Conversation from the film "Reds" (1981)
A bit of background: Emma Goldman ("EG" played by Maureen Stapleton) was a famous anarchist at the turn of the 20th century. (She was arrested, but later released, in connection with the McKinley assassination, and involved in others.) A lifelong anarchist, she and American communist/journalist John Reed ([edit: Warren] Beatty) are in Russia in this scene -- the communist revolution they've been working for has just come to pass.
But it's not going the way Goldman hoped:GOLDMAN: Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land and the workers taking the factories, then Russia is the one place where there's no Bolshevism!
REED: You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with generals ... I can't deal with the bureaucrats!
GOLDMAN: You think Zinoviev has nothing worse than the bureaucrats? The soviets have no local autonomy -- the central state has all the power! All the power is in the hands of a few men, and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any hope of real communism in Russia!
They're putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters -- and I want no part of it.
Every single newspaper has been shut down or taken over by the Party. Anyone even vaguely suspected of being a counterrevolutionary can be taken out and shot without a trial.
Where does that end? Is any nightmare justifiable in the name of defense against counterrevolution? The dream may be dying in Russia, but I'm not. It may take some time, but I'm getting out.
REED: It sounds like you're a little confused by the revolution in action, EG ... up to now you've only dealt with it in theory. What did you think this thing was gonna be, a revolution by consensus? Where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?
GOLDMAN: Nothing works! Four million people died last year! Not from fighting a war -- they died from starvation and typhus ... and a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights, where nothing works!
REED: They died because of a French, British and American blockade that cut off all food and medical supplies, and because counterrevolutionaries sabotaged the factories and the railroads and the telephones, and because the people, the poor, ignorant, superstitious illiterate people, are trying to run things themselves!
Just as you always said that they should, but they don't know how to run 'em yet! Did you really think things were going to work right away? Did you really expect social transformation was going to be anything other than a murderous process? It's a war, EG! And we've gotta fight it like we fight a war, with discipline, with terror, with firing squads -- or we just give it up!
GOLDMAN: Those four million people didn't die fighting a war. They died from a system that cannot work!
REED: It's just a beginning, EG -- it's not happening the way we thought it would. It's not happening the way we wanted it to, but it's happening.
If you walk out on it now ... what's your whole life been?
This is a transcript from the movie Reds written in 1981, Ronald Reagan's first year in office. It has been described as "celebrating" Reed and radical leftists, and as a sympathetic portrayal of Reed. The dialog seems, to me, to be a fair portrayal of the thoughts of the two real people at about this point. (Goldman would publish a book called "My Disillusionment with Russia" three years later, and Reed was prolific in his writings though he would die in Russia not long after this scene.)
Here's the scene -- less than three minutes. What strikes me is Reed's naive belief that the deaths of millions for the great fundamental transformation of a country was a cheap and inconsequential price to pay, though he'd spent his life advocating for the "human rights" of just such people. Now those "ignorant" people are his enemies, and terror and firing squads are appropriate and necessary to control them.
Now, it's most of a century later -- communism has been responsible for a hundred million deaths or so, and communists in this country and abroad are still advocating for that system. And every single time it's tried, it goes bad -- not in decades, but immediately.
Those communists and Marxists in this country, demanding free speech, have to realize that it is the first right to be suppressed once their system gets control. Look at China, at Venezuela -- as Emma Goldman says, the state controls all the papers.
Another aspect of this movie, occurring shortly after this scene: Reed learns that the speeches he's been writing to get the radical socialists in the Middle East fired up have been edited -- his fellow communists have replaced "revolution" with "holy jihad." He's irritated because he doesn't allow anyone to edit his speeches. But, indeed, the concept of a holy jihad against the West did not originate with the Bush administration. There were masses of them in Nazi uniforms in WWII, and they go back a very long time before that.
If only Reed's wry comment had been taken seriously: They should "just give it up."
But they have no intention of this. There were fourteen different communist/socialist groups advertising signs and/or selling books at the big march in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. I spend time on their websites, something I could not do if such people gained complete control. They are here, they are quite serious, they have recruiting offices (with full permission) on most campuses, and they're not going to just give it up.
