Labour Aristocracy Understood through Fucking Forklift Operator

MELBOURNE – Worker’s Spatula, being opposed to any sort of dogmatism and continuously staying aware of our limits in providing ready-made answers, have always maintained a healthy and dialectical relationship with the working class and contemporary trends in their consciousness. A burning question of the last century or so of communist organising has always been – what are the exact issues which the toiling masses are willing to rally around?

In that spirit, our intrepid Australian correspondent sharpened her boomerang and went to search for answers in the very heart of the class struggle – a warehouse in Carlton, Melbourne. After silently observing a group of workers walking out for a lunch break from a nearby bush, she adjusted her cork hat and approached them with one question in mind – what is it that most grinds their proletarian gears? Could it be the behaviour of the warehouse boss? Their pathetic wages? The disgusting sandwiches served at the canteen?

“No. It’s that bastard in the forklift,” quipped Dave Surname, a particularly burly worker who nodded towards a self-satisfied man wheeling about in the aforementioned vehicle. “Bruce, he’s called. Bruce Franić. They put that bludger in the forklift right at day one ’cause he claimed he came in eleventh at last year’s Shitbox Rally. And I’ve been eyeing that forklift for months. Look at me hands!”

The Spatula’s correspondent recoiled in horror.

“This is the dreaded box rash, missie,” Dave continued. “Get on the forklift and you’re free of the rash, full stop. That figjam has never experienced it, and probably never will, and he keeps rolling around us on that piece of shit, as if he’s just in it to spite us. I’d fucking bash him, if only the manager wasn’t around.”

Clara Paulson, the floor manager, was found standing near the warehouse entrance, doing whatever it is floor managers do with their clipboards: “Bruce? He’s not very popular with his co-workers, but I don’t mind him – he’s an alright worker. He fills his daily quota and does what he’s paid to do. Yeah, any idiot can drive a forklift around, but I guess somebody’s got to do that too. I don’t understand all the rage – just a couple of days back somebody wrote ‘OSSM: RAYMOND BERBLING LIVES ON IN OUR STRUGGLE’ on the forklift, with something that looked like platypus dung. What in the hell is an OSSM?”

Our correspondent returned to the group, who were by now finishing their lunch break and heading back to work.

“You do realise that what you are experiencing fits perfectly with the Marxist-Leninist theory of the labour aristocracy?” she asked enthusiastically.

“And what would that be?” enquired Noah Talbot, another strapping proletarian.

“Well, there exists a privileged upper layer of the working class which receives a higher wage and better working and living conditions. Like Bruce, who gets to drive that awesome forklift that you lot all envy. Well, that higher wage of his – and that forklift – come from superprofits extracted through imperialism, which basically means that he’ll lose that forklift if the government stops oppressing the Aboriginal peoples. So his parasitic forklift-driving existence is a vulgar manifestation of the connection between your exploitation and alienation as proletarians and the horrific colonial oppression experienced by the Aboriginals!”

“Yeah, he’s a fucking cunt,” agreed Noah.

Our correspondent thanked the workers for their time and handed everyone a copy of Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, which she makes sure to keep in her backpack at all times, as well as a copy of Enver Hoxha’s “Imperialism and the Revolution” for the group to share.

After receiving the report, the Worker’s Spatula Central Committee carefully reflected on the matter, and came to the conclusion that there will be no revolution in the warehouses if the spine of the forklift aristocracy is not immediately broken (and thrown into the fire). Thus, we, Worker’s Spatula, on behalf of the exploited and oppressed the world over, hereby instruct all sympathetic forces to add “abolition of the very concept of ‘forklift operator'” to their minimum programmes; in workplaces where such a position is necessary, it is to be regularly rotated on a daily basis among all able employees.

Death to the forklift tyranny, freedom for the proletariat!