Nostalgic leftism doesn't have an ideological label it. There are lots of nostalgic Marxists as well as anarchists and other kinds of leftist. I think it's sad to see people stuck on red flags, hammers and sickles, raised fists, The Internationale -- lots of which I have deep a - umm -- sentimental? attachment to. I still choke up at the Internationale and The Reg Flag. I own about eight editions of the Little Red Songbook.I agree with almost every political ideal in The Little Red Songbook, and happily sang (very badly) the song in it to my kids until they got embarrassed by my singing.
And sure, as far as content goes the Manifesto is still unsurpassed as an analysis of the nature of 21st century capitalism. Unfortunately a lot of people on the left stop there, or maybe with Lenin or Trotsky, formerly maybe with Mao. (A Maoist friend in the NLG spent a couple of hours the other week trying to recruit me into her little party, which she does every few years as part of her missionary activities.) We can't afford to lose the insights and esprit of the past, but it's sad for us if we don't move forward as well.
If we can't formulate kinds of political expression that were apt for our own era, as, in their time, Marx or Bakunin or (fill in your favorite leftist writer), or, in music Joe Hill or Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie or the Freedom Singers or John Lennon did work that resonated then, we are going to continue to fail to influence our future in contrast to the way they influenced theirs.
Give Peace A Chance is great song and the idea is not going to date, but it's sad for us that forty years on it's the centerpiece of rallies _and we don't have anything like it since._ I really think that if I go to another demo where they sing Give Peace A Chance and We Shall Overcome one more time I will scream.
I'd be really happy if I went to a mass rally of workers singing the Internationale, but I really don't expect that our singing the Internationale will bring about mass rallies of workers, and I rather suspect that when there are again mass rallies of workers they will be singing something else.
I agree that the things are discussing are important historically and a crucial part of collective memory. I also think we shouldn't settle for being curiosities for people interested in labor history. We need to make own own labor history. And other sorts too.
--- "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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."
>
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>
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