Saturday 2 August 2014

Mc Donalds, eleven year olds and Marxism.

Mc Donalds, and 11 year old and Marxism.

I'm getting frustrated., while my son is watching the internet I'm trying to understand an old, yellowing book about Marxism. I'm dyslexic and sometimes wonder if I should bother with books full of theoretical tongue twisters and academic waffle and stick to books with pictures in them  but I keep trying. Then my son asks

"Mum what's Marxism?"

Now that's an interesting question, I have to wonder if I should burden a video game loving eleven year old with political theory, but why not, his sister has explained  The Satanic Bible to him and he's happy to declare himself an atheist  so why not the theories of a man with terrible handwriting, a very patient wife and big ideas. I have to think about how to answer so I start with a familiar  idea, Mc Donalds.

"Well take Mc Donalds, they make a ton of money but is that food good for you"

"No" replies my son.

"Do the workers get paid much?

"No"

Do the workers own Mc Donalds?" I ask

"But they sort of do"

Go on I ask

"They could all go on strike"

Now that's clever, I wonder if ideas are genetic, after all, his grandmother was a political campaigner and feminist, she had the huge honor of being buried at Highgate Cemetery, English was her second language but she still struggled with yellowing books  until the early hours.

"They could but they don't own Mc Donalds"

"But they should, they do all the work"

"So Marxists believe the workers should own Mc Donalds"


Now I look at my yellowing book and realise that to a point Marxism is a very simple idea, a child understands fairness, they understand Mc Donalds and they go shopping, explaining the ideas of Marxism are not that difficult. So why are the ideas so bogged down with big words and self righteousness?

Then I realize myself how bad Mc Donalds' is, we sit and eat poisonous and addictive food for someone else s profit, but a bit of me knows we'll end up there, and that's the problem, it's easy to see why we shouldn't join in with the fag end of capitalism but we do, it's too cheap, too shiny and too tasty to resist, in a few years time Mc Donalds' will be a rainy day home and he will be so comfortable there he'll do his hair there, play cards and chat up girls there, Mc Donalds' fulls lots of social needs while feeding us dead animals, fat and sugar, that's why we hate the place but at some point end up sat in Maccys making money for the machine and feeding capitalism, a system so ingrained we have problems  imagining  anything else, so please before your kids sop dreaming explain Marxism, it's not that difficult.




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