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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Fast Food Workers Told us the Five Worst Things about their Jobs

Fast food workers have a tough job, and nobody knows it better than us. From low pay to the long hours the low pay imposes, from heartless management to impatient customers, there’s good reason why “flipping burgers” is the go-to descriptor for undesirable minimum wage work. We spoke to workers across Australia whom we contacted through our top secret RaFFWU networks about the things in their line of work which make their lives the hardest, and we collected their answers into a convenient five-item list for the clickbait-hungry public!

5. Rude customers:

“I understand most of our customers are about as hungry, broke, and pressed for time as we are, and I wish they could see that in us, too! Sometimes we make mistakes on an order, and no matter how apologetic I am, there are some customers who want to use me as a verbal punching bag! It’s not right, I’m having a hard day too.

“Also, one time, we called out this woman’s order about eight times, and then moved on to calling out other orders. A few minutes later, she came up to the counter demanding to know where her order was, and when I said we had called it out, she said I should’ve given the number in English, as if anyone was speaking anything but. Then she demanded a refund even though her order was right there, ready to be taken! What satisfaction do people get from this sort of behaviour?”
–”Ayşe”, Hungry Jack’s, Roxburgh Park (Melbourne)

4. Mussolini management:

“My manager is the worst. In addition to the sexual harassment and the fact that he threw my copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed into a bin because I left it in a public area, he’s a borderline fascist with our time! If we go a couple of minutes over on our break, he starts talking about ‘time theft’, but his nephew who he just hired can come in late and do nothing and we never hear a word.

“Besides, I wonder how ‘efficiently’ he’s using his time when he locks the door to his office and puts on music so we can’t hear what he’s up to? Fucking wanker.”
–Anita, KFC, Melbourne

3. The fucking SDA:

“The SDA are a bloody bosses’ union. They don’t speak for us, and it’s impossible to claim they are even winning reforms for proletarians like ourselves! I’ve been slipping RaFFWU propaganda into all my coworkers bags, and I haven’t been caught yet. We’re taking back our labour union movement, for the labourers!”
–Ali, Subway, Perth

2. The lack of consciousness of their coworkers of their potential as a political class:

“I work at the drive-in, and I can say the absolutely most unbearable thing is in between trying to hear the customers over the faulty speaker system, whenever I consider that even many of my coworkers who complain about their wages or hours or whatever are unaware that by formulating a theory and taking part in a practice which encompasses the totality of social struggle they can constitute a political class, namely the revolutionary proletariat, that can end exploitation and alienation as we know it!”
–Cindy, Red Rooster, Sydney

1. Modern revisionists and their fundamental lack of understanding of Marxist-Leninist categories of class analysis:

“The other day, my coworker Riley got upset because someone compared labour policies in Australia to those in China. His complaint was that China is socialist, and shouldn’t be compared to a capitalist country. I told him I considered China was not only not socialist, but was developing into an imperialist country. He scoffed at that, and when I asked him about the export of Chinese capital, he said ‘Why can’t socialist countries export capital? Do you want them to starve?’

“I couldn’t even tell what he meant by that, but then he said something about how China ‘can’t be imperialist because it hasn’t invaded any other countries’. It’s one thing to be ignorant about the PRC’s invasion of Vietnam, for example, but Lenin never theorised imperialism on the basis of its wars, imperialist wars are a natural outcome of the economic basis!

“How am I supposed to work with such people during the lunch rush?!”
–Karen, McDonalds, Canberra

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