Rev Left Radio - Marx in Soho: What if Marx Came Back?

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Breht performs Howard Zinn's one-man play "Marx in Soho". Outro music 'Weary Blues' by Madeleine Peyroux  ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, FORGE, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. So today's episode is going to be something that we've never done before. It's pretty experimental. I hope I did it justice. But basically this entire episode is going to be me performing Howard Zinn's one-man play called Marks in Soho. So Howard Zinn wrote this play. I don't exactly know when. I assume sometime in the 90s. So some of the references are just a tad off. But it's basically a play of Marks coming back,

asked the gods to come back to Soho, London, but through bureaucratic confusion, ended up in Soho, New York. So at the sort of turn of the millennium in the 21st century, Marx comes back to New York and has about an hour to reflect on how things have changed since he died. It's hilarious, it's profound, it's moving, it talks about his family but it also has critiques that are howards in so there will be some things said that if you're an m l you might not like when he when he rants against stalin if you're

an anarchist you might not like when he rants against becunen if you're english you might not like when he rants against the english so don't take this as oh brett believes everything he's saying this is a play i'm performing it there are things in here i disagree with there are things in here i completely agree with and everything in between um again this is how who wrote a people's history of the United States, it's his take on what Marx would do if he came back. In any case, aside from one or two lines that might bristle you a little bit, this is really fun. Like I said, this is totally new. I haven't done anything like this. Let me know if you enjoy it. I'm always trying to find new ways to inform, educate, and entertain people. And especially

at this time when so many of us are on lockdown, I thought this would be a nice little treat to put forward so people can, you know, be entertained and have a good time. Take their minds off of the crazy situation happening all around us, at least for a little bit. So without further ado, this is my performance of Marks and Soho, a play created by Howard Zinn. Enjoy. Thank God, an audience. Good of you to come. You weren't put off by all those idiots who said, Marx is dead.

Well, I am, and I am not. That's dialectics for you. You may wonder how I got here. Public transportation. I did not expect to come back here. I wanted to return to Soho. That's where I lived in London, but a bureaucratic mix-up. Here I am.

Soho in New York. Well, I always wanted to visit New York. Why have I returned? to clear my name. I've been reading your newspapers. They are all proclaiming that my ideas are dead. It's nothing new. These clowns have been saying this for more than a hundred years.

Don't you wonder, why is it necessary to declare me dead again and again and again? Well, I have had it up to here. I asked for the right to come back, just for a while. But there are rules, I told you. It's a bureaucracy. It is permissible to read, even to watch, but not to travel. I protested, of course, and had some support. Socrates told them, the untravelled life is not worth living.

Gandhi fasted. Mother Jones threatened to pick it. Mark Twain came to my defense in his own strange way. Buddha chanted, Oh, ohm. But the others kept quiet. God, at this point, what do they have to lose? Yes, there too I have a reputation as a troublemaker, and even there, protest works. Finally, they said, all right, you can go. You can have an hour or so

to speak your mind, but remember, no agitating. They do believe in freedom of speech, but within limits. They are liberals. You can spread the word. Marx is back, for a short while, but understand one thing I'm not a Marxist I said that once to Piper and he almost croaked I should tell you about Piper We were living in London

Jenny and I and the little ones Plus two dogs Three cats and two birds Barely living A flat on Dean Street Near where they dumped the city's sewage We were in London because I had been expelled From the continent

Expelled from the Rhineland Yes from my birthplace I had done dangerous dangerous things. I was editor of a newspaper. Der Reinich Zetong. Hardly revolutionary, but I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is to tell the truth. In the Rhineland, the police were arresting poor people for gathering firewood from the estates of the rich. I wrote an editorial protesting that.

Then they tried to censor our paper. I wrote an editorial declaring that there was no freedom of press in Germany. They decided to prove me right. They shut us down Only then did we become radical Isn't that the way it is? Our last issue of the Zaytung Had a huge headline in red ink

Revolt That annoyed the authorities They ordered me out of the Rhineland So I went to Paris Where else do exiles go Where else can you sit all night in a cafe And tell lies about how revolutionary You were in the old country

Yes if you were going to be an exile be one in Paris. Paris was our honeymoon. Jenny found a tiny flat in the Latin quarter, heavenly months. But the word was out, from the German police to the Paris police. It seems that the police develop an internationalist consciousness long before the workers. So I was expelled from Paris, too. We went to Belgium, expelled again.

We came to London, where refugees come from all over the world. The English are admirable in their tolerance and insufferable in their boasting about it. The doctors told me the cough would go away in a few weeks. That was in 1858. But I was telling you about Piper. You see, in London, the political refugees from the continent marched in and out of our house.

Piper was one of them. he buzzed around me like a hornet. He was a flatterer, a sycophant. He would station himself six inches from me to make sure I could not evade him, and he would quote from my writings. I would say, Piper, please don't quote me to myself. He had the audacity to say, thinking I would be pleased, that he would translate Das Capital into English. The man could not speak an English sentence without butchering it. English is a beautiful language. It is Shakespeare's language. It is Shakespeare's language. If Shakespeare had heard Piper speak one sentence of English, he would have taken poison. But Jenny felt sorry for him. She'd like to invite him to our family dinners.

One evening, Piper came and announced the formation of the Marxist Society of London. A Marxist society, I asked. What's that? We meet every week to discuss another of your writings. We read aloud, examine sentence by sentence. That's why we call ourselves Marxists. We believe completely and wholeheartedly in everything you have written. Completely and wholeheartedly? I asked. Yes, and we would be honored, Herr, Dr. Marx. He always called me Herr Dr. Marx, if you would address the next meeting of our Marxist society. I cannot do that.

Why? He asked. Because I am not a Marxist. I didn't mind his bad English. Mine was not that perfect. It was his way of thinking. He was an embarrassing. a satellite encircling my words, reflecting them to the world, but distorting them.

And then he defended the distortions like a fanatic, denouncing anyone who interpreted them differently. I once said to Jenny, do you know what I fear most? And she said that the workers' revolution will never come? No, that the revolution will come, and it will be taken over by men like Piper. Flatterers went out of power, bullies and braggarts when holding power. dogmatists. They will speak for the proletariat and they will interpret my ideas for the world. They will organize a new priesthood, a new hierarchy, with excommunications and indexes, inquisitions, and firing squads. All of this will be done in the name of communism, delaying for a hundred years the communism of freedom, dividing the world between capitalist empires and communist

empires. They will muck up our beautiful dream and it will take another revolution, maybe two or three to clean it up. That's what I fear. No, I wasn't going to have Piper translate Das Capital into English. It represented 15 years of work in the conditions of Soho, walking every morning past beggars sleeping amidst the sewage, making my way to the British Museum and its magnificent library, working there until dusk, reading, reading, is there anything more dull than reading political economy? Yes, writing political economy. Then home through the darkening streets, listening to the vendors calling out the

prices of their wares, and the veterans of the Crimean War, some blind, others without legs, begging for a penny in the noxious air. The poor smell of London, yes. My critics, trying to minimize what went into Das Kapital, would say, as they always say about radical writers, oh, he must have had some dreadful personal experience. Yes, if you want to make much of it, that walk home through Soho fueled the anger that went into Das Kapital. I hear you saying, well, of course, that's how it was then, a century ago. Only then? On my way here today, I walk through the streets of your city, surrounded by garbage, breathing foul air, past the bodies of men and women's

sleeping on the street, huddled against the cold. Instead of a lassie singing a ballad, I heard a voice in my ear, plaintively. Some change, sir, for a cup of coffee? You call this progress? Because you have motorcars and telephones and flying machines and a thousand potions to make you smell better. And people sleeping on the streets? An official report. The United States gross national product. Yes, gross. Last year was $7,000 billion.

Most impressive. But tell me, where is it? Who is profiting from it? Who is not? Less than 500 individuals control $2,000 billion of business assets. Are these people more noble, more hardworking, more valuable to society? than the mother in the tenement, nurturing three children through the winter with no money to pay the heating bill? Did I not say, 150 years ago, that capitalism would enormously increase the wealth of society,

but that this wealth would be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands? A giant merger of Chemical Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank. Twelve thousand workers will lose jobs, stocks rise. and they say my ideas are dead. Do you know Oliver Goldsmith's poem, The Deserted Village? Ill fares the land to hastening ills of prey, where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Yes, decay.

That's what I saw as I walked through your city this morning. Houses decaying, schools decaying, human beings decaying. But then I walked a bit further, and I was suddenly surrounded by men of obvious wealth, women in jewels and furs. Suddenly, I heard the sound of sirens. Was violence being done somewhere nearby? Was a crime being committed? Was someone trying to take part of the gross national product illegally from those who had stolen it legally?

Ah, the wonders of the market system. Human beings reduced to commodities, their lives controlled by the supercommodic, The committee doesn't like that. In that little flat in Soho, Jenny made hot soup and boiled potatoes. There was fresh bread from our friend the baker down the street. We would sit around the table and eat and talk about events of the day. The Irish struggle for freedom. The latest war.

The stupidity of the country's leaders. A political opposition confining itself to pips and squeaks. the cowardly press. I suppose things are different these days, huh? After dinner, we would clear the table and I would work. With my cigars handy and a glass of beer. Yes, work until three or four in the morning. My books piled up on one side,

the parliamentary reports piled up on another. Jenny would be at the other end of the table, transcribing. My handwriting was impossible, and she would rewrite every word of mine. Can you imagine a more heroic act? occasionally a crisis no not a world crisis a book would be missing one day i could not find my ricardo i asked jennie where is my ricardo you mean principles of political economy well she thought i was finished with it and she had taken it to the pawn shop i lost my temper my ricardo you pawned my ricardo she said be quiet last week didn't we pawn the ring my mother gave me that's how it was

we pawned everything especially gifts from Jenny's family when we ran out of those gifts we pawned our clothes one winter do you know the London winters I did without my overcoat another time I walked out of the house and my feet began to freeze on the snow

and then I realized I was not wearing shoes we had pawned them the day before when Das Capital was published we celebrated but angles had to give us some money so we could go to the pawn shop and retrieve our linens and dishes for the dinner angles an absolute saint there's no other word for him when they cut off our water our gas and the house was dark our spirits low angles paid the bills his father owned factories in manchester yes capitalism saved us he did not always understand our needs we had no money for grocery trees and he would send us crates of wine. One Christmas, when we had no means to buy a Christmas tree, angles arrived with six bottles of champagne. So we imagined a tree, formed a circle around it, drank champagne, and sang Christmas songs. I knew what my revolutionary friends were thinking,

Marx, the atheist, with the Christmas tree. Yes, I did describe religion as the opium of the people, but no one has ever paid attention to the full passage. Listen. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. True, opium is no solution, but it may be necessary to relieve pain. Don't I know that from my boils? And doesn't the world have a terrible case of boils?

