It’s got to do with some of the responses to my book Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. Shall arise, the Socialist World Republic”, Workers and peasants are no longer implored to rise up, but to double down, to fulfil their duties, and to defend the status quo. The original version is revolutionary, the newer one is fundamentally conservative. In the GDR’s sanitised re-release, however, not much of that energy survives. It is gripping, it is stirring, and it is full of righteous rage. You don’t have to be a socialist to “get” the appeal of songs like Der heimliche Aufmarsch, at a visceral level. It is the political organisation of the labourers in town and country under the leadership of the working class.” “The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state of the workers and the peasants. This, at least, was the official narrative, codified in the East German constitution: The workers and the peasants had already risen up (with a little help from their Soviet comrades), and the working class, as a whole, was now collectively in charge. It was now called Der offene Aufmarsch (“The Open Deployment”), to reflect the fact that there was no longer any need for secrecy. Thirty years later, a modified version of the song was re-released in the GDR. It calls upon the workers and peasants to arm themselves, rise up, and smash the system. Der heimliche Aufmarsch (“The Secret Deployment”) is an old socialist revolutionary song from the Weimar Republic.
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