Discussion: Marx and Brecht

Our session this evening considered Marx's famous work The Communist Manifesto  along with a play by Bertold Brecht, situated during WWII but based on the ancient Greek play Antigone.  

We began with Marx.  Chris led the discussion with contributions from Stephen.  One aspect that was mentioned was that Marx based his analysis of the dialectical issue of human history on Hegel's work (which we haven't read); and that communism and a revolution by the proletariat will eliminate this constant conflict between something and its antithesis because the proletariat includes everyone and will not have an antithetical entity.  Marx would go on to define a dialectic that was different from Hegel's, Marx even referred to his dialectic as the opposite of Hegel's.  This dialectic became defined as 'dialectical materialism' or the primacy of the material way of life over all forms of social consciousness.

Marx felt that all inequality was due to property ownership, which was also the control of the means of production.  At the time that he was envisioning a workers' revolution, his worker's paradise, Marx did not contemplate power issues occurring in a communist system, issues such as we have seen in countries such as China and Russia and to some lesser degree Cuba, in the century following the publication of the Manifesto.

Marx and Engels went back to try and look into the origins of class structure and see whether in other societies such as aboriginal societies, tribal societies etc they functioned differently from 'civilized' societies.  They concluded that the problems stemmed from ownership of property (which became ownership of the means of production especially during the industrial revolution).

Chris showed us a brief video of an early Soviet 'cartoon' which would have been shown in various villages after the revolution, to try and convince the peasants of the value of collectivization.  In jerky animation it showed the evils of capitalism and the benefits of working together for the good of all.  It reminded me of the old posters we would still see which had been popular in the 1920s - 1940s.

These posters would show strong austere workers working hard or with fists upraised in support of the revolution.  

I remember seeing idealistic students, decorating their university dorm rooms with these old posters from Russia.

I don't remember seeing many from China but they have the same flavour:

Even western posters had the same look at the time. 

When I see images from North Korea today I see the exact same style and imagery: urban scenes in the background (man's achievements) and in the foreground men and women lined up at attention in 'heroic' poses.

ANTIGONE

Bertold Brecht 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956

Brecht wrote this play just after the end of the second World War, in 1947/1948.  Brecht had spent the war outside of Germany, moving around the Scandinavian countries and then to the USA until he was blacklisted and called to appear before the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee).  He then returned to Europe, to Switzerland where he lived until moving to East Germany after the war.

The discussion of Brecht's play Antigone was interesting.  Jonas led the discussion which I always find interesting since when he is not leading the discussion he tends to be very quiet in class.  He had sent us out a list of questions, I've attached a few of them and our discussion here:

1. Who is the real hero of the play, Kreon or Antigone?
Kreon was a dynamic character, & Antigone was more static. Antigone is more heroic here. I felt Kreon was more static in this version than in Sophocles whereas Antigone seemed more heroic here compared to Sophocles' version where she just seems to have a martyr-complex and to value her dead, flawed brother above her live, vulnerable sister. Creon in the Sophocles version was more appealing to me - when he was at his most rigid I could still understand why he was the way he was.

2. Given that the play opens in post-war Germany, are we to view Kreon as Hitler? Was Argos the Soviet Union that bounced back from a Nazi invasion to utterly shatter Germany?
We didn't discuss this much but I saw a lot of WWII symbolism in the play.

3. After reading the Communist Manifesto, do you see Kreon as a Bourgeois imperialist and autocrat? Do you see Antigone and Hamon as rebellious Proletarians?
There is a hint of this when Kreon refers to Hamon as being Antigone's "comrade" (p 43). Hamon retorts, "Not only hers, but of all that's just, wherever I see it." It was very interesting to read this at the same time as Marx. There is so much from the manifesto that even if not directly referenced, obviously influenced the thinking of the following century.

4. Brecht changes the Ode from Love to a Bacchanalian orgy. As Antigone was preparing for her death, the city was literally in the throes of a drunken hedonistic orgy. Why did Brecht do this?
We discussed how this is likely to show that people continue on with their lives despite horrors. We have an enormous capacity to "move on" from things, to tolerate, adjust, forget, forgive.

Again, we could have taken up the entire time available just to discuss any one of these.  The influence of Marx and the rejection of prussianism and naziism were very apparent in this play, though unlike Anouillh, Brecht did not spend the war in either Germany or an occupied country.  I find it somehow reassuring that artists return to old stories to try and say something about the world they live in.  I don't know why this seems different than the endless plundering of previous movies that Hollywood does - maybe because when Hollywood remakes a movie they don't seem to bring anything new to the works, nor to have anything much to say.

