Marcuse - the barricade and the dance floor

Happy 125th birthday Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) , born 19th July 1898 and still spooking fascists from beyond the grave - see how he features in their ridiculous 'cultural marxism' conspiracy theory.

Marcuse took a more positive view of the counter culture and the radical movements of the 1960s than some of his Frankfurt School contemporaries, as he articulated in his 1969 'An Essay on Liberation':

'the hatred of the young bursts into laughter and song, mixing the barricade and the dance floor, love play and heroism. And the young also attack the esprit de serieux in the socialist camp: miniskirts against the apparatchiks, rock ‘n’ roll against Soviet Realism. The insistence that a socialist society can and ought to be light, pretty, playful, that these qualities are essential elements of freedom, the faith in the rationality of the imagination, the demand for a new morality and culture – does this great anti-authoritarian rebellion indicate a new dimension and direction of radical change, the appearance of new agents of radical change, and a new vision of socialism in its qualitative difference from the established societies?'.

Radio Citta Futura 1976

 1976 article about Italian radical radio station Radio Citta Futura (Radio Future City) from Red Weekly, paper of the International Marxist Group in the UK. The Rome-based station began broadcasting regularly in that year and played a role in the tumultuous events of that period. It was temporarily closed down by the state while covering the riotous demonstrations of the Movement of '77, as was the another Rome based station,  Radio Onda Rossa. In 1979  five  women involved with the station's feminist programme Radio Donna were shot and seriously injured in a fascist attack on the station.

The scan of the article is incomplete but there's some interesting information including the daily schedule for the station. This includes 'The Night of the Comrades' a late night programme where  'each worker on the station in rotation can broadcast what he/she wants' ('the freakier part of the station') and 'Programme for night workers' based on taped interviews. As mentioned in the article the proliferation of 'Free Radio' followed a court decision in 1975 that ended the state's monopoly on broadcasting - leading to the legal creation of commercial stations as well as political projects like this one. The interviewee - Sandro Silvestri - estimates that at this time there were 800 new radio stations 'in the whole of Italy and there are 52 in Rome alone... at least 120 stations are openly declared to be left wing stations, calling themselves "democratic" radio'.

The station is still broadcasting online (its correct name is Citta Futura not Future as stated in this article).

Source: Red Weekly, 21 October 1976

Other radio posts:

Radio Evasione (prisoners radio show)/Parco Lambro 1992

Portugal 1974/75: radio and revolution

Radical pirate radio in Islington 1969