thedrifter
10-28-07, 06:50 AM
October 28, 2007
Marx Resurrected by Howard Zinn
By Matt Bandyk
Gil-Scott Heron famously said "the revolution will not be televised." But apparently it does have a soundtrack. When Marx came back from the dead to explain why communism is more essential than ever, he was accompanied by the sound of... Billy Joel??
That was the music to warm up the crowd before a performance of Howard Zinn's one-man play "Marx in Soho" as part of the annual Capital Fringe Festival. The play is over an hour of the German philosopher himself talking about why the years since his death have done nothing to repudiate the validity of Marxism. Or, as Bob Weick, the actor who plays the role of Marx, familiarly said in a Washington Post preview of the show,
"It's not that communism failed. It's that it hasn't really been tried."
He's determined to convince others that communism gets an unfair rap; Weick's theater group is currently touring around the country at major colleges, high schools and arthouses with "Marx in Soho," telling audiences why everything they've been taught about communism is wrong. "The play moved me and made me want to become more radical," glows one college student's testimonial. "Marx in Soho" has been performed since 1999, but seems to have been continually updated to fit in references to contemporary events like the war on terror and Enron.
Billy Joel ended up being a somewhat fitting choice when I took a look at my fellow audience members. It was not exactly what one would expect to find at a show advertised in the paper as a "rousing defense of Marxism." Instead of dreadlocks and Che Guevara T-shirts, I saw receding hairlines and t-shirts from vacations on Sanibel Island. Billy Joel isn't as hip as Gil-Scott Heron, or the crowd as exciting as a rally of young bohemians or a strike of raucous dockworkers. However, the age distribution was somewhat more true to the types of people who actually have time to worry about Marxism these days. Affluent, bored retirees of the world, unite.
Zinn has made a career as a mainstream radical. His A People's History of the United States of America has been lauded by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, featured in dramatic readings by the likes of James Earl Jones and Marisa Tomei, and was recently adapted into a children's version. So it should come as little surprise that the Marx of "Marx in Soho" is one fit for popular consumption. He doesn't only talk politics; his persona is that of a kindly grandfather spinning yarns by the fire. The play is as much about Marx's life in the Soho quarter of London, where he began living in 1849 and stayed until his death, as it is about communism resurgent. He opines lovingly about his wife Jenny, in a way oddly reminiscent of Forrest Gump. This isn't the Marx worshipped by Lenin, Castro, Pol Pot, and other unsavories; this is a guy you want to have a drink with.
Why did he come back? The idea is that the association with repressive dictators has so unfairly maligned communism in the eyes of the world that Marx is pushed to return from the grave to set the story straight. The play's plot device -- Marx's return from the dead -- is a metaphor for what Zinn wants the audience to believe. Marx was absent from all horrors and failures committed by those who acted in his name. Now, Austin Powers-like, Zinn is reviving him and proclaiming that the last century has taught us nothing about his ideas, and that we should have another go at socialism.
Real communism, Marx says, is based on freedom and democracy, not totalitarianism and murder. Zinn's Marx speaks lovingly of the Paris Commune of 1871 as a paradise where proletarians came together and cooperated to provide education, medical services, and equal rights for all.
It's when the people refuse to freely cooperate that Marx gets angry. At one point in the play, Marx growls that "we should praise the capitalist system for its amazing means of production -- and then TAKE IT OVER." Zinn here gives voice to the same problem that confronted Lenin: it's really hard to be patient and wait for the revolution to spontaneously happen, as Marx predicted, when it's so easy to prod it along at the barrel of a gun.
Certainly, Zinn doesn't make Marx out to be flawless. But the problem for Zinn isn't that Marx overlooked the inability of centralized planning to effectively organize economic activity. It isn't that Marx exaggerated the extent to which capitalism degrades the life of the poor. Zinn's problem with Marx isn't what any of the people who have paid attention to global events since, well, Marx, have discovered. It's that Marx "didn't anticipate the drugs that would keep capitalism alive" -- the character in the play sheepishly admits that his "timing was a bit off" about the end of capitalism, an understatement that would surely provoke laughter from any audience other than one that would dedicate its Friday afternoon to a one-man show about Marx.
