On your Marx...

I'm just after reading a blog post over at The Cedar Lounge Revolution that says that an e-mail is doing the rounds attributing a quote to Karl Marx whereby he pretty much pulled a Nostradamus and predicted the current economic crisis. In fact, he kinda-sorta nails it. Down to the nationalisation of the banks. Except, according to them, he doesn't. Well, someone nails it, just not Marx. Always the bridesmaid with the predictions is our Karl.

However, what the author of that blog post doesn't realise is that it is a direct Marx quote from a unpublished text that even Marx himself at the time thought too - get a load of this for irony - revolutionary to publish. I have gained access to that text through my sources and can bring you excerpts from it.

The original 'leaked' quote in question is:

"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism." Karl Marx, 1867

This quote in itself is quite prescient from Marx. But wait, there's more:

"The road to communism will be long and arduous, however, and capitalism will prove a steely foe. As if to paraphrase the words of that guy from Independence Day, the bourgeoisie will cry, 'we will not go quietly into the night'. And the proletariat will answer, 'of course not, you will have your 'In Da Club' ringtones to break the deathly silence'."
- ibid

He continues:

"Against a backdrop of people dropping their house keys back through the Anglo Irish Bank's letterbox - or whatever alternative to letterbox technology comes up with by then - and yet more people wondering why on earth they signed a one-year contract with O2 for the new iPhone when their old Nokia worked just fine, one man will rise like a Red Lazarus from the Starbucks-coloured flames, shouting, 'now you fucks - see what you get for giving Varadkar my seat?'"
- ibid

And there you have it folks. Marx - pissing all over The Oracle at Delphi.

# Last night a BK saved my life #

God Bless Globalisation!

There, I said it. Never did I think I would. All those years of idealism, thinking that Coca Cola are the Antichrist (well, that one probably still holds up) and that the free market is destroying indigenous cultures (again, this is most likely true - my argument is starting to break down before I've even made my point), have been usurped by one realisation: I would've starved to fucking death if there was no Mickey D's or BK Lounge in Tokyo.

Like pretty much every person in the western world, I thought that Che Guevara was the shit. He shot people for a cause he believed in, represented peoples devoid of true representation, and - most importantly - had a really cool poster that fit nicely between The Persistence of Memory and Jim Morrison on your bedroom wall.

That single iconic image of El Che (created by a guy from Skerries of all places!) led me to read The Communist Manifesto (well, the Wikipedia page on it at any rate) and think that socialism was the true path that civilisation must take in order to prosper, and that capitalism and the global free market was a Leviathan-like evil come to take advantage of, and expose, our true nature: one of greed and selfishness.

However, like most people, I grew tired of communist talk of rising up and revolting when I realised that the Proletariat of Ireland would stay home from the revolution if RTE commissioned another new - and predictably disastrous - comedy series. This does not mean, though, that I abandoned my socialist bent entirely. I still voted Socialist (for what it a) means, and b) is worth) and held some strong opinions regarding capitalism and its agents around the world - esp. with regards to more marginalised people (of course, according to a number of Irish people - mainly the ones with "tiochfaidh ar la" tattoos - the Irish were, and still remain, the most oppressed people on the planet).

I can now say that this is no longer the case. I'm sitting here munching away on my Fillet-O-Fish and miserly-sized cup of tea (I was too late for breakfast! Maybe socialism is the way!) and I can no longer keep up the charade: the free market works! And it works spectacularly!

Now, don't get me wrong. I know you can't extrapolate from isolated instances to the greater world. But fuck it, that's what I'm gona do. I like that I can get a Big Mac in almost every country in the world, because when it comes down to it - and, like I hinted before, maybe we are an ultimately selfish species - I would rather eat a nice burger than be fucking around trying to figure out what the animal pictured outside on the restaurant menu is supposed to be (unicorn, perhaps?).

Just as a matter of clarity: I do eat a range of foods, sushi included. However, sushi (and, to be quite frank, every other purchasable item!) in Tokyo is not cheap. There is no equivalent of the Euro-Saver Menu. Thus, cheap-assed (but nonetheless delicious) chain restaurants featuring cartoon characters as PR men become, by default, your staple food.