Former Trotskyist, aspiring Social Democrat & edgy Westminster parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn has agreed to have another objective, impartial interview…
This time, at notable satire outlet Glossy News.
Wallace: So, we’ll play to your strengths first.
Jezza: Do I have to?
Wallace: Yes. It’s all in your objective interest. The objective material tendency of this interview is heading in that direction. TINA.
Jezza: That’s very comforting. I know a fellow admirer of the dialectic when I see one.
Wallace: So. Playing to your strengths…
Such as they are…
So, what’s your view on Hamas, Jezza?
Well, at least, your views at this current dialectical conjuncture in the history of the development of the universal-historical material forces of production, anyway.
Jezza: Why are you calling me ‘Jezza,’ you rapacious, pseudo-intellectual, petty-bourgeois-opportunist equivocator?!
Wallace: Sorry, I just thought you former Trots were renowned for your ‘erstwhile unphilosophical sense of humor.’
Jezza: Ah! You know, former Komrad Trotsky had a great sense of humour. He used to sit rubbing away in his cell, dreaming of what hilariously immeasurable agonies and sublimely comic pains he would inflict on his class enemies.
Wallace: You mean the capitalists?
Jezza: Oh, of course! Especially Stalin!
Wallace: Stalin the arch-capitalist?…
The f*** you on about, man?!
Jezza (mildly surprised): Oh?…
Didn’t you hear?
The Soviet Union were STATE CAPITALISTS!!!
They had ABSOLUTE NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the true, infallible, properly handed down and proclaimed teachings of great figures like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, and, and…
Well. That’s about it, really.
Wallace: So what do you think about capitalism then?
Feel free to leave the term ‘capitalism’ as vague, undefined and semantically empty as you like.
Or else just overdefine it in nitpicking, Comrade-Card-Index detail.
It’s up to you. All about freedom, right?
Jezza: Typical neoliberal reactionary-opportunist double-bind.
Capitalism? Well, right now, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Wallace: REALLY?!
Jezza: Well, yeah. I just had a very hostile, vicious, unfair, and petty-bourgeois-opportunist (and indeed OTHERWISE-PETTY-BOURGEOIS) interview in the UK.
Wallace: Why was that? Did they think Our Jezza were a proper tinpot Tony, or something?
Jezza: Um… not really. It was the capitalists.
THE-CAPITALISTS-MADE-THEM-DO-IT!!!
Wallace: Oof! Haven’t heard that one in a while. You’ve an answer for everything, haven’t you?
Jezza: Yes. Indeed I do.
Just one answer.
Straight from Das Kapital, believe it or not.
It’s stood me well for decades.
Wallace: So are there any other pressing social problems, apart from capitalism?
Jezza: Well, there are a few niggles and loose ends with a little bit of gender inequality, homophobia, religious prejudice, yada yada yada. But then…
Wallace: Let me have a guess…
Jezza: No, shut it! You just have no idea what I’m going to say, do you?
Wallace: I have an idea or two. Carry on.
Jezza: Well, there are a few niggles and loose ends with gender inequality, homophobia, religious prejudice, maybe one or two others, at a push.
…
But these are all caused by CAPITALISM, believe it or not.
Wallace: I should’ve known.
Jezza: Yes, you should’ve. You are from a humble background.
Borderline New Labour ‘ordinary person’ material, in fact.
Wallace: More than can be said for most Trots. I’ve never encountered one who was earning less than £90 000 a year!
Jezza: Well, you do what you can to live, don’t you?
Wallace: Aye…
Just like Lenin, Trotsky, Hitler, Stalin, and all those types.
End justifies the means, and all that.
Jezza: Of course…
Provided they are not CAPITALIST ENDS!!!
I mean, then it’s a completely different matter, isn’t it.
Wallace: Just change the record, man! You’re boring the arse o’ me, even if you are only a radically tendentious creation of my highly speculative fictional imagination, and not a real person.
***
Join us for the next dialectical leap of faith. Upwards, downwards, head-over-heels, who cares?
…
Well, I sure as hell don’t.