KURT
VONNEGUT is one of America’s best-known novelists,
with half a century of writings and close to 20 books
to his name.
He’s
also earned a reputation as an opponent of war and
injustice, both in his literature and as a public
speaker who has participated in movements for change.
In
October, Vonnegut was given the Carl Sandburg Literary
Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library–and
used the opportunity of his speech to discuss Sandburg’s
commitment to socialism.
Sandburg’s
poetry and essays can be found in many grade-school
literary anthologies, but few people learn that he
got his start as a writer as a labor and socialist
journalist.
For
example, in the early decades of the 20th century,
Sandburg wrote regularly for the International Socialist
Review, an ancestor of Socialist Worker’s sister
magazine of the same name.
His
fiery articles took on the greed and corruption of
big business, government repression and–in his
commentaries on the famous evangelist Billy Sunday,
for example–the way that religion was used by
the powers that be to prop up their rule.
Here,
with permission, Socialist Worker prints Vonnegut’s
acceptance speech.
WE
ARE America’s Great Lakes people, her freshwater
people, not an oceanic but a continental people. Whenever
I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in
chicken soup.
I
thank you for this honor, although it is a reminder
that I am not nearly the passionate and effective artist
Carl Sandburg was. And we are surely grateful for his
fog, which came in on little cat feet.
But
tonight seems an apt occasion as well for celebrating
what he and other American socialists did during the
first half of the past century, with art, with eloquence,
with organizing skills, to elevate the self-respect,
the dignity and political acumen of American wage earners,
of our working class.
That
wage earners, without social position or higher education
or wealth, are of inferior intellect is surely belied
by the fact that two of the most splendid writers and
speakers on the deepest subjects in American history
were self-taught workmen. I speak, of course, of Carl
Sandburg of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, of Kentucky,
then Indiana, and finally Illinois. Both, may I say,
were continental, freshwater people like ourselves.
Hooray
for our team!
I
know upper-class graduates of Yale University who can’t
talk or write worth a nickel.
''Socialism''is
no more an evil word than ''Christianity.'' Socialism
no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police
and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed
the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism
alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the
proposition that all men, women and children are created
equal, and shalt not starve.
Adolf
Hitler, incidentally, was a two-fer. He named his party
the National Socialists, the Nazis. Hitler also had
crosses painted on his tanks and airplanes. The swastika
wasn’t a pagan symbol, as so many people believe.
It was a working person’s Christian cross, made
of axes, of tools.
About
Stalin’s shuttered churches, and those in China
today: Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified
by Karl Marx’s statement that that ''religion is
the opium of the people.'' Marx said that back in 1844,
when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective
painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken
them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they
had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not
condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting
to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual
truism, not a dictum.
When
Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn’t even
freed our slaves yet. Whom do you imagine was more pleasing
in the eyes of a merciful God back then: Karl Marx or
the United States of America?
Stalin
was happy to take Marx’s truism as a decree, and
Chinese tyrants as well, since it seemingly empowered
them to put preachers out of business who might speak
ill of them or their goals.
The
statement has also entitled many in this country to
say that socialists are anti-religion, are anti-God,
and therefore absolutely loathsome.
I
never met Carl Sandburg, and wish I had. I would have
been tongue-tied in the presence of such a national
treasure. I did get to know one socialist of his generation,
who was Powers Hapgood of Indianapolis. After graduating
from Harvard he went to work as a coal miner, urging
his working-class brothers to organize, in order to
get better pay and safer working conditions. He also
led protesters at the execution of the anarchists Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Massachusetts in 1927.
We
met in Indianapolis after the end of World War Two,
and he had become an official in the CIO. There had
been some sort of dust-up on a picket line, and he had
just testified about it in court. The judge had interrupted
the proceedings to ask Powers Hapgood why, with all
his social and economic and educational advantages,
he had chosen to lead such a life. And Powers Hapgood
replied, ''Why, because of the Sermon on the Mount,
sir.''
