Yuletide Eve in the Holding Cell

“Hey!” yelled Joseph through the bars at the passing guard, “will you be charging us with something and keeping us here, or deporting us, and if so, to where?”

Joseph winced and tried to cover his face to prevent spittle from hitting him as the guard screamed a response at him. He turned heel and sat back on the cot he and his cellmate were sharing.

“What did he say?” asked Leon.

“I don’t know, I don’t speak Japanese.”

“Probably this was one of the shortcomings to our plan,” said Leon, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Attempting to sail into Japan, illegally, under COVID-19 conditions, without speaking Japanese, to travel to the gender neutral toilet in Kamakura.”

“I appreciate your acknowledgement of the gender neutral quality of the toilet in question,” said Joseph, looking his friend in the eye. “Very progressive.”

“And I appreciate you, friend.”

The two friends laid down in a spooning formation on the narrow cot and held each other for warmth. Leon, the big spoon, wrapped his arms tenderly around Joseph as they pressed into each other.

“I wish we had a blanket,” lamented Joseph.

“I know,” said Leon, planting a tender kiss on Joseph’s cheek. “What do you think our comrades are up to right now?”

“Probably huddled around the burning effigy drinking hot toddies and chanting ‘takbir’s. I wish we were with them,” Joseph sighed.

“Alan told me there’d be a piñata as well as a burned effigy this year. He said they’re going to get Stefan Engel drunker than usual, blindfold him, and make him crack it open with his bare fists.”

“What’s inside the piñata?”

“Several kilos of vegan okonomiyaki.”

Joseph turned around to face his friend. “I wish we had a blanket or something, it’s so cold and if we could at least cover ourselves from the waist down we could…”

“I know, hun. Try not to think about it,” said Leon.

“I just hate it!” Joseph yelped, a little tear rolling down his cheek. “We couldn’t complete our mission to urinate on Tetsurō Watsuji’s grave, just like we couldn’t build socialist construction up to a level that would allow humanity to pass from necessity into freedom, I just feel like a failure, and I just want to get drunk and get off with you right now, and we can’t even do that!”

Leon stroked his cheek tenderly as he looked out the tiny window of their holding cell at the moon shining over coastal Japan. “I know, Joseph. It’s hard to live with failure. Trust me, I know.”

“Yeah,” said Joseph. “We’ll still win though, right?”

“Inshallah.” said Leon. “Let’s try to focus on the reason for the season, and not put ourselves down right now.”

“You’re right,” said Joseph. “It’s December 25th, the eve of Tetsurō Watsuji’s death, and we should be focusing on that.”

“Did you read what [REDACTED] wrote? That Watsuji is actually a dialectical materialist, because of all the ningen stuff about society?” scoffed Leon.

“Absurd!” muttered Joseph, sitting upright. “The entire point of Watsuji’s work in every period is essentially anti-universalist, and his purported self-criticism about his past individualism is actually worse because of its real social context as academic propaganda for fascist Japanese nationalism!”

“You don’t have to tell me,” said Leon, standing and pacing in front of him. “It’s also deeply disturbing how Watsuji is held up as a sort of philosopher of Buddhism in this sense. The entire obsession with geography as a basis for social belonging has a clear Shinto origin, for starters, but more than that, it all builds into obvious Japanese nationalism which is completely at odds with the quest for Buddhahood that genuine Buddhists pursue.”

“It’s actually quite perverse,” agreed Joseph, tearing open two cigarettes and packing himself a pipe to smoke with the contents. “Every time Watsuji lauds the state, and in particular, the imperial Japanese state with its caste structures and racial supremacism, when he considers social rebellion to be an egotistical act, he forgets that non-conformity, social rebellion, and in particular social rebellion against outdated and superstitious structures are, in addition to being the source of development of human society from stage to stage in general, at the core of how Buddhism first became revealed as a great world religion!”

“Sure,” said Leon. “But this dual allegiance of the sangha to Buddha and king has a long history in every Buddhist society. Watsuji didn’t invent these problems in the Japanese academy, he simply worked hard to legitimise them there.”

Joseph nodded, “as with every religious tradition, the relationship between its ideal aim of universal consciousness and overcoming of the contradiction between self and other through spiritual transcendence is at odds with its material reliance on the state, which is an oppressive class structure and geographically and culturally limited in its particularity.”

“Word,” said Leon. “Do you want to make out and do some over-the-pants rubbing? All this philosophy talk has really got me going.”

“Yeah, all right.”

FUCK TETSURŌ WATSUJI.

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Varoufakis Back on His Bullshit

Yanis Varoufakis, the most famous veteran of the Syriza debacle, has taken a break from his prolific career as a male model to smugly host the 2020 Summit of the Progressive International, taking place, as everything else does lately, over Zoom and broadcast on YouTube.

Varoufakis, who dominated far too much of the Summit’s time with his self-important bullshit, spoke at great length about the importance of reforming capitalism maximally on its own terms, at a time when those terms are about to plunge us all into a global climate crisis the likes of which have yet to be seen.

Not content merely to take up so much of the actual audio and video time, he made sure that his pitiful, washed-up and frankly no longer relevant self was centred in discussion of the Summit in other news sources, even including extensive quotes from his prepared speech under that which he was expected to say.

Due to the Spatula’s perpetual commitment to combatting even the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev, Varoufakis’s hair-twin, we would remiss if we did not note that in a flagrant revisionism of class struggle, Varoufakis called for the problem of exploitation of workers to be addressed by converting each capitalist enterprise into “a corporation of all classes”.

Varoufakis also informed us that he personally does not shop on Amazon, and buys lots of fair trade coffee, or something.

The absolute highlight of the dismal Varoufakis Show where most of his guests were likewise held back by Keynesian cowardice from saying a single fucking thing of substance, was the appearance of Nick Estes, who is absolutely killing it on Twitter lately. In addition to a greatly Marxist call for land back to the Indigenous and a [planned?] economy for people and other such dank nugs, Estes heroically caused the one moment of tension by using the dreaded “s-word” which Varoufakis had clearly forbidden all guests from using.

“The name of the system we need to construct is socialism.” said Nick Estes, leaning forward for emphasis and staring into the camera. “Socialism. Socialism. Socialism.”

Varoufakis scrambled to regain control of the situation, lest he have to lose any sponsors for this unacceptably Stalinist turn of events: “Just so everyone out there knows, Progressive International doesn’t believe in any of that ‘actually existing socialism’, stuff, we’re just… we want to be beyond capitalism and critical of capitalism and contra-capitalist and everything else but allow me to emphasise that Mr. Estes is quite alone in his Enver Hoxha-esque call for ‘socialist construction’. No fucking way. No thank you.”

Before Estes or anyone else could interject any clarifying question or comment in response to this rant, Varoufakis nervously scratched his scalp and continued rambling: “I mean, if this were the Soviet Union, which thank God it’s not, I mean, that would be a really dystopic vision for the future, let me tell you, especially because I personally would be sent to GULAG. I mean I would. Me. Yanis Varoufakis. Imagine we’re in the Soviet Union now. I’d be the centre of attention then too, and Stalin couldn’t stand me getting all the attention, and so I’d have to go to GULAG. Is that what you want, Nick Estes? This is a fun game too, right?”

At time of press, [REDACTED] at the Worker’s Spatula Twitter was tweeting fantasies about an entirely different kind of summit with Varoufakis, if you catch my meaning, wink wink, nudge nudge.

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The Future: Max Zirngast

ANKARA – As the international revolutionary movement is already aware, as they all keep their eyes on Turkey at all times for the slightest development in that country, Max Zirngast was acquitted on September the 11th, 2019, of all of the trumped up charges which were collected to slander him since his initial detention on September the 11th, 2018.

No longer facing a ban on leaving the country as he has since he was initially freed, this heroic foreign socialist who actually learned proper Turkish, unlike all the others, is now free to go wherever he wants. One of our Ankara correspondents sat down with the intrepid Austrian to figure out what his plans are, and what the class implications of those plans are:

WS: Congratulations on being found innocent of being a member of a terrorist organisation, and thus returning to the ranks of ordinary non-AKP supporters [AKP’s note: this still constitutes a kind a terrorist]. With such a high-profile career in hypothetical terror, perhaps you have some unique insight into the anti-terror legislation in Turkey?

MZ: Definitely, I do. Principally, as you can imagine, the worst thing about the existing anti-terror legislation is that there’s nothing in it preventing Turkish authorities from arbitrarily detaining and arresting me, Max Zirngast. I would say that if Turkey had any commitment to democratic norms, they would follow the example of the European bourgeois democracies and include in all anti-terror legislation stipulations regarding the innocence of Max Zirngast.

WS: Definitely, there’s a campaign the international movement can get behind. But what do you have to say about the thousands of other democrats, progressives, leftists, socialists, and especially the Kurds who have been jailed by the Turkish state?

MZ: I think they are all very nice guys. Probably we should free them, too.

WS: So given the current situation in Turkey and your status as a foreigner, it’s probably pretty unclear whether or not you’ll stay. If you are able to remain in Ankara, what would your plans be?

MZ: Well naturally I was planning to enter legal politics, become elected President of Turkey, and rule via an increasingly paranoid Twitter account. But just before my day in court, I got started with the Twitter megalomania, and I found myself tweeting all sorts of things like “the Turkish deep state is too WEAK to hold ME, Max Zirngast! Their FAKE LEGAL SYSTEM is just the product of a series of 20TH CENTURY IMPERIALIST-BACKED COUPS. Sad!”; and “I have a bunch of GREAT IDEAS for ABOLISHING THE COMMODITY FORM, give up on CROOKED TAYYIP and choose me as your all-dominating dictatorial patriarch figure, Turks!”, and you know, does the world really need more of that?

So instead I’ll probably open a bakery and sell vegan Apfelstrudel.

WS: Alright now, if, on the other hand, you are forced by circumstance to leave the paradise on Earth which is Ankara, where you have made so many friends in the socialist movement, would you have to start all over? Do you feel you have a future in left politics outside of Turkey, at this point?

MZ: Do I have a future in left politics? Baby, I am the future of left politics. What you should be asking yourself is if anyone will pay attention to Turkey, and all of your struggles and organisations and mass movements and so forth when I, Max Zirngast, have gone. If I go back to Austria, maybe the Austrian left will become good. If I go to Germany, I plan to surpass Stefan Engel. If I go to Switzerland or Liechtenstein, maybe I can figure out why you guys are so obsessed with these stupid countries, which frankly just take up space in our region.

To be honest I have to take a break and go back to Austria either way. My owner, herself a Turkish socialist woman, is a big fan of Worker’s Spatula and your socialist matriarchy line. She wants to start a man harem of Austrian studs like myself, and as such I have to please mistress. But after that, she and I and the others might go any number of places, depending on the political conditions, and you can expect that wherever we are is where the action is gonna be.

WS: Very nice. Expecting great things from you, Max Zirngast. Any final thoughts for our remaining five readers [Editor’s note: now that Facebook is refusing to put our WordPress pieces in anyone’s feed]?

MZ: I don’t know. Tell the workers and oppressed that I think they’d make a cute couple or something. Seviyorsalar gitsinler konuşsunlar bence.

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Joe Biden Calls for Donald Trump to be Crowned King

LONDON – Donald Trump has shocked liberal public opinion again by daring to visit Tsaress Elizabeth II, the hereditary monarch of the pro-Nazi Windsor Klan. This brazen home invasion occurred at Her Majesty’s invitation, to coordinate their joint imperialist business, including their proxy war against the people of Yemen, representing to all decent-minded people a clear assault by “President” Trump on the progressive and liberal values manifested in this anti-Catholic head of one of history’s most brutal imperialist states.

The Queen, however, is reported to have boldly joined the protest against Trump by warmly receiving him dressed slightly better than him, with winking aristocratic garment choices signalling that she thinks him less-than-well-bred, and therefore less fully human (YAS O LITERAL QUEEN! FIGURATIVELY SLAY!).

Although we at Worker’s Spatula would be remiss if we did not note that both of them were dressed most inappropriately by the standards of Pride Month.

The Queen’s act of resistance to the capitalist-imperialist power elite chauvinism represented in the foul presence of Donald Trump, the first abuser of women Her Majesty has ever had to tolerate in person, certainly did not go unnoticed throughout the rest of the Resistance Axis. Her Lebanese counterpart, male model and Shi’a cleric Hassan Nasrallah, hastened to invite the parasitic feudal holdover to Beirut to coordinate strategy against the Donald.

US liberal opinion, however, has been more cynical. Speaking on behalf of the extreme left fringe of white YanKKKee U$$ political opinion, Joseph Biden, declared that while he shared Her Majesty’s “outrage at the very existence of sexist relics and racist white men like the Donald”, the Queen’s “impotent” protest had been hardly more effective in “toppling” Trump than other subliminal protests by such “tribune[s] of the oppressed” as Shinzo Abe.

Said Biden, “if we want to end the Trump presidency, we clearly have no choice but to crown him King of the United [$$tate$$ of AmeriKKKa]”:

Like all liberals, I adore pompous displays by imperialist charlatans with nothing of value to contribute to politics as far as the poor are concerned, who spend all their time hob-nobbing, wheeling, dealing, and indeed stealing with other members of the capitalist elite who control the imperialist world system.

But only when they are unelected inheritors of feudalist dogma which states that God Almighty has subjugated the commoners to their bloodline, damn it!

Unfortunately for us, in addition to technically being a republic of some sort, the United [$$tate$$] lacks a state religion which can be used to legitimise Trump’s glorious ascent to the throne.

Therefore, I call on all Ameri[KKK]ans, of all faith backgrounds, to join in a bipartisan effort to bring their clerics together for an Ecumenical Ameri[KKK]an Council dedicated towards the creation of a United Church of #TheResistance, which can then speak on behalf of the Godhead and bestow upon the Donald a divine mandate such that his seed may rule over us forever and ever, thereby rendering his antics inoffensive to Ameri[KKK]an democracy.

Asked if he predicted this would take place before the 2020 US Presidential Election, the champion of modern progressive values against Trump’s cishet boys’ club chauvinism confidently asserted that it very well could, allowing him to be elected as a President more hostile to Russian interests, and as he put it “not so gay for Putin”.

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Humourless Marxist Reviews: Behzat Ç.

Behzat Ç is a Turkish police drama about the existential crises of a detective investigating murders in the Turkish capital Ankara, which would not seem the usual target for a Humourless Marxist Review, particularly written by an Australian comrade, but here we are, aren’t we?

Why did I spend the past three years learning Turkish through this programme as my only form of international theory or practice, while my only domestic practice, organising fast food workers within RaFFWU, dwindled to nothing? Because the Worker’s Spatula Central Committee ordered me to do so, and if the vanguard of the vanguard of the vanguard of the world revolution tells you to watch some Turkish guy with a messy haircut run around in the dark punching criminals and being sad about it, you fucking do it, comrade.

When [REDACTED] first discovered me, I was just a low-level member of Socialist Alliance trying to organise the fast food workers of Melbourne. Now I speak fluent Turkish and am intimately familiar with Turkish drinking culture, and also I’m on my way to “Angara” to join the (Birleşik) Devrimci Parti’nin saflarına. All thanks to three seasons of a show about a cop.