I keep thinking about Jenny. how she packed all our possessions and brought our two girls, Jenichin and Laura, across the channel to London, and then gave birth three times in our miserable cold flat on Dean Street, nursed to those babies and tried to keep them warm, and saw them die one by one. Guido, he had not even begun to walk, and Francesca, she was one year old.

I had to borrow three pounds to pay for her coffin. As for Moosh, he lived for eight years. years, but something was wrong from the start. He had a large, handsome head, but the rest of him never grew. The night he died, we all slept on the floor around his body until the morning came. When Eleanor was born, we were fearful, but she was a tough little thing. It was good that she had two older sisters. They had barely survived themselves. Genachin was born in Paris. Paris is marvelous for lovers, but not for children. Something about the air. Laura was our second, born in Brussels.

No one should be born in Brussels. In London, we had no money, but we always had Sunday picnics. We would walk an hour and a half into the countryside, Jenny and I, the children, and Lenshin. Oh, I'll tell you about her. Lenschen would make a roast veal, and we would have tea, fruit bread, cheese, beer. Eleanor was the youngest, but she drank beer. No money, but children need a vacation. Once I took the rent money and sent them to the Atlantic coast of France.

Another time, with our groceries money, I bought a piano, because the girls loved music. A father is not supposed to have favorites among his children, I know, but Eleanor. I would say to Jenny, Eleanor is a strange child. And Jenny would reply, you expect the children of Karl Marx to be normal? Eleanor was the youngest, the brightest. Imagine a revolutionary at the age of eight. That's how old she was in 1863. Poland was in rebellion against Russian rule,

and Tussie wrote a letter. That's what we called her, Tussie. She wrote a letter to Angles about those brave little fellows in Poland, as she called them. When she was nine, she sent a letter to America, advice to President Lincoln, telling him how to win the war against the Confederacy. Also, she smoked and drink wine.

Still, she was a child. She would dress her dolls while sipping from a glass of wine. She played chess with me when she was 10, and I could not easily defeat her. At 15, she suddenly became furious against the law about observing the Lord's Day. No activity on Sunday was permitted. So, she organized Sunday evenings for the people at St. Martin's Hall, brought musicians there to play Handel, Mozart, Beethoven. The hall was packed. Two thousand people. It was illegal, but no one was arrested. A lesson.

If you are going to break the law, do it with 2,000 people, and Mozart. I used to read Shakespeare and Dante aloud to her and her sisters, which she loved. Her room was a Shakespeare museum. She memorized Romeo and Juliet and insisted that I read over and over

those lines of Romeo when he sees Juliet for the first time. The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars. As daylight doth a lamp, her eyes in heaven, With through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing, and think it were not night. Tussie was not easy to live with, oh no. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have a child who finds flaws in your reasoning?

She would argue with me about my writings. For instance, my essay On the Jewish Question. Not easy to understand, I admit. Well, Eleanor read it and immediately challenged me. Why do you single out the Jews as representatives of capitalism? They are not the only ones poisoned by commerce and greed. I tried to explain. I wasn't singling out the Jews, just using them as a vivid example.

Her answer was to start wearing a Jewish star. I'm a Jew, she announced. What could I say? I shrugged my shoulders, and Eleanor said, that's a very Jewish gesture. She could be very annoying. Tussie knew my father had converted to Christianity. It was not

practical to be a Jew in Germany. Is it ever practical to be a Jew anywhere? He had me baptized at the age of eight. This fact intrigued Elinor. She asked more. The family called me more because of my dark complexion. I know you were baptized, but first

you were circumcised, weren't you? Nothing embarrassed to that girl. At such times she was impossible. Listen to this. Alongside her Jewish star, she wore a crucifix. No, she was not an amort of Christianity, but of the Irish, and their rebellion against England. She learned about the Irish struggle from Lizzie Burns, Engels' love. Lizzie was a mill girl and could not read. Angles spoke nine languages.

You might think this would make it hard for them to communicate, but they loved one another. Lizzie was active in the Irish movement. Tussie would visit and the two of them would sit on the floor and drink wine together and sing Irish songs until they fell asleep. There was that terrible night. The night the English government hanged two young Irishmen, right there in Soho, with the drunken crowd cheering, those genteel English with their afternoon tea and their public hangings. I understand you don't hang people anymore, right? Only gas them, or inject poison into their veins, or use electricity to burn them to death? much more civilized.

Yes, they hanged two young Irishmen for wanting freedom from England. Eleanor, she wept and wept. I would say to her, Tussie, you don't have to get involved so soon with the horrors of the world. You're 15. And she would answer, that's the point more. I'm not 13. I'm not 14. I'm 15.

