Sometimes We Have to Sing
The
banks are made of marble
I first heard two Weavers Carnegie Hall albums in the winter, 1958. I’m not a
Red Diaper baby. I didn’t read Marx seriously until the 1970s when I started teaching Marx and political economy..
But I became a small “r” red when I first heard those Weavers albums. Then on
to Pete Seeger alone, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Joan Baez and later Paul
Robeson, Josh White, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, and even Kris Kristofferson and
Bruce Springsteen.
From time to time I reminisce about all this as I still listen to the music
that makes me mad, makes me cry, and makes me want to hit the streets. I forget
the fine-tuned lectures I listen to and even give myself, on neoliberal
globalization, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, over-production and
under-consumption, and financialization, and break into song and tears as I
hear the old music in the car or at home.
The deficit battle, which is a farce except for the pain the outcome will cause
working people, reminded me of the Weavers blasting out “The Banks Are Made of
Marble.” They sang of travels around the country seeing all the suffering that
the capitalist system was causing; “the weary farmer,” the idle seaman, the
miner scrubbing coal dust from off his back, “heard the children cryin” as they
froze in their shacks, and the suffering of workers everywhere.
Why does the song suggest there is so much suffering all across America? The
answer is so simple:
...the
banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the miner sweated for
The
song, written by Les Rice in 1948 said the antidote to this situation was
workers getting together and together making a stand. He predicted that the
result would be a good one:
Then
we’d own those banks of marble
With a guard at every door
And we’d share those vaults of silver
That we have sweated for
Pretty Boy Floyd and Christmas
I
also was thinking about an old Robin Hood song written by Woody Guthrie in the
1930s about an Oklahoma legend, Pretty Boy Floyd. According to Woody’s
rendition, Pretty Boy Floyd got into a fight with a deputy sheriff and killed
him. Floyd was forced to flee and allegedly took up a life of crime. At least
authorities and journalists blamed Floyd for every robbery or killing that
occurred in the state of Oklahoma. “Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his
name.”
But in true Robin Hood fashion Pretty Boy Floyd stole from the rich and gave to
the poor. Floyd, the outlaw, paid the mortgage for a starving farmer. Another
time when Floyd begged for and received a meal in a rural household, he placed
a thousand-dollar bill under his napkin when he finished dinner. One Christmas
Day Floyd left a carload of groceries for starving families on relief in Oklahoma
City.
And in these days of massive unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, criminal
wealth, and staggering poverty, through the voice of Pretty Boy Floyd, Woody
Guthrie tells the wrenching story of capitalism that today is not too much
different from during his time.
Yes,
as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Maybe
we ought to revisit the old songs and sing them as we hit the streets, get out
the vote, organize workers, and build a vast and powerful peoples’
organization.
