Envy/Solidarity Song
Lyrics:
Forward! and let’s remember,
What our strength always was and shall be.
In famine and in plenty
Forward! and remember: it’s solidarity!
Peoples of this earth, rise up now
for this earth is now your due:
It shall be the great provider
And it shall provide for you.
Forward! and ask the question
What our strength concretely is worth
In famine and in plenty:
Whose tomorrow is tomorrow
And whose earth is the earth?
And our various lords and masters
Welcome our disunity
For so long as they divide us
Lords and masters they shall be.
Black and white and brown and yellow,
End the rule of sword and gun!
For when once you raise your voices
All the peoples shall be one.
Hanns Eisler finished this song sometime between 1930 and 1932, when it was premiered by a workers’ chorus. This setting includes lyrics by Bertolt Brecht, although many variations of these lyrics exist; it was used in one form in the 1931 film Kuhle Wampe with lines specific to the film, but became popular in another more generalized form during the Spanish Civil War five years later. This English translation, done by Eric Bentley in 1967, is found in an anthology of songs from the fruitful collaboration between Brecht and Eisler.The two shared the ideology that art should serve a social purpose—unlike Expressionist tendencies towards art-for-art’s sake prevalent at the time—and produced many musical and theatrical works to that end.
Written in a verse and chorus form, with straightforward, diatonic accompaniment, this song is designed to be sung by ordinary people. It serves to bring art out of an elitist, bourgeois milieu and within grasp of working classes—helping combat upwards class envy—and to educate them as they learn it. Brecht also implemented this concept of education of the masses through performance practice with his Lehrstücke, or learning plays.
Within the text of the song, Brecht stresses the importance of non-competition amongst different groups of the proletariat. He reminds them that their division lessens their power and keeps their oppressors in control, also pointing out that they have no reason to compete: once the people have risen up, the earth “shall be the great provider/And it shall provide for you,” that is, there is no need to be envious of each other, because everyone’s needs will be satisfied after the Revolution. Brecht also advocates against racial division; while “black and… brown and yellow”workers might be jealous of perceived advantages of white workers, Brecht points out that they are all mortal and currently subject to “the rule of sword and gun,” especially as individuals rather than a united group, and that regardless of to what degree, they all suffer an unacceptable level of oppression at the hands of the same people. Ultimately the goal of teaching workers this song is to strengthen the Communist movement by reminding workers that they are strongest when united as one people and need to reject any resentment or envy for each other.