Recently, or perhaps not so recently, I have been mildly impressed and indeed intrigued (it makes my hairs on the back of my neck stand on end) by the communist anthem The Internationale.
"Oh!", I hear you yelp; this from Darren the Thatcherite - how can that be?! The tune is blood-curdling and the passion with which it is sung is nonetheless electric. These worker-strugglers stood up for what they believed in and looking back with Cold War distance it is easy to mock - but also less challenging to appreciate it.
A German version is particularly rousing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aRF4aN5C6U&feature=fvw
Not to mention several Soviet renditions.
The Chinese don't do a bad job of rousing the party-faithful either.
And for those of you who know anything of Japanese nationalists - get the irony?!?! - this is wonderful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRkRiOYFs4A&feature=related
Mind you listening to an Hewbrew version - that sounds like Milk and Honey from the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhbMuW_RxP4&feature=related) it's perhaps not all doom and gloom or taken too serious either. You can compare and contrast with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqFOxKPD_Ok&feature=related
On YouTube it's in virtually every imaginable language: Norwegian, French, Greek, Bangladeshi, and it goes on and on.....I even found it Burmese.
Marx was fool, Engel his equally idiotic side-kick, yet the lure of equality appeals even now. And perhaps it's right that it does: capitalism has taken a knock of late, but I still feel it's the most logical of human life-systems - the one that rewards those who deserve to be rewarded and penalises those who perhaps should be disadvantaged.
Yet, the powerful notion that we're all due something in life from government, from our fellow citizens, from God, is compelling and has ramifications for non-communist doctrines like capitalism. My Great-Uncle Jack has been a communist / socialist all of his life and a great life he's had too; I respect the history and origins of such beliefs, of such Weltanschauungen (world philosophies / views) but that framework of a solution is defunct, distressed, deserted.
We cannot and should not ignore our fellow man, we are all responsible for the good of our village, community and ultimately planet. This responsibility transcends left and right and currently the world is failing largely to acknowledge this obligation.
Yet the hypocrisy of communism should not be lost on anyone, especially the Nepalis in the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAxz0ECZ-Lo&feature=related where an adherent proudly wears an Arsenal football top - overtly displaying a symbol of both the submission of a sport to rampant capitalism and corporate manipulation - O2....?!!?
The world is crazy. But I love it.
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