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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/lennon12082005.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/lennon12082005.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>December 8,
2006<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=5 color="#990000"><b>"Power to the
People"<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>The Lost John
Lennon
Interview</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By
TARIQ ALI <br>
and ROBIN BLACKBURN<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>Editors' Note: </b>It was twenty-five
years ago today that John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota building
on Central Park West in New York City. We doubt many CounterPunchers have
read the following 1971 interview with Lennon done by CounterPunchers
Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn. It's a lot more interesting that the
interminable Q and A with Lennon done by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner.
Tariq and Robin allowed Lennon to talk and spurred him on when he showed
signs of flagging. Lennon recounts about how he and George Harrison
bucked their handlers and went on record against the Vietnam War,
discusses class politics in an engaging manner, defends country and
western music and the blues, suggests Dylan's best songs stem from
revolutionary Irish and Scottish ballads and dissects his three versions
of "Revolution". The interview ran in The Red Mole</i>, a
Trotskyist sheet put out by the British arm of the Fourth International.
As you'll see, those were different days. The interview is included in
Tariq Ali's
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844670295/counterpunchmaga">
Streetfighting Years</a>, recently published by Verso. AC / JSC<br><br>
</dl>Tariq Ali: Your latest record and your recent public statements,
especially the interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, suggest that your
views are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this
start to happen?<br><br>
John Lennon: I've always been politically minded, you know, and against
the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, to
hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as
something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead
somewhere.<br><br>
I mean, it's just a basic working class thing, though it begins to wear
off when you get older, get a family and get swallowed up in the
system.<br><br>
In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended to
overshadow it in my acid days; that would be around '65 or '66. And that
religion was directly the result of all that superstar shit--religion was
an outlet for my repression. I thought, 'Well, there's something else to
life, isn't there? This isn't it, surely?'<br><br>
But I was always political in a way, you know. In the two books I wrote,
even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's
many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a
capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to
write magazines in school and hand them around.<br><br>
I was very conscious of class, they would say with a chip on my shoulder,
because I knew what happened to me and I knew about the class repression
coming down on us--it was a fucking fact but in the hurricane Beatle
world it got left out, I got farther away from reality for a
time.<br><br>
TA: What did you think was the reason for the success of your sort of
music?<br><br>
JL: Well, at the time it was thought that the workers had broken through,
but I realise in retrospect that it's the same phoney deal they gave the
blacks, it was just like they allowed blacks to be runners or boxers or
entertainers. That's the choice they allow you--now the outlet is being a
pop star, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class
hero'. As I told Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power,
the class system didn't change one little bit.<br><br>
Of course, there are a lot of people walking around with long hair now
and some trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed
except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running
everything.<br><br>
Robin Blackburn: Of course, class is something the American rock groups
haven't tackled yet.<br><br>
JL: Because they're all middle class and bourgeois and they don't want to
show it. They're scared of the workers, actually, because the workers
seem mainly right-wing in America, clinging on to their goods. But if
these middle class groups realise what's happening, and what the class
system has done, it's up to them to repatriate the people and to get out
of all that bourgeois shit.<br><br>
TA: When did you start breaking out of the role imposed on you as a
Beatle?<br><br>
JL: Even during the Beatle heyday I tried to go against it, so did
George. We went to America a few times and Epstein always tried to waffle
on at us about saying nothing about Vietnam. So there came a time when
George and I said 'Listen, when they ask next time, we're going to say we
don't like that war and we think they should get right out.' That's what
we did. At that time this was a pretty radical thing to do, especially
for the 'Fab Four'. It was the first opportunity I personally took to
wave the flag a bit.<br><br>
But you've got to remember that I'd always felt repressed. We were all so
pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves,
especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a
cocoon of myths and dreams. It's pretty hard when you are Caesar and is
saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and
the girls, it's pretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don't
want to be king, I want to be real.' So in its way the second political
thing I did was to say 'The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.' That really
broke the scene, I nearly got shot in America for that. It was a big
trauma for all the kids that were following us. Up to then there was this
unspoken policy of not answering delicate questions, though I always read
the papers, you know, the political bits.<br><br>
The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I
wasn't saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that
game any more, it was just too much for me. Of course, going to America
increased the build up on me, especially as the war was going on there.
