Stefan Engel Discovers Christmas

THÜRINGEN, GERMANY – Notable big shot ICOR guy and Maoist theoretician Stefan Engel has ordered all MLPD cadre to meet him in his beloved Thüringen to make “the biggest announcement in German history”.

Upon arrival at the press conference, MLPD cadre and local press (including Worker’s Spatula correspondents from across the German-speaking world) found that Stefan Engel was not alone at the podium, but was flanked by pop singer Mariah Carey:

“Christmas is magic. It’s so festive and joyous. Nothing else really matters,” explained Worker’s Spatula’s favourite German, giddy as a schoolboy, to the confused stares of all present.

“Ever since Stefan first heard my song, ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’, earlier this week, he’s been texting and e-mailing and demanding I come to Germany to meet with him and spread the good word. I don’t know too much about this Maoism stuff, but it seems pretty close to my politics, and I’m happy as long as my music is bringing happiness to people, especially if it’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You,” explained Carey.

“From now on, I want the MLPD to cease all operations not related to Christmas, Mariah Carey, or Tetsurō Watsuji from December 24th until New Year’s Day, every year,” explained a suddenly dour-faced Engel.

Sources present at the conference agreed this was the biggest Christmas song-related event in communist news ever since the IMCWP commemorated the death of their fallen comrade, George Michael.

“We Germans don’t really know very much about Christmas, in spite of our strong opinions on Jesus, which in part may explain our reactionary national Spirit,” explained Engel to his followers, who were furiously scribbling notes to a background soundtrack of Mariah Carey’s hit song. “We don’t have any songs or traditions related to the birth of Jesus, who the German state informs us is our official Lord and Saviour, but who we only celebrate through the academic study of Luther, Bonhoeffer, or Hegel if we’re lucky enough to live in a Protestant area.

“In my own native Bavaria, on the other hand, I had never even heard of Christmas as a child. This, like most elements of Bavarian culture, is tantamount to child abuse, and I don’t want the next generation to grow up without knowing how wonderful Christmas is, and, oh wait, shut up, here it comes!” exclaimed Engel, jumping up and down, barely able to contain his joy as the bridge began:

Oh, all the lights are shining so brightly everywhere
And the sound of children’s laughter fills the air
And everyone is singing, I hear those sleigh bells ringing
Santa, won’t you bring me the one I really need?

Sources present at the conference could not confirm if the one who Engel “really need”s is in fact Joseph Stalin.

The IMT’s local German affiliate “der Funke” have released a press release following their “Marxmas” merchandising push noting that the IMT and all its affiliates had long been aware of the joy and magic of Christmas, and had been working hard to raise awareness of the holiday and its festive spirit among the Germans long before Stefan Engel’s announcement:

In fact, while we have not been partisans of Christmas for our entire history, having not had a clear pro-Christmas line upon our formation in 1992, Ted Grant and Alan Woods both met with Mariah Carey personally in 1994 to learn all about Christmas and the laughter of children while the Stalinists ignored Carey and indeed condemned her as a representative of US imperialism.

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Sandwich Theory

We at Worker’s Spatula pride ourselves in being both the most theoretically advanced of shitposters, and also the shittiest of theoreticians. It comes as a great disappointment to us that in our years of weird theoretical interventions on Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and now Instagram, we have barely succeeded in explaining even the most basic fact about Hegel’s dialectical method which Marx upheld and appropriated, namely that it is not about THESIS – ANTITHESIS – SYNTHESIS.

We encourage readers who really are coming at this stuff from the beginning to start with the famous Twitter thread. However, we recognise that some of our examples were either too political or too philosophical for many of our target audience, who are used to discussing everything in terms of what is and what is not a sandwich.

Therefore, we present to you, our dear readers, comrades and strugglers, toilers and oppressed, from Melbourne to Moscow, the dialectical answer to the question “is it a sandwich?”

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Well, obviously it must first be said that a hot dog is technically a kind of sausage, which is ordinarily served in a manner that provokes sandwich controversy:

the thing in the package is a hot dog,
the thing on the label may be a sandwich

However, the standard presentation of the hamburger patty in contemporary culinary norms being called a “hamburger”, we accept that most readers likewise will excuse further reference to a hot dog on a hot dog bun as a “hot dog”. Are these bread-meat combinations sandwiches?

