If every just man that now pines with want
Had but a moderate and beseeming share
Of that which lewdly pampered luxury
Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,
Nature’s full blessings would be well dispensed
In unsuperfluous even proportion . . .

                                                               -- John Milton

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: