The british government censoring of Jeremy Deller's hypergraphic Harry Kills Me at the 2013 Venice Biennale - which referred to Prince Harry's role as officer in the British Army in Afghanistan as well as his shooting of endangered hen harriers on one of his family estates as well as the fact that he is a seriously unfunny little fuck - can show us, besides the snivelling servitude of Deller and the bureaucrats of the British Council, some ways that art functions today.

The actions of the council first show how not just politics but how art too is a continuation of war by other means. The passive reaction and collusion of the press in the uk shows how censorship is art made not tongue-tied but triumphant. Meaning is constructed by what is occulted not revealed. Finally the collusion then of the artist himself who is quoted as being happy with the censorship shows how even the bourgeoisie have come to agree that art for arts sake is just another piece of deodorised dogshit.

We publish deller's piece here not out of some liberal defense of so-called freedom of speech or of art itself but in order to attack these abstract bourgeois constructions and their very real and detrimental effects on working class people everywhere.

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