Every morning I wake up on
When the proletariat takes power, it may be quite possible that the proletariat will exert towards the classes over which it has just triumphed, a violent, dictatorial and even bloody power. I can’t see what objection one could make to this.
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Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede.
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I was in Glasgow for a week over the summer. It’s a very nice place; here’s what I wrote at the time:
Glasgow’s a curious city, which I can’t quite place. At first I thought it was just run down (which it is), but it’s a particular sort of run down. Perhaps its a feature of cities which owe their origin to industry (Glasgow rather reminds me of Leeds) rather than commerce (Glasgow doesn’t remind me of London, or Edinburgh, for that matter). London hides its ugliness in back streets and sprawling alleyways and passages. Glasgow doesn’t; its run-down streets are broad and atraight. I suppose it’s democractic.
We went to St Mungo’s Cathedral, which is mostly blah, but does have an interesting addition — a tiny, bright white chapel off the main Cathedral, like a little bit of Presbyterianism nestling close to the episcopy. St Mungo’s is also home to a museum of religion, a tremendously ecumenical (not to say childishly postmodern) exhibition of religious artefacts. In many ways it’s excellent, particularly the way it manages to appreciate religious art from a variety of sources without reducing it to just (secular, aesthetic) art. There is, however, an occassional sense of insincerity; I can’t believe any real person is this blandly tolerant, particularly when that tolerance extends to Orange Order parades, photographs of which rested next to pagan naming ceremonies and baptist baptisms.
It does feature an incredible zen garden, which has that tremendous zen quality of being metaphorical without being a metaphor for anything.
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If you want to make a career just become a gay and appoint a meeting with our manager.
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Dead Prez means dead the fucking president
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America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
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The annual interactive fiction competition has begun. I’ve only played two games so far, and they were both kind of disappointing, but hopefully they’ll be a couple of gems. Anyway, when the comp is over, I’ll post reviews here.
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The more I think about it, the more I like the Soviet Union. Now, a terrible state capitalist regime it may well have been, but at least you knew you were getting exploited and could just try and ignore it and get on with your life. Under free-market capitalism, on the other hand, you have to put in all the effort of deciding which bastard is going to exploit you, and which fetishised commodities you are going to alienate yourself by purchasing (the later, admittedly, can be diminished by shopping at Aldi). It goes back to what I was saying about de-Taylorised work — free-market capitalism doesn’t just fuck you, it forces you to like it. I think a little bit of gulag would be a fair price to pay for to get rid of all that hastle.
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The second part of my essay on counter-culture is up at DRL. It deals with the possibility (or, I should say, impossibility) of making any contemporary subculture into a counter-culture. Also, here are a couple of phrase I want to work into the essay, to give you an idea of the excitements to come:
Avril Lavigne will burn down more McDonalds than Kathleen Hanna — The society of the specatcle is a society of simulacra: if the culture industry is so obliging as to provide us with simulacra of rebellion, it is our duty to turn them into real rebels.
…
Today Adorno sounds … what’s the word? Quaint? With his fusty fulminations against jazz (oh, wait a second — the word’s ‘racist’, isn’t it).
…
At your next Reclaim the Streets, knock the techno on the head and play some S Club Juniors. Get the 8 year olds out on the streets with you.
Also, I’ll be developing a new anarchist tactic: the Britney Bloc.
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I haven’t read this yet, but it’s bound to be brilliant. Jon Ronson interviews S Club Juniors.
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