‘Music as an Agency of Socialist Propaganda’ by W.W. Atkinson from The Comrade. Vol. 2 No. 11. August, 1903.

WHY is it that, in the United States of America, we Socialists make so little use of song in our propaganda. With hundreds of comrades in the movement capable of musical and poetical composition, it is yet remarkable that but little is being done in this direction and I do not know of a single great meeting in this country when any effort has been made to have the audience join in song, as is done continually in Germany and other countries of Continental Europe.

Is it because the “American” spirit of commercialism has so corrupted us that we are dulled to the glorious inspiration of music and verse?

Have we, in sympathy with our capitalistic institutions, become so crassly materialistic that the idealistic side of normal human nature is to be frowned upon and all of its softer and more beautiful manifestations smothered?  I hope not.

Music- song- is a necessity!

Ever through the ages, pregnant with great causes, great men and great deeds, the soul of man has been stirred by song; on the wings of glorious melody his spirit has soared to majestic heights of heroism and self-sacrifice.

Music is good.

Misers hate it- men of plots and schemes (Shakespeare’s men of “stratagem and spoils”) hate it, for music is a reproof to sordidness and selfishness, its every note telling of man’s brotherhood. The exploiter hates it; for vengeance follows fast upon the heels of a people’s heart-cry when crystallized into the burning words and compelling music of the song of revolution.

Music is nature:

The pianissimo of the summer breeze, the crescendo of the gale, shrieking through the nooks and crannies of the mountains or the thunderous forte of the hurricane making its resistless way across the seas and prairies, are all parts of a wondrous anthem, with weird harmonies and strange modulations, the introduction to which was never heard- the finale never to be sounded!

Music is the Divine Tonic:

When the poet’s art is added to the inspiration of music, a great piece is heard, a great force established- the turgid blood of indifference is changed into a fervid, pulsing stream, and men go forth like avenging angels to do battle for the right.

Were there no hymns there were no religions- great “revivals” are possible even through the medium of such drivel as the “Moody and Sankey” style of “gospel hymns”- music at its worst and verse purely maudlin- and great results are certain in Socialism’s grand cause by the use of so powerful a servant, which, though debauched by priestly rape, can yet move thousands and join their voices as one.

It is folly to appeal to the brains and stomachs of the mass and leave the wellsprings of the heart to congeal under the numbing blasts of cold logic.

Socialism is striving for more than justice and bread and butter- it is striving for the comrade life- striving for human brotherhood- for human love- for human freedom.

Wake this dormant note with song and man will respond as does a fine violin to the touch of a master.

Facts? faugh! the world turns with them! Phrase the spirit of life-the real current of the toilers’ hopes- and your indifferent mass is converted into an alert and disciplined army ready to do and to dare, for Freedom!

Sing then your songs- sing them loudly, strongly, beautifully, with your whole heart in every note.

Sing as the French sang the glorious Marseillaise the first real battle hymn of the proletarian army, a hymn that moved the spirit and nerved the arms of a nation to mighty protest. Sing as did our forebears when they sang that wondrous ode to the flag, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” an ode that has inspired Americans in all their history and helped them to victory on every battle field.

Sing as the Abolitionists sang “John Brown’s Body,” with the conviction that your song has a purpose and plant deep down in your hearts the fierce resolve to carry its purpose to a successful issue.

Sing, then, comrades; sing!

Sing a grand poem of victory; sing a song of love and brotherhood; sing a song of protest and defiance and revolution.

We have a great truth to impart- drive it home with song!

The Comrade began in 1901 with the launch of the Socialist Party, and was published monthly until 1905 in New York City and edited by John Spargo, Otto Wegener, and Algernon Lee amongst others. Along with Socialist politics, it featured radical art and literature. The Comrade was known for publishing Utopian Socialist literature and included a serialization of ‘News from Nowhere’ by William Morris along work from with Heinrich Heine, Thomas Nast, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Edward Markham, Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Eugene Debs, and Mother Jones. It would be absorbed into the International Socialist Review in 1905.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/comrade/v02n11-aug-1903-The-Comrade.pdf