Obviously, this is no communist show. The hero is an officer of the bourgeois state, after all. But the portrayal of the police in the show is consistently revealing of the limitations of “justice” in class society: driven by an honest conscience, whenever Behzat and his friends try to do the right thing, they are either forced to go against the explicit orders of the state bureaucracy and struggle against the actual forces of the state, or they find themselves undermined, and the unjust order uses the police force at large to protect the bourgeois individuals and class interests which, in the final instance, command them.

It’s easy to miss this theme, even for many critical Turkish viewers. In the service of gaining a more total understanding of Ankara society in all its diverse class and social contradictions than any Turkish person, merely from watching this television show, I have not left the house in the past six months, surviving on cigarettes, tea, and rakı, just like Behzat and his friends.

I’m told that a lot of Turkish “diziler” are fixated on the toiling lower classes, and Behzat Ç. is no exception, with many scenes portraying working class neighbourhoods, and even militant leftist organisations. The portrayal of these groups is in many ways inaccurate, but it is broadly sympathetic, and leftist viewers will certainly be interested in this theme.

The gender politics are also not perfect, as one might expect from a show so dominated by men, but it is interesting to watch how even in this context, men have the ability to show emotional vulnerability and cry, etc. Presumably, this show influenced the US programme Steven Universe, which combines Harun’s love of snacks with the more emotionally healthy and gender-progressive men characters to create the titular Steven Universe, the Ankara cop of Anglo children’s TV heroes.

I have reported to [REDACTED] that I finished this series, and would recommend it to others trying to acclimate themselves with the Turkish language and the Ankara culture; she replied that I ought to write this review and publish it on the Spatula page. She then presented me with a thumb drive full of other Turkish “diziler” which she recommends for my flight to Turkey, including “Masum”, “Leyla ile Mecnun”, and “Şahsiyet”.

When I asked if these series were also about Ankara, or were about left politics in Turkey, she replied “no, they’re just really good for binge-watching”.

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All Trump Wants for Chanukkah is a United 32 County Socialist Transjordan

JERUSALEM/AL-QUDS – Following the usual misinterpretation of Comrade Trump’s progressive accelerationist views in the FAKE NEWS MEDIA, Worker’s Spatula, the only honest news source in the English language, and the true force behind the election of Comrade Trump, are forced to once again set the record straight.

“I love you Worker’s Spatula kids, you’re the best, really I love you, can I say how much, is anybody seeing this?” exclaimed the Donald to a cheering crowd in Jerusalem, as he motioned to the small Worker’s Spatula contingent standing in the front row, waving our red Spatula and Sickle flag. “These are the only ones who tell it like it is, don’t you all listen to the rest, it’s all FAKE NEWS!

“Sad!” added the President of the imperialist United States of AmeriKKKa.

“So as I was saying: Tel Aviv is no capital, because the Zionist entity is entirely illegitimate,” explained Trump, to the crowd of Hebrew and Arab socialists who had poured into the streets to hear the only hope for the US speak on the important political questions of their region. “We won’t accept their phony two-state solution, because our only goal is a united, thirty-two county socialist republic encompassing all of Transjordan! We’re going to build an Phalaistín Nua, we’re going to do it by Chanukkah, and we’re going to make the Brits pay for it!

“Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall!”

The PFLP greeted the announcement warmly, and called upon all Trump supporters and other enemies of the Zionists to join them in their renewed struggle against the occupation, until Palestine should be free, from sea to shining Dead Sea, and then well into the fucking desert where the British occupational authorities drew some arbitrary jagged straight-line borders.

The PFLP’s statement underlined, however, that those borders are sacred, because there is a Syrian nation which is the same thing as the Syrian state. As a citation, we were referred to “the noted Middle East experts in the CPGB-ML.”

Meanwhile, across that border, the THKP-C/MLSPB took a break from their busy schedule of armed propaganda to release the following press statement in response to the rapidly escalating developments in Palestine:

Our fighters are being stretched thin across all the fronts we have to fight on, but we’re extremely hopeful. Not long ago we were saying that Rojava is the Bekaa Vadisi of the 21st century. Now the entire Arab geography is being opened up to more and more opportunities for armed struggle and everyday resistance.