Yes, she was 15. And she became infatuated with any, dashing, handsome man who visited our flat. I could draw up a list. For all the rest of her life, Eleanor was clever in politics, idiotic in love. She was mad about the hero of the Paris Commune, Lesagere. Well, at least he was a Frenchman. Jenny Chin's fellow was English.

Englishmen are like English food. Need I say more? And there was Laura's lover, Lafargue. His public displays of ardor were absurd. He would put his hand on her asses. ass in public, as if it were the most natural thing. And Jenny defended him. It's his Creole background, she said.

You know his family came to French from Cuba? As if in Cuba, everyone went around with their hands on somebody's ass. Jenny was always trying to calm me down. Well, she might calm me, but she was unsuccessful with my boils. Did you ever have boils? There is no sickness more odious. They plagued me all my life and led to stupid attempts to analyze me via my boils. Marx is angry at the capitalist system because he has boils.

What imbeciles! How do they account for all the revolutionaries who don't have boils? Of course, they always find something. This one was beaten by his father. This one was nursed by his mother until he was ten. That one had no toilet training, as if one must be abnormal, to resent. exploitation. Every explanation except the obvious one, that capitalism, by its nature, its attack on the human spirit, breeds rebellion. Oh yes, they say capitalism has become more

humane since my time. Really? Just a few years ago, it was in the newspapers, factory owners locked the doors on the women in their chicken factory in North Carolina. Why? To make more profit. There was a fire, and 25 workers were trapped, burned to death. Perhaps my anger did inflame my boils, but try working, try sitting in writing with boils on your ass, and tell me about doctors. The doctors knew less than I did, much less, because the boils were mine. I could not sleep. Then I discovered something miraculous. Water. Yes, as simple as that clothes soaked in warm water. Jenny would apply them patiently, hour after hour. She would wake up in the middle of the night when I cried out and apply those soothing wet cloths. Sometimes, when

Jenny was away, Lenshin would do that. Yes, Lenton. Here we are, living in poverty in Soho, and Jenny's mother decides to send us Lenshin to help with the babies. We had pawned our furniture, but suddenly we had a servant girl. That's how it is when you marry into aristocracy. Your in-laws don't send you money, which you desperately need. They send you fine linens and silverware, and a servant. Actually, not a bad idea. The servant can take the linens and silverware to the pawn shops and get some money. Lenshin did that many times. But she was never a servant. The children adored her, and Jenny had tremendous affection for her. When Jenny was ill, Lenshin was with her, tending to every need. But yes, her presence created

a great tension between Jenny and me. I remember a scene. Jenny said, this morning, I saw you looking at Lenshin. Looking? What do you mean? I mean the way a man looks at a woman. I still don't know what you mean. It was one of those conversations which cannot possibly come to any good. There was all this going on inside our flat on Deem Street, and outside was London.

Can you imagine the streets of London in 1858? The coaster girls trying to sell a few rolls for a few pennies, the organ grinder with his monkey, the prostitutes, the magicians, the fire-eaters, the street vendors, bellowing trumpets, ringing bells and hurdy-gurdies, the organs, the brass bands, the fiddlers, the Scottish pipers,

and always a beggar girl singing an Irish ballad. That's what I saw and heard, walking home every evening from the British Museum, under the gas lamps that had just been lit, until I got to Dean Street and made my work. way through the mud and sewage, thinking about the care they took in paving streets of the wealthy neighborhoods. Well, I suppose it was only fitting that the author of Das Kapital should slog through shit

while writing his condemnation of the capitalist system. Jenny did not sympathize with my complaints about waiting through the mud on the street. She would say, that's how it feels to me reading Das Kapital. She was always my severest critic. unsparing honest you might say is there anything more outrageous than an honest critic the book troubled her yes das capital she worried that i would bore people from the start with my discussion of commodities use value exchange value she said the book was too long too detailed she used the word ponderous imagine she reminded me what our trade union friend peter fox said when i gave him the book i feel like a man who has been given an elephant as a gift. Yes, Jenny said, it is an elephant. I tried to tell her, this is not the communist manifesto,

which was intended for the general public. It is an analysis. Let it be an analysis, she said, but let it cry out like the manifesto. A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. Yes, she said, that excites the reader. A specter is haunting Europe. And then she read to me the first words of Das Kapital,

to torment me, of course. The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities. She said, that will put readers to sleep. I ask you, is that boring? Well, maybe it is a little boring. I admitted that to Jenny. She said, there's no such thing as a little boring. Now, don't misunderstand.

She did see Das Capital as a profound analysis. It showed how the capitalist system must, at a certain stage in history, come into being and bring about a colossal growth of the productive forces, an unprecedented increase in the wealth of the world, and then how it must, by its own nature, distribute that wealth in such a way as to destroy the humanity of both laborer and capitalist, and how it must, by its nature, create its own gravediggers and give way to a more human system. But Jenny always asked, are we reaching the people we want to reach? One day, she said to me, do you know why the censors have allowed it to be published? Because they cannot understand it and assume no one else will. I reminded her that Das Kapital was receiving favorable reviews. She reminded me that most of the reviews were written by angles. I told her that perhaps she was being critical of my work because she was unhappy with me.