Without a doubt. By removing the sausage or the patty and replacing them with, e.g. tuna fish, everyone would agree that what you have before you is none other than a sandwich. Consider this indisputable sandwich from the chain “SUBWAY”:

Clearly there is nothing more sandwich-like about this than a hot dog

So then is our answer so simple? Is a sandwich merely anything inside of bread? Let us turn to other possibilities:

Is an Onigiri a sandwich?

We have no doubt that some readers will doubt that the tasty snack displayed below constitutes a sandwich exactly and precisely because it is not made out of bread. But we have equally no doubt that each and every person who seeks to exclude onigiri from the category of “sandwich” is a frothing racist:

You’ve been called out, onigiri-haters.

The “filling” of the onigiri is clearly sandwiched between rice, and it is meant to be eaten much in the manner of a sandwich, and accordingly fills, in Japanese society in particular, the universal social role of a sandwich.

So it is clear that no true internationalist revolutionary can disagree that onigiri too are sandwiches. The matter here is that we have only initial affirmations of sandwichhood, with no negation, and thus NO DIALECTICAL PROCESS THROUGH WHICH TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF SANDWICH-HOOD CAN CONCRETELY EMERGE.

Let us reveal the essence of the sandwich phenomenon through its negation, the un-sandwich:

Is a pie a sandwich?

As with the hot dog example above, certain terms are imprecise for theoretical/philosophical sandwiches. The word “pie” is used for a great many things, but let us consider this extremely haram English pork pie, purely for theoretical reasons because no Spatula writer-militant would dare allow pork to touch their lips, and could only be made to eat pork under the duress of torture by fascists:

Don’t look at it for too long, Allah will grow displeased.

While it cannot be denied that bread contains this repugnant dish on every side, it cannot be eaten in the manner of a sandwich. Beyond the act of parallel containment by sandwiching, the preparation of a true sandwich must be mindful of the end result of the process by which a sandwich is eaten as food, in a sandwich-like fashion:

A sandwich is made to be held in the hands by its sandwiching parts and eaten likewise for the convenience and enjoyment of the proletarian worker (who has ideally produced it for themselves in an unalienated fashion, but perhaps has purchased it as a commodity because we live under capitalism).

In other words, despite having all the formalist appearance of a sandwich, and indeed being constructed through sandwiching, unless you can unhinge your jaw like a fucking python, the food this man is showing us is in social practice no sandwich:

It is, however, arguably very erotic.

We hope that the theoretical essence of sandwichhood has thus been revealed, and through this, any serious Marxist can now determine for themselves if almost any foodstuff is a sandwich.

Is a pizza a sandwich? A taco? A burrito? A falafel wrap?

As we have already charged deniers of the sandwichhood of the onigiri and upholders of the sandwichhood of that girthy monster above with formalism, it should be clear that it is highly undialectical to deny that any foodstuff, from an ice cream sandwich to a Hot Pocket, which is produced in such a manner that it may be purposefully consumed in the manner of a sandwich through sandwiching is a sandwich.

A Pop-Tart is a sandwich.

Most controversially, this means that we deny the sandwichhood of the so-called “open-face sandwich” as REVISIONIST.

However, any “open-face sandwich”, including any slice of most varieties of pizza (putting aside the culinarily superior Chicago-style “deep dish” pizza), that can be accordingly manipulated may be rendered a sandwich through the simple act of folding:

A cheese and tomato sandwich.

Disagree with any single word of this on social media and you will be blocked and reported to Stalin.

Sandwich workers and oppressed
sandwiches of the world, unite!

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Point/Counterpoint: Stalin was Non-Binary

nonbinarystalin

What follows is a debate between two Worker’s Spatula cadre at a closed Spatula conference on gender politics which took place in an undisclosed location. As the comrade arguing the initial “Point” represented a Maoist tradition, and the comrade arguing the follow-up “Counterpoint” represented a “Hoxhaite” tradition, they will be identified as such for the purposes of publication:

Point: Stalin was non-binary because Jughashvili was a Georgian
by a queer Maoist

There is, as everyone knows, a prolific online discourse as to whether Joseph Stalin was trans or not. Naturally, as with all such discussions, we as anti-revisionists assume that the side which wishes to associate Stalin with conservativism and reaction are nothing more than agents of the cishet patriarchal capitalist-imperialist-fascist enemy, who wish to sow confusion and division in our movement.

However, as Chairman Mao famously said: “no googling, no right to tweet”.

Googling reveals a startling pattern: Russian sources consistently refer to Joseph Stalin with the masculine pronouns in use in the Russian language, and no Russian sources mention that Stalin was a trans man, or any other kind of AFAB individual. Could Joseph Stalin have been cis?

