“What Is to Be Done?”
by
Jean-Luc Godard
Translation by Mo Tietelbaum
First published in English and French in Afterimage, 1970
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We must make political films.
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We must make films politically.
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1 and 2 are antagonistic to each other and belong to two opposing conceptions of the world.
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1 belongs to the idealistic and metaphysical conception of the world.
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2 belongs to the Marxist and dialectical conception of the world.
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Marxism struggles against idealism and the dialectical against the metaphysical.
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This struggle is the struggle between the old and the new, between new ideas and old ones.
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The social existence of men determines their thought.
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The struggle between the old and the new is the struggle between classes.
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To carry out 1 is to remain a being of the bourgeois class.
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To carry out 2 is to take up the proletarian class position.
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To carry out 1 is to make descriptions of situations.
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To carry out 2 is to make concrete analysis of a concrete situation.
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To carry out 1 is to make British Sounds.
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To carry out 2 is to struggle for the showing of British Sounds on English television.
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To carry out 1 is to understand the laws of the objective world in order to explain that world.
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To carry out 2 is to understand the laws of the objective worlds in order to actively transform that world.
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To carry out 1 is to describe the wretchedness of the world.
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To carry out 2 is to show people in struggle.
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To carry out 2 is to destroy 1 with the weapons of criticism and self-criticism.
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To carry out 1 is to give a complete view of events in the name of truth in itself.
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To carry out 2 is not to fabricate over-complete images of the world in the name of relative truth.
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To carry out 1 is to say how things are real. (Brecht)
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To carry out 2 is to say how things really are. (Brecht)
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To carry out 2 is to edit a film before shooting it, to make it during filming and to make it after the filming. (Dziga Vertov)
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To carry out 1 is to distribute a film before producing it.
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To carry out 2 is to produce a film before distributing it, to learn to produce it following the principle that: it is production which commands distribution, it is politics which commends economy.
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To carry out 1 is to film students who write: Unity—Students—Workers.
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To carry out 2 is to know that unity is a struggle of opposites (Lenin) to know that the two are one.
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To carry out 2 is to study the contradiction between the classes with images and sounds.
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To carry out2 is to study the contradiction between the relationships of production and the productive forces.
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To carry out 2 is to dare to know where one is, and where one has come from, to know one’s place in the process of production in order then to change it.
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To carry out 2 is to know the history of revolutionary struggles and be determined by them.
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To carry out 2 is to produce scientific knowledge of revolutionary struggles and of their history.
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To carry out 2 is to know that film making is a secondary activity, a small screw in the revolution.
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To carry out 2 is to use images and sounds as teeth and lips to bite with.
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To carry out 1 is to only open the eyes and the ears.
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To carry out 2 is to read the reports of comrade Kiang Tsing.
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To carry out 2 is to be militant.
Biblioklept 