You men, she said, you cannot believe that your work deserves criticism, so you attribute it to something personal. Yes, more. My personal feelings are there, but this is separate. Yes, her personal feelings. Jenny was having a terrible time then. I suppose I was responsible. But I did not know how to ease her anguish. You must understand. Jenny and I fell in love when I was 17 and she was 19. She was marvelous looking, with auburn hair and dark eyes. For some reason, her family took a liking to me. They were aristocrats. Aristocrats are always impressed with intellectuals.

Jenny's father and I would have long discussions about Greek philosophy. I had done my doctoral thesis on Democritus and Heraclitus. I was beginning to realize that up to now the philosophers had only interpreted the world, but the point was to change it. When I was expelled from Germany, Jenny followed me to Paris, and there we married, and she gave birth to Jenny Chen and Laura. We were happy in Paris, living on nothing, meeting our friends in a cafe.

They also lived on nothing. What a bunch we were. Bakunin, the huge, shaggy anarchist. Angles, the handsome atheist. Hein, the saintly poet. Oh, Sturner. Total misfit. And Prudon, who said,

Property is theft, but wanted some. Being poor in Paris is one thing. Being poor in London is quite another. We moved there with two children, and soon Jenny was pregnant again. Sometimes I felt she blamed me for having to bring up our children in a cold, damp flat where someone was sick all of the time. Jenny came down with smallpox. She recovered, but it left pock marks on her face. I tried to tell her she was still beautiful, but it didn't help.

I wish you could know, Jenny. What she did for me cannot be calculated, and she accepted the fact that I could not simply get a job like other men. men. Yes, I did try once. I wrote a letter of inquiry to the railway for a position as clerk. They responded as follows. Dr. Marks, we are honored with your request for a position here. We have never had a doctor of philosophy working for us as a clerk, but the position requires a legible handwriting, so we must regretfully decline your offer. Huh, Jenny believed in my ideas, but she was impatient with what she considered the pretensions of high-level scholarship.

Come down to earth, her, doctor, she would say. She wanted me to describe the theory of surplus value so that ordinary workers could understand it. I told her, no one can understand it without first understanding the labor theory of value and how labor power is a special

commodity whose value is determined by the cost of the means of substance and yet gives value to all other commodities, a value which always exceeds the value of labor power. She would shake her head. No, that won't do. All you have to say is this. Your employer gives you the barest amount in wages, just enough for you to survive and work. But out of your labor, he makes far more

than what he pays you, and so he gets richer and richer while you stay poor. All right, let us say only a hundred people in world history have ever understood my theory of surplus value. But it is still true. Just last week, I was reading the reports of the United States Department of Labor. There you have it. Your workers are producing more and more goods and getting less and less in wages. What is the result? Just as I predicted. Now the richest 1% of the American population owns 40% of the nation's wealth. And this in the great model of world capitalism, the nation that has not only robbed its own people, but sucked in the wealth of the rest of the world.

Jenny was always trying to simplify ideas that were, by their nature, complex. She accused me of being a scholar first and a revolutionary second. She said, forget your intellectual readers. Address the workers. She called me arrogant and intolerant. Why do you attack other revolutionaries more intensely than you attack the bourgeoisie? She asked. Prudon, for instance.

The man did not understand that we must applaud capitalism. for its development of giant industries and then take them over. Pradone thought we must retreat into a more simple society. When he wrote his book, The Philosophy of Poverty, I replied with my own book, The Poverty of Philosophy. I thought this was clever. Jenny thought it was insulting. I suppose Jenny was a far better human being than I could ever be.

She encouraged me to get off my behind and get involved in the cause of the London workers. She came with me when I was invited to address the first meeting of the International Working Men's Association. It was the fall of 1864. 2,000 people were packed into St. Martin's Hall. The workers of all countries must unite against foreign policies which are criminal, which play upon national prejudices, which squander in wars the people's blood and treasure. We must combine across national boundaries to vindicate. the simple laws of morals and justice in international affairs.

Workers of the world unite. Jenny liked that. She kept the family going, with the water cut off, the gas cut off, but she never tired of the subject of women's emancipation. She said that the vitality of women was being sapped by staying at home, knitting socks, and cooking. And so she refused to stay at home. She accused me of being theoretically in emancipation.

Haitianist, but practically ignorant of the problems of women. You and Engels, she said, write about sexual equality, but you do not practice it. Well, I won't comment on that. She supported with all her heart the Irish struggle against England. Queen Victoria had said, These Irish are really abominable people, not like any other civilized nation. Jenny wrote a letter to the London newspapers. England hangs Irish rebels, who wanted nothing but full.

freedom. Is England a civilized nation? Jenny and I were powerfully in love. How can I make you understand that? But we went through hellish times in London. The love was still there, but at a certain point things changed. I don't know why. Jenny said it was because she was no longer the great beauty I had wooed. That made me angry. She said it was because of Lenthen. That made me even more angry. She said I was angry because it was true. That made me furious. They claim that

because the Soviet Union collapsed, communism is dead. Do these fools know what communism is? Journalists, politicians who say such things. What kind of education did they have? Did they ever read the manifesto that Engels and I wrote when he was 28 years old and I was 30? In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Do you hear that? An association? Do they

understand the objective of communism? Freedom of the individual to develop himself, herself, as a compassionate human being? Do they think that someone who calls himself a communist or a socialist and acts like a gangster understands what communism is? To shoot those who disagree with you? Can that be the communism that I gave my life for? That monster who took all power for himself, who insisted on interpreting my ideas like a religious fanatic

when he was putting his old comrades up against the wall before firing squads, did he allow his citizens to read that letter I wrote to the New York Tribune in which I said that capital punishment could not be justified in any society calling itself civilized? Socialism is not supposed to reproduce the stupidities of capitalism. Here in America, your prisons are crowded. Who is in them? The poor. Some of them have committed violence and terrible crimes.