In a way we'd turned out to be a Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right
to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got into more and
more heavy stuff and that's when they started dropping us.<br><br>
RB: Wasn't there a double charge to what you were doing right from the
beginning?<br><br>
Yoko Ono: You were always very direct.<br><br>
JL: Yes, well, the first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness
to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool and talk
like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray,
Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC.
They were only comedians but that's what came out of Liverpool before us.
We refused to play that game. After The Beatles came on the scene
everyone started putting on a Liverpudlian accent.<br><br>
TA: In a way you were even thinking about politics when you seemed to be
knocking revolution?<br><br>
JL: Ah, sure, '</i>Revolution' . </i>There were two versions of that song
but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me
out'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in'
too; I put in both because I wasn't sure. There was a third version that
was just abstract, musique concrete, kind of loops and that, people
screaming. I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution--but
I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was
anti-revolution.<br><br>
On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about
destruction you can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't
really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed
to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of
the police waiting to get picked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you
know. I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated
themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it. That was
how I felt--I was really asking a question. As someone from the working
class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that
related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist
game.<br><br>
At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used
to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says,
religion is legalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that
and made me feel my own pain.<br><br>
RB: This analyst you went to, what's his name. ..<br><br>
JL: Janov ...<br><br>
RB: His ideas seem to have something in common with Laing in that he
doesn't want to reconcile people to their misery, to adjust them to the
world but rather to make them face up to its causes?<br><br>
JL: Well, his thing is to feel the pain that's accumulated inside you
ever since your childhood. I had to do it to really kill off all the
religious myths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of
your life--it's excruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain,
the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is
really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the
result of your parents and your environment.<br><br>
As I realised this it all started to fall into place. This therapy forced
me to have done with all the God shit. All of us growing up have come to
terms with too much pain. Although we repress it, it's still there. The
worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not
need you in the way you need them.<br><br>
When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the
ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went
into my eyes and into my mind. Janov doesn't just talk to you about this
but makes you feel it--once you've allowed yourself to feel again, you do
most of the work yourself.<br><br>
When you wake up and your heart is going like the clappers or your back
feels strained, or you develop some other hang-up, you should let your
mind go to the pain and the pain itself will regurgitate the memory which
originally caused you to suppress it in your body. In this way the pain
goes to the right channel instead of being repressed again, as it is if
you take a pill or a bath, saying </i>'Well, I'll get over it'. Most
people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of
making it.<br><br>
The therapy is like a very slow acid trip which happens naturally in your
body. It is hard to talk about, you know, because--you feel </i>'I am
pain' and it sounds sort of arbitrary, but pain to me now has a different
meaning because of having physically felt all these extraordinary
repressions. It was like taking gloves off, and feeling your own skin for
the first time.<br><br>
It's a bit of a drag to say so, but I don't think you can understand this
unless you've gone through it--though I try to put some of it over on the
album. But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip
or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for
some kind of heaven.<br><br>
RB: Do you see the family in general as the source of these
repressions?<br><br>
JL: Mine is an extreme case, you know. My father and mother split and I
never saw my father until I was 20, nor did I see much more of my mother.
