*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- Artist's Corner- "The Solution" -In Honor Of Bertolt Brecht

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-    Artist's Corner- "The Solution" -In Honor Of Bertolt Brecht

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This poem refers to the German workers uprising, an attempted workers political revolution, in East Germany in 1953.


The Solution- Bertolt Brecht

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY-From The Pen Of Bertolt Brecht

A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY-From The Pen Of Bertolt Brecht  

A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY


PLAY/BOOK REVIEW


THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, BERTAOLT BRECHT, UNIVERSTIY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 1999


One of the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht’s strengths as an artist was the ability to set up a moral dilemma and work it out to a conclusion, not always a satisfactory one, by play’s end. This is unusual in a seemingly orthodox follower of the old Stalinist 'socialist realist’ cultural program. This work nevertheless permitted Brecht to address an age-old question about the nature of property ownership, extending it from its natural and historic setting in land and chattels to the question of personal human ownership.

The question posed here is whether a child abandoned by its natural mother then found and raised by another women should go to the former or that latter. Nice dilemma, right? But Brecht, as seem in Mother Courage and other parables, is not above cutting right to the bone on moral questions. What makes this work a cut above some of Brecht’s more didactic plays is the way that he weaves the parable about the odd resolution of an ancient Chinese property dispute and places that ‘wisdom’ in context of a then current dispute between two Soviet-era communes.

In the ancient dispute the judge who is called upon to render judgment, using the circle as a medium to resolve the dispute, seems to be Solomonic but is really a buffoon. This is pure Brechtian irony. This says as much about Brecht's attitude toward property as it does about the old time Chinese justice system. The question of property rights as presented by Brecht and their value as a societal glue is also something the reader or viewer of this play should think about, as well.

THE REVOLUTION AT THE BASE-From The Pen Of Bertolt Brecht

THE REVOLUTION AT THE BASE



PLAY/BOOK REVIEW



THE MOTHER, BERTOLT BRECHT, GROVE PRESS, 1989




More than one socialist commentator, including Lenin and Trotsky, has noted that a revolution is made at the base of society by a combination of experiences that cause the masses to throw of their former servitude, indifference or fear and just go for it. In the Marxist movement this has been called the molucular process. The action 'below the radar'. For a rather beautiful literary description of this rising tide read the first few chapters of Volume I of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. Needless to say those times are few and far between so that it is important to study the mechanics of those changes even if, as here, they are changes in overwhelmingly agrarian Russia just coming into the capitalist production process in the early 20th century. I believe, as Brecht obviously did when he brought it to the theater in highly industrialized Germany, that those same sentiments would also be expressed in more developed capitalist societies when tensions reached the breaking point.

Brecht has adapted for the stage this story written by the great Russian writer, and sometime revolutionary, Maxim Gorky. The story line in both cases is fairly straight forward. A working class mother not far removed from her rural roots is fearful that her son’s Bolshevik revolutionary activities will bring disaster on him and the family. As the story unfolds and the son’s commitment grows in line with the government’s repressive policies the mother starts, slowly, very slowly, to get the point of his work. Along the way her own ‘politics’ change and by the end she is as committed to the cause as her son. Her banner is now red.

On the Brechtian stage this story is told amid banners and music that add to the dramatic effect. In either format this is a powerful story and good piece of socialist propaganda. I remember an old German Communist Party member once telling me that in his youth he was actually recruited to the Communist Youth League by this play. Apparently the German CP set up literature tables in the lobby of the theater and at intermission and the end would sign up theater patrons after they had experienced the play. WOW! Would that our tasks were so easily accomplished these days.

WAR- UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL-From The Pen Of Bertolt Brecht

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, BERTOLT BRECHT, GROVE PRESS, 1991

In what appears to be a permanent war in Iraq it is not untimely to address the question of how individuals caught up on the margins of warfare cope, for good or evil, with the trauma of it. Bertolt Brecht, the master Communist playwright, has taken a story of a working mother’s struggle to survive as a camp following petty merchant in the Thirty Years War of the 17th century in Germany as his backdrop to investigate one aspect of that phenomena- the elemental struggle for individual survival. And it is not pretty.

If the simple moral of the story is that war does nothing to elevate the human spirit or bring out the better instincts of our nature Brecht has made his point in rather stark terms. The struggle of Mother Courage to keep her ‘mom and pop’ business going at the cost of the lives of her children may not go down well with today’s more squeamish audiences but the unfortunate fact is that all over the world, and most notably in today’s Iraq, those very same kind of cold, calculating decisions are being made by families in order to survive. The fact that it is a mother, the source of life and supposed nurturer-in-chief, who is sacrificing her children only makes that observation more compelling.

Brecht, moreover, wants us to see that while greed and acquisitiveness may not be eternal human characteristics under conditions of scarcity that have dominated most of human history that struggle has led to some very strange behavior. In the end his play is not only against war but the economic conditions that engender war as well. That would require some mighty big changes. But we had better think about it. Pronto.

IN DEFENCE OF SCIENCE-From The Pen Of Bertolt Brecht

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW



GALILEO, BERTOLT BRECHT, GROVE PRESS, 1996



The pressures that the established order can bring to bear on those who want to move outside the status quo are enormous. In the end those in charge can grind down the best of men and women with the most worthy knowledge to disseminate. That is the story that the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht brings us here concerning the pressures to recant brought on Galileo by the Catholic Church in the 1500’s. And for what crime? For merely bringing out facts about the nature of the earth and its place in the universe that are taken as commonplaces, even by small children, today.

Brecht himself certainly knew about such pressures. Although in public, at least, Brecht was a fairly orthodox Stalinist he had his private moments of doubt. Certainly some of the themes in his plays stretch the limits of the orthodox Stalinist ‘socialist realist’ cultural program. Thus the strongest part of the play is the struggle between an individual who is onto something new about the world and an institution that saw that such a discovery would wreak havoc on its claims to centrality. Every once in a while a section of humankind turns inward on itself like that and here the Church was no exception. Damn, that is the overhead cost we pay for some sense of human progress. Except, as in the case of the Catholic Church, it should not have taken 300 years to admit the error. Know this. We have to defend the Galileos of the world against the seemingly never-ending rise of obscurantism. And in this play Brecht has done his part to honor that commitment.