We are confident that the revolutionary masses of this great geography will soon join us in our rightful struggle. We are right, we will win.

We encourage all our trench comrades in Turkey and Kurdistan to study the Arabic language, and be ready for struggle at any time from Yemen to Tunisia.

There are those cowards and reformists who fear the coming storm which will consume the old order across the Arab world. To them we say: how many months ago was ISIS a threatening spectre which was expected to pull all of the region into its barbaric sway. But thanks to the determination of everyday working people, of the poor and oppressed, of the Kurdish guerrillas and the Marxist-Leninists of Turkey, ISIS were beaten back and now Raqqah has fallen.

Fear not the coming struggle, comrades! Was it not Mahir Çayan who said:

“There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent.”

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Shock as DSA Establishes Fraternal Relations with CPC

NEW YORK CITY/TWITTER: The US left is reeling in the aftermath of DSA’s announcement that, following their decision to leave the so-called “Socialist International”, they have established fraternal relations with the revisionist Communist Party of China.

“After internal debate, we are entering into fraternal relations with our comrades of the CPC. Socialist China is a beacon to the world and a shining example of what we want to establish in America, only without going through the tankie Maoist phase,” said DSA spokesperson and self described “Dengist Harringtonite” Brendan O’Grady.

“We want Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, only instead it’s Socialism with American Characteristics. There’s no real difference between the two, only instead of mass unemployment and environmental degradation being masked by singing ‘March of the Volunteers’, we’ll sing ‘This Land is Your Land’” added O’Grady.

The Revolutionary Organisation of Labor, the US ICOR affiliate and chief source of Marxist entryism into the DSA, released the following statement:

At the current stage, we have to accept this embrace of Chinese revisionism as a step forwards for the proletariat of the US (North) oppressor nation. Viewing Chinese social imperialism as a model deserves harsh criticism, but the objective conditions are such that anything that can stand in the way of warmongering against the DPRK is progressive. Further, it is our hope that by passing through the Three Worlds Theory, we might eventually be able to steer the DSA towards Marxism-Leninism.

But let’s give the kids some credit, they’re moving pretty quick. They’re kicking out cops and they support Chokwe Antar Lumumba. Remember when we thought the best we could hope for was Sanders?

Less critical self-identified Marxist-Leninists in the US, particularly those found on Twitter, were thrown into confusion by these developments, which pitted their uncritical love of red flags against their uncritical hatred of practical politics in their own country:

“DSA is a bunch of petty bourgeois cop lovers! How could they support China? How could China support them?” asked a confused @BeriasT34.

“DSA has broken with imperialism. Long live DSA, long live Socialist China” @NKVDfan replied, adding a rose emoji to his Twitter name.

“It’s another psyop, everything’s a psyop,” opined @DaddyStalin.

“Except me”, he hastily added in a follow-up tweet.

At time of press, the Bolşevik Parti of Turkey and North Kurdistan (one of the country’s three ICOR affiliates) had released a twenty-page analysis of the DSA and the YDS, comparing the former to TİP and the RSDLP, and the latter to DevGenç and the Bolsheviki. The long screed ended by imploring the “rebel youth” of the DSA to send a representative to meet them in Germany to coordinate declarations. Fellow Turkish ICOR affiliate TİKB have reportedly sent an enquiry to the YDS Twitter page enquiring about coordinating armed struggle.

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Worker’s Spatula New Year’s Message and Self-Criticism

“No, we see your point,” explained our host, politely. “His analysis of international relations IS good, but I don’t think we’ll be converting the entire party to Shi’a Islam on the basis of that alone.”

“We’re recording,” interrupted the Yank. “Read the statement.”

“COMRADES!” began a bearded comrade with an obnoxious English accent, drops of butter tea dripping down his moustache, “We, the central committee of Worker’s Spatula, the rebel base of Marxist-Leninist internet irony, are here in a mountain camp in Bhutan, in solidarity with the local Gonzalists and their popular war against Bhutanese happiness! MABUHAY!”