But Yoko had her parents there and it was the same....<br><br>
YO: Perhaps one feels more pain when parents are there. It's like when
you're hungry, you know, it's worse to get a symbol of a cheeseburger
than no cheeseburger at all. It doesn't do you any good, you know. I
often wish my mother had died so that at least I could get some people's
sympathy. But there she was, a perfectly beautiful mother.<br><br>
JL: And Yoko's family were middle-class Japanese but it's all the same
repression. Though I think middle-class people have the biggest trauma if
they have nice imagey parents, all smiling and dolled up. They are the
ones who have the biggest struggle to say, 'Goodbye mummy, goodbye
daddy'.<br><br>
TA: What relation to your music has all this got?<br><br>
JL: Art is only a way of expressing pain. I mean the reason Yoko does
such far out stuff is that it's a far out kind of pain she went
through.<br><br>
RB: A lot of Beatle songs used to be about childhood...<br><br>
JL: Yeah, that would mostly be me...<br><br>
RB: Though they were very good there was always a missing
element...<br><br>
JL: That would be reality, that would be the missing element. Because I
was never really wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of my
repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was
'normal'...<br><br>
YO: ... and happy ...<br><br>
JL: The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say: 'Now,
mummy-daddy, will you love me?'<br><br>
TA: But then you had success beyond most people's wildest
dreams...<br><br>
JL: Oh, Jesus Christ, it was a complete oppression. I mean we had to go
through humiliation upon humiliation with the middle classes and showbiz
and Lord Mayors and all that. They were so condescending and stupid.
Everybody trying to use us. It was a special humiliation for me because I
could never keep my mouth shut and I'd always have to be drunk or pilled
to counteract this pressure. It was really hell ...<br><br>
YO: It was depriving him of any real experience, you know...<br><br>
JL: It was very miserable. I mean apart from the first flush of making
it--the thrill of the first number one record, the first trip to America.
At first we had some sort of objective like being as big as Elvis--moving
forward was the great thing, but actually attaining it was the big
let-down. I found I was having continually to please the sort of people
I'd always hated when I was a child. This began to bring me back to
reality.<br><br>
I began to realise that we are all oppressed which is why I would like to
do something about it, though I'm not sure where my place is.<br><br>
RB: Well, in any case, politics and culture are linked, aren't they? I
mean, workers are repressed by culture not guns at the moment
...<br><br>
JL: ... they're doped ...<br><br>
RB: And the culture that's doping them is one the artist can make or
break...<br><br>
JL: That's what I'm trying to do on my albums and in these interviews.
What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All
those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in
their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell
them.<br><br>
RB: Even in the past, you know, people would use Beatle songs and give
them new words. 'Yellow submarine' , for instance, had a number of
versions. One that strikers used to sing began 'We all live on bread and
margarine' ; at LSE we had a version that began 'We all live in a Red
LSE'.<br><br>
JL: I like that. And I enjoyed it when football crowds in the early days
would sing 'All together now'--that was another one. I was also pleased
when the movement in America took up 'Give peace a chance' because I had
written it with that in mind really. I hoped that instead of singing 'We
shall overcome' from 1800 or something, they would have something
contemporary. I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people
would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to
compose songs for the revolution now ...<br><br>
RB: We only have a few revolutionary songs and they were composed in the
19th century. Do you find anything in our musical traditions which could
be used for revolutionary songs?<br><br>
JL: When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution to
people of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to
break through all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down
on us kids. We were a bit conscious to begin with of being imitation
Americans. But we delved into the music and found that it was half white
country and western and half black rhythm and blues. Most of the songs
came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of
Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort
of cultural exchange.<br><br>
Though I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black ones
because they were more simple. They sort of saidshake your arse, or your
prick, which was an innovation really. And then there were the field
songs mainly expressing the pain they were in. They couldn't express
themselves intellectually so they had to say in a very few words what was
happening to them. And then there was the city blues and a lot of that
was about sex and fighting.<br><br>
A lot of this was self-expression but only in the last few years have
they expressed themselves completely with Black Power, like Edwin Starr
making war records. Before that many black singers were still labouring
under that problem of God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right
through the blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain
and also about sex, which is why I like it.<br><br>
RB: You say country and western music derived from European folk songs.
Aren't these folk songs sometimes pretty dreadful stuff, all about losing
and being defeated?<br><br>
JL: As kids we were all opposed to folk songs because they were so
middle-class. It was all college students with big scarfs and a pint of
beer in their hands singing folk songs in what we call la-di-da voices-'I
worked in a mine in New-cast-le' and all that shit. There were very few
real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there
was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear
very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or
somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is
fantastic.<br><br>
But mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive
something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority
thing kept going by a minority group. Today's folk song is rock and roll.