It's true, but most of them are burglars, thieves, robbers, sellers of drugs. They believe in free enterprise. They do what the capitalists do, but on a much smaller scale. Do you know what Angles and I wrote about prisons? Rather than punishing individuals for their crimes, we should destroy the social conditions which engender crime and give to each individual the scope which he needs in society in order to develop his life.

Oh yes, we spoke of a dictatorship with a proletariat, not a dictatorship of a party, of a central committee, not a dictatorship of one man. No, we spoke of a temporary dictatorship of the working class. The mass of the people would take over the state and govern it in the interests of all until the state itself would become unnecessary and gradually disappear. Bakunin, of course, disagreed. He said that a state, even a worker state, if it has an army, police, prisons, will become a tyranny.

He loved to argue with me. Do you know about him, Bakunin, the anarchist? If a novelist invented such a character, you would say the existence of such a person is not possible. To say Bakunin and I did not get along is a great understatement. Listen to what he said at the time, Angles and I were in Brussels, writing the manifesto. Marks and Angles, but especially Marx, are ingrained bourgeois. We were ingrained bourgeois. Of course, compared to bourgeois.

Bakunin, everyone was bourgeois, because Bakunin chose to live like a pig. And if you did not live like a pig, if you had a roof over your head, if you had a piano in your sitting room, if you enjoyed some fresh bread and wine, you were a bourgeois. Now listen, I grant the man courage. He was imprisoned, sent to Siberia, escaped, wandered the world trying to foment a revolution everywhere.

He wanted an anarchist society. But the only anarchism he ever succeeded in a establishing was in his head. He tried to start an uprising in Bologna and almost killed himself with his own revolver. His revolutions failed everywhere, but he was like a man whose failure with women only spurs him on to more. Did you ever see a photograph of Bacoonen? A giant of a man, bald head, which he covered with a little gray cap, massive beard, ferocious expression. He had no teeth, scurvy, the result of his prison diet. He seemed to live not in this world, but in the world of his own imagination. He was oblivious to money. When he had it,

he gave it away. When he didn't have it, he borrowed without any thought of returning it. He had no home, or you might say, the world was his home. He would arrive at a comrade's house and announce, I am here. Where do I sleep? And what is there to eat? In an hour, he was more at home than his hosts. There was that time in Soho. We were having dinner, and Bakunin burst in. Didn't bothered to knock. It was his habit to arrive at dinner time. We were surprised. We thought he was in Italy. Whenever we heard about him,

he was in some far off country organizing a revolution. Well, he almost knocked the door off its hinges, came in, looked around, smiled his toothless smile, and said, good evening comrades. And without waiting for a response, sat down

at the table and began devouring sausage and meat in enormous chunks, stuffing in cheese too and glass after glass of brandy i said to him mackale try the wine we have plenty of that brandy's expensive he drank some wine spit it right out absolutely tasteless he said brandy helps you think more clearly he then began his usual performance preaching arguing ordering shouting exhorting i was furious but it was jenny who spoke up mackale she said stop you're consuming all the oxygen in the room. He just roared with laughter and went on. Bakunin's head was full of anarchist garbage, romantic utopian nonsense. I wanted to expel him from the international. Jenny thought this ridiculous. Why, she asked, do revolutionary groups with six members always threaten someone with expulsion? He had a hundred disguises, too, because the police were looking for him in every

country in Europe. When he came to us in London, he was disguised as a priest. At least he thought so. He looked ridiculous. Well, he was with us for a week. One night, we stayed up the entire night, drinking and arguing and drinking some more, until neither of us could walk. In fact, I fell asleep in the midst of one of Bakunin's performances. He shook me until I woke up, saying, I haven't finished my point. It was that glorious, glorious time in the winter of 18, when the commune had taken power in Paris. Yes, the Paris Commune. Bakunin leaped with his full bulk into that revolution.

The French understood him. They had a saying, On the first day of a revolution, Bakunin is a treasure. On the second day, he should be shot. Do you know about that magnificent episode in human history, the Paris Commian? The story starts with stupidity.

I am speaking of Napoleon III. Yes, the nephew of Bonaparte. He was a buffoon, a stage actor smiling to the crowd, while 16 million French peasants lived in blind, dark hovels, their children dying of starvation. But because he kept a legislature, because people voted, it was thought they had democracy. A common mistake. Bonaparte wanted glory, so he made the mistake of attacking Bismarck's armies. He was quickly defeated, whereupon the victorious German troops marched into Paris and were greeted

by something more devastating than guns, silence. They found the statues of Paris draped in black, an immense, invisible, silent resistance. They did the wise thing. They paraded through the Arc de Triumph and quickly departed. And the old French order, the Republic? Liberals, they called themselves. They did not dare come into Paris. They were trembling with fear because with the Germans gone, Paris was now taken over by the workers, the housewives, the clerks, the intellectuals, the armed citizens. The people of Paris formed not a government, but something more glorious, something governments everywhere fear, a commune, the collective energy of the people.