“Down with mirth! Fuck joy!” interrupted one of the guerrillas in the back.

2016 marked the first full calendar year of Worker’s Spatula activity. Despite a generally pessimistic mood in some corners, in many ways, we count this past year as a success: We successfully defended Jeremy Corbyn against the Blairites, we defeated Hillary Clinton through our accelerationist agent, the Donald, and we sold a few t-shirts.

Per our original self-description, we take no responsibility for the many setbacks the world revolutionary movement has suffered over the course of the past year. Further, we are responsible for all progressive motion and unity among the revolutionary masses and their vanguard. So one would think we have no room for self-criticism, but we do. And not only because we’re being hosted by Maoists.

First of all, during our New Year’s self-criticism last year, we promised video propaganda. We did produce one low quality video, and wrote two or three others, but we made the grievous error of trusting the Yanks with video production duties. Needless to say, we should’ve known from Hollywood that the US is the last country you can put your faith in for quality video work. Hopefully and إن شاء الله, 2017 permits us to produce those and other videos for your viewing enjoyment.

More importantly, if we’re perfectly honest with ourselves, Worker’s Spatula is altogether too accessible to people who don’t spend all day reading ROL newsletters and founding documents of Turkish Marxist-Leninist groups from the 80s and 90s. We are simply not weird and obscure enough. Sometimes we even catch anarchists reading our work. It’s extremely disheartening to see, and represents clear evidence of some deviation from the correct line handed down to us from the prophet Vladimir Lenin (SAW).

Prepare for a new year which is more brutal, more dialectical, and more materialist. Prepare for jokes that Die Linke people won’t get, and GegenStandpunkt will hate themselves for chuckling at. We’re going to make jokes about Hegel and Gramsci and Left Communism, we’re going to talk about the THKPC-MLSPB instead of the MLKP, and we’re basically going to make 90% of our readers and 50% of our own staff declare the Spatula to be a hateful, unreadable mess barely worth mentioning.

We’re going to make the RCPB-ML look like the fucking CPB.

And yet somehow we’re going to keep gaining followers, because this is the internet, and quality and quantity keep transforming into each other in the ways we least expect.

In this spirit, we call on all of you to make a New Year’s resolution with us: MAKE YOUR RESOLUTION, REVOLUTION. Resolve to join Worker’s Spatula in our regular reading of revolutionary texts, the Spatula Reading Group, and become part of the process of our interventions in practical politics by responding to them!

On the first and fifteenth of every month, we’re going to assign a different revolutionary text for collective reading. It may be from the Marxist-Leninist canon, or perhaps it will be Hegel, but we will provide a link to the text online.

We want you, the readers, to write a one-page summary, or response with your reactions, preferably in terms of how you were able to relate the reading to the material conditions in which you are doing revolutionary politics. Through this online reading and recontextualising, you will be taking part in the dialectic that underlies Worker’s Spatula. You can push the spiral upwards! Push it! Push it good! Push it real good!

Taking part in this campaign is a great way to improve your Marxist reading and help expand Worker’s Spatula’s collective consciousness of the theoretical and practical struggles in your life. We encourage all to take part, and to e-mail us at mastursublator [at] gmail.com

Finally, in spite of whatever setbacks may loom large in your sight, we hope all comrades will cling tight to hope and struggle on to great victories in the new year! In particular, we hail Oscar Temaru’s inevitable victory in the upcoming French presidential elections. When the power of the Spatula and the revolutionary masses are united, miracles are possible! We are right, we will win!

WORKER’S AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORLD – UNITE!

Upon completing the reading of the statement, all present raised their Kalashnikovs skywards and fired into the heavens whilst the Yank screamed: “DIALECTICS, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Corbyn Demands Loyalty to PYD

LONDON – Despite claiming to be reinventing himself as a populist, Hoxhaite leader of the UK Party of Labour Jeremy Corbyn may find his new policy proposal to be less than popular with the still-unliberated British electorate.

