Lifestyles of the Poor and Alienated

 “Living a Marxist Life: Why Marx is a Drug You Should Probably Take” by Andrew Pendakis, 2024

On the cover of the book is a picture of Che looking like a hipster, reading Goethe.  This is a ‘cool’ book from a cultural angle that turns being a Marxist into becoming some kind of hip intellectual and activist. It’s a work about what Pendakis thinks of as a subculture and lifestyle, an almost declasse boho strata, a romantic cohort of cosmopolitans who know the real truth. Pendakis is an Associate Professor at Brock University in Canada, yet his father was a truck driver and his home-life religious.  He imbibed this negative class lesson into his angle, so shopping, work, a house, family, love, careerism and money are all approached with irony, alienation and ambivalence through a Marxist lens.  The book is aimed at young people – or precisely ‘students’ – and so being hip is essential to his ‘drug’ dealing.

It’s not based on a survey of the many different types of Marxists across the world or prior books or studies about being a Communist - it’s a work of informed imagination.  That information is gleaned from the work of hundreds of famous or prominent Marxist revolutionaries, activists and academics, the ones he constantly lists – people like Adorno, Badiou, Benjamin, Ghodsee, Luxemburg and Zizek.  It is not clear he’s in a socialist organization or been in class combat.  The book only intersects with those experiences – which seem to be essential to actual Marxism – in the last chapter. He once calls Lenin and Engels ‘vulgar’ Marxists, but he did use quote marks on the word ‘vulgar.’ He’s a good writer, with many clever turns of phrase, and jokes at capital’s expense. He over-emphasizes, then auto-corrects like a zig-zag train. And he needs an editor in this chatty book.  So what has he got to say?

In his celebration of alienation, he thinks Marxists do as little on an employed job as possible.  However, as anyone who has actually worked for a long time in a blue, service or white collar occupation knows – lazy or incompetent people get no respect, usually because this impacts their co-workers.  It doesn’t matter how ‘brilliant’ they are or how pro-union.  They’re seen as sad dicks.  This is part of his flawed description of Marxists as knowing hipsters, though that type certainly exists too.  As Vivian Gornick pointed out in her book “The Romance of American Communism” party members were from many ‘walks’ of life, though most were poor or working class but also included artists, the middle class and intellectuals.  She said “there was not one CP type.”  (“Romance” reviewed below.)  My contact with older, organized Marxists from the 1970s to today shows many were union people, some were down and outs, some profs, but solid and established comrades.  This is unlike the generations coming up now as the ‘Boomer’ good times slide away.  ‘Who’ is a Marxist changes depending on what historical stage a society is at.

Pendakis makes a point about the enormous and omnivorous intellectual influence of Marxism in many fields – sociology, geography, politics, history, anthropology, psychology, environmental and natural sciences, culture, military studies, political economy, philosophy, religion - even cosmology.  No wonder the Right wants to shut down universities outside of the business school and the technical or hard sciences and focus high school only on the 3 ‘Rs’. This is because Marxists are autodidacts – always learning; and because Marxism is a holistic method of actuality and flux that recognizes few barriers.  In this context he objects to simplified bumper-sticker / Facebook© thinking, to repetition, reduction and the bureaucratized groupthink of the Stalinized Communist Parties in the Twentieth century, as it mitigates against Marxist methods. Marxism is a method and mentality clearly not frozen in amber, much as some wish it so.

Wadya' smokin' boys?

Pendakis spends a long time on how Marxism is in a deep sense true – an almost ‘documentary’ vision of the world, not one clogged by veils, lies, ideology, intentional blindness or complacent comfort.  It reads like a pat on the back for all us Reds.  He paints it not as a dark vision but believes that knowledge and clarity are their own rewards.  This insight he gained out of a depressing working-class childhood and then brought it into the professional academic arena.  Instead he makes a plea for anger, a very un-academic recommendation.  Liberals and technocrats see politics as “little more than rational conversation” (Ha!) so rage is the province of thugs and crazy people. Religion and yoga want to banish anger too. Pendakis sees it as fuel for action if properly directed and applied creatively.  This is nothing new of course.

According to Pendakis, liberals identify rage with fascism, which makes Marxists … fascists.  As historically stupid as this co-identification may be, it’s a lie told to maintain immediate control.  Marx’s own combativeness is held against him, though it was to sharpen his own theories and defeat opponents – an intellectual version of the class war. In this context Pendakis keeps on mentioning Zizek’s clever demolition of the lazy thinking of Canadian conservative Jordan Peterson, who seems to be his bête noire. 

Pendakis finishes with a discussion of organization.  He describes the dedication of a Maoist in 1962 trying to reconstruct a city in China and an Adivasi Naxalite guerilla in India - both to show that hard conditions can be the most fulfilling to a socialist.  In the process he dismisses Maoism as a product of its time and place, and guerilla war as almost extinct. In this context he points out that Marxists have repeatedly been the subject of anti-communist pogroms in many countries, so ‘courage’ is one of the ingredients of being one.  He says he’s a supporter of some kind of Leninist party, but describes all the other forms of organizations Marxists might participate in – unions, cooperatives, united fronts, specific activist organizations, community and ad hoc groups.  His definition of “Marxist’ here is broad – actually including anarchists and unions, with a nod to social-democrats and others in a ‘big’ church.  He does a non-specific roundup of debates between socialists over the possibility of revolution, the nature of socialism, the question of violence and the overwhelming need for organized politics as part of a ‘spiritual,’ atheistic Marxism. He makes a passionate plea for a Marxist morality but most of all, for the value of a politically organized life against individual or performative isolation.    

Will this book win over the kids?  Pendakis is obviously a highly literate writer with an intimate knowledge of various philosophers, so ‘headier’ youth might be recruited to join a Marxist subculture.  But as they say, acts speak louder than words.  Profs are impressive to students, but not so much to others.  This book itself is hard to get through because of its somewhat endless, rambling and repetitive nature, along with its tiny print. Nevertheless it is a good introduction - for some - to the “constantly expanding theoretical universe” of Marxism – being personal without being too theoretical after all.   

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using this term:  “Marxism.”    

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / November 11, 2024

Celebrate Armistice Day!