A Commonplace Book

...I always knew that the physical senses are susceptible not only to education and development, but to atrophy and desuetude; and also that the "aesthetic sense" can only be reached through the physical senses themselves. I had also observed the indubitable fact that among the proletariat -- exploited and oppressed by the bourgeoisie -- the workman, ever burdened with his daily labor, could cultivate his taste only in contact with the worst and the vilest portion of bourgeois art which reached him in cheap chromos and the illustrated papers.

Art has always been employed by the different social classes who hold the balance of power as one instrument of domination -- hence, as a political instrument.... [T]here is no form of art which does not also play an essential political role. For that reason, whenever a people have revolted in search of their fundamental rights, they have always produced revolutionary artists...