Another
of our freshwater ancestors was Eugene Victor Debs,
of Terre Haute, Indiana. A former locomotive fireman,
Eugene Debs ran for president of the United States four
times, the fourth time in 1920, when he was in prison.
He said, ''As long as there is a lower class, I’m
in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I’m
of it. As long as there’s a soul in prison, I am
not free.''
Some
platform. A paraphrase of the beatitudes.
And
again: Hooray for our team.
And
our own beloved Carl Sandburg had this to say about
the fire-belching evangelist Bill Sunday:
''You
come along–tearing your shirt–yelling about
Jesus. I want to know what the hell you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft, and everybody except
a few bankers and higher ups among the con men of Jerusalem
like to have Jesus around because he never made any
fake passes, and he helped the sick and gave people
hope.
''You
come along calling us all damn fools–so fierce
the froth of your own spit slobbers over your lips–always
blabbering we’re all going to hell straight off,
and you know all about it. I’ve read Jesus’
words. I know what he said. You don’t throw any
scare into me. I’ve got your number. I know how
much you know about Jesus.
''You
tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix
it up all right with them by giving them mansions in
the skies after they’re dead and the worms have
eaten ’em. You tell $6 a week department store
girls all they need is Jesus. You take a steel trust
wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at
40 years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on
the cross and he’ll be all right.
''You
tell poor people they don’t need any more money
on pay day. And even if it’s fierce to be out of
a job, Jesus’ll fix that all right, all right.
All they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.
''Jesus
played it different. The bankers and corporation lawyers
of Jerusalem got their murderers to go after Jesus because
Jesus wouldn’t play their game. I don’t want
a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.''
Hooray
for our team.
And
I now take advantage of your hospitality by declaring
myself a child of the Chicago Renaissance, powerfully
humanized not only by Carl Sandburg, but by Edgar Lee
Masters and Jane Addams and Louis Sullivan and Lake
Michigan, and on and on.
And
I propose a toast to an individual who wasn’t an
artist or working stiff of any description. She wasn’t
even a human being. Ladies and gentlemen of Chicago,
I give you Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.
And
I thank you for your attention.
KURT
VONNEGUT is one of America’s best-known novelists,
with half a century of writings and close to 20 books
to his name.
He’s
also earned a reputation as an opponent of war and
injustice, both in his literature and as a public
speaker who has participated in movements for change.
In
October, Vonnegut was given the Carl Sandburg Literary
Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library–and
used the opportunity of his speech to discuss Sandburg’s
commitment to socialism.
Sandburg’s
poetry and essays can be found in many grade-school
literary anthologies, but few people learn that he
got his start as a writer as a labor and socialist
journalist.
For
example, in the early decades of the 20th century,
Sandburg wrote regularly for the International Socialist
Review, an ancestor of Socialist Worker’s sister
magazine of the same name.
His
fiery articles took on the greed and corruption of
big business, government repression and–in his
commentaries on the famous evangelist Billy Sunday,
for example–the way that religion was used by
the powers that be to prop up their rule.
Here,
with permission, Socialist Worker prints Vonnegut’s
acceptance speech.
WE
ARE America’s Great Lakes people, her freshwater
people, not an oceanic but a continental people. Whenever
I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in
chicken soup.
I
thank you for this honor, although it is a reminder
that I am not nearly the passionate and effective artist
Carl Sandburg was. And we are surely grateful for his
fog, which came in on little cat feet.
But
tonight seems an apt occasion as well for celebrating
what he and other American socialists did during the
first half of the past century, with art, with eloquence,
with organizing skills, to elevate the self-respect,
the dignity and political acumen of American wage earners,
of our working class.
That
wage earners, without social position or higher education
or wealth, are of inferior intellect is surely belied
by the fact that two of the most splendid writers and
speakers on the deepest subjects in American history
were self-taught workmen. I speak, of course, of Carl
Sandburg of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, of Kentucky,
then Indiana, and finally Illinois. Both, may I say,
were continental, freshwater people like ourselves.
Hooray
for our team!
I
know upper-class graduates of Yale University who can’t
talk or write worth a nickel.
