Billy Bragg - "World Turned Upside Down"

[ArtoriousRex44]

This should be the Wall Street protesters' anthem.



[flax56]

Fuck NWO

[ben909ben]

Somehow, he's a kindred spirit with Ray Davies

in a bizarre kinda way

love them both

[putaweonpo]

why are the crowd not more excited?!?! they all seem a bit "meh"

[mowgli2071]

@putaweonpo: They look semi-geriatric. What do you expect?

[TheLEJT1]

As a real proper Black Country wench (with the lady chainmakers among my ancestors) this is amazing to me.

I suggest certain people on here study real working class history-which this is about-rather than banging on about Stalin.

[BuckyKhronic]

Who's the odd one out? Billy Bragg, Bono or Joe Strummer?

Bono...Well apart from a whole lot of credibility, neither Billy or Joe have ever thought they were Bono!

[stevenv310382]

I was there!

[grobo11]

I support the BNP and I think Billy Bragg is cool.

[TheSpineyOne]

@grobo11

lol dissonance

[grobo11]

@TheSpineyOne My two likes are not conflicting with each other.

[MrLovethelife]

Haha you sound like a very confused lad!? Who knows maybe you will listen to his lyrics??

[grobo11]

@MrLovethelife Well there not HIS lyrics, this was taken from an old song called the 'diggers song' which was the anthem of the politicol party 'the levellers' who were themselves executed by Oliver Cromwell when they wanted equal rights for all. Confused? No, not really and besides you don't have to read into the lyrics to like a song.

[button1943]

inspiring!!

[billydai]

should have deek(fist in the air) stood at the back

[blackiron60]

Hardcore song, I have plenty of working class ancestors who would have identified entirely with what he's singing here.

[ben909ben]

Thanks Mike - maybe add "Leon Rosselson" to the tags, he wrote this song, (and a bunch of other cutting commentaries).  If you like the tune, his recorded version is wonderful, and available on Limewire and for sale.

you poor take courage

you rich take care

[yuga2]

Saw Billy in Seattle in 1992. He was fantastic and I love this version of this wonderful song.

[Jozi832]

Peter Maurin (France 1877 - USA 1949), christian anarchist activist who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, believed the Catholic Worker should stress life in small agricultural communities, as 'there is no unemployment on the land. When business is based on selfishness, everybody is busy becoming more selfish. Everybody would be rich if nobody tried to become richer.' Notice the Vatican Popes on the contrary are as christian as the greedy Italian Maffia Godfathers. Now Bless Billy 'ere :-)

[68evolver]

What the hell are you all talking about? Listen to Bill's music, take the pickles out of your arses, stop debating Stalin's legacy and get on with it! "All things in common, ALL people one!"

[mak1emak1e]

spiney

1. you talk more than stalin murdered

2. this has nowt to do with video stop taking upthe space of the screen with ure hundered comment conversation with a screeen

[TheSpineyOne]

@mak1emak1e

Do you even understand the subject matter of the song? Or the subtext? Completely relevent, unless you take a completely superficial stance.

[sonever1]

Coercive Socialism is theft.

On the other hand a market economy probably doesn't work very well if it doesn't have a thriving Commons right along with it to which people can have economic recourse. That's 'Commons', not 'public land' owned by 'the state'.

Go British National Party.

[TheSpineyOne]

Fuck off Nazi

[sonever1]

Wrong. Nazis are and were Leftists and vice versa. It's the Coercive Socialism and reductionist ideological brainwashing that gives it away.

[TheSpineyOne]

You really are painfully stupid, aren't you? Hitler was a right wing nut case. Fascism was and is a reactionary ideology that came from the same school of thought as conservatism. It was in response to the egalitarian measures being taken in Europe in the 1930's. The name "National Socialist" was an historic relic of the days, prior to Hitler's leadership, when the party had been a left leaning workers party.

The criticism of Hitler, prior to the second

[TheSpineyOne]

world war, came exclusively from the left, mainly from Trotskyists and Anarchists. The right, especially in the UK, considered fascism the only way to hold on to their priveliges. (Indeed the British royal family were very supportive of Hitler, Edward VIII went so far as to give Hitler British military secrets and should ave been shot).

You are clearly a dim-witted yank with no knowledge of history so I won't blame you for your ignorance. I suggest you watch "Young,

[TheSpineyOne]

Nazi and Proud" and "BNP Exposed: The Secret Agent", both of which are on Youtube.

The BNP are, almost exclusively, holocaust deniers and Hitler worshippers. They blame immigrants for all the ills in society, if that's not "reductionist ideological brainwashing" I don't know what is. They are not Libertarians. I am no fan of Ron Paul but I can assure you that he would not approve of anything they stand for. Look on their own website if you do not

[TheSpineyOne]

believe me - BNP(dot)org(dot)uk - and check out their manifesto.

[sonever1]

Thanks for your considered response. Skip the abuse in future.

