Karl Marx and Colonel Sanders

by Jules Vitali


...That dang stodgy Karl Marx may have been right after all but I don't think Kernal Sanders was in on it, but I am fair convinced that Frankie Purdoo somehow helped to perpetuate it. How does a telecommuter that sits at home on his duff all day know this... cause his wife goes off to college and they force it into her head and then she comes home and tells him about it.

Marxism, Leninism, Astigmatism, Pragmatism... they were all the same to me until about a week ago. My life has changed since then. My view of moral philosophy with regard to the business sector changed, too. Plus, I thought my frugality was deeply rooted in a lifestyle choice I had made unto myself. I was näive. Any frugality I may enjoy comes not as a result of saving but as a result of what someone else decides or decides not to allow me to save. I am one of the proletariat. I didn't elect to be one of these, Karl did it to me. Not that I want to be a bourgeoisie either. Marxist theory predicts that the contradictions and weaknesses within capitalism will cause increasingly severe economic crisis and impoverishment of the working class, which will ultimately revolt and seize control of the means of production. In the resulting classless society, the coercive state will be replaced by rational economic cooperation. The proceeding sentence or two was quoted verbatim from ''The Concise Columbia One-volume Encyclopedia.'' Now I sound like that sod laden serf in that Monty Python flick about King Arthur, Bourgeoise Extraordinaire. Don't try to understand all of this and I won't try to explain it and if you do already understand Marxism, please, don't explain it back to me, I can't take any more of it. I've come to believe that Karl is the Negativistic New Order Nostradamus. It really takes me to the edge when these great people who lived long ago make predictions that come true... especially in my lifetimeŠ really, couldn't this all have waited until my passing. Anyway, basically what Karl had to say that seems to bother me so much is that there are land and property owners (bourgeois) and there are people who supply labor (proletariat, in short mostly, you and I) and that given the conditions that exist today we will work, produce, and slave our way into an ugly self fulfilling prophecy where there is nothing to produce but rebellion. My point being, at least I guess my point being, is that we should probably start worrying.

As far a the Colonel goesŠ I think he just wanted us exploited worker bees to have some nice chicken to eat when we got hungry. All he basically had in life was his secret recipe. Not a heck of a lot of land or factories or anything like that. He probably even made some of us proletariat feel like big shot bourgeois when they ate his crispy chicken and mashed potatoes (Gore spelling) with gravy. He sold franchises for a living, so he actually never had anything but green pieces of paper to show for his troubles. From what I read, his Colonelship was kinda franchised and given unto him by the governor of his home state, so the colonel wasn't even really a colonel but just another joker on the bus.

The following is straight off the internet: Chicken-man Frank Purdue's slogan, ''It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,'' got terribly mangled in a Spanish translation. A photo of Purdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained ''It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused.'' A very bourgeois statement if ever I read one. Giving further credence to the idea that Marx never took advertisement into consideration when he espoused his theorems.

I don't know if it was a group of Marxist scientists that recently got together and decided that our big old ice cap is melting and will raise the ocean enough so that, say, Galesburg, Illinois will soon be oceanfront property on both the east and west sides of town. This is certainly going to put a crunch on land holdings for a lot of the bigwig bourgeois boys and girls, and if the water rises fast enough and strong enough, it may dramatically cut down on the available labor force necessary to produce the goods and services that the aforementioned need to keep the industrial complexes running smoothly if only for their own benefit. It all gets pretty confusing from here on out and my brain is tired. Thank you for bearing with me.

A bright note before I finish up with this commentary that clearly demonstrates that Marxism is still alive and well. A newspaper reporter came to the house the other day. He drove an older, kinda beat-up car of the General Motors persuasion on whose skewed and partially rusted faux chromium cum sun faded black plastique back bumper was an almost, but not quite, centered sticker exclaiming that the reader should ''Crush the Bourgeoisie.'' I inquired about it... and was told that there were only eight of these stickers in existence... and to have one show up in my driveway as I am penning this article I think speaks distinctly to the enigma at hand, and that is... Be fair in all your business practices.



Uploaded to The Zephyr Online July 11, 2001

Back to The Zephyr