Bertolt Brecht’s To Those Born After- In Honor Of A Veteran Communist Militant For Forty Years Of Service To The Struggle

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

My old friend and political compatriot, Peter Paul Markin, and I have been on many a picket line, joined many a rally, walked many an endless march, and attended, seemingly, countless meetings (emergency meetings, of course) since we first met in the summer of love in the year of our lord, 1967. We have sat on many an ad hoc committee as well. Although Markin has flirted with more than one on-going organization I have studiously avoid that means of political expression preferring the free-lance organization life. Nevertheless in our circumscribed small left-wing circles we have worked with, been friends with, and even had affairs with those who have been committed to the organized left-wing life. Recently Markin came across some information about one such woman, her real name and her organization are not important to publish here, whom I was very close to back in the early 1970s. I had not heard her name nor been in contact with her for well over thirty years. Nor am I in contact with her now. Nevertheless I will honor her here and the reader can read why below.

Dear Roberta,

Way back, back in the 1970s day, when we had our personal and political Boston minute, I sensed, strongly sensed although I, perhaps, never articulated it that way that here was a person who was in the struggle for the long haul. Here was somebody, a woman, out of long misty past European traditions of revolutionary struggle, a Verna Figner, Krupskaya, or beloved Rosa Luxemburg. Maybe it was the careless way you wore your hair then (and your seeming disdain for creature comforts). Maybe it that tone in your voice, the one that said this is not somebody to trifle with politically. Or maybe it was just East Texas po’ girl grit. (Christ, trying to be communist out of Texas in the 1960s required some serious grit.) But here you are now a veteran communist passing on the lessons of our common history to the next communist generation a-borning (actually the next next generation we lost the Reagan generation). And I am sure that they were listening attentively, or else.

I, on the other hand, turned out to be a poor communist. But know this, through all my personal foibles and faults, and they were massive and egregious then, I never lost faith in the communist future. While I do not have forty years of dedicated organized communist service to my credit I am comfortable in the knowledge that I too will finish up as a communist, and that those better instincts of my nature got me through.

Enough of that though. In a righteous world we could sit in some Bay Area ocean spot (or the Charles River) and compare notes in a League of Old Communists. Fate has dealt us a terrible blow and we have no time for such drawn out reflections. The youth will make the revolution and make this wicked old world a far better place to live in. But just in case they falter we had better stay in the fight to the end.

Have courage –Josh Breslin

Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor of a Veteran Communist (Of course it had to be a German poet to honor this communist)

To Those Born After

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
*******
To Those Who Come After

History in the conditional is always a funny tricky little thing. You can get wrapped up it in so bad that you begin to deny the hard reality of what really happened, what really bad happened usually. On the other hand you can do as most historians do and just plod along assuming because X, Y, or Z happened that was that. That’s the facts, jack and that’s it. Obviously to resolve this thing, or rather to get a real sense of the possibilities, some combination, some mix and matching needs to be placed in the maelstrom. And it is under that sign that I wish to understand Bertolt Brecht’s great poem, his great big tied-up with ribbons and bows valentine to future generations really, To Those Who Come After, that I have dedicated to a veteran communist who will understand my choice.

Of course it is a matter of generations, no question. And what that generation could have, or could not have, done, and done differently to sway the funny little rhythms of history. For his, Bertolt’s generation, if they only could have held out against the imperialist imperative onslaught of World War I, or at least not gone alone like sheep until almost the very end. More germane, if it could have carried out to completion one of those big-time revolutionary possibilities in Germany it had in the early 1920s. Or ceased, Communists and Social-Democrats alike, their willfully myopic view that the Weimar regime would hold out against the jackboot of Hitler’s storm streets without having to unite for an all-out fight to the death against the Nazi menace.

Moving forward to my parent’s generation, the generation that scarecrow survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and went on to survive, or wait on the survivors, of the D-Day and Pacific bloodbaths of World War II. If only they could have seen clearly enough that that Roosevelt guise was sheer deception to save his class in power (even if he had to fight them, the economic royalists, the one percent of his time, tooth and nail to do it) and create their own party, a workers party, after the tremendous class battles of the mid to late 1930s when they had the bosses on the run, a little anyway. Or hadn’t bought, bought hard into that white picket fence post-war dream and let the red scare dark night wash away whatever big (or little, but I think big) spark got them through the dustbowl miseries and war shellshock.

Once again moving forward to my generation, my disposable income record store soda fountain be-bop high school confidential night with some undiagnosed teen angst mixed with teen alienation generation, the generation of ’68, who didn’t want, well, didn’t start out wanting to anyway, buy into that red scare night white picket fence dream. If we could have just, a big “could have just” I agree, not thrown everything out with the bathwater and read some history we could have realized that it wasn’t just about us. Well, one way or the other, the Vietnamese taught us that lesson, that lesson about perseverance, about a sense of history and about using every tool around to get free. Or, closer to home, if we could have remembered where we had come from, most of us anyway, and dug our working class heels in sooner we could have left some kind of social movement worthy of the name instead of leaving future generations to start almost from scratch.

And moving on to our children’s generation. Oh, well, history records many retrogressions in the uphill struggle.

And now on to the generation that I am really directing this little “history” lesson to, the real subject of my “to those who come after,” those who roughly are students today, and are moreover the heart and soul of the Occupy movement that has suddenly jumped up onto the historic stage giving them a chance to change the course of history- on their terms. And, by the way incidentally giving to me (and others) from the generation of ’68 a second chance to make things right. Each generation I am firmly convinced must (and will) find its own ways to fight the monster. But know this, know this from first-hand experience, there is a monster on the loose out there, and that monster has a name, the American imperial state just now being captained by one Barack Obama. Whoever the captain is though the monster remains and that is where the “to the death” fight is.

And this is where Brother Brecht and I can share the same sentiments about being ill-equipped in our times to face those hard realities, to worry over half-measures, to not stay the course we knew we had to stay. So forgive us for not doing better, not doing a lot better. But forgive, or not, go slay that damn dragon.