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A review by sarsaparillo
Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young by Helen Razer
4.0
Having studied computer science and worked in the entertainment industry, I've had to learn history, economics and politics via ad-hoc and extracurricular means. I'm catching up, but gaping holes remain, and one of those holes was Marx-shaped. So when I saw that Helen Razer had written an accessible book about his thought, I dropped everything and immediately started waiting for the self-narrated audiobook, of which this is a review.
I have faint but fond teenage memories of Razer's hilarious exasperated rants on triplej, and have recently been enjoying her tweets, and the first couple of paragraphs in her Crikey articles above the paywall... wait a sec - I just checked her Wikipedia page and realised that she is turning 50 as I write these very words. Happy birthday Helen!! (balloon emoji)
This book delivered on my expectations for both distilled theory and ranty exasperation. As a not-quite-millennial my growing awareness of economic precariousness came less at the entering-the-workforce phase and more at the worrying-about-my-kids phase. As such at some points in this book I was feeling almost sick at the state of the world as described therein. It's quite a comedown after reading Pinker's excellent, if rose-tinted, Enlightenment Now recently.
I'm not now a convert, but this book gave me much better impression of Marx, I think in particular because Razer focuses more on his economic and social theory and how it relates to capitalism as it manifests in the modern world. She refers to capitalism's coming decline and the inevitable need for state smashing but doesn't go into detail about how exactly that's supposed to happen. So, not a lot of history nor blueprints for revolution, but it's not a big book and it's pretty up front about this.
I found myself at the end with a lot of nagging questions. Why can't capitalists keep growing their profits with ever more efficient robots? I didn't quite understand why human labour is key to profit growth, or is it that you need at least some solvent employed humans to consume the products? This is a technicality I guess, clearly something is unsustainable about growing automation and the need to keep everyone employed for their survival.
Something about capitalism - or free markets - has been very successful, and not just for the elite. I'd rather live now than before the industrial revolution. But I'm not sure exactly what it is. There's a baby there among the disposable capitalistic bathwater. I guess what I'm wondering is how collective ownership of the means of production would practically work on a global scale. I'm sure other authors have covered this, but if Razer is considering a sequel, this would make an interesting discussion, though necessarily much more speculative. This book does come with a generous list of further reading recommendations though.
There's a lot more to this book to make it worth the read, including fresh tangents into the Trump phenomenon and feminism. It's also disarmingly personal, bleak, sweary and funny.
If like me you find it comforting to try to understand what on earth is going on right now by reading a wide variety of perspectives, add this Marxist one to your list.
I have faint but fond teenage memories of Razer's hilarious exasperated rants on triplej, and have recently been enjoying her tweets, and the first couple of paragraphs in her Crikey articles above the paywall... wait a sec - I just checked her Wikipedia page and realised that she is turning 50 as I write these very words. Happy birthday Helen!! (balloon emoji)
This book delivered on my expectations for both distilled theory and ranty exasperation. As a not-quite-millennial my growing awareness of economic precariousness came less at the entering-the-workforce phase and more at the worrying-about-my-kids phase. As such at some points in this book I was feeling almost sick at the state of the world as described therein. It's quite a comedown after reading Pinker's excellent, if rose-tinted, Enlightenment Now recently.
I'm not now a convert, but this book gave me much better impression of Marx, I think in particular because Razer focuses more on his economic and social theory and how it relates to capitalism as it manifests in the modern world. She refers to capitalism's coming decline and the inevitable need for state smashing but doesn't go into detail about how exactly that's supposed to happen. So, not a lot of history nor blueprints for revolution, but it's not a big book and it's pretty up front about this.
I found myself at the end with a lot of nagging questions. Why can't capitalists keep growing their profits with ever more efficient robots? I didn't quite understand why human labour is key to profit growth, or is it that you need at least some solvent employed humans to consume the products? This is a technicality I guess, clearly something is unsustainable about growing automation and the need to keep everyone employed for their survival.
Something about capitalism - or free markets - has been very successful, and not just for the elite. I'd rather live now than before the industrial revolution. But I'm not sure exactly what it is. There's a baby there among the disposable capitalistic bathwater. I guess what I'm wondering is how collective ownership of the means of production would practically work on a global scale. I'm sure other authors have covered this, but if Razer is considering a sequel, this would make an interesting discussion, though necessarily much more speculative. This book does come with a generous list of further reading recommendations though.
There's a lot more to this book to make it worth the read, including fresh tangents into the Trump phenomenon and feminism. It's also disarmingly personal, bleak, sweary and funny.
If like me you find it comforting to try to understand what on earth is going on right now by reading a wide variety of perspectives, add this Marxist one to your list.