Marx & me

Once again I was asked what my politics are and once again I was challenged in my reply. The thing is, I’m a Marxist and I'm also self-employed, so pay myself creatively to minimise my taxation.

But how can this be Phil? Surely you’re a hypocrite?

Well, no.

There are, in my reading of the ideology, two tenets to Marxism. The first is that it is a revolutionary party, but obviously there will never be a revolution in the UK. Mainly because people are being fed lies by the media all the time over who is to blame for the fundamental economic and societal problems that we have faced for the last 30 or so years. 147 years ago, Marx himself though the revolution would happen here because workers were increasingly leaving their agrarian lives and moving to cities, to sell the one commodity that we all have – our labour. Control of their lives was sold for a price to a factory or mill owner who while taking in massive profits, paid just enough to keep his workforce from starving. Marx theorised that the people would get sick of this, realise the exploitation being forced upon them and rise up. But, for whatever reason it didn’t happen here. Instead it happened in Russia, where the population in Marx’s own words were ‘lumpenproletariat’ a group that were unlikely to achieve any class consciousness. But they had one of the most charismatic and intelligent leaders to grace any period of history in Lenin who identified a single target – the Tsarist system and her fomented a revolution around this. Today the left is woefully divided and the chances of this happening again are remote. But that is another story and I digress.

Our current political class are obviously a hopeless bunch. If I give them my money, what will they do with it? They might spend billions on renewing the Trident submarines so that we can carry on fighting a cold war that ended 25 years ago as I was leaving the RAF, although the timing of those two events is entirely coincidental. I thought the (made up) enemy now was a loose collective of people who hated our freedoms, people who could be anywhere, could be everywhere? So people we cannot hit with nuclear missiles. We could round up all the ‘casino bankers’ who caused the recent crisis and hit them with missiles but can’t see that happening. Why the hell do I want to pay any tax to fund this? It is surely a revolutionary act to deny this outdated mind-set of the funds needed to achieve their needless goals?

The second tenet of Marxism is the redistribution of wealth. Now let me put in a caveat before I go any further, that I am only too aware of how lucky I am and nothing I say now is in anyway gloating. It breaks my heart that there are almost certainly people within a mile of me who are hungry tonight because of the welfare ‘reforms’. But if the welfare state and NHS were funded better maybe I’d be inclined to contribute more. What I can do and boy do I, is spend more. I’ve never had a saving mentality. If I die more than £10 in credit, my like will have been a failure. But every penny you spend helps someone. It helps the person who designed, produced, packaged and transported that product. It helps the people who work in the shop where you bought it. It helps them and their families to get by decently.

Just spend your money wisely. Do you know why all big Tesco stores have a filling station and why the fuel there is cheap? Because they sell it at a loss figuring that while you are there you’ll probably do you weekly shop there too. Well don’t; fill up at Tesco and drive to Sainsbury’s! As I have argued before, the most powerful political weapon we have is not where we put our cross every five years, but where we spend our money every day. Use that weapon carefully and redistribute the wealth according to your own plan.

It’s a personal Marxism and I’m comfortable with it.