Capitalism and Pynchon

[Mr Craig Clark]

Richard Romeo wrote:

> Not to be coy but without the big K, many Marxists wouldn't have a JOB?
> One of my favourite cartoons was in the Village Voice:  Karls' wife 
> yelling at sodden old K:  "hey Karl, when the fuck you gonna get a job?"
> We need the devil but thru his victories we find our salvation or vice 
> versa...

I'm kinda sceptical of these arguments because I heard a lot of them 
about ten years ago, right here in South Africa: on that occasion it 
was at the level of "Archbishop Tutu doesn't really want to see the 
end of apartheid, because it's what has made him famous." And no 
prize for guessing which side of the anti-apartheid struggle the 
people who argued thus stood. Actually, like many anti-apartheid 
activists who really did want to see apartheid end, many anti-capitalist
activists sincerely and genuinely want to see the end of capitalism. 

Steve Robinson wrote
> I'm teetering off subject here, but . . .  A visiting Russian prof 
> recently told me of a saying that's going around the former USSR:  
> "Anyone who does not lament the fall of communism has no heart; anyone 
> who would want it back is a fool."
Again, this is an old one. The usual version in circulation is "Anyone who is 
not a socialist at twenty has no heart, anyone who is still a socialist at thirty
has no brain."

I'd like to suggest in this regard that we all consider the profound 
and disturbing epiphany that visits Roger Mexico during the banquet 
at the Utgarloki's in _GR_: particularly that bit about how the 
Counterforce are as massively double-minded in the presence of money 
as the rest of humanity. Maybe the trend to which Richard and Steve 
both allude, in their own way, is just that: the seducing of people away 
from the cause of socialism by money. Think of all the lefty students 
you knew, foax: how many drive big, fast cars these days?
 
Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"