The proposal, unveiled at a small press conference today at his Islington bunker, would see all new public servants having to take three months out of their first year in office to fight alongside the YPG/YPJ forces linked with the PYD in Syria.

Matt Zarb-Cousin, a spokesman for Mr. Corbyn, told the Spatula the idea shouldn’t be controversial: “Talk of ‘British values’ is cheap nationalist populism,” he said. “What we should be doing is trying to foster universal values. At the moment, it seems to us, no cause is more important than defeating ISIS and establishing Rojava as a beacon of women’s rights and other progressive values in the Middle East.”

But once ISIS is defeated, what then for the fledgling scheme?

“That’s the beauty of the whole scheme, its simplicity. At a moment’s notice we can have thousands of armed pen-pushers liberate Guantanamo Bay or back up the FARC in Colombia.

“They could even play the role of a praetorian guard for the coming revolutionary regime in the People’s Republic of Scotland. We’re only limited by our imaginations from here on in.”

Humourless Marxist Reviews: Bee Movie

The astute reader might note that Bee Movie, a Dreamworks film in which bourgeois stooge Jerry Seinfeld (no relation) stars as a talking bee, was released a decade ago and that, typically, film criticism focuses on films released more recently than a decade ago. This reader would be correct in these suppositions, but wrong in their implicit conclusion, namely, that we should refrain from reviewing this film simply because it was released a decade ago.

In case you have not noticed, o astute reader, Bee Movie has become something of a “meme” as of late, meaning that this film has garnered a great deal of attention among the masses. As Marxist-Leninists, then, it is our duty to address this film and to interpret it in appropriately rigorous fashion.

What’s that, o astute reader? You have further objections? You note that Bee Movie has already received sufficient academic attention from bourgeois scholars such as the late Jack Halberstam? That in his book, the Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam interprets Bee Movie as a transgressive children’s film, but under a toothless postmodern rubric? All the more reason for us to intervene with the correct analysis! Halberstam’s analysis of Bee Movie may be prominent, but we would be remiss to abandon the working class to it, with all its glaring insufficiencies. Halberstam even identifies Bee Movie, quite incorrectly, as a Pixar film! This should not surprise us; were Halberstam able to attend to concrete matters in their specificity, he would not be a postmodernist.

In any event, Bee Movie is invaluable as a tool for understanding the inevitable failure of “progressive” liberal responses to exploitation. The film’s main character, Barry Benson, discovers with horror that millions of bees worldwide are crowded into bee farms, worked to exhaustion, only to have their honey expropriated at the end of the dreadful process. This is a clear analogy to the expropriation of surplus-value from productive labourers by the bourgeoisie. So clear, in fact, that I found it a bit on-the-nose. Such clumsy analogising would not feel out of place in the Trotskyite, imperialist spy and propagandist George Orwell’s book about pigs being more equal than sheep or whatever.

(I don’t recall the title – I’ve never read it.)

What happens next is of far more interest. For what does Benson do when he becomes conscious of his fellow bee-letarians’ exploitation? Does he form a party and organise for a bee revolution? No, dear reader, he does not. He instead brings a lawsuit against the beekeepers in a doomed attempt to resolve the contradiction through recourse to bourgeois “justice”.

After eking out a legal victory, Benson returns honey to the bees, but we can easily infer that much of the honey is promptly appropriated by a small caste of bourgeois bees (or bee-geoisie), among whose ranks Benson may count himself. This leads to maldistribution of resources and mass unemployment, which in turn spurs a massive environmental crisis. Sound familiar?

The lesson of Bee Movie, properly interpreted, is thus a Leninist one: the corridors of the bourgeois state offer no route to true emancipation: “The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” For this reason, we may understand Bee Movie as a progressive bourgeois film, one which may be repurposed as revolutionary propaganda in Marxist reading groups across the globe.

Patrick Warburton is also pretty funny in it.