The problem, of course, with consulting Russian sources is that they’re in Russian and by Russians. How can this imperialist language with its patriarchal pronouns capture the fullness of Stalin’s personhood? To discover the answer, I became fluent in the Georgian language, memorising its complex verbal morphology and becoming a master Georgian calligrapher, so that I could blend in to the indigenous culture of Georgian Orthodoxy and understand how gender was expressed among the Georgian people before capitalism and Russian Tsarism penetrated their country and imposed the cishet patriarchy on these noble people.

While reading the diaries of Stalin’s seminary friends, I discovered something startling: the same pronoun was used for “Soso” as for the Virgin Mary. That’s right: Stalin used the Georgian equivalent of they/them pronouns, because the indigenous Georgian culture doesn’t have gender.

Anyone who claims Stalin was a “cis man” doesn’t only impose on Stalin a gender identity which Stalin never chose, but because they are imposing this identity which apparently doesn’t even exist in Georgia, anyone who claims Stalin was a “cis man” is actually a racist.

I rest my case. Stalin’s pronouns are “ის/მან”, Stalin and the entire Georgian people are non-binary.

Counterpoint: Stalin was non-binary because Stalin represented the multi-gendered masses
by a queer Hoxhaite

While it’s definitely true that we have to critically reexamine any Russian sources of the Soviet Union as unrepresentative of the reality of the minority nationalities, particularly after decades of revisionism and known national oppression, we need not resort to Cuğaşvili’s national origins to deny the slanderous revisionist lie that Stalin was a “cis man”.

Even if Cuğaşvili would fit into our understanding of what a “cis man” is, Cuğaşvili was not Stalin, and Stalin was not Cuğaşvili. Before Soviet power was lost, Stalin was the symbol of soviet power, and as such, Stalin was at least bigender.

Oh, that’s right: if you consider Stalin–a symbolic representative figure based on the real hero but none the less fully human person Cuğaşvili, a figure expressing the political consciousness and will of the revolutionary proletariat in its totality–could possibly have just been a “man”, then you are effectively excluding women from your understanding of the proletariat which is, in addition to being grossly sexist, revisionist as all fuckhell.

twogendersofstalin
Both of these people are equally Stalin.

So, accepting that the Stalin figure to whom all anti-revisionists pray to intercede on their behalf to the Dialectic of History was effectively “bigender” in the Russian-dominated official Soviet system, we must further surmise that today, in an online discourse that encompasses gender expressions of diverse kinds from diverse cultural traditions, Stalin, who lives on in our struggle, is extremely genderfluid.

We can safely say that if Stalin were on Twitter, Stalin would post pronouns as “any pronouns”: whether she/her, he/him, they/them, ze/zir, xe/xem, etc.

Stalin’s pronouns are whatever your pronouns are, you beautiful Stalin you.

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Point/Counterpoint: Trotskyism

Trotskyism

Point: You’re a Trot!

by Communist Party of Australia Representative

Dear fucking God. I thought I had seen some Trots in my day, but this is a bridge too far: how dare you disagree with me, you fucking Trot! Only a Trot would question China’s socialism, only a Trot would imply something was wrong with the Soviet Union, and only a Trot would tell me to ‘read my Marx’! I know a Trot when I see one, you bastard, and you’re a fucking Trot!

We’ve had it up to here with Trots in Australia, and I can’t believe I’m wasting some of my precious time here in Germany, the land of Bertolt Brecht, heroic killer of Trots, talking to a Turkish Trot like you!

Off about your Trot business, you Trot!

Counterpoint: No, you’re a Trot!

by Maoist Communist Party (Turkey/North Kurdistan) Representative

You fucking Australian labour aristocrat pseudo-revolutionary! Clearly it’s YOU who is the Trot here. You are a representative of the modern revisionist Trotskyite Menshevik neo-opportunist front that must be brought down.

You aren’t struggling against fascism, you aren’t fighting in Dêsım, and Trotsky didn’t do either of those things either. Case closed, now do you have a cigarette by any chance?

Counter-counterpoint: Comrades, don’t you see who the real Trots are?

by Stefan Engel

Comrades, we all have our differences, and we should, nein, must struggle through them to reach a higher level of truth and unity. But for too long have we argued about who are the real Trots in our midst. We too have wasted precious hours attacking the DKP, but the real question is this: if Trotsky were alive today, which party would he support?

In their pseudo-radical posturing, in their empty anti-austerity politics that fail to confront the imperialist state which imposes the austerity, we all know who the real Trots are: Die Linke. Die Linke are the only Trots in our midst today.