It was the commune of Paris. People meeting 24 hours a day, all over the city, in knots of three and four, making decisions together, while the city was encircled by the French army, threatening to invade at any moment. Paris became the first free city in the world, the first enclave of liberty in a world of tyranny. I said to Bakunin, you want to know what I mean by the dictatorship of the proletariat? Look at the commune of Paris. That is true democracy. Not the democracy of England or America, where elections are circuses, with people voting for one or another guardian of the old order, where whatever candidate wins, the rich go on ruling the country.

The Commune of Paris. It lived only a few months, but it was the first legislative body in history to represent the poor. Its laws were for them. It abolished their debts, postponed their rents, forced the pawn shops to return their most needed possessions. They refused to take salaries higher than the workers. They lowered the hours of bakers and planned how to give free admission to the theater for everyone. The Great Corbe himself, whose paintings had stunned Europe, presided over the federation of artists. They reopened the museums, set up a commission for the education of women, something unheard of, education for women. They took advantage of the latest in science, the lighter than air balloon, and launched one out of Paris to soar over the countryside,

dropping printed papers for the peasants with a simple, powerful message, the message that should be dropped to working people everywhere in the world. Our interests are the same. The commune declared the purpose of the schools to teach children to love and respect their fellow creatures. I have read your endless discussions of education. Such nonsense. They teach everything needed to succeed in the capitalist world, but do they teach the young to struggle for justice?

The communards understood the importance of that. They educated not only by their words, but by their acts. They destroyed the guillotine, that instrument of tyranny, even of revolutionary tyranny. Then, wearing red scarves, carrying a huge red banner, the buildings festooned with sheets of red silk, they gathered around the vedom column, symbol of military power, a huge statue surmounted by the bronze head of Napoleon and bone apart. A pulley was attached to the head, a capstan turned, and the head crashed to the ground. People climbed on the ruins. A red flag now floated from the pedestal. Now it was the pedestal not of one country, but of the human race, and men and women watching, wept with joy. Yes, that

was the Paris Commune. The streets were always full, discussions going on every Everywhere. People shared things. They seemed to smile more often. Kindness ruled. The streets were safe, without police of any kind. Yes, that was socialism. Of course, that example, the example of the commune, could not be allowed. And so the armies of the Republic marched into Paris and commenced a slaughter. The leaders of the commune were taken to a cemetery, put against the stone wall, and shot dead. Altogether, 30,000 were killed. The commune was crushed by wolves and swine. But it was the most glorious achievement of our time. Bakunin and I drank and argued, drank and argued some more. I said to him, Mikhail, you don't understand the concept of a proletarian state. We cannot shake the past off in one orgasmic moment.

We will have to remake a new society with the remnants of the old, order. That takes time. No, he said, the people overthrowing the old order must immediately live in freedom or they will lose it. It began to get personal. I was getting impatient and I said you are too stupid to understand. The brandy was having an effect on him too. He said, Marx, you are an arrogant son of a bitch. As always, it is you who don't understand. You think the workers will make a revolution based on your theory. They care not to shit for your Your theory, their anger will rise spontaneously, and they will make a revolution without your so-called science. The instinct for revolution is in their bellies.

He was aroused. I spit on your theories. As he said this, he spat on the floor. What a fucking pig. This was too much. I said, Mikhail, you can spit on my theories, but not on my floor. Clean it immediately. there, he said, I always knew you were a bully. I said, I always knew you were a eunuch.

He roared. It sounded like a prehistoric animal. Then he leapt on top of me. You must understand, this man was enormous. We wrestled on the floor, but we're too drunk to really hurt one another. After a while, we were so tired that we just lay there, catching our breath. Then Bacoonin rose, like a hippopotamus rising out over river, unbuttoned his trousers, and began to urinate out the window. I could not believe what I was seeing. What in the hell are you doing, Mikhail? What do you think I'm doing? I'm pissing out your window.

That is disgusting, Mikhail, I said. I'm pissing on London. I'm pissing on the whole damn British Empire. No, I said, you're pissing on my street. He didn't reply. Just buttoned his pants. lay down on the floor and began to snore. I lay down on the floor myself and was too, soon, unconscious.

Jenny found us both like that, hours later, when she woke with the dawn. No, they could not allow the commune to live. The commune was dangerous, too inspiring an example for the rest of the world, so they drowned it in blood. It still happens, does it not, that whenever in some corner of the world the old order is pushed aside and people begin to experiment with a new way of living, people innocent of ideology, just angry about their lives, it cannot be permitted. And so they go to work. You know who I mean by they, sometimes insidiously, covertly, sometimes directly, violently to destroy it. So they keep saying, capitalism.

has triumphed. Triumphed? Why? Because the stock market has risen to the sky and the stockholders are even wealthier than before? Triumphed? When one-fourth of American children live in poverty? When 40,000 of them die every single year before their first birthday? A hundred thousand people lined up before dawn in New York City for 2,000 jobs? What will happen to the 98,000 who are turned away? Is that why you are building more prisons? Yes, capitalism has triumphed. But over whom?

You have technological marvels. You have sent men into the stratosphere. But what have the people left on earth? Why are they so fearful? Why do they turn to drugs, to alcohol, Why do they go berserk and kill? Yes, it's in the newspapers. Your politicians are bloated with pride.

The world will now move toward the free enterprise system, they say. Has everyone become stupid? Don't they know the history of the free enterprise system? When government did nothing for the people and everything for the rich? When your government gave a hundred million acres of land free to the railroads, but looked away as Chinese immigrants and Irish immigrants worked 12 hours a day on those railroads and died in the heat and in the cold. And when workers rebelled and went on strike, the government sent armies to smash them into submission.

Why the hell did I write Das Kapital, if not because I saw the misery of capitalism, of the so-called free enterprise system? In England, little children were put to work, work in the textile mills because their tiny fingers could work the spindles. In America, young girls went to work in the mills of Massachusetts at the age of 10 and died at the age of 25. The cities were cesspools of vice and poverty. That is capitalism.

Then and now. Yes, I see the luxuries advertised in your magazines and on your billboards and on your screens. Yes, all those screens with all those pictures You see so much and know so little Doesn't anyone read history What kind of shit do they teach in the schools these days? They are so sensitive

I missed Jenny She would have something to say about all of this I watched her die sick and miserable at the end but surely she remembered our years of pleasure our moments of ecstasy in Paris even in Soho I miss my daughters

Anniversary of Gulf War A victory short and sweet Yes I know about these short sweet Wars which leave thousands of corpses in the fields and children dying for lack of food and medicine. In Europe, Africa, Palestine, people killing one another over boundaries. Didn't you hear what I said 150 years ago? Wipe out these ridiculous national boundaries.

No more passports. No more visas. No more border guards or immigration quotas. No more flags and pledges of allegiance to some artificial entity called a nation. workers of the world unite oh god my back is killing me i confess i did not reckon with capitalism's ingeniousness in surviving i did not imagine that there would be drugs to keep the sick system alive war to keep the industries going to make people crazed with patriotism so that they would forget their misery. Religious fanatics promising the masses that Jesus will return.

I know Jesus. He's not coming back. I was wrong in 1848. Thinking capitalism was on its way out. My timing was a bit off. Perhaps by 200 years. But it will be transformed. All the present systems will be transformed. People are not fools. I remember your president, saying that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Their common sense, their instinct for decency and justice will bring them together. Don't scoff. It has happened before. It can happen again, and on a much larger scale.

And when it does, the rulers of society, with all of their wealth, with all their armies, will be helpless to prevent it. Their servants will refuse to serve. Their soldiers will disobey orders. Yes, capitalism has accomplished wonders unsurpassed in history, miracles of technology and science, but it is preparing its own death. Its voracious appetite for profit, more, more, more creates a world of turmoil. It turns everything, art, literature, music, beauty itself, into commodities to be bought and sold. It turns human beings into commodities. just the factory worker, but the physician, the scientist, the lawyer, the poet, the artists,

all must sell themselves to survive. And what will happen when all these people realize that they are all workers, that they have a common enemy? They will join with each other in order to fulfill themselves, and not just in their own country, because capitalism needs a world market. Its cry is free trade Because it needs to roam freely Everywhere in the globe to make more profit

More More But in so doing It creates unwittingly A world culture People cross borders as never before in history Ideas cross borders Something new is bound to come of this

You know when I was in Paris with Jenny in 1843, I was 25, and I wrote that in the new industrial system, people are estranged from their work because it is distasteful to them. They are alienated from nature as machines, smoke, smells, noise invade their senses. Progress, it is called. They are estranged from others because everyone is set against everyone else, scrambling for survival, and they are alienated from their own selves, living lives that are not their own living as they do not really want to live so that a good life is possible only in dreams in fantasy but it does not have to be there is still a possibility of choice only a possibility i grant nothing is certain that is now clear i was too damned certain now i know anything can happen but people must get off their asses does that sound too radical for you Remember, to be radical is simply to grasp the root of a problem, and the root is us. I have a suggestion.

Pretend you have boils. Pretend that sitting on your ass gives you enormous pain, so you must stand up. You must move, must act. Let's not speak any more about capitalism, socialism. Let's just speak of using the incredible wealth of the earth for human beings. Give people what they need. food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in. Some hours of work, more hours of leisure.

Don't ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it. Well, it's time to go. Do you resent my coming back and irritating you? Look at it this way. It is the second coming. Christ couldn't make it. So Marx came.

Lord, I've been waiting so long. These blues have got me crying. Oh, sweet daddy, please come home. The snow falls round my window. but it can chill my heart Lord knows it died the day you left my dream world fell apart weary blues from waiting

Lord, I've been waiting so long These blues have got me crying Oh, sweet daddy, please come home Oh, sweet daddy, please come home I don't know. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha.

Ha, ha. Through tears, I watch, I watch young lovers. As they go strolling by And of all the things that might have been, God forgive me if I cry We're worried blues from waiting Lord, I've been waiting so long. These blues have got me crying.

Oh, sweet daddy, please come home. Oh, sweet daddy, please come home. I don't know.