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!

Did you enjoy this piece, or anything else on Worker’s Spatula? Then consider donating as little as one imperialist Yankee dollar a month to supporting our work!

Feel Old Yet? Billie Eilish Wasn’t Even Born at Publication of Die bewußte Anwendung der dialektischen Methode auf dem Niveau der Lehre von der Denkweise

BERLIN – With the release of US pop singer Billie Eilish’s new song (“No Time to Die”, the theme for the latest installment in the never-ending post-Cold War British intelligence services advert series), the young songsayer has been again courting controversy by not knowing things as she makes the rounds on the talk show circuits of European countries.

Having already alienated all the “Boomers” in the band’s native Netherlands due to her lack of familiarity with Van Halen, Eilish arrived in Germany this week only to find her knowledge of formal logic and philosophy under scrutiny in the homeland of Hegel:

“You haven’t read Die bewußte Anwendung der dialektischen Methode auf dem Niveau der Lehre von der Denkweise?” asked the incredulous Bremen-based late-night talk show host James Kümmel, in a clearly visible state of shock during Eilish’s appearance on the former’s Thursday night show.

“I’ve never even heard of it!” laughed the singer, to gasps from the audience.

“It’s a classic short work by the Maoist theoretician Stefan Engel, of the MLPD. How old are you?” asked Kümmel, checking his notes.

“I was born in 2001, I’m 18!” laughed Eilish. “The only Maoist I read is JMP!”

“Oh God, you’re younger than the text! I feel so old! Don’t you feel extremely old, folks?” asked Kümmel to the audience, who laughed uproariously, but in that German way, where you have to stop chuckling every few seconds to say “ja, natürlich”.

Other public appearances by Eilish were marked by a similar culture clash between the Land of No Theory and the Land of The Appropriate Amount of Theory. During a daytime performance on Friday, Eilish made a joking reference to the synthesiser on stage as being “constructed through the Hegelian dialectic by attaching an antithesiser to a thesiser”, provoking a heckler to begin shouting: “that’s Fichte! Stop attributing Fichtean logic to Hegel, Yanks!” over and over again until they were escorted from the premises by security.

Eilish’s young age and theoretical naïveté leave her particularly vulnerable to ontological bullying in a country where every secondary school student is required to write a philosophically grounded defence of the rational core of Christianity or similarly grounded criticism of one of the same to be allowed to graduate. Outside of a scheduled performance in Hamburg this weekend, a picket is to take place by an LGBT+ group  who condemn Eilish’s discography for “failure to meaningfully engage with Hocquenghem’s central claims”. In solidarity, local Worker’s Spatula cadres will be joining the picket and passing out literature condemning Leon Trotsky.

Eilish’s management company, The Darkroom, have released a statement attempting to calm German outrage at the singer:

To the German press and public opinion,

Although we understand that it is not the case in Germany, in most cultures, youth is a time of impetuousness and irreverence towards authority and tradition. Billie Eilish can hardly be blamed for her ignorance, an understandable consequence of coming from the most anti-intellectual country on Earth and being born into a generation where hope is a fast-dying flame which we ourselves are extinguishing by profiting off of the despairing alienation which her entire generation is slowly resigning itself to.

We wish to assure the German public that Billie Eilish means no offence by not having an opinion on Kant’s religiosity, or the causes of the collapse of the Weimar Republic, or what a “World War II” is. She is simply too young in our culture to know things, and frankly, if it is up to us and all other gatekeepers of socially normative “alternative” culture, no young people would ever know a single new thing not necessary for commodity production and exchange.

However, as sale of Billie Eilish’s music is especially important in our digital era, it is very important to us that Billie Eilish know harmless things which will allow German people to purchase the alienated product of her labour and the labour of all those involved in the production of her music in its objectified commodity form.

Accordingly, we promise that throughout 2020, she and her brother and musical partner Finneas will sit down together to read Slavoj Žižek’s The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, so that she can do rudimentary interviews for German television in the manner you people expect.

Did you enjoy this piece, or anything else on Worker’s Spatula? Then consider donating as little as one imperialist Yankee dollar a month to supporting our work!

Venezuela Making King of Norway Doubt Merits of Rentier Social Democracy

OSLO – Bernie Sanders’s favourite socialist leader and last bastion of struggle against EU imperialism, King Harald V of Norway, today revealed to our Worker’s Spatula correspondent in Oslo his concerns about Venezuela and its implications for the Norwegian model.

“Ever since the war in Libya, I’ve been concerned that our gradualist approach to socialism presented too long of a period of transition, allowing sabotage by the imperialists. Venezuela has been a concern in this area for a long time, and now everyone’s seeing how serious of a problem this is.

