The Left Book Club

Christ! The whole thing was a fuck-up, really, All it would have taken was a decent bit of bayonet-waving, Lob a few mortars into the city and that, as they say, Would have been that. But, I forgot, we had to make sure Of our ideological purity first. That is, We were less concerned with winning Than with ensuring that the struggle Had the correct dialectical properties. We debated Hegelian metaphysics in trenches And quoted Marx in the latrines; Our understanding of economic determinism Was the best in the free world. We believed in our aims, we fought hard, And yet, somehow, somewhere, we failed Both ourselves and our people. And the biggest problem is That we were right all along. One day, the leader of our party came to see us, A rare privilege indeed, and we asked him If it was still official policy To shoot any fascist that we saw. He looked hard at us, stroked his Stalinist moustache, and said: "From now on lads, Shoot any man who is not a socialist, It is the only thing That those bastards will understand."