May Day: Hopes and Fears

Happy May Day! Billy Bragg reminds us here about the hopes and dreams of worker solidarity--what ordinary people could accomplish by cooperating together against those small groups who fight to maintiain their privileges:



(I always did like that tune!)

But Orwell reminds us that the need for solidarity, the sense of needing to belong to a larger whole, can easily be manipulated by the privileged. It disconcerting to hear how the filmmakers of 1984 turned the IngSoc (English Socialism) anthem into a version of the Internationale:



It makes you wonder whether its possible to dream for a utopia anymore.