So make haste comrades, tomorrow is for the debate, today is for the ice axes! Ice axes for Die Linke!

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Princess Diana: Also a Worker

DianaintheMiana

We must socialise the Monarchy to raise their class consciousness.

It has been 20 years since Diana, Tywysoges Cymru, died whilst using publically funded transport. Shockingly, no organ of the British working class (aside from the Sunday Sport) took the time to honour her memory.

Her death in August of 1997 sent shockwaves around the world, arguably leading to the death of that other Tribune of the People, known Albanian Mother Theresa. In the months of public mourning after the tragic event, the bourgeois press attempted to cover up the proletarian nature of the life of the last British Stakhanovite. Worker’s Spatula have elected to rectify this by publishing Her True Story.

Born into obscurity in a small village in East Anglia, Diana (maiden name Spencer, from the old French term for Butler of Steward) experienced significant hardship during her upbringing. Coming from a broken home, and never performing well at school, one would expect her to become a member of the landless rural Lumpenproletariat like the rest of her family. However, she rose to public prominence after marriage to minor British dignitary Charles Windsor and embarking on a career in Landmine Removal. Following the example of her idol, Che Guevara, she travelled to Angola to join the struggle of the MPLA against the regional domination of the apartheid South African regime, where she met Che’s comrade Fidel Castro, and fell pregnant with two young children who unfortunately grew up to be Maoists.

Such was her dedication to raising the revolutionary consciousness of the international working class, that she founded and worked for over 100 revolutionary organisations (which the bourgeois mainstream media offensively obscure by referring to them as ‘charities’).

Following her divorce, she spent time party building in London, New York, and Lahore, before moving to Paris in the wake of the election of socialist Lionel Jospin to the position of Prime Minister. Though her time in Paris before her untimely death was short, her impact was far reaching, as can be seen in the introduction of the 35-hour workweek, and the CMU (couverture maladie universelle), both solid gains for the French working class, who still mourn the loss of their last great leader every year.

Indeed, her tragic death following a life and death car chase with state agents in Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris whilst she was on her way to a union meeting (where she was branch chair), was met with shock and outrage by workers of the world. Following the public outcry, British Prime Minister Tony Blair colluded with the British Establishment to de-politicise Diana’s death, appealing to national-chauvinist sentiment to stem the rapidly growing insurrection, enlisting the support of noted class collaborator Elton John to memorialise Diana as ‘England’s Rose’ (an affront to the Welsh peasants who she spent decades organising against English domination!).

Since her death, scab princess, Camilla Parker-Bowles, has tried to fill the shoes of the People’s Princess, but has only managed to write one cash-in book on bone vitamins, the most reactionary of all vitamins. More recently, she has tried to bolster her faltering cult of personality with the dubiously titled Big Bone Walk, where she lead 90 suffering children on a 10 mile walk in an attempt to emulate the PLA’s ‘Long March’.

In stark contrast, despite the sneers of former confidante and revisionist Paul Burrell, the legacy of the Queen of Hearts lives on in the struggles of the 32 million British workers who watched her televised funeral.

Diana lived, Diana lives, Diana will live forever, no matter how the bourgeois press try to make us forget her, and her untimely death.

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Fucking Idiot Doesn’t Understand Relationship Between Surplus Value and Profit

Shaikh

NEW YORK – Anwar Shaikh found himself confronted by a rival Marxist economist at a conference earlier this week over his approach to the transformation problem. Despite Shaikh’s obviously superior understanding of economics at large and Marxism in particular, he found it quite difficult to convince his idiotic shithead rival that the transformation problem was little more than a simple accounting issue that anyone whose brain isn’t entirely filled with shit should immediately be able to grasp:

“Are you actually fucking stupid?” enquired Shaikh of the upstart bastard who dared question his theoretical approach, “How can you not understand the transfer of value between the circuits of capital and revenue? Profit is mainly derived from surplus value, but not exclusively! Go read the first pages of ‘Theories of Surplus Value’, and learn what profit upon alienation is.

“You dumb fuck,” concluded the Economics professor from the New School for Social Research in New York City.

“If you consider the money value of the net product with regard to total labour time, and the value of labour power as the net labour time represented by the money wage, the surplus value can be calculated through the actual profit, which is to say…” began Shaikh’s rival, before being cut off by a punch to the face.

“You fucking simpleton! You stupid fucking idiot! Do you not even care about the total product, or just the net product? Do you not even realise that profit itself is a product of surplus value, not the other way around? Do you know a fucking thing?”

