[lbo-talk] labor bitchiness

[B.]

So passing out the Little Red Songbook -- which has
some great songs in it, is "really sort of sad" -- but
the Communist manifesto, written almost 100 years its
senior -- how does that rank? Uber-pathetic, off the
scale? Ive seen way more of the latter than the
former.

I bought and paid for a copy of the Little Red Song
book -- no one was passin' em out "like it was 1916"
when I got mine -- which I love and could recommend to
anyone who likes old labor folk or labor history. Then
again, I have stuff written from the 1500s, too
(Rabelais, etc.) And, actually, I do find a lot of
Hill's and Chaplin's, et. al., lyrics to be basically
spot-on, even in our modern environment. But I also
think a lot of stuff in the Comm. Manifesto was
prescient as well, esp. the parts about globalization.

-B.

andie nachgeborenen wrote:

"Nostalgia isn't the same as sentimentality. Btw while
I love those songs as such as anyone I am not so sure
they are forward thinking today, I mean in a 'Pierre
Menard, Author of Don Quixote' sort of way. What was
forward thinking from Joe Hill's point of view in the
teens of the last century isn't necessarily forward
thinking today, if we don't build on it and move on.
People who keep handing out The Little Red Songbook
like it's 1916 are really sort of sad IMHO. But maybe
you don't disagree."