John
Lennon, who wore glasses and was therefore clever, once said that he had been
an ‘instinctive socialist’ in his youth. I know what he meant. During my
adolescence, my own instincts led me to join CND, give up meat, be sympathetic to
feminism, and wear a Friends of the Earth t-shirt.
As I was too busy learning the guitar solos from ‘Sultans of Swing’, I never
got round to reading any of the literature. I still haven’t[1].
So,
a few years ago when my aunt explained to my oldest son that I had been a
Marxist in my youth, I was quite surprised[2]. I’d
never been moved to read anything by Marx[3],
mainly for his lack of guitar solos but also because of Communism, which I instinctively
felt was a bad idea. I suppose my aunt had looked at my list of right-on credentials
and concluded that I must have been a Marxist.
This
revelation passed without comment from said son, who has a philosophy degree,
has also read The Communist Manifesto[4] and
knows better than to take his father too seriously, but it did make me wonder
about any future conversations between my aunt and my brother’s children. My
brother voted Tory in 1987, viewed my meat-free-peacenik-treat-women-as-equals-etc
with disdain, and landed a job in London which had absolutely nothing to do
with altruism and everything to do with earning a lot of money, and I fear that
she thus may have jumped to another conclusion and will explain to my nephews that their father
was a Nazi in his youth.
There
was going to have been a point to this piece of scribbling, but I got too far away from it, so
will leave it for another day. As compensation for wasting your time here's a new definition
of Marxist for you, based on my own experiences:
Marxist,
noun: sanctimonious dunderhead,
usually ignorant [esp. of own status].
No comments:
Post a Comment