Kmflett's Blog

Only a Pawn in Their Game?: Bob Dylan and Trotskyism

Bob Dylan was 81 earlier this week and there was of course some comment, special programmes etc.

One thing, unsurprisingly, that was missing was that Dylan in the early 1960s didn’t just sing protest songs he had far left politics. The lyrics of some of his earlier songs could not have been written as they were without an understanding of such a perspective.

Much of that work was inspired by Dave Van Ronk who was then and remained until his death in 2002 a (broadly) orthodox Trotskyist.

Dylan picked up a great deal from Van Ronk’s music- not least his re-working of House of the Rising Sun but his profound grasp of the politics of early 1960s America may well have owed something to Van Ronk as well. Several commentators have highlighted for example Dylan’s Only a Pawn in Their Game as a complex analysis of racism and the US white working class. It still has great relevance.

Van Ronk, again broadly, was the subject of the Coen Brothers film Inside Llewelyn Davies which featured both beards and cats. His Guardian Obit from 2002 is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/feb/13/guardianobituaries

There is a good deal on this in a book by the late Mike Marqusee on Dylan and the 1960s,Wicked Messenger.