  

Marx & Engels: The Communist Manifesto

Mark, Karl & Engels, Friedrich: The Communist Manifesto, Tr. Samuel Moore; Penguin Classics, London, 2002

This is another of those books that I'd always meant to read but hadn't.  I just remember so many references to marxism or its derivatives in the books, movies etc that I've seen growing up.  Though it all occurred over 100 years before my birth, the repercussions of marxism and socialism continued to reverberate in the century following.  That aspect of intolerance and paranoia and absolutism, of revolution spawned so much reaction and change.

From German preface 1883

all history has been a history of class struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time for ever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles…”

from preface to English edition of 1888

Socialists in 1847 were the adherents of various Utopian systems: Owenites in England; Fourierists in France; …

Communist was that portion of the working class that had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion then called itself communist.

Produced the Utopian communism in France of Cabet, in Germany of Weitling

Socialism in 1847 was a middle-class movement; Communism a working-class movement

Socialism on the Continent was respectable, Communism the opposite

‘the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself’

pg 38  The fundamental proposition of the manifesto is: 

that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class -- the proletariat -- cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class -- the bourgeoisie -- without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.

 There is so much in this book that was prescient about capitalism - especially evident in the globalization we see today.  pg 67  “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.  It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere."  Pg 68  

“In place of old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.  In place of old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.  And as in material, so also in intellectual production.  The intellectual creations of individual nations becomes common property.”

“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.”

"The bourgeoisie increases urban at expense of rural."

“The necessary consequence [of concentrating property in a few hands] was political centralization.”  Pg 69

Marx and Engels write about the effects of the bourgeoisie in less than 100 years.

“Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture , steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation canalization of rivers…”  Pg 70

“…the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.”

“But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians.”  Pg 71

“the proletariat, the modern working class, […] a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital.” Pg 73

This really sums up the constraints of wage labour - though we have seen some changes, probably through the trade unions, that have mixed it up where some wage earners can earn enough to be able to accumulate property and get ahead of the hourly wage trap and some of what would have been called the bourgeoisie, the professionals, don't make much hourly, have huge student loan burdens and are trapped in the hourly wage prison.

Interesting perspective on some gender elements on pg 73  

“The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women.  Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class…”

Pg75  “every class struggle is a political struggle”

The focus on property is interesting - I'm not sure in 2013 if it would seem so cut and dried.  Right now the potential oppressors are the institutions and those who control them.  This seems to involve sex and race more than class.  We also see the incredible power of money - not property but money in whatever form.  Crime can reward so much power via money.  

“The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other mode of appropriation.  They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.”On Pg 77

“The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority.”

[The bourgeoisie] is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law.  It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery.”  Pg 78  

This is probably still true for much capital but with financial markets, information technology  etc, much money can be accumulated without wage labour.  “The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour.  Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers”

“…Man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life.”pg 86  

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class

The language got a little over-elaborate at times:

The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry 'eternal truths', all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.

Pg 97   Discussion of Bourgeois Socialism  “They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.”

PROLETARIAT – lower class, working class – originally from Roman Constitution – census of citizens, those who didn’t have minimal wealth (equivalent to 11,000 asses) had their offspring noted instead as their only contribution to the state (from prole = offspring)

While trying to find some information on where the word proletariat came from I came across this great quote where Marx gave this description of the lumpenproletariat:

Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.

I was really glad to have finally read this book.  I can see how young idealists in the late 19th c an early 20th c would have been attracted to this as a way to try and change centuries-old injustices.

a word to look up - Apodictic

Brecht: Antigone

Brecht, Bertold: Antigone, Tr. Judith Malina; Applause Theatre Book Publishers, New York, 1990

I think I enjoyed this version the best of the 3 we've considered this year: Aeschylus', Anouillh's and now Brecht's.  This may because I had more sympathy for Antigone herself in this one.  She just seemed obstinate in the original Greek play and I couldn't understand why her loyalty to her dead, traitorous, power-hungry brother trumped her responsibility and feelings for her living, needy sister.  Anouillh's version had a more sympathetic Creon but I think I prefer the original Creon, initially narrow-minded and self-righteous but eventually self-aware, humble and repentant.

I LOVED the language in this version (as I did in Sophocles version, not so much in Anouillh).  I'm always impressed when the language in a translation is beautiful.  I never know for sure whether it is 'as good' as the original but I have to wonder whether beautiful language, certainly beautiful imagery, can persist into other languages.