If you can, check out Prof. Paul Johnson of Cambridge's 'Modern Times', a great survey history of the 20th century that you won't be able to stop reading once begun. He reviews Fascism's origin in the 1920s with the editor of Italy's Socialist paper 'Avanti', Benito Mussolini.

Hitler in his Vienna days was a sexually confused bohemian artist leftwing headcase. You got the 'nutcase ' part correct.

I'll check the website you cite.

[sonever1]

The Nazis and Communists of 20's and 30's Germany were ,figuratively, two similarly demented whores fighting over the same streetcorner. Ideologically addled thugs, largely.Kind of like the 'struggles' between Trotskyists and stalinists and Moaists, tending to result in mass murder when they gain power.

[TheSpineyOne]

Yet again, your knowledge of history and political ideology is astounding in its inadequacy.

Are you still defending the BNP? Still claiming they're not Nazi's?

When was Trotsky ever in power?

Stalin, although claiming to be a left wing egalitarian, was an authoritarian, thus adhering to the right wing ethos; that the working class are a tool to be used by the ruling classes to meet their needs.

Trotsky, on the other hand, was a libertarian

[TheSpineyOne]

socialist, who advocated a permanent international revolution, with no borders and no state power. The state would be redundant because all land is held in common; you cannot steal what is already your own.

Mao was a puppet of Stalin, nothing else.

If you want to see a real left wing, socialist society, have a look at Bolivia. It's not a rich country but there is virtually no poverty, some of the highest literacy rates in the world and excellent public health.

[TheSpineyOne]

Then there's Norway, the "happiest" country in the world, also the most left wing country in the industrialised world.

We have Post revolution, pre-Franco Spain, a place where inequality and slavery (wage or chattel) had been eradicated completely. Who did the capitalists support? Franco the Fascist.

Read "The Communist Manifesto" and ask yourself if the USSR bore any resemblance to the system advocated.

Let's now look at the US, the land of the free. It

[TheSpineyOne]

was the last of the industrialised countries to outlaw slavery. Public health is ranked below several developing countries (the likes of Chile, Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador and Brazil, just in south America, are above them). You have the highest crime rates in the industrialised world and the highest murder rates of any country in the world other than those undergoing a civil war.

You seem to see the left as authoritarian state control and the right as freedom and liberty.

[TheSpineyOne]

This is not surprising, given that McCarthy will have had such an influence on your life. But this is simply not true. The right stands for the conservation of class privelige and whatever reactions are necessary to keep the working class down and obediant. In the USA they use the propaganda of Fox, NBC and CNN to tell you how good you have it and that the things you think they should do are "politically impossible". As Von Goethe said, "there are none so well enslaved as those that falseley

[TheSpineyOne]

believe themselves free". Why beat you into line when you go into line without question?

The Spanish in the '30s were working class heroes. Franco knew that propaganda would not work so he had to sruch them, using the force of his Italian and German co-Fascists.

Really, if you are going to use personal liberty as the standard bearer, you still have to say the left are the defenders of our rights.

Here's a little reading list for you: Das Kapital (vol.1-3) (Marx), The Communist Manifesto

[TheSpineyOne]

(Marx/Engels), Bakunin on Anarchism, The Lion and The Unicorn, Homage to Catalonia and 1984 (Orwell).

This is not intended as an insult, though it will come over that way: The way politics is presented in the US is completely backwards. Libertarianism is not, in its true sense, a right wing capitalist ideology; it is a libertarian socialist, or anarchist position. State taxation is not "undemocratic", we vote for the people who install these taxes, knowing what they will

[TheSpineyOne]

be. The free market is NOT democratic, the more money you have the greater the influence you can have. This is oligarchy, not democracy.

Noam Chomsky has some excellent writings on this; his multilingual talents and conversations with Spanish Anarchists at a young age freed him from the newspeak and doublethink that is US political dialogue.

[jackriter]

If Trot was so libertarian why would he stab Makhno in the back, and crush Krondstadt? He advocated party control, not worker control.

[TheSpineyOne]

The propensity of Makhno's troops to execute captured communists may have had something to do with it.

Makhno may have espoused libertarian and anarcho-syndicalist ideas but his actions contradicted this stance. His army was outwardly democratic but in practice the final decision was the senior commander's to make. The fighters under Makhno's command were not the automomous volunteers they were purported to be. Deserters were subject

[TheSpineyOne]

to summarry execution, all the more torturous if they were found to have joined the red army. His numbers included many prisoners that had been forced to cooperate under threat of execution. His army was as likely to attack the reds as he was the whites.

[jackriter]

Makhno attacked the Reds because they atacked him, it would be illogical not to attack back, and not to punish soldiers who would defect to kill their former comrades. Makhno's army was voluntary, there was no conscripts just volunteers, they also had the ability to quit if they wished, just so long as they would not run off to the Reds or Whites.

[TheSpineyOne]

That's not true and you know it. The "democracy" in his armies was a mere front. Many of his men were prisoners who were forced, at pain of death, to support him (they were never allowed weapons, naturally!)

This is an interesting quote, from Makhno himslef, "Some groups have understood voluntary mobilization as mobilization only for those who wish to enter the Insurrectionary Army, and that anyone who for any reason wishes to stay at home is not liable. This is

[TheSpineyOne]

not correct. The voluntary mobilization has been called because the peasants, workers and insurgents themselves decided to mobilize themselves without awaiting the arrival of instructions from the central authorities."

According to Voline: "His greatest fault was certainly the abuse of alcohol. Under [its influence], Makhno became irresponsible in his actions; he lost control of himself. Then it was personal caprice, often supported by

[TheSpineyOne]

violence, that suddenly replaced his sense of revolutionary duty; it was the despotism, the absurd pranks, the dictatorial antics of a warrior chief."

Indeed, Makhno's arrest was not ordered until he and his army deserted their position in the line, leaving a huge hole, through which the whites advanced, forcing the reds into retreat.

Makhno had betrayed the Bolsheviks and his betrayal could easily have resulted in a white victory. It was inevitable that, even though an

[TheSpineyOne]

ahreement was made, he would have to be punished. I know anarchists have claimed that Makhno was opposed because the bolsheviks feared that he could introduce successful anarchist communes but the facts and sequence of events simply do not back this up.

[TheSpineyOne]

The Krondstadt rebellion was not what is has been made out to be in the bourgeous, capitalist press, though it was a tragedy. It is to be remembered that inside Krandstadt the men were by no means united against the bolsheviks, there were clashes between the old revolutionaries and the new reecruits, who were, by and large, recruited from petit bourgeois families. The secret Soviet archives, released after the fall of

[TheSpineyOne]

the USSR had some interesting information on this. During the attack, the workers had laready turned against the putschists and liberated the town, prior to the arrival of the main red army forces. This destroys the idea that this was a rebellion against boshevism, given that it was, in fact, a workers' uprising against the "rebels". The "rebellion" heavily backed by former tzsarist prime-minister Kokovzev, who is known to have

[TheSpineyOne]

trasferred 225,000 francs to the Kronstadt rebels. The rebels were led by counter-revolutionary traitors, S H Dmitriev and A H Koslovsky.

The majority of Russian anarchists were not members or uncritical supporters of bolshevism but did cooperate with them prior to the rise of Stalin.

[jackriter]

Sure, I guess freedom of speech and more power for Soviets are petty bourgeois demands.

[TheSpineyOne]

I'm sorry? Are you suggesting that the Krondstadt rebellion was not funded and orchestrated by tzarists and whites?

[limeyjohn1963]

TheSpineyOne.. Spot on mate. I wish I could be half as eloquent as you, very well researched...well done.

[kevinairlocked]

Property is theft!

[shuttlem]

it amazes me that you racist Bnp wankers take time and effort to bugger around on youtube slaggin off billy bragg , is there not a cause to be championed??

is this how u intend to get ur white superior state, naughty comments about lefties on youtube?

surely u have a brick to put through some innocents window?

basically mate, if u don't like it, fuck off an leave it alone, so we can enjoy.

superb track, much love to billy bragg.

[gonzophotojournalism]

what? you the pope or something?

[TheSpineyOne]

Another shit for brains Nazi wanker. You fascists will be first against the wall come the revolution.

[DonegalRaymie201]

@TheSpineyOne

Come the glorious day comrade! Come that day!

[TaliaA1990]

My History teacher made us all sing to this in a lesson once - good times ha.

[kirstenk14]

If you like this song check out the book The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution by Christopher Hill

The Diggers knew what they were talking about. listen up!

[js7800]

yes mate! that book is sick! also reading that you realise how out of all the radical groups around at that time the Diggers are the top dogs. You can read their manifesto online, written by Gerard Winstanley it's called 'A true levellers standard advanced'

[lepermessiah76]

Nice song. There's a good message here, I still prefer the first version I heard by Dick Gaughan though.

[leethegravyboat]

my god.

we listened to this in one of our history lessons!in fact i think i have the lyrics hanging around at the back of my history book somewhere... great song.

[haveanicedayeveryone]

yeah same here

[PforPanchetta]

Great clip! Thanks for shooting and posting a fantastic performance of this powerful song.

Cheers!

[TheKingDies]

Ahaha that were a well fun day ;] I kept sneaking into all the musuemy old fashioned stuff thingys. :P

[potatoisyellow2]

Thanks for putting this on, I went to this and it was a great day.Loved the museum as well.The sound of this is great, really good quality.Nice one.

[kateiskrazee]

i love you billy !!

[74BMW]

This is the best clip of this song floating around youtube.

[henapen]

this is the best song ever! great version! keep fighting Billy!

[TheKingDies]

LOOOLL I WAS THERE LMAOO. I was that crazy kid with the big hair running around totally, then sliding down the hill. I can see some of my relatives in the audiance. Ahaha.