Wednesday 16 January 2013

How many Trotskyists does it take to change a light bulb?

Well by the time they’ve formed a steering committee, drafted a resolution condemning capitalist light bulb manufacturers, gone out and tried to sell a few newspapers, condemned the resulting darkness as bourgeois oppression and then gone down the pub; none.

But never mind, come the revolution…


Comrades the proletariat are incandescent with rage

Motion passed. By.

4 comments:

  1. You know, I almost became a communist. But then I realized that I prefer for my plans to work.

    As one of the few folk across the pond who own a copy of the Communist Manifesto (currently on loan to a friend), I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Marx should have done more field research.

    Communism/Marxism/Trotskyism/Maoism all mean well, but are so sadly flawed as to cause as much if not even greater harm to the proletariat they intend to protect.

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  2. “I almost became a communist” sounds like it was too much effort or something. Was the queue too long perhaps?

    In my opinion Marx did his field research. He was a great philosopher, economist and political theorist. It’s not his fault that what he envisaged has never been put into practice properly. He never intended for pre-industrialised nations to apply it. Marx was fine, it’s peoples’ grasp and interpretation of his writing that leaves much to be desired.

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  3. Eh, the line was small, actually. And rigorously monitored by an ever-paranoid and increasingly ruthless bourgeois. I felt (and was advised) that it was best to keep a distance, and simply learn from Marx's writings along with my own experiences.

    Don't get me wrong, I do not blame Marx for the impact of his work. He himself was dead-on with his observations, and his theories all carry a great weight of truth. He was one of the most brilliant minds to ever grace humanity. Sadly, humanity has this curious habit of warping and perverting any social system.

    A fascinating trait of the bourgeois is that it seems to self-replicate. Historical instances where the ruling class were overtaken by the people (Post-revolutionary France, China, and Russia, to name a few), ended with another segment of the proletariat abruptly taking the old throne through a combination of political maneuvering, armed enforcement,
    personality cults, and (sigh) nationalism.

    While I know for a fact that Marx took many observations from the French Revolution into his own works, I believe he may not have taken enough. The historical implementation of his work indicates that the bourgeois-proletariat complex is likely a product of a dark section of the human condition. Arab Spring, with the overthrow of numerous totalitarian dictators, just to see them replaced by similar regimes, shows this as well.

    I still maintain that Marx needed to conduct more field research, but given the amount that he already conducted in his lifetime, I realize that may be asking too much of one man.

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  4. On the whole I would say we are in agreement

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