Anti Fascists

"When Victor Adler objected to Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia, even if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: "And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein [Trotsky] sitting over there at the Cafe Central?""

"Any scrap of Trotsky's writing is worth having. He can always provide the biting comment, the brilliant pen-portrait."

"Trotsky carried to excess the weakness of the intellectual in politics. He was ruthless in stating principles; he was soft and indifferent in questions of personality."

"It was Trotsky who created the armies; chose the officers; determined the strategy; and inspired the soldiers. Every interference by the Soviet Government was a mistake; and the greatest mistake was the campaign against Poland, which Trotsky opposed. The achievement was not only one of organization. It was the impact of a fiery personality, the sparks from which flew round the world."

"The glories of his revolutionary triumph pale before the nobility of his later defeats. The spirit of man was irrepressible in him. Colonel Robins, the American Red Cross representative in Petrograd, pronounced history's verdict: "A four-kind son-of-a-bitch, but the greatest Jew since Jesus Christ.""

"Trotsky explained that a nationalised planned economy needs democracy as the human body needs oxygen."

"Joseph Stalin's rise was the result of Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin's policies which undermined working class democracy in favour of the Party bureaucracy. Before he was in power, Trotsky even warned of the dangers of Lenin's strategy, warning in 1904 that "these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organisation 'substituting' itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organisation, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee". But while he was in power, he supported these methods, for example banning all other political parties, banning factions in the party in 1921, and purging and executing rivals. In the end he was outmanoeuvred, purged, and himself assassinated on Stalin's orders."

"Esteban Volkov, Trotsky’s 93-year old grandson, has recently denounced the series as “a political assault, masked as historical drama” and “a justification of the murder of the ‘monster’ called Trotsky.” The Latin American edition of the Spanish newspaper El Pais has described the series as the “second assassination of Leon Trotsky” and rejected its portrayal of the revolutionary “as a sadist, a complete traitor, and as a puppet.”"

"My business is too difficult. My business is trying to arouse human pity. There are few things that'll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is when they've been used several times, they no longer work. So it happens, for instance, that a man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time that he'll give him sixpence. But the second time it'll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he'll hand him over cold-bloodedly to the police."

"First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics."

"Those who lead the country into the abyss Call ruling too difficult For ordinary men."

"Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of."

"Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!"

"The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh."

"Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not Always spoken the truth in my books? And now You treat me like a liar! I order you: Burn me!"

"The main objective is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the great one's thinking."

"A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls."

"The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot."

"It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation."

"Mitfühlend sehe ich Die geschwollenen Stirnadern, andeutend Wie anstrengend es ist, böse zu sein."

"Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably."

"To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated."

"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."

"Always the victor writes the history of the vanquished. He who beats distorts the faces of the beaten. The weaker depart from this world and the lies remain."

"Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice!"

"Those who are weak don't fight. Those who are stronger might fight for an hour. Those who are stronger still might fight for many years. The strongest fight their whole life. They are the indispensable ones."

"You don't need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured."

"Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life."

"Mr. Wurlitzer, I am now in a position to receive your organ."

"What is the burgling of a bank to the founding of a bank?"

"For the task assigned them Men aren't smart enough or sly Any rogue can blind them With a clever lie."

"The law is simply and solely made for the exploitation of those who do not understand it or of those who, for naked need, cannot obey it."

"For once you must try not to shirk the facts: Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts."

"You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!"

"And the shark he has his teeth and There they are for all to see And Macheath he has his knife but No one knows where it may be."

"I love Brecht and Fassbinder, of course."

"this sequence has that title coming from a poem by Bertolt Brecht, the great German playwright and poet, a revolutionary playwright and poet, I should add, who wrote a poem in which he said, “What kind of times are these, when it seems almost a crime to talk about trees, because it means keeping silent about so many evil deeds.” And so, I called the whole sequence “What Kind of Times Are These.” And in it, I was just playing with the sense of what it was like—what it is like to be alive in this country in the 1990s—the encroaching power of the capitalist economy, the denial of any kind of counterbalancing past, the wiping out of history, and also the need to find happiness and pleasure in the midst of such dark times, and how that can carry you through to be aware, as open-eyed as you can of what is going on in your time, and at the same time, as Rosa Luxemburg advised, to seize every beautiful cloud and every joyful moment. And so, this little sequence of poems came out of that kind of musing."

"As a youth I enjoyed — indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered — the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism. It later occurred to me that his plays were copyrighted, and that he, like I, was living through the operations of that same free market. His protestations were not borne out by his actions, neither could they be. Why, then, did he profess Communism? Because it sold. The public’s endorsement of his plays kept him alive; as Marx was kept alive by the fortune Engels’s family had made selling furniture; as universities, established and funded by the Free Enterprise system — which is to say by the accrual of wealth — house, support, and coddle generations of the young in their dissertations on the evils of America."

"In 1935 German communist poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote an essay, "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties," about the challenges facing writers during a time of political repression and manipulation. He said, "The writer who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties." These were "the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons." Brecht wrote, "We must tell the truth about evil conditions to those for whom the conditions are worst, and we must also learn the truth from them. We must address not only people who hold certain views, but people who, because of their situation, should hold these views....Even the hangmen can be addressed when the payment for hanging stops, or when the work becomes too dangerous." If people don't hold the views we expect their lives to generate, we need to listen more deeply, listen to the layers of stories underlying the ones they tell, until we find the layer where our truths meet. Finally, Brecht speaks of cunning, the skill to evade repression but also to work around people's resistance to the truth, to make intentional choices about whether and how to encode our messages, based entirely on what will be most effective. Some radicals insist on using the clichéd language of bloody chains and groaning masses, phrases that make them feel militant but limit their audience. Sometimes it's more effective to say "profit-driven society" instead of "capitalism," "making war on people to steal their stuff" instead of "imperialism." Brecht asked writers to act based on the results we want to achieve, not just on what makes us feel good in the moment."

"In my conscious effort to become an American writer, I gave up my German literary models-Thomas Mann, Knut Hamsun, Karl Kraus. I read all the O. Henry Award-winning short-story collections of the past decade, Hemingway, Dos Passos and Faulkner. Richard Wright's work struck me with elemental force-he spoke from the gut in a way I wished I could speak, but that seemed utterly unobtainable to me at that time. Carl and I read Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay and Walt Whitman aloud to each other. The only German author I was not willing to give up was Bertolt Brecht, whose work on the emigration experience spoke to me directly and powerfully. I was determined that Carl must learn to appreciate Brecht as I did. I developed the ability to do simultaneous translation, reading in German and speaking in English, but I never did get Brecht's poetic quality right until much later, when I translated some of his work in earnest and with care, in writing...Brecht wrote eloquently about the cost paid by the writer forced to abandon his language."

"I began to write poetry in English before I could properly speak or write. Since I wrote free verse in ordinary speech, patterning my style after Bertolt Brecht, and getting effects by sharply contrasting images and striking sound patterns, I could achieve some sort of effect with the most primitive means."

"I've been thinking about Brecht's comment on creating apolitical art: it's like painting a still life on a sinking ship, he said."

"I am working for the courage to admit the truth that Bertolt Brecht has written; he says, "It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak." I cherish the mercy and the grace of women’s work. But I know there is new work that we must undertake as well: that new work will make defeat detestable to us. That new women’s work will mean we will not die trying to stand up: we will live that way: standing up. I came too late to help my mother to her feet. By way of everlasting thanks to all of the women who have helped me to stay alive I am working never to be late again."

"I turned to Brecht and asked him why, if he felt the way he did about Jerome and the other American Communists, he kept on collaborating with them, particularly in view of their apparent approval or indifference to what was happening in the Soviet Union. ... Brecht shrugged his shoulders and kept on making invidious remarks about the American Communist Party and asserted that only the Soviet Union and its Communist Party mattered. ... But I argued ... it was the Kremlin and above all Stalin himself who were responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of the opposition and their dependents. It was at this point that he said in words I have never forgotten, 'As for them, the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' I was so taken aback that I thought I had misheard him. 'What are you saying?' I asked. He calmly repeated himself, 'The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' ... I was stunned by his words. 'Why? Why?' I exclaimed. All he did was smile at me in a nervous sort of way. I waited, but he said nothing after I repeated my question. I got up, went into the next room, and fetched his hat and coat. When I returned, he was still sitting in his chair, holding a drink in his hand. When he saw me with his hat and coat, he looked surprised. He put his glass down, rose, and with a sickly smile took his hat and coat and left. Neither of us said a word. I never saw him again."

"I will quote Brecht: “I’m on the side of the people.”"

"Yesterday, a long conversation in Brecht’s sickroom about my essay "The Author as Producer." Brecht thought the theory I develop in the essay — that the attainment of technical progress in literature eventually changes the function of art forms (hence also of the intellectual means of production) and is therefore a criterion for judging the revolutionary function of literary works — applies to artists of only one type, the writers of the upper bourgeoisie, among whom he counts himself. "For such a writer," he said, "there really exists a point of solidarity with the interests of the proletariat: it is the point at which he can develop his own means of production. Because he identifies with the proletariat at this point, he is proletarianized — completely so — at this same point, i.e. as a producer. And his complete proletarianization at this one point establishes his solidarity with the proletariat all along the line.""

"There is a wonderful sentence, a statement, by one of Bertolt Brecht's characters, he says: "I am that man that goes around with a brick in his hand, to show the world how his house was." And that's the way I feel about my books in a way, that they are my bricks. I can show people what I believe my world was, so I've not lost it."

"What if they gave a war and no one came? Then the war will come to you."

"If you fight you might lose, if you don’t you have already lost."

"The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies."