People Are Getting Hungry. Do You Know What That Means?

he people, Marxists always said, won’t revolt unless they’re hungry enough. Mass unemployment and poverty, along with government in action, are about to test that proposition.

6 Comments. Leave new

  • alex_the_tired
    May 18, 2020 1:35 AM

    Good God, Ted. Do you realize you are more erotically desirable the more Marixst you get?
    The next time I see you in person, remind me, before one or both of us end up naked …

  • Ted, I think the observation that «people won’t slaughter their oppressors until they’re hungry» long antedates Marx – one even finds a milder version in the Declaration of Independence :

    Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

    What Marx and Engels claimed in the Manifesto was the following :

    The Manifesto being our joint production, I [i e, Friedrich Engels] consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class — the proletariat — cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class — the bourgeoisie — without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles.

    Somehow, I doubt that Covid-19 – and in particular, the incompetent, not to say indifferent manner with which the US government has dealt with the pandemic on its shores – is going to lead to the emancipation of «society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles»….

    But I hope I’m wrong….

    Henri

  • Hungry people will not slaughter their oppressors if they are starved of anything but cheap subsidized non-nutritive fatty foods like Micky Dees , Buger King, etc..

    Overweight people with high blood pressure and diabetes are more likely to just lay there, take abuse, and reach for more cheap, toxic, “comfort” foods.

    We have met the enemy and we are his collaborator.

    • TaxiManSteve
      May 18, 2020 1:33 PM

      Methinks you’re right Glenn. Fat Americans will reach for Cheetos while lying in bed in their underwear, just like Brian Wilson did. If roused from their torpor, they will vote for more. More Trump.

  • If we get a revolution it’s more than likely go right wing, than left. The police and FBI will jump on any left wing movment tht gains any sort of traction.
    Right now we are seeing right wing groups protesting at state capitols, demanding their old jobs back despite the risk of infection. No demands for higher pay, no hazard pay, no demands to cover the lockdown bills. No demands for a safer work place, voluntary mask wearing, hand sanitizer and courage to face the virus are the lines they espouse. The scream tyranny at reasonable public health measures, carry guns, then to cap it off they try to play the oppressed victim card.
    Lets see what the protesters say when the dead pile up, probably they will repeat right wing media catch phrases, unavoidable, we saved millions from a bad economy, the healthy survived…ect.

    People keep looking at the Nazis, look at the history a place little south of Germany

    Mussolini was originally a socialist politician and a journalist at the Avanti! newspaper. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I, in opposition to the party’s stance on neutrality. In 1914, Mussolini founded a new journal, Il Popolo d’Italia, and served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, Supporting the army, cracking down on labor strikes, preaching nationalism, racism and accommodating the church set him apart form the communist. At the start it seemed less radical than communism.

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