SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

This play (96pg) by german marxist Bertolt Brecht is about relations between the working class and the bourgeois. This play is a very good comedy, and Brecht uses the personality of Puntilla (he is one way when drunk, and completely different when sober) to mock the idiocies, arogance, and petty discrimination of the bourgeois towards the lower classes, and he makes clear the point that the bourgeois always put themselves above others, and act superior and more rude and demeaning than anyone else, and cannot be anything but our enemies, since they emotionally and economically want to keep themselves above us.

This play (55pgs) by Bertolt Brecht is about the subservience of education to the demands and interests of the upper classes, using as a metaphor a german tutor to the nobility during the 1700's. And as the main character points out at the beginning of the play, just as previously tutors, teachers, and professors were subservient to the nobility, now they are subservient to the bourgeois, and on the whole make sure to teach what they want them to. It also shows how some students' opposition to the mainstream, and rebellion against authority, is easily overcome when they want a job as a teacher or professor: then they have no problem teaching what the ruling classes want them to and selling out. And if a teacher does rebel or go against the mainstream of things, the upper classes try to cut them down to size and make them miserable so that they submit and teach their students the crap that other teachers teach their students.

This play (121pg) by German Marxist Bertolt Brecht was written in 1941 during Brecht's exile from nazi Germany. It is an allegoricall play that uses a ganster's (Arturo Ui's) rise to power as an allegory to the rise to power of Hitler. It is a very interesting play, in that it both satirizes Hitler, a mediocre if not stupid person at everything he put his hand to before his final rise to power, and yet it explains his rise to power in a simple, very understandable way. All of the charachters in the play have an equivalent to real-life people in Germany, thus Old Dogsborough is von Hindenberg, Ernesto Romo is Ernest Rohm, Emanuele Giri is Hermann Goring, Giuseppe Givola is Joseph Goebbels, the Cauliflower Trust is the Junkers, Chicago is Germany, and Cicero is Austria. Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

This short play (41pg) by Brecht is a beautiful play about one of the most well known resistance figures of Europe, Joan of Arc. She is often portrayed as insane, which is not surprising since any one who fought against british [brutish] imperialism was subject to demonization and dehumanization. In reality, Joan of Arc was an intelligent, brave, strong peasant girl, who began fighting against british imperialism and occupation when she was only sixteen. In the play you can see her intellect, and the court dialogue is kept very close or the same as what she said. Of course Brecht does add his own interpretation in, especially in the street scenes and the end where Joan refuses to sell out and betray her people. Of course this may be a little fictionalizing on Brecht's part, but I don't think that it is far from the truth in any case.

This is a beautiful, poetic short story (2pg) by German Marxist Bertolt Brecht about the absurdity of war, and how the producers of all things, the workers and the peasants, are the ones to suffer from it, and the ones expended by the oppressor classes during it. Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

The Soldier of La Ciotat - Bertolt Brecht.pdf

This is a beautiful play (30pg – it takes place during the Spanish Revolution), and it is basically a theatrical presentation of the argument between advocates of non-violence, and advocates of real change, and real struggle (i.e. advocates of armed resistance). Brecht is very effective, rhetorically and logically, in putting forward the argument for armed struggle, and I also like that he gave a fair view of religion's role in violent resistance (which is often hard for non-believers), since he not only mentioned the role of the clergy in advocating “non-violence” bullshit, but he also made it a point to say that many priests, and other clergy had died fighting against the fascists. Yet, as the eloquent and entertaining writer that Brecht is, the play does not lack at all in emotion or entertainment, although it is heavily focused on advocating a certain political message, and personally I even cried at the end, that is how beautiful, engaging, and timely it is.

This short story (3pg) by German Marxist Bertolt Brecht is very interesting for it's critique of gender roles, and also it's stark portrayal of what it means to have to work to live in a time of recession and mass unemployment. Brecht criticizes very well the view that women can only perform so called "woman work" or "feminine work," and makes the accurate point that anyone, man or woman can do any type of work, and act in any type of manner, and that the only things that prevents this is the rampant sexism in society, and the societal conditioning of people into their "right" or "correct" roles, defined of course solely by their gender, and not by the special abilities or interests that they may have. This story also shows what a job means to a worker who has been unemployed for a long period of time, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to obtain one. Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

This type of play by German Marxist Bertolt Brecht was meant to be educational, in this case it is a lesson in the right and wrong way to conduct agitation. It is also has a very powerful message of the type of sacrifice needed if you intend to seriously work for a socialist revolution, and a dictatorship of the proletariat and of all the oppressed. Although it may be short (34pg), which perhaps is more of a strength than anything else for this type of play, it is an excellent example of using “art” for explicit political agitation and education (in this case agitating for agitation and educating in the correct way to conduct this agitation). Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

The Measures Taken - Bertolt Brecht.pdf

This is a very short, one act play by Bertolt Brecht, and it is about prostitution. Brecht basically mocks and satirizes bourgeois hypocrisy in regards to prostitution, i.e., the bourgeoisie are the biggest public critics of prostitution, and use the most moralizing and idiotic arguments against it, while at the same time being the ones who ran/run brothels, and who have always been the main “clients” of prostitution. Of course we, as socialists, feminists, and decent fucking human beings, should be against prostitution, but NEVER should we use the same kind of moralizing (and most often religious bullshit is included) as the hypocritical bourgeoisie, nor should we EVER put ANY of the blame on the working women themselves, who are exploited brutally, and as is mentioned in this play, are often infected with sexually transmitted diseases by the pieces of shit who defile them. Anyway, enjoy the play comrades:

Liberation:

This short story (2pg) by German Marxist Bertolt Brecht is an attack on the system of marriage, and how it has been at base an economic institution with little or no concern for the rights of women, and how it has built itself, not on mutual feelings of love and respect between two partners, but rather on an exploitative and callous economic base. At the same time it is celebrating true love between two people, which is beyond economic justifications, and which doesn't cease in the face of tradgedy, but if anything becomes stronger. Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

The Foolish Wife - Brecht.pdf