Although it happened to emanate from America, that's not really important
in the end because we wrote our own music and that changed
everything.<br><br>
RB: Your album, Yoko, seems to fuse avant-garde modern music with rock.
I'd like to put an idea to you I got from listening to it. You integrate
everyday sounds, like that of a train, into a musical pattern. This seems
to demand an aesthetic measure of everyday life, to insist that art
should not be imprisoned in the museums and galleries, doesn't
it?<br><br>
YO: Exactly. I want to incite people to loosen their oppression by giving
them something to work with, to build on. They shouldn't be frightened of
creating themselves--that's why I make things very open, with things for
people to do, like in my book [Grapefruit].<br><br>
Because basically there are two types of people in the world: people who
are confident because they know they have the ability to create, and then
people who have been demoralised, who have no confidence in themselves
because they have been told they have no creative ability, but must just
take orders. The Establishment likes people who take no responsibility
and cannot respect themselves.<br><br>
RB: I suppose workers' control is about that...<br><br>
JL: Haven't they tried out something like that in Yugoslavia; they are
free of the Russians. I'd like to go there and see how it works.<br><br>
TA: Well, they have; they did try to break with the Stalinist pattern.
But instead of allowing uninhibited workers' control, they added a strong
dose of political bureaucracy. It tended to smother the initiative of the
workers and they also regulated the whole system by a market mechanism
which bred new inequalities between one region and another.<br><br>
JL: It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult--even
the Chinese seem to need a father-figure. I expect this happens in Cuba
too, with Che and Fidel. In Western-style Communism we would have to
create an almost imaginary workers' image of themselves as the
father-figure.<br><br>
RB: That's a pretty cool idea--the Working Class becomes its own Hero. As
long as it was not a new comforting illusion, as long as there was a real
workers' power. If a capitalist or bureaucrat is running your life then
you need to compensate with illusions.<br><br>
YO: The people have got to trust in themselves.<br><br>
TA: That's the vital point. The working class must be instilled with a
feeling of confidence in itself. This can't be done just by
propaganda--the workers must move, take over their own factories and tell
the capitalists to bugger off. This is what began to happen in May 1968
in France...the workers began to feel their own strength.<br><br>
JL: But the Communist Party wasn't up to that, was it?<br><br>
RB: No, they weren't. With 10 million workers on strike they could have
led one of those huge demonstrations that occurred in the centre of Paris
into a massive occupation of all government buildings and installations,
replacing de Gaulle with a new institution of popular power like the
Commune or the original Soviets--that would have begun a real revolution
but the French C.P. was scared of it. They preferred to deal at the top
instead of encouraging the workers to take the initiative
themselves...<br><br>
JL: Great, but there's a problem about that here you know. All the
revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who
were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a
good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that
they were in a repressed state. They haven't woken up yet here, they
still believe that cars and tellies are the answer. You should get these
left-wing students out to talk with the workers, you should get the
school-kids involved with The Red Mole</i>.<br><br>
TA: You're quite right, we have been trying to do that and we should do
more. This new Industrial Relations Bill the Government is trying to
introduce is making more and more workers realise what is
happening...<br><br>
JL: I don't think that Bill can work. I don't think they can enforce it.
I don't think the workers will co-operate with it. I thought the Wilson
Government was a big let-down but this Heath lot are worse. The
underground is being harrassed, the black militants can't even live in
their own homes now, and they're selling more arms to the South Africans.