“In fact, I had discussed the matter with Comrades Gaddafi and Chavez before their respective tragic deaths…” said the 79-year-old monarch as he gazed sadly out the palace window.

“The problem is, if there’s one country that is more gradual than any other in its march to socialism, it is Norway, where we are so conservative in our struggle against the forces of reaction that I am in power,” he said looking our interviewer directly in the eyes.

Influential Norwegian Marxist theoretician Elling Borgersrud expressed frustration with the king’s stubborn refusal to draw the necessary conclusions: “We’ve been saying this for years, and I think the time has come for the king to just admit it: Social democracy may be good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice.

“I think I speak for the entire people of Norway when I say that the time has come for the king to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks, the comprador bourgeoisie, and the aristocracy.”

 

Bob Avakian Wearing a Balaclava Now

NEW YORK – Bob Avakian is apparently appearing in public wearing a balaclava now, and quite often smoking a pipe. Sources within the RCPUSA can neither confirm nor deny any connection between the chairman’s new appearance and the recent announcement that all charges by the Mexican state against EZLN commander Subcomandante Marcos have been dropped due to the statute of limitations laws in that country.

The move, which the CPUSA condemned as “not something the Democratic Party would approve of”, is expected to increase Bob Avakian’s popularity among Chicanos who are already members of the RCPUSA.

Sources in New York were divided on the new choice, with genius theoretician and New School professor Andrew Arato stating: “Everything except my academic publications is adventurism. This applies to the movements of national liberation for the Palestinians and the Kurds, and it applies to whatever it is Bob Avakian does.”

RCPUSA member Raymond Lotta, well known for having a superior moustache to Andrew Arato, disagreed, stating: “Everything Chairman Avakian does draws him closer to the Chicano masses in the United States, whether it is wearing their traditional folk costume or supporting Ted Cruz against Trumpite fascism. Bob Avakian is my daddy.”

RCPUSA sources were also unable to confirm or deny rumours that Bob Avakian is planning to run for the office of President of the United Mexican States on a platform of “a chicken in every pot and a new synthesis for every contradiction”.

Wine Riot Movement Spreads to Boston

BOSTON – Fresh on the heels of their grand successes on the New York scene, an up-and-coming Anarchist collective known as Wine Riot is now expanding their recruitment efforts northward towards Boston.

Known for their staunch rejection of bourgeois culture, Wine Riot was formed last summer spontaneously, as everything always must be, in response to the killing of Eric Garner by the NYPD. The collective got its start in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where, in its most famous moment, a white member [all Wine Riot members appear to either be white or Asian-American – WS] walked up behind a police officer, lifted a brick aloft with which to strike him, and then suffered a panic attack when the officer turned around, collapsing into the fœtal position and needing to be hospitalised.

The group describes itself as “the truest and most militant allies of oppressed Black Americans,” and engages in “propaganda of the deed” against the police on these grounds.

“In fact we’re more militant than Black people. Get drunk and start fuckin’ rioting, Roxbury!” said one Boston member at the bar where he agreed to meet us, prior to hailing a taxi back to Jamaica Plain.

We were contacted to discuss the group’s recruitment methods by an individual who signed his e-mails “John Chaos”, sent from the e-mail address admin@tylerballiet.com.

“We’ve already made contact with some big names in revolutionary activity in North America, like Jason Unruhe and Suey Park. I don’t think they’re radical enough to join us as full members yet, but we’ve been engaging in theoretical debate.”

“We don’t have roles or hierarchies, because we’re anarchists, and everyone’s equal, but since I’m the smartest, you can think of me as the chief theoretician. Contrary to popular belief among Marxist-Leninists, we do utilise class analysis, and we’re making sure our next big event targets the social class which has historically made up the hard core of the anarchist movement.”

“John Chaos” left the Starbucks where he agreed to meet us, parting ways by providing us with some of the group’s literature, reproduced below in its entirety:

<for immediate release>
“RIOT RIOT RIOT

EVERYONE RIOT

SMASH THE PATRIARCHY

SMASH THE STATE

BLOW UP THE GOVERNMENT

GROW A GARDEN

FEED THE PEOPLE

DO DRUGS

READ A BOOK

SLAUGHTER YOUR ABUSIVE LOVER

WINE RIOT WINE RIOT WINE RIOT WINE RIOT

DO HARDER DRUGS

BUY A GLOCK

BUY C4

ERADICATE RACISM

ABOLISH PRIVATE EDUCATION

GET A TATTOO

TORCH SOME CARS

DO SOME REAL HARD FUCKING

GO OFF THE GRID

COMMIT RANDOM ACTS OF ECO-TERRORISM

RIOT RIOT RIOT RIOT

WINE RIOT

On the back of the sheet was the url for this recruitment video aimed at other young anarchists: