Brecht’s The Skill to Manipulate the Truth as a Weapon
Perhaps I am too placid and young. Perhaps I am too simple and naive but I feel I must be cautious here. Perhaps I need to slow down a little in my approach to Brecht's essay, Writing the Truth: the 5 Difficulties. You see, I am not a socialist and in this section of the essay Brecht assumes that we are all on the same page. Fascism is capitalism unchecked and the cure is socialism. The thing is, I don't know any socialists, real socialists, that is. I know a lot of people claim to be socialists; I went to high school with kids who quoted Marx and Lenin, who wore Che Guevara or Bob Marley t-shirt, talked about "offing the pigs" but they never worked, their parents owned profitable businesses in town, they had unending pocket money and cars and leather jackets and even today they seem to be a lot like the critics Neruda writes about in his, Oda a la crítica. They do not live in the same world I do.
To me, socialism has been left behind in some rosy, utopian world of the 1920s, along with Al Capone and the Wobblies. Perhaps it is because I have seen what socialism did to countries like Armenia, with failed economies and Third World status, or any of the former states of the U.S.S.R. But I again, what do I know? I am not a social scientist, nor a politician. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am simply choosing to see what I want to see. Still, socialism, at least in the form that I understand it, seems to be what my privileged friends rant about when they rant — ai! the evils of capitalism; ai! the evils of the world; ai! the cure. The cure is always socialism … or libertarianism … or some other -ism that will sweep over people like a cyclone. But unlike various small town capitalistic enterprises that seem to work and do not cause massive havoc to the simple people1 this part of Brecht's essay is the furthest from anything I can use. I am not saying that we should ignore his advice. I am saying that my culture has moved beyond what Brecht is talking about and requires new ways of thinking, new methods of communication. I do not see the 1970s banter of revolution that much political poetry was seeped in as having the same audiences today, for example. Remember, few people read or buy poetry. Few people listen to rhetoric, regardless of which side it comes from. But many, many people I think are in desperate need for knowledge, messages, commutation.
No one wants to feel stupid or be silenced. Why is it that people can quote Let It Be by heart, even if they know no other words of English? Perhaps it is a beautiful tune, but I also think it is because it is simple yet profound message. It argues peace over violence, there is a metaphysical tinge to it, a philosophy. In short it contains many important elements of successful poetry and yet it is neither esoteric, obscure, cryptic. It doesn't use big words to show the cleverness of the poet.2 Simple people like it. I like it and I am pretty simple. I write all this because I think that for us (that is myself and anyone reading this, friend) to develop a poetic discourse from what Brecht is writing about, we shall have to think beyond socialism. We shall have to talk in a way that simple people will want to hear. Perhaps you do not write poems for simple people? That is fine too, but who do you write poems for? What is their purpose? Where do they go? I personally do not know who I write for. I am unsure of my audience, my determination, my purpose. In the beginning of each adventure story the main character always says the same thing: "you got the wrong person; really, I can't do the things you think I can" … and then the story goes to show just how wrong our character can be.
Let us read this now. Let us think about Neruda's Oda a la crítica as we do it. Where can we take our poetry? Who can we sing for? Where can we go? Who can we be?
The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action. As a specimen of a truth from which no results, or the wrong ones, follow, we can cite the widespread view that bad conditions prevail in a number of countries as a result of barbarism. In this view, Fascism is a wave of barbarism which has descended upon some countries with the elemental force of a natural phenomenon.
According to this view, Fascism is a new, third power beside (and above) capitalism and socialism; not only the socialist movement but capitalism as well might have survived without the intervention of Fascism. And so on. This is, of course, a Fascist claim; to accede to it is a capitulation to Fascism. Fascism is a historic phase of capitalism; in this sense it is something new and at the same time old. In Fascist countries capitalism continues to exist, but only in the form of Fascism; and Fascism can be combated as capitalism alone, as the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous form of capitalism.
But how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth? What will be the practical results of such truth?
Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.
Outcries against barbarous measures may be effective as long as the listeners believe that such measures are out of the question in their own countries. Certain countries are still able to maintain their property relations by methods that appear less violent than those used in other countries. Democracy still serves in these countries to achieve the results for which violence is needed in others, namely, to guarantee private ownership of the means of production. The private monopoly of factories, mines, and land creates barbarous conditions everywhere, but in some places these conditions do not so forcibly strike the eye. Barbarism strikes the eye only when it happens that monopoly can be protected only by open violence.
Some countries, which do not yet find it necessary to defend their barbarous monopolies by dispensing with the formal guarantees of a constitutional state, as well as with such amenities as art, philosophy, and literature, are particularly eager to listen to visitors who abuse their native lands because those amenities are denied there. They gladly listen because they hope to derive from what they hear advantages in future wars. Shall we say that they have recognized the truth who, for example, loudly demand an unrelenting struggle against Germany “because that country is now the true home of Evil in our day, the partner of hell, the abode of the Antichrist”? We should rather say that these are foolish and dangerous people. For the conclusion to be drawn from this nonsense is that since poison gas and bombs do not pick out the guilty, Germany must be exterminated—the whole country and all its people.
The man who does not know the truth expresses himself in lofty, general, and imprecise terms. He shouts about “the” German, he complains about Evil in general, and whoever hears him cannot make out what to do. Shall he decide not to be a German? Will hell vanish if he himself is good? The silly talk about the barbarism that comes out of barbarism is also of this kind. The source of barbarism is barbarism, and it is combated by culture, which comes from education. All this is put in general terms; it is not meant to be a guide to action and is in reality addressed to no one.
Such vague descriptions point to only a few links in the chain of causes. Their obscurantism conceals the real forces making for disaster. If light be thrown on the matter it promptly appears that disasters are caused by certain men. For we live in a time when the fate of man is determined by men.
Fascism is not a natural disaster which can be understood simply in terms of “human nature.” But even when we are dealing with natural catastrophes, there are ways to portray them which are worthy of human beings because they appeal to man’s fighting spirit.
After a great earthquake that destroyed Yokohama, many American magazines published photographs showing a heap of ruins. And, to be sure, though one might see only ruins at first glance, the eye swiftly discerned, after noting the caption, that a few tall buildings had remained standing. Among the multitudinous descriptions that can be given of an earthquake, those drawn up by construction engineers concerning the shifts in the ground, the force of stresses, the best developed, etc., are of the greatest importance, for they lead to future construction which will withstand earthquakes. If anyone wishes to describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must show that these disasters are launched by the possessing classes to control the vast numbers of workers who do not own the means of production.
If one wishes successfully to write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought.
- Again, Neruda's choice of words, by which I suppose he means harmonious, common, unsophisticated; the people who are going about their daily lives. How interesting that my thesaurus' selection of the word "common" also includes the word "unpoetical." Again, my culture's assumption that poetry is some how affected, artificial, feigned. Curious. [back]
- Now, not everyone agrees with the use of poetry or even its purpose. For many writing today poetry is about obscuring what is said, that is, stripping down the meaning to get to the underlining nature of the words. To these poets I say: keep on, my friends, keep on. You might not agree with me but it is like what Rumi said: "it is all praise and it is all good." I do not wish to snub or send away any school of poetics here, only open things up for communication [back]