Like Richard Neville said, there may be only an inch of difference
between Wilson and Heath but it's in that inch that we live....<br><br>
TA: I don't know about that; Labour brought in racialist immigration
policies, supported the Vietnam war and were hoping to bring in new
legislation against the unions.<br><br>
RB: It may be true that we live in the Inch of difference between Labour
and Conservative but so long as we do we'll be impotent and unable to
change anything. If Heath is forcing us out of that inch maybe he's doing
us a good turn without meaning to...<br><br>
JL: Yes, I've thought about that, too. This putting us in a corner so we
have to find out what is coming down on other people. I keep on reading
the </i>Morning Star [the Communist newspaper] to see if there's any
hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for
dropped-out, middle-aged liberals.<br><br>
We should be trying to reach the young workers because that's when you're
most idealistic and have least fear.<br><br>
Somehow the revolutionaries must approach the workers because the workers
won't approach them. But it's difficult to know where to start; we've all
got a finger in the dam. The problem for me is that as I have become more
real, I've grown away from most working-class people--you know what they
like is Engelbert Humperdinck. It's the students who are buying us now,
and that's the problem. Now The Beatles are four separate people, we
don't have the impact we had when we were together...<br><br>
RB: Now you're trying to swim against the stream of bourgeois society,
which is much more difficult.<br><br>
JL: Yes, they own all the newspapers and they control all distribution
and promotion. When we came along there was only Decca, Philips and EMI
who could really produce a record for you. You had to go through the
whole bureaucracy to get into the recording studio. You were in such a
humble position, you didn't have more than 12 hours to make a whole
album, which is what we did in the early days.<br><br>
Even now it's the same; if you're an unknown artist you're lucky to get
an hour in a studio--it's a hierarchy and if you don't have hits, you
don't get recorded again. And they control distribution. We tried to
change that with Apple but in the end we were defeated. They still
control everything. EMI </i>killed our album </i>Two Virgins because they
didn't like it. With the last record they've censored the words of the
songs printed on the record sleeve. Fucking ridiculous and
hypocritical--they have to let me sing it but they don't dare let you
read it. Insanity.<br><br>
RB: Though you reach fewer people now, perhaps the effect can be more
concentrated.<br><br>
JL: Yes, I think that could be true. To begin with, working class people
reacted against our openness about sex. They are frightened of nudity,
they're repressed in that way as well as others. Perhaps they thought
</i>'Paul is a good lad, he doesn't make trouble'.<br><br>
Also when Yoko and I got married, we got terrible racialist letters--you
know, warning me that she would slit my throat. Those mainly came from
Army people living in Aldershot. Officers.<br><br>
Now workers are more friendly to us, so perhaps it's changing. It seems
to me that the students are now half-awake enough to try and wake up
their brother workers. If you don't pass on your own awareness then it
closes down again. That is why the basic need is for the students to get
in with the workers and convince them that they are not talking
gobbledegook. And of course it's difficult to know what the workers are
really thinking because the capitalist press always only quotes
mouthpieces like Vic Feather* anyway. [Ed. Note: Vic Feather 1908-76 was
General Secretary of the TUC from 1969-73.]<br><br>
So the only thing is to talk to them directly, especially the young
workers. We've got to start with them because they know they're up
against it. That's why I talk about school on the album. I'd like to
incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to
stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.<br><br>
YO: We are very lucky really, because we can create our own reality, John
and me, but we know the important thing is to communicate with other
people.<br><br>
JL: The more reality we face, the more we realise that unreality is the
main programme of the day. The more real we become, the more abuse we
take, so it does radicalise us in a way, like being put in a corner. But
it would be better if there were more of us.<br><br>
YO: We mustn't be traditional in the way we communicate with
people--especially with the Establishment. We should surprise people by
saying new things in an entirely new way. Communication of that sort can
have a fantastic power so long as you don't do only what they expect you
to do.<br><br>
RB: Communication is vital for building a movement, but in the end it's
powerless unless you also develop popular force.<br><br>
YO: I get very sad when I think about Vietnam where there seems to be no
choice but violence. This violence goes on for centuries perpetuating
itself. In the present age when communication is so rapid, we should
create a different tradition, traditions are created everyday. Five years
now is like 100 years before. We are living in a society that has no
history. There's no precedent for this kind of society so we can break