''Socialism''is
no more an evil word than ''Christianity.'' Socialism
no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police
and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed
the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism
alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the
proposition that all men, women and children are created
equal, and shalt not starve.
Adolf
Hitler, incidentally, was a two-fer. He named his party
the National Socialists, the Nazis. Hitler also had
crosses painted on his tanks and airplanes. The swastika
wasn’t a pagan symbol, as so many people believe.
It was a working person’s Christian cross, made
of axes, of tools.
About
Stalin’s shuttered churches, and those in China
today: Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified
by Karl Marx’s statement that that ''religion is
the opium of the people.'' Marx said that back in 1844,
when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective
painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken
them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they
had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not
condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting
to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual
truism, not a dictum.
When
Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn’t even
freed our slaves yet. Whom do you imagine was more pleasing
in the eyes of a merciful God back then: Karl Marx or
the United States of America?
Stalin
was happy to take Marx’s truism as a decree, and
Chinese tyrants as well, since it seemingly empowered
them to put preachers out of business who might speak
ill of them or their goals.
The
statement has also entitled many in this country to
say that socialists are anti-religion, are anti-God,
and therefore absolutely loathsome.
I
never met Carl Sandburg, and wish I had. I would have
been tongue-tied in the presence of such a national
treasure. I did get to know one socialist of his generation,
who was Powers Hapgood of Indianapolis. After graduating
from Harvard he went to work as a coal miner, urging
his working-class brothers to organize, in order to
get better pay and safer working conditions. He also
led protesters at the execution of the anarchists Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Massachusetts in 1927.
We
met in Indianapolis after the end of World War Two,
and he had become an official in the CIO. There had
been some sort of dust-up on a picket line, and he had
just testified about it in court. The judge had interrupted
the proceedings to ask Powers Hapgood why, with all
his social and economic and educational advantages,
he had chosen to lead such a life. And Powers Hapgood
replied, ''Why, because of the Sermon on the Mount,
sir.''
Another
of our freshwater ancestors was Eugene Victor Debs,
of Terre Haute, Indiana. A former locomotive fireman,
Eugene Debs ran for president of the United States four
times, the fourth time in 1920, when he was in prison.
He said, ''As long as there is a lower class, I’m
in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I’m
of it. As long as there’s a soul in prison, I am
not free.''
Some
platform. A paraphrase of the beatitudes.
And
again: Hooray for our team.
And
our own beloved Carl Sandburg had this to say about
the fire-belching evangelist Bill Sunday:
''You
come along–tearing your shirt–yelling about
Jesus. I want to know what the hell you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft, and everybody except
a few bankers and higher ups among the con men of Jerusalem
like to have Jesus around because he never made any
fake passes, and he helped the sick and gave people
hope.
''You
come along calling us all damn fools–so fierce
the froth of your own spit slobbers over your lips–always
blabbering we’re all going to hell straight off,
and you know all about it. I’ve read Jesus’
words. I know what he said. You don’t throw any
scare into me. I’ve got your number. I know how
much you know about Jesus.
''You
tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix
it up all right with them by giving them mansions in
the skies after they’re dead and the worms have
eaten ’em. You tell $6 a week department store
girls all they need is Jesus. You take a steel trust
wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at
40 years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on
the cross and he’ll be all right.
''You
tell poor people they don’t need any more money
on pay day. And even if it’s fierce to be out of
a job, Jesus’ll fix that all right, all right.
All they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.
''Jesus
played it different. The bankers and corporation lawyers
of Jerusalem got their murderers to go after Jesus because
Jesus wouldn’t play their game. I don’t want
a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.''
Hooray
for our team.
And
I now take advantage of your hospitality by declaring
myself a child of the Chicago Renaissance, powerfully
humanized not only by Carl Sandburg, but by Edgar Lee
Masters and Jane Addams and Louis Sullivan and Lake
Michigan, and on and on.
And
I propose a toast to an individual who wasn’t an
artist or working stiff of any description. She wasn’t
even a human being. Ladies and gentlemen of Chicago,
I give you Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.
And
I thank you for your attention.
