I don't think I am actually a Communist, even though I voted for the Communist Party in the last few elections. Well, to be precise, I voted for the Marxist Leninist party because in my old riding both the Communists and Marxist Leninists were fielding candidates. You'd think that, given the high unlikelihood that either one of these parties was going to win they could put aside any ideological differences they had until after the election and then come up with an amicable way to divide their collective responsibilities as they nationalized all the key industries and reorganized the monetary system and distribution of essential services and foodstuffs, but no, they could not; the ideological gap was just too wide.
Part of the problem is, of course, that small political parties and fringe political parties are almost inevitably going to be peopled by wing-nuts of one stripe or another. Such folk (whether they are realistic about it or not) can afford to stand on the kind of principles that divide Marxist Leninist thought from Communist thought because there is just no goddamn way they are ever going to be elected for anything. It is only when the party begins to gain some kind of traction that compromises have to be made toward the centre and toward the more pragmatic political heavyweights who occupy this centre.
I'm speaking only of Canada here, because obviously very extreme formally fringe parties have done well in other places and at other times, but if you look at the evolution of something like the current Conservative Party you will note that the original party, brought forth under the leadership of Preston Manning (as gentle as their extremism was) never stood a chance of election until they began to abandon many of their principles and move to the centre.
Another problem, and this applies directly to both Communists and Marxist Leninists, is that the centre simply has no interest in embracing any political experiment even remotely associated with the USSR. The rhetoric of the Evil Empire is still thick enough that during the last US election, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republicans were able to scare up more than a few votes by accusing Barack Obama of being (not even a Communist but) a socialist.
So, even if there are a good many salvageable ideas in Communism (or Marxist-Leninism, if you prefer), as long as anybody starts with the word "Communism" people are just going to shut down and refuse to listen and as long as the same damn photo of Che Guevara keeps getting waved around people are going to shut down and so on and so on.
For this reason, I propose that what Communism needs is a rebranding campaign to sex it up a little; to bring it forward into the 21st century. I think that a political party could probably put forward a lot of Communist ideas as long as they adamantly denied that they were Communist ideas whenever anyone asked. They could call themselves the National Conservative Democrats or something and no one would be the wiser.
If they wanted to be even more hip, of course, then they could take the revolution online and make up a whole bunch of campaigns with savvy sexy kids in their 20s with wavy hair and colourful clothes talking about how technology is helping everyone to learn to share everything now and that this idea of sharing should be infectious and spread into every sector…because that's the way things work now.
The screen fades to red and the title credits come on in bright yellow: iMarx …the way things work now.
June 10, 2009
June 7, 2009
even if that person really isn’t so bad
Last September, I think, I was walking along Avenue de Pins toward the McGill squash courts where I play two or three times a week. As I was crossing Parc a young woman approached me and called to me by name. "Adam," she said, "how are you?" A number of possibilities ran through my mind regarding the identity of this individual, but the answer didn't materialize quickly enough and so I simply stared back at her blankly. "I'm so-and-so; a student in your conference," she then told me, obviously seeing that I needed rescue. "Oh, I'm sorry, there are a lot of students, you know, and it takes me time to get to recognize everyone's face." Well that's fine said she, she understood and that she was looking forward to the class and it looked like a lot of fun an so on and so forth and with this we parted ways and I continued up the hill.
No less than a minute after this, I passed another young woman on the street, this time on who had been in a conference I was doing the year before. I looked right at her as she walked by, expecting at least a smile or something in recognition of the fact that we had spent so many hours and so many weeks locked in the same miserable windowless room together, but there was nothing. She walked right past as though I didn't exist.
Since this time any number of other former students have walked past, and while some do acknowledge me and some even stop to talk and are cheerful and pleasant, the weighted majority has been entirely toward those who can't or don't want to distinguish me from any of the other uninspiring features of the landscape through which they pass.
