{"id":62235,"date":"2021-03-23T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=62235"},"modified":"2022-04-07T09:44:25","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:44:25","slug":"qotd-marx-was-right-but-not-about-the-proletariat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/03\/23\/qotd-marx-was-right-but-not-about-the-proletariat\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Marx was right &#8230; but not about the proletariat"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Karl Marx, damn his rotten soul, was right. Or, more accurately, his followers made him right. The Proletariat never achieved class consciousness on their own. Nor did they do it with the assistance of the Vanguard Party, like Lenin thought. In fact, they only did it \u2014 incompletely; they&#8217;re in the process of doing it now \u2014 with the assistance of a bunch of drooling idiots who can&#8217;t even spell &#8220;Karl Marx.&#8221; I&#8217;m speaking, of course, of the <em>Apparat<\/em>, the managerial class, the iron rice bowl perma-bureaucracy that runs the Imperial Capital.<\/p>\n<p><em>Those<\/em> fuckheads achieved class consciousness here in the last 30 years, and now they&#8217;re doing what Marx said the Proletariat would \u2013 making Revolution, overturning the system, causing the State to wither away as they pursue their own interests against tradition, religion, all enemies foreign and domestic. Theirs is a &#8220;Marxism&#8221; boiled down to its essence: Nihilistic, suicidal envy.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Once they achieve class consciousness, the Revolution is inevitable \u2013 Marx was right about that, too. There are only so many places in the <em>Apparat<\/em>, after all, and the number of talented, ambitious people in the Empire \u2014 even now, after a century&#8217;s worth of mandatory &#8220;education&#8221; \u2014 far exceeds the number of make-work jobs the <em>Apparat<\/em>, <strong>any<\/strong> <em>Apparat<\/em>, can support. Provided we survive it, it will be some cold comfort, watching the bewilderment in their faces as they&#8217;re lined up against the wall. Ever read <em>Darkness at Noon<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/skynet-becomes-self-aware\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Skynet Becomes Self-Aware&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em><\/a>, 2020-12-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karl Marx, damn his rotten soul, was right. Or, more accurately, his followers made him right. The Proletariat never achieved class consciousness on their own. Nor did they do it with the assistance of the Vanguard Party, like Lenin thought. In fact, they only did it \u2014 incompletely; they&#8217;re in the process of doing it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,41],"tags":[509,1076,506,1462],"class_list":["post-62235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-quotations","tag-civilservice","tag-karlmarx","tag-revolution","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-gbN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62235"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64813,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62235\/revisions\/64813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}