Tag: Communist

BR#9 – Accidental Death Of An Anarchist

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Another new playwright has crossed my path. Dario Fo wrote Accidental Death Of An Anarchist in response to the 1969 death of an anarchist in police custody Milan. He had been accused of the bombing of the Agricultural Bank which had resulted in the deaths of sixteen people. While in custody he, according to the official account at the time, committed suicide by jumping out of the window on the fourth floor of the police headquarters. Ten years later three fascists were convicted of the crime, some of whom were agents of the secret police, and in court proceedings it was determined that the major actors behind the bombing had been senior ministers and Generals who were condemned before being acquitted. The state once more protected it’s own while allowing those at the bottom who actually committed the act itself to go down for it. The play was written prior to this final outcome and was partly in response to a dearth of reporting from both sides of the political spectrum, the right-wing for obvious reasons and the Communists because they’re little more than power hungry political stooges themselves.

The play is set one week after the event and Fo uses the character titled Maniac to highlight the ridiculous nature of the police account of events, their incompetence and as a vehicle to get his political message across. I’m sure there’s a name for this type of character in a play but I forget what I learnt in school. While serious and dry approaches to storytelling always have their place, there is a particular way satire manages to express an idea and create an understanding in the audience. It is more accessible, despite it being on a serious topic comedy allows people to take it in without feeling they need to immediately react in a serious manner. Fo does this expertly and through his use of the Maniac manages to create a situation in which the police expose their own corruption and the left wing reporter her own hypocrisy.

To quote the Maniac in one of his more lucid moments;

“Why not ask yourself, Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence ours demands, when they have put the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage cuts to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises, and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile*, and set their wildest dogs loose on us all”

*While events in Chile happened after the original was written, the text I read from was translated and adapted in the 1980s hence the reference.

BR#6 – Red Rosa

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Dr Rosa Luxemburg, what a woman. She would have definitely put me in my place. I mentioned about a week ago about revolutionary left wing men in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century all looking like intellectual accountants, well this was her time, and these were her men. Rosa Luxemburg was of Jewish Polish decent but it was in Germany and the Revolutionary Socialist movement of the time in which she is most remembered. This was a remarkable time for change while also being a frustratingly impotent one too. It’s littered with the ‘what if’ moments that seem to be a constant in social movements, and which ultimately suggests they failed in their objective of removing the bourgeoisie from power and liberating the workers in the process. It is also important though to remember we’re not working fourteen hour days, for what it’s worth we have a vote and although it’s not perfect we do seem to have gained a certain degree of liberty and protection under the law. On the other hand that liberty and that protection can be taken away from us at any time, as the late great George Carlin said;

“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges“

But enough of that this is about Rosa Luxemburg and the graphic novel on her life I have just finished called Red Rosa. She was a fighter, and she had a profound understanding on the nature of capitalism, imperialism and power. She was a revolutionary but had she lived long enough would likely have been horrified by what unfolded in Russia in the name of communism and the people. She also challenged the ideas of Marx which was for many a major taboo, although others saw her as adding to and evolving his ideas. She spent virtually the entirety of the First World War in prison because of her anti-imperial beliefs and was murdered shortly afterwards as the new faux-socialist SPD Party, of whom she had once been a leading member, cemented it’s position in the new republic by removing those who challenged it’s power and tried to bring about any real change.

The graphic novel itself is aesthetically impressive, the images expressive and the ideas put forth insightful. This is not just a picture book but one telling the life of someone justifiably revered. Her beliefs and ideals are explained in an easily understandable way, as is a general explanation of anti-capitalism and social movements generally as well as in relation to modern times. I imagine it would probably be a great book for a teenage girl as it has the potential to be incredibly inspiring. As I don’t know any I’ll put it in my book stack and give it away when the moment comes. The graphic novel is an incredibly enjoyable format and this a powerful and important story to tell. Neither are let down here.

Li Shizhen & Political Medicine

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Specific dates from the past are always hard to verify and quite often when recording somebody’s date of birth they are either inaccurate or a year or period of years is given. It was finally decided in the 1960s during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution that Li Shizhen was born on the Third of July 1518. Up until this period he had been a relatively little known historical figure but with the rise of Communist China his status was elevated to one of national hero. His most famous and greatest achievement was to compile his Compendium of Materia Medica which was a scientific book based upon Chinese herbology. It took him twenty seven years and while he completed it prior to his death in 1593, it was not published until afterwards by his remaining children. It received varying amounts of attention upon release but nothing comparative to it’s fame post politicising. There are no known images of his true likeness and all have been created during the last half century in China. Films have been made about him, books have been written about him and the myth of the barefoot doctor going from village to village curing the people has been born.

Many of the cures he wrote about form the basis of what is now known as traditional Chinese Medicine. There are many examples of herbology being incredibly effective at helping people lead a long and healthy life. More traditional based remedies quite often look holistically at the body comparative to modern medicines which go straight to the pain. Both of these approaches have their benefits and this isn’t to specifically bash traditional or modern medicines. For every corrupt pharmaceutical rep pushing drugs which will never actually cure anyone but merely create dependence, you have traditional practitioners pushing shark fin soup and rhino horn. Rhino horn ground down will not make you strong and virulent. Shark fin soup will not do whatever medicinal benefits it’s proponents suggest it will. Shark fin soup was popularised and made fashionable during the Ming dynasty by the Tianqi Emperor who ruled from 1620 to 1627 who had it served at royal banquets. It first appeared in Li Shizhen’s Compendium of Materia Medica.

Beautiful animals like tigers, rhinos and sharks are partly being pushed to the edge of extinction by the popularity of dishes containing them in modern day China. This is not an article damning the field entirely as there are proven benefits from some treatments, some being absorbed into more modern medicinal approaches. What it is though is a piece highlighting the utter absurdity that endangered animals are being massacred because of the ideological myths creating by a regime looking to maintain it’s grip on power. He is the barefoot doctor, the man of the people, the Chinese hero. People in China are not just eating powdered horn and fin soup because they believe it to do something, this is state sanctioned conditioning. There are no extra erections on show, merely the remains of prostrate butchered animals.