Yes, the timing was off, but according to "Marx in Soho," we're still on that irrevocable path toward the revolution. Capitalism continues to degrade the working class, which will inevitably lead them to rise up. Marx the character cites Enron and corporate layoffs as evidence that capitalism hasn't gotten any more humane. He goes on to compare the poor found languishing on many streets in Washington to the abject poverty he saw living in the Soho district of London. A look at Soho today might tell a quite different story about the effects of capitalism. When Marx lived there from 1849 until the end of his life, Soho was a filthy slum and the red light district. Today, despite the ravages of global capitalism, Soho is a more of a center for fashion boutiques, tourists and media companies than prostitutes and sewage.
Of course, Zinn is right in an important sense. Marx's vision of communism hasn't really been tried. The Soviet Union, Cambodia, Cuba-none are examples of true communism. Marx predicted that communism would only arrive after the proletariat gained control of all the means of production. This "dictatorship of the proletariat" ends capitalism and, as Marx described in his famous essay "On the Jewish Question", man stops living as capitalism forced him to live -- egoistic man -- and starts living as a "species-being", a communal being who no longer separates his individual needs from needs of the group as a whole. Egoism is simply a product of a political order that recognizes and protects private property; once that order is thrown away, the state dissolves and true communism arrives.
Like Marx being resurrected from the dead, Marxists believe that politics can resurrect a man who seems to have been absent through all recorded human history. Marx seems to have taken a cue from Rousseau, who believed that in his natural state, man was peaceful and unselfish. This is an untestable and impossible-to-prove thesis. We can't know what happened before recorded history. The only way to believe this argument is to want to believe it. But everything we know about humans suggests that it is unrealistic to expect them to subordinate all their wants and desires to the community.
That's why it's pointless to argue with the Marx of "Marx in Soho." It's pointless to point out that the progression of capitalism hasn't been to further and further degrade the life of the poor; in fact, it has lifted more people out of poverty than anyone living in Soho in the late 1800's thought possible. None of this matters to Zinn. It's not a matter of empirical evidence-capitalism must degrade man, because communism is the prehistorical, proper way for man to live. And he knows this on faith.
This version of the play, and certainly others, will continue to tour the country, spreading Marx's (and Zinn's message). You may not be convinced by their arguments, but you may be impressed by how well they're keeping the faith.
Ellie
Marx Resurrected by Howard Zinn
By Matt Bandyk
Gil-Scott Heron famously said "the revolution will not be televised." But apparently it does have a soundtrack. When Marx came back from the dead to explain why communism is more essential than ever, he was accompanied by the sound of... Billy Joel??
That was the music to warm up the crowd before a performance of Howard Zinn's one-man play "Marx in Soho" as part of the annual Capital Fringe Festival. The play is over an hour of the German philosopher himself talking about why the years since his death have done nothing to repudiate the validity of Marxism. Or, as Bob Weick, the actor who plays the role of Marx, familiarly said in a Washington Post preview of the show,
"It's not that communism failed. It's that it hasn't really been tried."
He's determined to convince others that communism gets an unfair rap; Weick's theater group is currently touring around the country at major colleges, high schools and arthouses with "Marx in Soho," telling audiences why everything they've been taught about communism is wrong. "The play moved me and made me want to become more radical," glows one college student's testimonial. "Marx in Soho" has been performed since 1999, but seems to have been continually updated to fit in references to contemporary events like the war on terror and Enron.
Billy Joel ended up being a somewhat fitting choice when I took a look at my fellow audience members. It was not exactly what one would expect to find at a show advertised in the paper as a "rousing defense of Marxism." Instead of dreadlocks and Che Guevara T-shirts, I saw receding hairlines and t-shirts from vacations on Sanibel Island. Billy Joel isn't as hip as Gil-Scott Heron, or the crowd as exciting as a rally of young bohemians or a strike of raucous dockworkers. However, the age distribution was somewhat more true to the types of people who actually have time to worry about Marxism these days. Affluent, bored retirees of the world, unite.
Zinn has made a career as a mainstream radical. His A People's History of the United States of America has been lauded by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, featured in dramatic readings by the likes of James Earl Jones and Marisa Tomei, and was recently adapted into a children's version. So it should come as little surprise that the Marx of "Marx in Soho" is one fit for popular consumption. He doesn't only talk politics; his persona is that of a kindly grandfather spinning yarns by the fire. The play is as much about Marx's life in the Soho quarter of London, where he began living in 1849 and stayed until his death, as it is about communism resurgent. He opines lovingly about his wife Jenny, in a way oddly reminiscent of Forrest Gump. This isn't the Marx worshipped by Lenin, Castro, Pol Pot, and other unsavories; this is a guy you want to have a drink with.