I realise, as I write this, that I am sounding a little crotchety about the entire thing, but being ignored thus is just a little dehumanizing as though, instead of the process of being in a class and exchanging ideas and knowledge for the sake of our personal betterment, has been no better to a lot of these people than a commercial exchange and they have no more need or desire to concede even my existence after our financial arrangement is completed than they have to acknowledge a bag boy they see outside the supermarket or a waitress they see outside the restaurant.
It's not that I'm putting down bag boys, per se, but I feel like in a classroom what people are trying to do—or I'm trying to do anyhow—is really connect with people and create an atmosphere where people can really try to think shit through and be creative about it and that this kind of thing isn't nothing, it's something. It's something to me anyhow. Incidentally, I have said hello to the bag boy from my supermarket outside the supermarket and it was pretty clear he didn't know who the fuck I was, either.
I suppose I'm making a case for late capitalist disaffection being the cause of this phenomenon, but it's impossible for me to say for certain without being privy to the behaviour of teachers and students throughout the ages. Perhaps the original students at Oxford in the high middle ages were just as likely to aloofly spurn their passing professors and said professors, gathered together in their elegant faculty club, between long draughts of mead, would blame the influence of filthy troubadours and the poisonous whisperings of those damaged individuals who had returned from the crusades glutted with the heretical leanings of the perfumed hordes of the orient.
Of course, one must remember that professors also routinely pass their students in the hallways without any acknowledgement and also students from the same class pass each other without acknowledgement and I remember perfectly well that when I was living in residence I used to pass people who lived in the next room without acknowledging them (sometimes 10 times a day) and there's only so much reaching out that anyone can be expected to do in this world, I guess, and a lot of the time the perception that one might have to stop and talk to a certain somebody seems more like an annoyance than a pleasure—even if that person really isn’t so bad.
No less than a minute after this, I passed another young woman on the street, this time on who had been in a conference I was doing the year before. I looked right at her as she walked by, expecting at least a smile or something in recognition of the fact that we had spent so many hours and so many weeks locked in the same miserable windowless room together, but there was nothing. She walked right past as though I didn't exist.
Since this time any number of other former students have walked past, and while some do acknowledge me and some even stop to talk and are cheerful and pleasant, the weighted majority has been entirely toward those who can't or don't want to distinguish me from any of the other uninspiring features of the landscape through which they pass.
I realise, as I write this, that I am sounding a little crotchety about the entire thing, but being ignored thus is just a little dehumanizing as though, instead of the process of being in a class and exchanging ideas and knowledge for the sake of our personal betterment, has been no better to a lot of these people than a commercial exchange and they have no more need or desire to concede even my existence after our financial arrangement is completed than they have to acknowledge a bag boy they see outside the supermarket or a waitress they see outside the restaurant.
It's not that I'm putting down bag boys, per se, but I feel like in a classroom what people are trying to do—or I'm trying to do anyhow—is really connect with people and create an atmosphere where people can really try to think shit through and be creative about it and that this kind of thing isn't nothing, it's something. It's something to me anyhow. Incidentally, I have said hello to the bag boy from my supermarket outside the supermarket and it was pretty clear he didn't know who the fuck I was, either.
I suppose I'm making a case for late capitalist disaffection being the cause of this phenomenon, but it's impossible for me to say for certain without being privy to the behaviour of teachers and students throughout the ages. Perhaps the original students at Oxford in the high middle ages were just as likely to aloofly spurn their passing professors and said professors, gathered together in their elegant faculty club, between long draughts of mead, would blame the influence of filthy troubadours and the poisonous whisperings of those damaged individuals who had returned from the crusades glutted with the heretical leanings of the perfumed hordes of the orient.
Of course, one must remember that professors also routinely pass their students in the hallways without any acknowledgement and also students from the same class pass each other without acknowledgement and I remember perfectly well that when I was living in residence I used to pass people who lived in the next room without acknowledging them (sometimes 10 times a day) and there's only so much reaching out that anyone can be expected to do in this world, I guess, and a lot of the time the perception that one might have to stop and talk to a certain somebody seems more like an annoyance than a pleasure—even if that person really isn’t so bad.
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