Americans just need to see and understand what's happening. I'd like to see a few thousand Marxist college professors shown the door, quite frankly. They have the right to free speech, but not on someone's payroll. Or the taxpayer's. Unfortunately, universities really like them as a general thing.
===|==============/ Level Head
But it's not going the way Goldman hoped:GOLDMAN: Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land and the workers taking the factories, then Russia is the one place where there's no Bolshevism!
REED: You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with generals ... I can't deal with the bureaucrats!
GOLDMAN: You think Zinoviev has nothing worse than the bureaucrats? The soviets have no local autonomy -- the central state has all the power! All the power is in the hands of a few men, and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any hope of real communism in Russia!
They're putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters -- and I want no part of it.
Every single newspaper has been shut down or taken over by the Party. Anyone even vaguely suspected of being a counterrevolutionary can be taken out and shot without a trial.
Where does that end? Is any nightmare justifiable in the name of defense against counterrevolution? The dream may be dying in Russia, but I'm not. It may take some time, but I'm getting out.
REED: It sounds like you're a little confused by the revolution in action, EG ... up to now you've only dealt with it in theory. What did you think this thing was gonna be, a revolution by consensus? Where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?
GOLDMAN: Nothing works! Four million people died last year! Not from fighting a war -- they died from starvation and typhus ... and a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights, where nothing works!
REED: They died because of a French, British and American blockade that cut off all food and medical supplies, and because counterrevolutionaries sabotaged the factories and the railroads and the telephones, and because the people, the poor, ignorant, superstitious illiterate people, are trying to run things themselves!
Just as you always said that they should, but they don't know how to run 'em yet! Did you really think things were going to work right away? Did you really expect social transformation was going to be anything other than a murderous process? It's a war, EG! And we've gotta fight it like we fight a war, with discipline, with terror, with firing squads -- or we just give it up!
GOLDMAN: Those four million people didn't die fighting a war. They died from a system that cannot work!
REED: It's just a beginning, EG -- it's not happening the way we thought it would. It's not happening the way we wanted it to, but it's happening.
If you walk out on it now ... what's your whole life been?
This is a transcript from the movie Reds written in 1981, Ronald Reagan's first year in office. It has been described as "celebrating" Reed and radical leftists, and as a sympathetic portrayal of Reed. The dialog seems, to me, to be a fair portrayal of the thoughts of the two real people at about this point. (Goldman would publish a book called "My Disillusionment with Russia" three years later, and Reed was prolific in his writings though he would die in Russia not long after this scene.)
Here's the scene -- less than three minutes. What strikes me is Reed's naive belief that the deaths of millions for the great fundamental transformation of a country was a cheap and inconsequential price to pay, though he'd spent his life advocating for the "human rights" of just such people. Now those "ignorant" people are his enemies, and terror and firing squads are appropriate and necessary to control them.
Now, it's most of a century later -- communism has been responsible for a hundred million deaths or so, and communists in this country and abroad are still advocating for that system. And every single time it's tried, it goes bad -- not in decades, but immediately.
Those communists and Marxists in this country, demanding free speech, have to realize that it is the first right to be suppressed once their system gets control. Look at China, at Venezuela -- as Emma Goldman says, the state controls all the papers.
Another aspect of this movie, occurring shortly after this scene: Reed learns that the speeches he's been writing to get the radical socialists in the Middle East fired up have been edited -- his fellow communists have replaced "revolution" with "holy jihad." He's irritated because he doesn't allow anyone to edit his speeches. But, indeed, the concept of a holy jihad against the West did not originate with the Bush administration. There were masses of them in Nazi uniforms in WWII, and they go back a very long time before that.
If only Reed's wry comment had been taken seriously: They should "just give it up."
But they have no intention of this. There were fourteen different communist/socialist groups advertising signs and/or selling books at the big march in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. I spend time on their websites, something I could not do if such people gained complete control. They are here, they are quite serious, they have recruiting offices (with full permission) on most campuses, and they're not going to just give it up.
Americans just need to see and understand what's happening. I'd like to see a few thousand Marxist college professors shown the door, quite frankly. They have the right to free speech, but not on someone's payroll. Or the taxpayer's. Unfortunately, universities really like them as a general thing.
===|==============/ Level Head