Brecht begins his version with a prose poem that encapsulates the play.  This would make a great "60 second' play.
He captures so much so efficiently.

And Ismene, her sister, came out of the house and said:
'I am the one who did it.' But Antigone said: 'She's lying.'
And wiping the sweat off, he said: 'Work it out between you.'

So much captured in 3 lines.

Kreon is a colder, more tyrannical person in this version.  Antigone is more idealistic, not just about her duty to her gods and family but about the injustice of Kreon's rule.  This all makes sense when you think about the timing of this version, so close to WWII.

I'll have to keep my eye out for Brecht's version being performed sometime.

Some lines I want to remember:

_{Pg 18                           62}

_ISMENE

_{…we’re women,}

_{who haven’t the strength to fight}

_{against men; and therefore we’re obedient}

_{in this, and in some things even harder.  Therefore}

_{I ask the dead and the oppressed to forgive me, I obey}

_{The authorities.  What’s the sense of committing}

_{Useless actions.}

_{Pg 21                           147}

_KREON

_{…I know}

_{that you will not count the costs}

_{when it comes to oiling the wheels}

_{of the man-mangling war machine, any more}

_{than you deny him the blood}

_{of your sons in battle.}

_{Pg 24                           235}

_KREON

_…

_{Of all things graven,}

_{There is nothing as evil as silver.  It corrupts}

_{Whole states.  It lures men from their homes}

_{To practice every kind of godless action…}

_{Pg 26                           300}

_{THE ELDERS}

_{For he who finds no enemy becomes}

_{His own enemy.  As though he were an ox,}

_{He yokes the neck of his neighbor, but his neighbor}

_{Tears it off.  If he advances}

_{He steps across the bodies of his own people.  He can’t}

_{Fill his own stomach.  But he builds a wall}

_{Around his own property; and the wall:}

_{It must be torn down!  Open the roof to the}

_{Rain!  He counts what is human}

_{As nothing at all.  He has become}

_{His own monster.}

_{Pg 32                           433}

_ANTIGONE

_{…Anyone who uses}

_violence

_{against his enemy will turn and use violence against}

_{his own people.}

_{Pg 36                           514}

_ANTIGONE

_{Don’t die too abstractly.}

_527-8

_KREON

_{These women, I tell you, they’re all alike;}

_{One of them loses her mind, and another one follows.}

_…

_{ISMENE     530}

_{But you’re killing your son’s own bride.}

_{KREON       531}

_{There’s more than one field for a man to plow.}

_{Pg 40                           611}

_KREON

_{…The uncommitted man}

_{who doesn’t know his own mind tastes dissent}

_{in every small annoyance….}

_{Pg 41                           650}

_HAMON

_…

_{But don’t say you alone can be right, and no other.}

_{He who cuts himself off from the others has}

_{No thoughts or speech or soul like another,}

_{And if we look inside such a man}

_{We would find him empty…}

_{Pg 43                           692}

_KREON

_…

_{“He seems to be that woman’s comrade.”}

_HAMON

_{Not only hers, but of all that’s just, wherever I see it.}

_KREON

_{Wherever there’s a hole in it.}

_…

_KREON

_{I’d call that fresh if it weren’t a woman’s slave who}

_{Said it.}

_HAMON

_{Better her slave than yours.}

_…

_{…You want to say everything}

_{and hear nothing.}

_{Pg 45                           729}

_…

_{O lusts of the flesh, it is you}

_{Who win every battle!...}

_{Pg 46                           778}

_ANTIGONE

_{I, who belong to life, not to death.}

_{THE ELDERS}

_…

_{Violence never examines its motives.}

₈₀₀

_ANTIGONE

_…

_{And men say that winter is always with her}

_{And her throat is washed}

_{With the snowbright tears of her eyelids…}

Discussion: Darwin's Origin of Species

Discussion: On the Origin of Species

1. Comment on what Darwin was attempting to accomplish in the Origin, his method, and how well you think he succeeded in his aim?

He wanted to lay out a well-constructed body of information to show how natural selection HAD to be the answer rather than a creationism myth.  Wanted it to be understandable by the "lay" reader.

Natura non facit saltum

Nature makes no leaps

2. William Paley’s Natural Theology: Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802) greatly impressed Darwin in his youth (Paley is responsible for the famous ‘watchmaker’ metaphor). Among other things, he argued that the complex structure of the eye is clear evidence of an Intelligent Designer. How did Darwin deal with this kind of argument?

Darwin described how eyes can be lost or become less functional in animals that don't need them i.e." where working eyes don't contribute to the survival of the species such as moles, some bats etc.

