The problem with Marx’s ideas was threefold: (1) sociological phenomena are a little like the emergent properties of biological systems — fuck with this phospholipid or that portion of the ATP cycle, and you’re just as likely to kill whatever it is that you thought you saw growing (or festering, as it were), (2) it doesn’t take much to keep the Proles happy and churning out Model-Ts and out of the bars and bowling alleys where they might foment drunken revolution, and (3) basic, bloody human nature. I wonder, though, whether he might not have been right; whether there might not be some ass-arific socio-politico-economical arrangement toward which all forms of human society inevitably lurch and gurgle.
Those of you who bemoaned the ascendancy of the shopping mall take note: At least shopping malls don’t stock generic-brand marshmallow fluff. Big-box stores are here, they’re queer, and they’re out to kick the ever-living shit out of your shopping malls — bastions of our beloved modern culture though they may be. And with their ridiculous leverage with suppliers, their LARGE margins, and the astounding, staggering profits they make on generic-brand soap and cereal, it’s only a matter of time until you regard everything other than generic-brand marshmallow fluff as a luxury.
I want to come back as a bucket of generic-brand marshmallow fluff.
But that’s OK. Jesus said something or other about poor folks inheriting the Earth — however fucked up and Wal-Mart-filled it may be.
