Red
Flag, The
Red Fly the Banners, O!
Regime of truth, a
Rerum Novarum
Revolutionary Vigilance
Rolling
Turtle Format
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Red
Flag, The
Official theme song
of the British Labour Party before it was supplanted by D:Ream's Things
Can Only Get Better. James O'Connell wrote the words in 1899, which
were originally set to the Scottish reel tune "The White Cockade",
and later attached to the more familiar "Tannenbaum". A selection
of sound clips are available for download here.
The people's flag
is deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead;
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their hearts' blood dyed to every fold.
Then raise
the scarlet standard high!
Within its shade we'll live and die.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer --
We'll keep the Red Flag flying here!
It waved above
our infant might
When all around seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow:
We must not change its colour now!
It well recalls the triumphs past,
It gives the hope of peace at last:
The banner bright, the symbol plain
Of human right and human gain.
Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow's vaults its hymns are sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.
It suits today the meek and base
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place
To cringe beneath the rich man's frown
And haul that sacred emblem down.
With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall!
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn:
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Red
Fly the Banners, O!
A popular song,
sung to the tune of the old English folksong Green Grow the Rushes,
O!.
I'll sing you one
- O!
Red Fly The Banners, O!
What is your one - O!
One is Workers' Unity and ever more shall be so.
I'll sing you two
- O!
Red Fly The Banners, O!
What are your two - O!
Two, two, the workers' hands, working for a living - O!
One is Workers' Unity and ever more shall be so.
I'll sing you three
- O!
Red Fly The Banners, O!
What are your three - O!
Three, three the Rights of Man (liberté, egalité, fraternité!)
Two, two, the workers' hands, working for a living - O!
One is Workers' Unity and ever more shall be so.
I'll sing you four
-O!
Red Fly The Banners, O!
What are your four - O!
Four for the Communist Thinkers (Marx! Engels! Lenin! Stalin!)
Three, three, etc...
...
I'll sing you fourteen
- O!
Red Fly The Banners - O!
What are your fourteen - O!
Fourteen for the IQ of the average Trot
And Thirteen for the holes in Trotsky's head.
Twelve for the chimes on the Kremlin clock
And eleven for the Moscow Dynamos
Ten for the Days that Shook the World
And Nine for the Days of the General Strike
Eight for the hours of the working day
Seven for the Seventh World Congress
Six for the Tolpuddle Martyrs,
Five for the years in Stalin's plans
And four for the four years taken,
Three, three, the Rights of Man!
Two, two the workers' hands, working for a living, O!
ONE IS WORKERS' UNITY AND EVER MORE SHALL BE SO!
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Regime
of truth, a
Michel Foucault
describes a regime of truth like this:
"Each society
has its regime of truth, its "general politics" of truth:
that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function
as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish
true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned;
the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of
truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts
has true.
"In societies
like ours, the "political economy" of truth is characterised
by five important traits. "Truth" is centred on the form
of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; it
is subject to constant economic and political incitement (for demand
for truth, as much for economic production as for political power";
it is the object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption
(circulating throughout apparatuses of education and information whose
extent is relatively broad in the social body, notwithstanding certain
strict limitations); it is produced and transmitted under the control,
dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses
( University, army, writing, media); lastly, it is the issue of a
whole political debate and social confrontation ("ideological"
struggles)."
[Source:
Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power", 1977, in Colin Gordon's
1980 anthology Knowledge/Power.]
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Rerum
Novarum
Proclaimed on May
15, 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum is the major Catholic
condemnation of socialism, as well as being the founding text of the
Catholic "social doctrine" long influential on the Continent
and now substantially embodied in European Union legislation. It is
one of the present Pope's favourite encyclicals, and one which he commemorated
with a new encyclical, Centesimus Annus in 1991.
The encyclical noted
"that the spirit of revolutionary change... should have passed
beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate
sphere of practical economics is not surprising. ...", and this
this called for a statement on "the condition of the working classes".
While the Pope accepted that it was "no easy matter to define the
relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital
and of labor", he felt confident enough on the topic to condemn
"crafty agitators" trying "to stir up the people to revolt"
against what he accepted was often "a yoke little better than that
of slavery itself". .. Socialists, on the Pope's view, exploited
"the poor man's envy of the rich", and were "emphatically
unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions
of the State, and create utter confusion in the community" owing
to the justice of the capitalist wage contract and the sanctity of property
relations. While -- interestingly -- the Pope accepted Marx's binaristic
model of the class structure of modern society, he went on to reject
doctrines of class struggle:
"The great
mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to
take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class,
and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to
live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that
the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human
frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts
of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two
classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the
balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot
do without labor, nor labor without capital..."
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Revolutionary
Vigilance
The Big Soviet
Encyclopaedia (3rd ed., English version, v.3 p.750) defines revolutionary
vigilance as "The unflagging attention of the revolutionary class
and its political party to hostile forces that oppose the establishment
and development of a progressive social system" and notes that
"Revolutionary vigilance is an indispensable quality that Communist
parties and every Communist and revolutionary fighter must possess".
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Rolling
Turtle Format
As the founding
Manifesto of the cyberspace incarnation of
The Voice of the Turtle put it,
"The Turtle
will no longer be published in separate issues. Following the lead
of John Birt and Karl Marx, two of the presiding godfathers of our
age, the Turtle will synthesize the concept of "rolling
news" and of the "permanent revolution" and remain
in a state of continual dialectical flux, being adjusted and expanded
as new content is made available. This means, for all our would-be
contributors, that we no longer have any deadlines: send us your material
as soon as you've written it."
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