Thomas_More
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I don’t have the stamina for composition that I used to have. Are there not other comrades interested in other species and in mutual aid in both human and nonhuman societies, who would like a chance to write for the Standard?
I’ve been over this subject so many times, and with diabetes I am lately tired every day.More guilt-tripping of unemployed wage-slaves; and the danger of being forced to take dangerous drugs, when all genuine physicians tell us diet and exercise are the only safe options for weight-loss, not pills.
Even when I mention things in passing, whilst having a normal small talk conversation, I am rendered speechless. For instance, the news that dinosaurs did not co-exist with humans has people reply, “Are you sure? How do you know that?”
And I constantly have to dumb down my vocabulary.
I also hate snobbery, and it comes because, as I am not an academic, I am asked “How would YOU know? You’re not a professor.”I’ve had doors closed on me whilst a friend was allowed through, because she had an academic title and I’m just a bum.
I’ve been ridiculed as a book reader all my life, long before the internet. Book readers for pleasure are not valued, especially not when they are male.
And you can bet those dismissing books in favour of the digital are NOT, for the most part, going online to read Marx and Engels. Nor to read anything of substance.
Money-making, gambling, porn, zombie games, jobs and sport are about all, plus conspiracies (for those of that bent).
Very few are researching historical materialism. Many more than that are researching flat earth, or Taylor Swift.
Btw, do you see socialism as a bookless society, like in H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, where former libraries are full of dust, and books crumble like cookies when touched?
We can hardly hope Shelley’s knowledgeable, well-read, coherent, eloquent and enlightened “rising lions” are still to be found anywhere, as we once hopefully saw heroic proletarians abolishing the wages system. That’s a Godwinian and Marxian fiction, you have to admit. And Rosa Luxemburg is long gone.
The vocabulary of Marxism, or any extensive vocabulary, has no place in most people’s lives, and they have no interest in it.
The workers are not going to make the revolution through any understanding of historical materialism. Only a tiny minority know what that is, and I am mocked for my pleas on the importance of books and knowledge of history, and am told by socialists we don’t need people to read in order for them to make socialism. If that is so, we must hope for them to make it without any historical understanding of their role; just make it intuitively, out of the self-preservation instinct.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c625p2wy3q7o.amp
This could drag in more countries.It wasn’t Woolworth’s.
I won’t name it.I did have a Xmas job in Woolworth’s in 1993.
I was on the till, age 33, and the 21 yr old manager was supervising me, when a little old lady spoke to him and pointed at me:
“It’s good to see the young ‘uns getting a proper start in life.”
Woolworth’s had the habit of frisking all staff about to clock off early, in front of customers.
An amusing true story. I worked in Debenhams in the 1980s, where a Mr. Mackay-like security guard gave us all the once-over at the end of the day.
Years later I bumped into him (he was a customer, like me), in a CD shop. He shouted, with everyone turning to look at me: “STILL ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW?”
As I was leaving the shop, he boomed again, with everyone turning: “KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN!”As part of the induction process to working in a department store a few years ago, I sat with young wage-slave hopefuls at a large table facing the managers. When it came time for a trade union rep to talk to us, we were told in advance that we don’t have to listen to him. While the young people (all avid fans of Love Island etc.) sat with heads bowed in silence and stayed silent when he asked for questions, I engaged with him, while the managers glared at me.
Back at the jobcentre I was summoned to a private office and told “You’re a troublemaker, aren’t you?”