He said that eyes would have evolved "little by little" and in nature we see great variability in the eye.

3. Given Whewell’s comment above, do you think that it is possible to read God into evolutionary theory? What was Darwin’s view?

Darwin seemed to want to avoid bringing God into the discussion.  He felt that we did not need God to explain the variety of animals on earth but that doesn't mean he doesn't exist.  He is just not needed for the discussion.  These incredible organs we have and marvelously adapted characteristics all evolved "little by little".

Darwin considered that man evolved as animals did, all from the same basis, starting point.

3. How did Darwin use his own experiments to bolster his general argument?

This was the part I enjoyed the most - how he could study species from travels around the world and from other scientists but then deduce so much just from little experiments he would do in his own property.

4. Why did Darwin devote so much attention to the difficulty in distinguishing ‘species’ from ‘varieties’? What bearing might this problem have on the nature and interpretation of human “races”? He spent quite a bit of time on this, trying to decide what the basic unit was, what the end points of various evolutionary branches would be.

7. What was the importance to Darwin of the discovery of “deep time” – time as understood by geologists like Lyell?  The notion of immense stretches of time are what allowed Darwin's theory to be feasible, little by little over a LONG period of time.

Darwin's The Origin of Species

Darwin, Charles: The Origin of Species. London: Penguin Classics (150th Anniversary Edition), 2009

DARWIN 1809-1882
I enjoyed this book - another one on my "Must Read" list.  It made me want to go and read The Voyage of the Beagle. I didn't actually make a lot of notes while reading this book.  It all seemed to make sense to me, though I was still amazed that Darwin could figure this all out and put it all together in the 1800s.  Thinking about him travelling around and collecting scads of animals, plants and insects and then bringing them all back to categorize and examine and try and figure it all out - it's an amazing thought. Made me think of the naturalist or biologist in Angels and Insects.

It is good thus to try in our imagination to give any form some advantage over another.  Probably in no single instance should we know what to do, so as to succeed.  It will convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings.." pg 78

How I wish that this were true but instead we have scientists who either through hubris or greed think they can play havoc with species and organisms in order to create something which they [mankind] think is 'good' or 'useful'.  They are busy inserting genes into different species, making GMOs, most frighteningly Monsanto which creates Frankenfoods that will only survive if you use their chemicals.  We have geneticists and fertility specialists playing around with lethal genetic diseases.  We're a long way from being 'convinced of our ignorance.'  How can our notion of 'good or useful' compare with an inanimate entity whose only measure is survivability.  For Darwin, "the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."  pg 79

Man can act only on external and visible characters: nature cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being.  She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life.  Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends." pg 82-83

And Darwin was only speaking of breeders.  I don't think he could have even contemplated the drastic changes that science is now able to perform.

Darwin sees evolution as a big tree with branches sprouting off and some continuing to bud and sprout and others dying at the ends and ceasing to grow.

This is the most sobering aspect of this book - that Darwin could see so clearly the "rightness" of natural selection and the danger of man's manipulations for his own, shallow purposes and yet here we are, over 100 years later, and we muck around with species as if we are mixing paint.

Ibsen: The Enemy of the People

Ibsen, Henrik: The Enemy of The People,

I'm pretty sure that I've read some Ibsen before but I don't have a strong memory of his style.  I enjoyed this play.  I thought the characters were interesting and he set up the dilemma very well, giving us some information and having his characters seem to have certain principles and then having most of them turn face and demonstrate that self-interest trumps all.  He doesn't make anyone the hero in the purest sense. Dr. Stockmann seems to be a person of "sacred convictions" but he very quickly becomes almost messianic in his reactions.  He certainly has issues about his importance and his wife suggests he has got himself (and his family) into trouble before.  His brother suggests he is cantankerous and has trouble with authority figures.  His daughter Petra seems quite decent as does their friend Captain Horster.  It was interesting and frightening to see how the townspeople so quickly closed ranks and turned on the doctor, someone one would assume that they had respected and trusted and needed.  As soon as their interests were threatened they all closed ranks and turned on the "truth teller".  Stockmann seemed to have some threads of zealotry in him.  He very quickly moved from trying to make sure the baths didn't physically harm anyone to wanting to overthrow the old guard and eliminate anyone who got in the way of change and progression.  Fortunately Petra was more balanced and gives us hope for the future.

I won't be able to be at the class discussion this week as I'll be down in Guatemala.  I'm curious to see what the discussion is about this play and about what was going on in Norway at the time.