Marxist Moments

THE NEW DEVIL’S DICTIONARY

 

ADVERTISING – paid for in supermarkets.

 

AFFORDABLE HOUSING – to make property primarily unaffordable.

 

AMAZON – a tribe of fierce women who became the world’s biggest exploiters of cheap labour.

 

ANTI-SEMITISM – being opposed to Netanyahu and far-Right Israeli politics and illegal land seizures. In Jews, this opposition is called ‘self-hatred.’

 

BENEFIT SCROUNGERS – by no means all of the 800 or so who sit in the most bloated unelected parliamentary chamber in the world collecting £300 a day + expenses for doing nothing. Also a family I know of vaguely but whose name (if not income) momentarily escapes me.

 

BONFIRE OF THE RED TAPE – abolishing health and safety regulation and inspection of construction sites, factories, offices, tower blocks, schools, hospitals and on the road.

 

BREXIT – the spirit of 1940 when Britain ‘stood alone’ backed by Empire and nourished by Bovril. Nowadays will preside – when enacted – over a loss of trade by keeping out of the EU but of course still subsidising cheap rail tickets on the continent. Meanwhile, will seek 51^st statehood of the USA.

 

DEBT – someone else’s asset.

 

DICTATORSHIP – applies to Cuba and Venezuela but not to Azerbaijan, Turkey or Uzbekistan, which have popularly elective assemblies at all levels of government.

 

EMPLOYMENT – zero-hour contracts,   unlimited hours without overtime pay, stagnating and declining wages against inflation (often requiring ‘in-work’ benefits), insecure pensions, unsociable hours and mass mental depression.

 

FAKE NEWS – first inscribed on Assyrian monuments c. 2000 BCE.

 

FREE SCHOOLS – freedom for shareholders and CEOs to make a packet out of the substandard education of children. For a better and – in a special sense – richer Britain.

 

GROWTH – the world economy dies if it does not ‘grow’, until it absorbs the whole planet and then some. If ‘growth’ were the sole object of life, then the success of trees (say) would be that they never stopped growing. Another term for collective insanity. But steady-state capitalism is a contradiction in terms.

 

HATRED OF FREE SPEECH – anti-fascism.

 

IMMIGRANTS – these supply our food by picking and keep the NHS going while also buying up our football teams.

 

JOGGING – brings the computer into green open spaces, which are scarred with deep muddy grooves made by the same anti-social impulses fed in the first place by staring into computers.

 

LIFESTYLE – personalised selfishness.

 

LITTER – the triumph of free enterprise in all directions.

 

NANNY STATE – provides security for all in health and basic needs and so creates a ‘culture of dependency’.

 

PHILOSOPHY – the art of reducing humanity’s deepest and most searching questions to mumbo-jumbo. Scientists build on the success of past scientists; philosophers feed on the shortcomings of past philosophers.

 

PIECEMEAL SOCIAL ENGINEERING (‘Sir’ Karl Popper) – change without upsetting the powerful. A weasel phrase, one of this great philosopher’s best known.

 

POLITICAL MEMOIRS – prop doors open.

 

POLLUTION – the oxygen of modernity.

 

PROGRESS – enslavement.

 

RADICAL TERRORISTS – anti-frackers, especially anti-fracking grannies and blokes in wheelchairs.

 

REFORM/LIBERALISATION – reform of labour so that it can be more cheaply hired and more easily fired.  Advocates ‘labour flexibility’ and ‘labour mobility’ on these grounds.

 

ROLLING BACK THE STATE – once one has bon-fired the red tape, we get rid of social infrastructure including health care, education and public transport as well as day-to-day law and order.

 

RUNAWAY BESTSELLER – so over-hyped that, with any luck, it will be sold off in WH Smith’s at half-price within six months.

 

SPENDTHRIFT LABOUR – though not quite so spendthrift as the Tories, who have piled up the national debt higher than Labour ever did chiefly by giving tax-cuts to the better-off and allowing non-domiciled status to the seriously rich.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA – to encourage anti-social behaviour. Amongst other things they promote the grooming, self-harm and suicides of children, and pay as little tax as they can get away with.

 

SOCIOLOGY – substantiates the mythology of ‘society’ as a reified object, like an idol.

 

TRADE UNION BARONS – to be distinguished from press barons, union barons salt union dues away in tax havens and tend to be non-domiciled for tax purposes.

 

TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT – as the rich get richer the poor get poorer because the rich grab even larger proportions of the available money. What ‘trickles down’ is poverty.

 

VENTURE CAPITALISTS - buy up companies, suck them dry of capital and then sell them off to the lowest bidder, all in a spirit of daring adventure.

 

WEALTH CREATORS – those who steal and mortgage the future of the wealth created by others.

 

….My work here is done!

 

 

With due acknowledgements to Ambrose Bierce (1842-?1914) and his Devil’s Dictionary. He disappeared in Mexico in 1914. If you are still alive, Mr Bierce, preferably in a comfy little hacienda, thanks a lot.