Ana Stankovic is having a toxic reaction to a wave of references to Karl Marx. She writes about it in LARB:
CALL ME A KILLJOY but I am sick to death of hearing about Karl Marx. I am sick of his name, his -isms, his undoubted genius, and his “philosophy.” I am sick of him “having reason,” as the French say, or “being right.” But most of all I am sick of his “relevance.”
As someone whose parents were born and grew up in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and who missed the same fate by the skin of her teeth, I know perfectly well what Marx’s relevance amounts to. Marx gave it a name, even if for him it meant something else than it did for the people of Yugoslavia. I am talking about the oft-quoted and seldom understood “religion of everyday life.”
In post–World War II Yugoslavia, Marx’s “relevance” was to be a member of the ruling communist party. Outside of that supra-religious institution no substantial share in the social wealth was possible. “[T]he life-process of society,” as Marx observes in what turned out to be a weird prediction, “which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.”
Always interested in a foreign viewpoint, this one concerning a supra-religious institution is fascinating and baffling. I suspect I need a better grounding in the history of the region once called Yugoslavia, as well as that of Marx.
And Ana has a lovely analogy with the satirical movie The Producers, worth taking a look at.