Why did he come back? The idea is that the association with repressive dictators has so unfairly maligned communism in the eyes of the world that Marx is pushed to return from the grave to set the story straight. The play's plot device -- Marx's return from the dead -- is a metaphor for what Zinn wants the audience to believe. Marx was absent from all horrors and failures committed by those who acted in his name. Now, Austin Powers-like, Zinn is reviving him and proclaiming that the last century has taught us nothing about his ideas, and that we should have another go at socialism.
Real communism, Marx says, is based on freedom and democracy, not totalitarianism and murder. Zinn's Marx speaks lovingly of the Paris Commune of 1871 as a paradise where proletarians came together and cooperated to provide education, medical services, and equal rights for all.
It's when the people refuse to freely cooperate that Marx gets angry. At one point in the play, Marx growls that "we should praise the capitalist system for its amazing means of production -- and then TAKE IT OVER." Zinn here gives voice to the same problem that confronted Lenin: it's really hard to be patient and wait for the revolution to spontaneously happen, as Marx predicted, when it's so easy to prod it along at the barrel of a gun.
Certainly, Zinn doesn't make Marx out to be flawless. But the problem for Zinn isn't that Marx overlooked the inability of centralized planning to effectively organize economic activity. It isn't that Marx exaggerated the extent to which capitalism degrades the life of the poor. Zinn's problem with Marx isn't what any of the people who have paid attention to global events since, well, Marx, have discovered. It's that Marx "didn't anticipate the drugs that would keep capitalism alive" -- the character in the play sheepishly admits that his "timing was a bit off" about the end of capitalism, an understatement that would surely provoke laughter from any audience other than one that would dedicate its Friday afternoon to a one-man show about Marx.
Yes, the timing was off, but according to "Marx in Soho," we're still on that irrevocable path toward the revolution. Capitalism continues to degrade the working class, which will inevitably lead them to rise up. Marx the character cites Enron and corporate layoffs as evidence that capitalism hasn't gotten any more humane. He goes on to compare the poor found languishing on many streets in Washington to the abject poverty he saw living in the Soho district of London. A look at Soho today might tell a quite different story about the effects of capitalism. When Marx lived there from 1849 until the end of his life, Soho was a filthy slum and the red light district. Today, despite the ravages of global capitalism, Soho is a more of a center for fashion boutiques, tourists and media companies than prostitutes and sewage.
Of course, Zinn is right in an important sense. Marx's vision of communism hasn't really been tried. The Soviet Union, Cambodia, Cuba-none are examples of true communism. Marx predicted that communism would only arrive after the proletariat gained control of all the means of production. This "dictatorship of the proletariat" ends capitalism and, as Marx described in his famous essay "On the Jewish Question", man stops living as capitalism forced him to live -- egoistic man -- and starts living as a "species-being", a communal being who no longer separates his individual needs from needs of the group as a whole. Egoism is simply a product of a political order that recognizes and protects private property; once that order is thrown away, the state dissolves and true communism arrives.
Like Marx being resurrected from the dead, Marxists believe that politics can resurrect a man who seems to have been absent through all recorded human history. Marx seems to have taken a cue from Rousseau, who believed that in his natural state, man was peaceful and unselfish. This is an untestable and impossible-to-prove thesis. We can't know what happened before recorded history. The only way to believe this argument is to want to believe it. But everything we know about humans suggests that it is unrealistic to expect them to subordinate all their wants and desires to the community.
That's why it's pointless to argue with the Marx of "Marx in Soho." It's pointless to point out that the progression of capitalism hasn't been to further and further degrade the life of the poor; in fact, it has lifted more people out of poverty than anyone living in Soho in the late 1800's thought possible. None of this matters to Zinn. It's not a matter of empirical evidence-capitalism must degrade man, because communism is the prehistorical, proper way for man to live. And he knows this on faith.
This version of the play, and certainly others, will continue to tour the country, spreading Marx's (and Zinn's message). You may not be convinced by their arguments, but you may be impressed by how well they're keeping the faith.
Ellie