Thomas_More
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Pretty Boy Floyd
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
Contact Publisher – Woody Guthrie Publications/BMG Chrysalis
https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Pretty_Boy_Floyd.htmIf you’ll gather ’round me, children,
A story I will tell
‘Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.…
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.© Copyright 1958 (renewed) by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.
But using the present Iran/Israel crisis as an example: no government wants to ‘lose face’, either to rival states nor to their own electorates. So both sides are compelled to retaliate and thus escalate.
” I think you missed out the question mark.”
I really don’t see how the rival capitalist blocs can pull back at this point without ‘loss of face.’
Talk of smashing any country means supporting the mass murder of fellow workers.
“He who celebrates victory rejoices in killing.” (Lao Tsu).
So those Trotskyists are no different from the Stalinists who support war in Ukraine.
Russia could get drawn in.
But these elements of the superstructure do not force states into war. They do, however, serve to hoodwink the workers into taking part.
The second world war had nothing to do with Nazi ideology, although Nazi ideology served German capitalism’s purposes at the time. Hitler was instructed to eliminate the most fanatical believers in Nazi ideology, which he did, because they were an obstacle to the state’s requirements. However, once the war had broken out (for economic reasons), it facilitated the Holocaust, which catered both to ideology and to profit (the exploitation of prisoners for slave labour).
But ideology does not CAUSE war. The most it does is facilitate the atrocities war produces.