the old patterns.<br><br>
TA: No ruling class in the whole of history has given up power
voluntarily and I don't see that changing.<br><br>
YO: But violence isn't just a conceptual thing, you know. I saw a
programme about this kid who had come back from Vietnam--he'd lost his
body from the waist down. He was just a lump of meat, and he said, 'Well,
I guess it was a good experience.'<br><br>
JL: He didn't want to face the truth, he didn't want to think it had all
been a waste...<br><br>
YO: But think of the violence, it could happen to your kids ...<br><br>
RB: But Yoko, people who struggle against oppression find themselves
attacked by those who have a vested interest in nothing changing, those
who want to protect their power and wealth. Look at the people in Bogside
and Falls Road in Northern Ireland; they were mercilessly attacked by the
special police because they began demonstrating for their rights. On one
night in August 1969, seven people were shot and thousands driven from
their homes. Didn't they have a right to defend themselves?<br><br>
YO: That's why one should try to tackle these problems before a situation
like that happens.<br><br>
JL: Yes, but what do you do when it does happen, what do you do?<br><br>
RB: Popular violence against their oppressors is always justified. It
cannot be avoided.<br><br>
YO: But in a way the new music showed things could be transformed by new
channels of communication.<br><br>
JL: Yes, but as I said, nothing really changed.<br><br>
YO: Well, something changed and it was for the better. All I'm saying is
that perhaps we can make a revolution without violence.<br><br>
JL: But you can't take power without a struggle...<br><br>
TA: That's the crucial thing.<br><br>
JL: Because, when it comes to the nitty-gritty, they won't let the people
have any power; they'll give all the rights to perform and to dance for
them, but no real power...<br><br>
YO: The thing is, even after the revolution, if people don't have any
trust in themselves, they'll get new problems.<br><br>
JL: After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of
sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that
revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split
into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't
it--but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to
solidify a new order. I don't know what the answer is; obviously Mao is
aware of this problem and keeps the ball moving.<br><br>
RB: The danger is that once a revolutionary state has been created, a new
conservative bureaucracy tends to form around it. This danger tends to
increase if the revolution is isolated by imperialism and there is
material scarcity.<br><br>
JL: Once the new power has taken over they have to establish a new status
quo just to keep the factories and trains running.<br><br>
RB: Yes, but a repressive bureaucracy doesn't necessarily run the
factories or trains any better than the workers could under a system of
revolutionary democracy.<br><br>
JL: Yes, but we all have bourgeois instincts within us, we all get tired
and feel the need to relax a bit. How do you keep everything going and
keep up revolutionary fervour after you've achieved what you set out to
achieve? Of course Mao has kept them up to it in China, but what happens
after Mao goes? Also he uses a personality cult. Perhaps that's
necessary; like I said, everybody seems to need a father figure.<br><br>
But I've been reading Khrushchev Remembers.</i> I know he's a bit of a
lad himself--but he seemed to think that making a religion out of an
individual was bad; that doesn't seem to be part of the basic Communist
idea. Still people are people, that's the difficulty.<br><br>
If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the
bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind.<br><br>
RB: ...In Britain unless we can create a new popular power-and here that
would basically mean workers' power--really controlled by, and answerable
to, the masses, then we couldn't make the revolution in the first place.
Only a really deep-rooted workers' power could destroy the bourgeois
state.<br><br>
YO: That's why it will be different when the younger generation takes
over.<br><br>
JL: I think it wouldn't take much to get the youth here really going.
You'd have to give them free rein to attack the local councils or to
destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the
repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people
have got to get together more.<br><br>
And the women are very important too, we can't have a revolution that
doesn't involve and liberate women. It's so subtle the way you're taught
male superiority.<br><br>
It took me quite a long time to realise that my maleness was cutting off
certain areas for Yoko. She's a red hot liberationistand was quick to
show me where I was going wrong, even though it seemed to me that I was
just acting naturally. That's why I'm always interested to know how
people who claim to be radical treat women.<br><br>
RB: There's always been at least as much male chauvinism on the left as
anywhere else--though the rise of women's liberation is helping to sort
that out.<br><br>
JL: It's ridiculous. How can you talk about power to the people unless
you realise the people is both sexes.<br><br>
YO: You can't love someone unless you are in an equal position with them.