Shaikh’s brutal response to the “revisionist clowns” around him “who probably haven’t even read the third volume of Capital” is expected to finally legitimise the labour theory of value in the eyes of mainstream economists, and unify Marxist economics around a single theory of exploitation.

The obvious practical applications to having unified our academic understanding of the transformation problem are simply too numerous to list here.

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17-Year-Old Building Own Cult of Personality

chaaron

CHICAGO – 17-year-old Aaron Gold, or as he has recently begun insisting his followers refer to him, “Chairman Aaron”, is hard at work creating his very own cult of personality at CICS Northtown, where he has been relatively successful at promoting a Marxist-Leninist approach to politics among his classmates.

“Today we’re celebrating Chairman Aaron’s birthday, which is also the anniversary of the beginning of dekulakisation” explained Chairman Aaron’s best friend and first recruit, Joshua Washington. “Not with a cake or whatever, that’s exactly what the kulaks would want. No, we’re going to screen a documentary I made on my laptop about the time Chairman Aaron won a debate with some old revisionist from the CPUSA.”

“Chairman Aaron is our only real teacher at this bourgeois school,” explained Sara Ahadi, who was drawn to Chairman Aaron’s ideas while seated next to him during a particularly boring maths lecture. “We were talking about Trump, and I mentioned being annoyed by these white women who are still wearing their Clinton buttons, who never joined in with Black Lives Matter. He said we should try to unite with them against this common enemy without granting them hegemony. He says that in many cases, our initial differences might be ‘subliminalated’ in a ‘populist front’, which we can use to win over some of the Meghan Trainor fans (Marxist-Leninists listen to Sia).

“My mom says he meant ‘sublated’, but Chairman Aaron says she’s a Brezhnevite, so what does she know?”

Chairman Aaron is constantly seen meeting with diverse groups of students, adopting their mannerisms and style of speech in an attempt to facilitate a more dialectical communication process. Among Jewish students, he is always to be heard mentioning his single Jewish grandparent, while also fasting for the entire month of Ramadan as part of his infiltration of Muslim student groups.

“Have y’all heard about this murder clown Michael Israel? Homeboy got killed by a Turkish airstrike while fighting ISIS with his crew, the IFB,” explained Chairman Aaron to a small huddle of juggalos in the corner of the cafeteria.

“That’s what’s up, ninja,” intoned “Axeboy”, one of three nodding juggalos at the table as they inspected Chairman Aaron’s rendering of YPJ guerrillas in clown makeup, splitting the skulls of those whack ISIS bigots.

“Exploitation, alienation, oppression, imperialism; all that shit is whack,” explained one of the juggalos, who asked that he be credited as “Homidical Nutt”. “When Chairman A gets to talkin’ ’bout the dialectic, it’s just like the Dark Carnival, yo!”

“Yo, Chairman A was telling us about this dope homeboy Stalin, from Atlanta or some shit,” chimed in “Nonprovocative Steve”, the third member of the juggalo crew. “This crazy ninja killed Hitler, that’s like the most fucked-up bigot of all time!”

“Word,” concluded “Axeboy”, as he poured his juggalo comrades and our correspondent some plastic cups full of warm, flat Faygo. “Chairman A knows everything. I’m going to tattoo his face on my shaft as the ultimate symbol of my dedication to a critical approach to all established conditions. It’s gonna stretch out when I’m thinking about contradictions and rapidly contract in the event of quantitative change effecting qualitative change.”

“Me too,” agreed the others.

Liechtensteiner ICOR Affiliate Discovered

liechtenstein

VADUZ, LIECHTENSTEIN – A wrong turn by one of our Viennese correspondents led them to accidentally enter Liechtenstein, the rarest and highest HP value of all the German-speaking countries. While there, he decided to visit an old comrade presently teaching at the Wirtschaftswissenschaftsfakultät of the University of Liechtenstein.

The comrade, [REDACTED] provided him with a copy of the newsletter of der Revolutionäre Organisation Liechtensteins (ROL), the Liechtensteiner ICOR affiliate, which describes itself as “the only genuine Marxist-Leninist organisation operating from within the belly of the imperialist beast that is Liechtenstein”. Below are some selections from this rare and extremely anti-revisionist organisation. Reader discretion is advised:

New Octobers: Yes! Liechtenstein: No!

The world needs a new October Revolution today. Where the first one shall be, no one can say, but one can say that it will not be in Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is the most dangerous and reactionary entity imagineable, and the only solution to its contradictions is its utter and complete destruction.

