| If 08:26 - Jul 12 with 7846 views | PlanetHonneywood |
I don’t do poetry, it’s pretentious bollox! That said, when I first came across ‘If’ as a teenager, I’ve gone through life frequently reading it. It’s the most beautiful piece of prose I know.
It’s just before 2pm in Rangoon. I’v just woken up and I don’t know if I need a shit or a shower. But I do know I’ve the most monstrous hangover, the wife wrote a lovely message and beside me in bed is our cat, who we saved as a kitten. His name is Kipling.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master;
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son! | |
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| If on 15:14 - Jul 23 with 1028 views | TacticalR |
Did they not like it? The Law for the Regulation of National Labour of 20 January 1934 did away with collective bargaining.
'The Nazis wish to 'abolish class struggle' by depriving the working class of all possibilities to struggle, delivering them to the mercy of the capitalists and proclaiming the identity of the interests of exploiters and exploited.
...
Big Capital, the real master of Hitler Germany, does not want to permit economic experiments. The state capitalist tendencies of Schleicher appear to it suspect. Yet, under the pressure of the crisis and the fear of the awakening impoverished masses, Hitler might be driven to experiments in the direction of a certain 'planned economy' or state capitalism. Also as a measure of economic preparation for war, this might be conceivable — some clauses of the Nazi agrarian law can be explained only on such an assumption. Here are two conflicting tendencies at work, and it remains to be seen whether this will lead to the perpetuation of the zigzag course, or whether one of these two tendencies will get the upper hand.
...
Nevertheless, the complexity of German economic life leaves little room for experiment by such unqualified hands [i.e. the Nazis] — the incompetent bureaucratic machine of the 'totalitarian' state might, like the proverbial bull, destroy too much china.
Hitler therefore has solemnly renounced the 'second revolution', that is to say the nebulous socialist tendencies implied in his programme. This had done service in the propaganda, before the conquest of power. After dinner the world appears in a different light.'
Peter and Irma Petroff, The Secret of Hitler's Victory (1934)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/petroff/1934/hitlers-secret.htm
(One interesting thing that comes across in Petroff's essay is that the capitalist government was already operating by diktat prior to Hitler's accession to power) | |
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| If on 22:42 - Jul 23 with 899 views | FDC |
Just another normal day in a normal country where everything is normal, and military leaders are writing pieces for a national paper advocating the death penalty for people declared enemy combatants.
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