A lot of women have to cling to men out of fear or insecurity, and that's
not love--basically that's why women hate men...<br><br>
JL: ... and vice versa ...<br><br>
YO: So if you have a slave around the house how can you expect to make a
revolution outside it? The problem for women is that if we try to be
free, then we naturally become lonely, because so many women are willing
to become slaves, and men usually prefer that. So you always have to take
the chance: 'Am I going to lose my man?' It's very sad.<br><br>
JL: Of course, Yoko was well into liberation before I met her. She'd had
to fight her way through a man's world--the art world is completely
dominated by men--so she was full of revolutionary zeal when we met.
There was never any question about it: we had to have a 50-50
relationship or there was no relationship, I was quick to learn. She did
an article about women in Nova</i> more than two years back in which she
said, 'Woman is the nigger of the world' .<br><br>
RB: Of course we all live in an imperialist country that is exploiting
the Third World, and even our culture is involved in this. There was a
time when Beatle music was plugged on Voice of America....<br><br>
JL: The Russians put it out that we were capitalist robots, which we were
I suppose...<br><br>
RB: They were pretty stupid not to see it was something
different.<br><br>
YO: Let' s face it, Beatles was 20th-century folksong in the framework of
capitalism; they couldn't do anything different if they wanted to
communicate within that framework.<br><br>
RB: I was working in Cuba when Sgt Pepper was released and that's when
they first started playing rock music on the radio.<br><br>
JL: Well hope they see that rock and roll is not the same as Coca-Cola.
</i>As we get beyond the dream this should be easier: that's why I'm
putting out more heavy statements now and trying to shake off the
teeny-bopper image.<br><br>
I want to get through to the right people, and I want to make what I have
to say very simple and direct.<br><br>
RB: Your latest album sounds very simple to begin with, but the lyrics,
tempo and melody build up into a complexity one only gradually becomes
aware of. Like the track 'My mummy's dead' echoes the nursery song
</i>'Three blind mice' and it's about a childhood trauma.<br><br>
JL: The tune does; it was that sort of feeling, almost like a Haiku poem.
I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic.
Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind
you're left with great precision.<br><br>
Yoko was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference
between them and Long fellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem
the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which
gives you the whole picture, really....<br><br>
TA: How do you think we can destroy the capitalist system here in
Britain, John?<br><br>
JL: I think only by making the workers aware of the really unhappy
position they are in, breaking the dream they are surrounded by. They
think they are in a wonderful, free-speaking country. They've got cars
and tellies and they don't want to think there's anything more to life.
They are prepared to let the bosses run them, to see their children
fucked up in school. They're dreaming someone else's dream, it's not even
their own. They should realise that the blacks and the Irish are being
harassed and repressed and that they will be next.<br><br>
As soon as they start being aware of all that, we can really begin to do
something. The workers can start to take over. Like Marx said: 'To each
according to his need'. I think that would work well here. But we'd also
have to infiltrate the army too, because they are well trained to kill us
all.<br><br>
We've got to start all this from where we ourselves are oppressed. I
think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is
great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better
but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the
degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a
living wage.<br><br>
Tariq Ali </b>is author of the recently released
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844670295/counterpunchmaga">
Street Fighting Years</a> (new edition) and, with David Barsamian,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156584954X/counterpunchmaga">
Speaking of Empires & Resistance. </a>He can be reached at:
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/maiilto:/tariq.ali3@btinternet.com">
tariq.ali3@btinternet.com</a><br><br>
Robin Blackburn</b>, a frequent contributor to CounterPunch, is the
former editor of <a href="http://www.newleftreview.net/">The New Left
Review</a> and author of the excellent history of the slave trade,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859848907/counterpunchmaga">
The Making of New World Slavery</a> and the new book from Verso
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/185984409X/counterpunchmaga">
Banking on Death: the Future of Pensions</a>.<br><br>
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