We call upon our comrades, the toiling masses of Liechtenstein, particularly the Gastarbeiters whose exploited labour allows the labour aristocracy of Liechtenstein to grow fat and stupid, as well as the escalator repairmen’s union in which we have long been active, to rise up to destroy Liechtenstein and help its people unite with their brothers and sisters in Switzerland and Austria.

We call upon all our fraternal organisations of ICOR to unite with us in our call for the destruction of Liechtenstein, and work for the overturning of all existing social conditions and a glorious red dawn for a new day tomorrow!

Workers of the world and oppressed peoples – unite!

Liechtenstein must be destroyed!

Other pieces attacked rival left-wing formations in Liechtenstein, such as they are:

Pepo Frick – Scoundrel and spectacled traitor

In our analysis, the single greatest threat to the toilers of the pseudo-country known as Liechtenstein is the scoundrel and spectacled traitor who calls himself Pepo Frick. Pepo Frick, if that is his real name, stands as the smiling face of social-democracy in Liechtenstein. Little do the confused masses of Liechtenstein realise that social-democracy, far from being a “left” trend, is actually the historical friend of Nazism and the cold-blooded assassins of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

If tomorrow the entirety of the ROL is found floating dead in the Rhine, slaughtered by bloodthirsty Nazis, know that it was Pepo Frick who delivered this fate unto us.

Remain ever-vigilant comrades: No to social-democracy, NO TO PEPO FRICK!

On the final page, some truly unique theoretical positions were on display:

Stalin – REVISIONIST?

We, der Revolutionäre Organisation Liechtensteins (ROL), have never shied away from controversy when declaring our bold theoretical stances. We declared Mao to have dangerously deviated from the correct line before Enver Hoxha did, and we declared Enver Hoxha to have embraced the Three Worlds Theory before the elements that would become the Bolşevik Parti in North Kurdistan – Turkey did. We declared Bob Avakian to be a Trotskyite before the RIM did, and we declared the DPRK to be Trotskyites just so we could take a stance literally no one else has.

We now wish to unveil our boldest theory yet: Joseph Stalin was himself a Trotskyite revisionist, worse even than Lenin in his deviations from the correct line of Marxism-Leninism, defensible only against the immediate and total threat of international fascism, led by Ernest Mandel…

It goes on like this for a few paragraphs.

We wish our newfound comrades in Liechtenstein all the best, and call upon all sympathetic forces in Austria and Switzerland to unite with them in struggle, and struggle with them in unity.

Humourless Marxist Reviews: Arrival

ARRIVAL

2016’s Arrival, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, tells the story of first contact with an alien species, and the philosophical and linguistic implications thereof.

It also fucking sucks, and I hated it.

Yes, Arrival is a terrible goddamn film. It was fucking boring and stupid. I strongly disliked it. And if you liked it, you’re bourgeois.

You might quote all the critics who loved the film, as well as your wide circle of friends, saying that the film was beautifully produced, splendidly acted, intellectually deep, etc. And to all of that, I would say: Those critics are bourgeois, your friends are bourgeois, the production team and the actors are incredibly bourgeois.

In addition to being bourgeois yourself, you are almost certainly some sort of revisionist.

“Oh, look at me, I’m Amy Adams! Can we communicate with these aliens before the Chinese blow them up?”* I don’t fucking care, Amy Adams! All I care about is organising the industrial proletariat for strikes, marches, and other forms of direct action against the growing fascist tide sweeping across the globe!

“Oh, I’m Forest Whitaker, I’m in the military! Let’s hire a linguist to translate these aliens’ jibber-jabber before the Chinese ruin everything!”* STOP BLAMING THE CHINESE FOR EVERYTHING, FOREST WHITAKER! YOU’VE BEEN AN IMPERIALIST STOOGE SINCE THE CRYING GAME!

You know how I perceive time, you bourgeois hacks? I perceive it in terms of the hours of my life robbed from me in the form of wage labour. And when I’m sitting through your boring film, I perceive it in terms of how much I had to pay for a ticket to this steaming pile of bourgeois crap, money that represents those same hours I put in as a wage labourer!

The sort of people who like Arrival probably like bourgeois nonsense like M. Night Shyamalan. Proletarians can’t afford films anymore, and that’s why all films these days are bourgeois and terrible.

When the revolution comes, the Proletarian Film Awards will not pay attention to awful films like Arrival.

*Actual dialogue taken from the film.