Imagine: Now Implement

 

John Lennon: 9 October 1940 - 8 December 1990

From the Socialist Standard January 1981

‘'Newspapers have described the tragic death of John Lennon as

the end of an era. We wish they were right. We wish it was theend of a period of human society in which rock singers could accumulate millions of pounds from the sale of records while millions starve for want of a bowl of rice; we wish we could write an obituary to the violent social system of capitalism in which men like Lennon's alleged murderer can easily obtain and use a gun; we wish we could report the end of the wars and malnutrition and the inequality which Lennon sang about so well. But the era of capitalism is still with us and there will be others to grow rich singing about the miseries it causes.

Lennon was a talented musician and lyricist who understood the world he lived in more than most of his musical colleagues. Some of his songs showed definite political perception and what is generally considered to be his greatest post-Beatles record, 'Imagine', showed an understanding of the meaning of socialism which is almost unmatched in the history of rock music. The song urges people to imagine a world without possessions, countries, wars, hunger or religion. When a meeting of our companion party, the Socialist Party of Canada, was shown on Canadian TV, 'Imagine' was selected by the producer as the most appropriate theme song to sum up our views.

Rock critics regarded Lennon's message with predictable hypocrisy. While claiming that Lennon was a great musician and that they were in tune with what he was trying to say, they have disparaged such songs as 'Imagine' as an "idealistic vision". (Robin Denselow, the Guardian, 12.12.80.) They prefer to stress Lennon's more easily categorised leftist lyrics, such as those on 'Some Time In New York City' in which he expressed his support for thedivisive nationalism of the IRA. Like many people, John Lennon vaguely perceived important socialist ideas, but these became confused with the pragmatic radicalism for which he will be remembered by the trendy sloganisers of the Left. For genuine world socialists the vision of a society of which Lennon sings in 'Imagine' is worth more than any of the sterile aggression of modern punk rock. The man may be dead, but the vision of a world of peace, equality and freedom lives on within the socialist movement which neither Lennon nor his supporters have had the wisdom to join. At the risk of being labelled a Marxist-Lennonist, this writer echoes the words of 'Imagine'

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope one day you'll join me
And the world will live as one.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/12/john-lennon-1981.html

From  the Socialist Standard February 2018

'Why oppose dreaming? Who opposes dreaming? Those who are supporters of the status quo.

The enemy of the dreamer of better times is the ideologist of the present, out to defend the existing miseries with the claim that the prevailing relationships of oppression are immutable.

‘You wouldn’t abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn’t control the winds.’  – Thomas More (1478 -1535), Utopia, published in 1516 in Latin.

‘One man with an idea in his head is in danger to be considered a mad man; two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act; a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer the question.’ – William Morris (1834-1896), ‘Art Under Plutocracy’ 1883, LINK. ).

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) once remarked, ‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.’ Also that: ‘The map of the world which does not include Utopia is not worth glaring at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.’ (Plays, Prose Writings and Poems, p. 270).

‘Be realistic – Demand the Impossible’ was the slogan of the active dreamers who gave the ‘realists’ a good shock in the Paris of May 1968. A couple of years later John Lennon (1940 -1980) composed one of the finest modern contributions to utopian literature: the words of Imagine urged the millions who sent the song to Number One in the record charts to share the vision of a world without possessions, commerce, countries or religion. ‘You may say I’m a dreamer’, sang Lennon, ‘but I’m not the only one: I hope some day you’ll join us , and the world will live as one.’

William Morris (who had little time for music) would have had a lot of time for those words. In another lecture he said:

   ‘It is not we who can build up the new social order; the past ages have done the most of that work for us; but we can clear our eyes to the signs of the times, and we shall then see that the attainment of a good condition of life is being made possible for us, and that it is now our business to stretch our hands to take it’ (How We Live and How We Might Live).

In Marx’s words, ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please: they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.’ (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte).'

Binay Sarkar

World Socialist Party of India

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/12/whats-wrong-with-dreaming-2018.html