the Wading Through The Serf With Daddy edition

NF, One L
​issue FOURTEEN

1. Hey, let’s talk about Karl Marx! Have you ever noticed that anyone Republicans don’t like is instantly a Marxist, while it is also clear that they know nothing at all about what that supposed epithet means, or who Marx was?

2. Marx was initially a natural philosopher who came up with the idea of Dialectical Materialism, which he stole directly from Hegel, and was basically the fairly interesting notion that all knowledge is “material” passed from the subject (you) to the object (everyone else) through dialectics (discussions), and such material was really the only concrete thing of value in an extremely short, transitory, and relatively meaningless existence.

3. Karl Marx was born middle class and moved his family (including their slave/maid) to London, where, when he worked at all, did so as a freelance journalist. The rest of his time was spent drinking, whoring, smoking cigars he couldn’t afford, and fathering children. So, the Great Man Of The Worker really didn’t work much himself, if at all, and most of his labor went into borrowing money from family and friends to cover rent. No, he was not at the heart of the Soviet Empire as is commonly imagined, he was in Covent Garden drinking and flâneur-ing around town, and actually, by the end of his life, like his hero Hegel, disavowed many of his own ideas. So, like the rest of us, a complicated individual.

4. Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the “Communist Manifesto”, basically a sixty-page screed of outrage about wealth inequity, and the way in which world governments and the wealthy class colluded to fund lavish lifestyles on the backs of expendable workers. The manifesto began as a freelance newspaper piece that got a little out of control, undoubtedly over an endless river of cognac and cigars. Engel’s father owned a factory, and after some working-class dilettantism, Engels took a top management job there, and so was the main source of money for Marx, who less borrowed than sponged it to blow cavalierly in exactly the way of the parasitic leisure class he otherwise so despised.

5. Marxism and Communism are not the same thing. The Soviets and Communism are not the same thing. Marxism is a fairly reasonable response to a world in which most of Europe was fueled by the labor of expendable serfs, while those born with advantage maximized their advantages in a grotesquely immoral way. Marx, for instance, proposed radical leftist things like a ban on child labor, and a maximum number of hours that could be bled from a serf per day. He also proposed a number of unrealistic if not deeply stupid ideas, like Communal Property. As Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) cleverly metaphorized for us, we are all in the end animals, and animals cannot be trusted to share. Some will, but others just take, and then the sharers start to think if everyone else is taking, they’d be suckers to keep sharing and so should get in on the game (always too late) and then spend the rest of their lives bitching about how they’re getting shafted (the true fuel of MAGA), although now they’d happily shaft if only given the opportunity. For example: The rise and fall of Soviet Russia.

6. In truth, the Russians were never really Communist, maybe for like a week, but then they started grabbing everything not nailed down, killing everyone surprised that all the high-minded rhetoric was not actionable in practice, and quickly became a form of Kleptocratic Dictatorship with Communist frosting. Which you could argue was still an improvement on the Tsars, an interesting debate that both sides would be doomed to simultaneously win and lose.
7. Marx advocated for a classless society (First Commissar: “The peasants are revolting!” Second Commissar: “Yes, they are.”) But he was what could be generously called idealistic and more realistically labeled deluded, to think you could simply shave a dog and suddenly Poodles would be overjoyed to sniff the asses of Mutts for the greater glory of Canine Progress. The thing is, Poodles are inbred for a reason, and none of us can outrun our genetics, let alone lupine past.

8. The idea that anyone across the political spectrum in contemporary America, from AOC to Bernie to whoever, really believes in or advocates any form of Marxism, is absurd. People also no longer believe in Phrenology or Shock Treatment (well, sort of) or Leeching or Geocentrism or that when sneezing you expel the devil, although for some reason even atheists will still say “Bless You” just like peasants did back in 1522. So when Kristi Noem calls Zohran Mamdani a Marxist, what she’s really saying is that he prefers a version of Democratic Socialism that is to some degree more Democratically Socialist than America already is, and has long been. Or increasingly isn’t. Which is to say, Mamdani wants more money to go to the working class and less to the aristocracy. Which isn’t a specifically Marxist idea. In fact, it’s pretty goddamn Christian. Also, Medicare is Socialist. So is the NFL, if you want to be technical about it.

9. Really the reason that people of today still Fear and Loathe Marxism is its genial veneer of advocating godlessness. Even though we supposedly believe in the separation of church and state, and mainly came from Europe to begin with because Europeans had been slaughtering each other for centuries for murky reasons involving popery, apostates, Calvinism, Protestantism, Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration, Trinitarianism, royal interbreeding, Martin Luther, alchemists, and papal dispensations, Marxism is less a stance against spirituality and more the idea that an equitable governance would be more efficient if stripped of theology of any denomination. And, of course, he was totally right about that. For example: America today.
Bonus 10: Did you know we (The Puritans) were total assholes? In 6th grade we were all told that the Puritans came to America for religious freedom, but in truth they were kicked out of England because everyone hated their hysterical judgment and theological inflexibility and total lack of a sense of humor, so they went to The Netherlands, where even the very flexible and accommodating Dutch finally kicked their un-sexy and self-flagellating asses out. So they were left with no real alternative except a suicide mission/sailing excursion along the lines of Gilligan to investigate (bitterly deny themselves) the delights of The New World. Where, between witch burnings, they all would have died of starvation the first winter if not for the intervention of (Not God) but Tisquantum and the Patuxet, who they viewed as godless savages but still deigned to eat their leftover corn.
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11. No matter what your ultimate opinion is of Daddy, you gotta hand it to him, in this day of Influencers and clicks and self-branding as the only true measure of personal worth: it is inarguable that Karl Marx is the most cited social theorist in human history.