As soon as there will exist for everyone a margin of real freedom beyond the production of life, Marxism will have lived out its span; a philosophy of freedom will take its place. But we have no means, no intellectual instrument, no concrete experience which allows us to conceive of this freedom or of this philosophy. 

                                                                         — Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method

"C'mon labour, let's get wise

we can lick these greedy guys,

all you gotta do is organize . . . "

Paging Donald Trump

The fascist leader types are frequently called hysterical. No matter how their attitude is arrived at, their hysterical behavior fulfills a certain function. Though they actually resemble their listeners in most respects, they differ from them in an important one: they know no inhibitions in expressing themselves. They function vicariously for their inarticulate listeners by doing and saying what the latter would like to, but either cannot or dare not. They violate the taboos which middle-class society has put upon any expressive behavior on the part of the normal, matter-of-fact citizen. One may say that some of the effect of fascist propaganda is achieved by this break-through. The fascist agitators are taken seriously because they risk making fools of themselves.

Educated people in general found it hard to understand the effect of Hitler’s speeches because they sounded so insincere, ungenuine, or, as the German word goes, verlogen. But it is a deceptive idea, that the so-called common people have all unfailing flair for the genuine and sincere, and disparage fake. Hitler was liked, not in spite of his cheap antics, but just because of them, because of his false tones and his clowning. They are observed as such, and appreciated. Real folk artists, such as Girardi with his Fiakerlied, were truly in touch with their audiences and they always employed what strikes us as ‘false tones.’ We find similar manifestations regularly in drunkards who have lost their inhibitions. The sentimentality of the common people is by no means primitive, unreflecting emotion. On the contrary, it is pretense, a fictitious, shabby imitation of real feeling, often self-conscious and slightly contemptuous of itself. This fictitiousness is the life element of the fascist propagandist performances.

— Theodor W. Adorno, “Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda”

Fail Better

There's a new American Express ad which essentially extols the value of failure: a handful of celeb capitalist success stories (don't ask me their names . . . don't know, don't give a fuck) talk about how they failed over and over again before they finally hit it big.

Failure has become the new fashion accessory for the entrepreneurial classes.

But: talk about Marxism, and the discussion gets pointed at Stalin, Mao, Kim-Jong Il, Pol Pot, the crushing weight of the Soviet, and the unspeakable horrors of totalitarianism.  Seems people are allowed to fail; the people are not.  If it can be said that somehow capitalism has failed less than Marxism, then truly our idea of failure is disastrous.

There is no question that Marxism has its failures.  We can't let these failures be the totems of Marxism.  "Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better": it's not just for capitalists anymore.


Now please enjoy this leftist Mekons anthem lovingly captioned for you in Comic Sans:

Don't Give Them a Hand Out, Give Them a Hand Up: Smash the State!

One way to make sure all your friends and acquaintances think you're a total dick is to give them the real deal on charity.  And if that doesn't do it, talk to them about recycling.

There's already a whiff of sulfur around charity.  We think of blow-dryed billionaire 80's Michael Douglas clones (clowns) writing five and six figure checks easier than we give the guy on the corner spare change for bus fare/booze/smack.  We know that those checks are the price for not having to see the darkness of the system he creates.  We know it is the false face of compassion.

Charity is, as our Randy right wing friends love to tell us, a hand out.  Just like welfare, which is essentially government charity.  There is, of course, a good reason Adam Smith expounds on the necessity of welfare: it is the ether that gets sprayed into the carburetor of capitalism.  Charity/welfare is the salve that keeps revolution at bay.

Because, you see, charity never addresses the structural issues that put people on the street to begin with.  You could hand the guy on the corner a grand, and even if he is frugal, that grand is going to run out, and he's back where he started.  Now Rand guy will tell you that charity/welfare is bad, and rather than hand him a fish, you should teach him how to catch his own fish.  True enough, perhaps, but more than likely he's not on the street because he doesn't know how to fish, but because the only ponds he has access to are already fished out.

Recycling, like charity, seems like a good idea, but does nothing to address the core problem.  Good intentions aren't the guarantor of good results.  Band aids won't cure skin cancer.  Recycling is a drop in the ocean of gross overproduction.

I won't tell anyone to abstain from charity, just as I would never condemn anyone for throwing that beer bottle in the recycling bin.  What I won't tolerate is the self-righteous glow of charity: don't pretend for a second you are addressing the problem, don't think for a minute you are making a real difference.

Ethical Consumerism is Still Consumerism

Does this require any more explanation?

A man who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is absorbed by his labour for the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine for producing Foreign Wealth, broken in body and brutalized in mind.   — Karl Marx - Value, Price and Profit