Marks is of greater importance today than in his day

It's an old Soviet good joke for Radio Yerevan: a listener asks: “is it true that Rabinovic won a new car in the lottery? ”, whose radio host answers: “in principle yes, it's true, but it was not a new car but a new bike, and he didn't win but it was stolen from him. ”

Does it not stand the same for Marks ' heritage today? Let's ask Radio Yerevan: “is the Marxist theory still important in our time?” We might speculate the answer: yes, in principle, he describes in a fine way the mad movements of capitalists who have reached their peak today, but... Gerald Ahen counted four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class: (1) it makes up the majority of society; (2) produces the wealth of society; (3) consists of experienced members of society; and (4) its members are people in need. When these four traits combine, they generate two other traits: (5) the working class will lose nothing from the revolution; and (6) it will engage in the revolutionary transformation of society.

None of the first four features stands for today's working class, from which two other traits cannot be derived. Even if some of the features continue to be part of today's society, they cannot be united into a single agent - people in need of society are no longer workers, and so on.

But let's dig into this question of Marks' importance further. Not only Marks' political criticism and capitalist dynamic sketches are important, but one step should be taken further and say that today, Marks is actually quite important.

After overcoming external obstacles, new threats come from within today. In other words, Marks was not just wrong, he was often right but more literally than he could have hoped for on his own.

For example, Marks could not have imagined that capitalist dynamics of distribution of party identities would be translated into ethnic identities. Today's celebration of “Pakate “and people in “margjina” is the predominative position of the majority of extreme right who complain about the terror of “political rectity” take advantage of this by presenting themselves as the defender of minorities at risk, proving the reflection of the campaign on the other side.

And on the other hand, we have the case of <x0-fethetism of comfort”. Remember the classic joke about the man who believes he's a grain and is taken to the institute for mental illness, where doctors do their best to convince him that he's not a seed but he's a human. When he is treated [in the belief that he is not a seed but a human] and is allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately becomes thrilled at the institute. There's a chicken outside the door and he's afraid she'll eat it.

You know very well that you're not a grain, but you're a human. ” says to the doctor.

“Of course you know, ” returns it to the patient, “but does the chicken know about it? ”

How does this apply to the notion of luxury fetishism? Notice the beginning of Marx's subcaptain on this matter Capital: “Customity at first glance seems a very clear, trivial thing. But his analysis shows that it is a strange thing, related to metaphysics and theological details. ”

The fetishism of comfort [our belief that the comforts are magical objects, equipped with an inert metaphysic force] is not fixed on our minds, in the way we [worst] perceive reality, but in the social reality itself. We may know the truth, but we act like we don't know in our real life, we act like chickens in the joke we said earlier.

Niels Bohr, who gave the best answer for “God does not play with Einstein's zar” with [<x2] > Don't tell God what to do!” also set the perfect example of how the fetishist rejection of faith works. Seeing a horseshoe hanging on the door, a surprised visitor said he did not believe that Bohr could believe in superstitions, which means that horseshoes would bring good luck to people. Oh, my God. But I keep it here because I'm told it works even if you don't believe it! ”

This is how ideology works in our cynical period: we should not believe in it. Nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we're all aware of their corruption, but we practice it in other words, we display faith in them because we presuppose that they work even if we don't believe in them.

As for religion, we “don't believe any more seriously” we just follow some religious rituals as part of respect for the community we belong to.

I don't really believe it, but it's part of my” culture that seems to have become the predominent type of displaced faith characteristic of our times. “Kultura” is the name for all those things we practice without really believing in, without taking them seriously enough.

That's why we deny fundamentalist believers as “bar” or “resolation”, as an anticultural, as a threat to culture because they dare take their beliefs seriously. The cynical wind in which we live would not surprise Marks.

So Marx theories are not just alive: Marks is a ghost that continues to follow us, and the only way to keep him alive is to focus on those views that are even more true today than in his day.

Subtitles by Leapin