July 28, 2014. Although the official discourse insists that there is an economic recovery, the crisis that began in 2008 is here to stay. Economic deregulation and its consequences (global inflation, food and energy crises, threat of recession, etc.) and that maxim that terrifies and paralyzes in equal measure, called “crisis of confidence in the markets,” have become good arguments to re-regulate the entire system and, of course, not in favor of fundamental rights and just causes.
It seems that the time has come to reread Marx. From philosophy, art, theater and political activism, we return to the ideas of the philosopher and to his critical and detailed analysis of capitalism and its practices, to find out if it is true that we are experiencing the last gasps of capitalism, or if it is a collapse prior to a stronger resurgence. But don’t panic, because what is at stake is also rereading it from a contemporary perspective, desacralizing it, commenting on it and also ironizing it.
In 2010, Jason Barker directed the film Marx Reloaded, with a “cast” that includes Norbert Bolz, Micha Brumlik, John Gray, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Nina Power, Jacques Rancière, Peter Sloterdijk, Alberto Toscano and Slavoj Zizek. This agile documentary features interviews with supporters of Marx’s analysis and also with skeptics, as well as Marx himself in an animated version trying to delve into a sort of “matrix” of his own ideas. “Take the blue pill and you will wake up in Cologne as the director of a provincial newspaper. Take the red pill and I will show you how the permanent revolution goes,” Stalin tells Marx, while offering him first a blue pill and then a red pill.
Jason Barker has not been the only one who has dared to tackle Marx. The American theorist Howard Zinn has also done so with a play, Marx in Soho, in which Marx comes back to life, but due to a bureaucratic confusion, he does not appear in Soho in London, where he lived in exile, but in Soho in New York, where, still in a state of shock, he wants to clarify misunderstandings and the way in which his ideas have been interpreted, in relation to communism, capitalism, Marxism and the Paris Commune. We are therefore moving in the realm of “what if…?” and with the need to return to the original sources, to correct suspicious readings and interpretations.
Returning to the sources is what Sylvain Creuzevault has done, and in what way, taking Karl Marx’s Capital literally to transform it into Capital and its monkey of repetition, a show that for two and a half hours does not give you a break and demands great mental agility to digest all the references and twists. The work, which has been seen these days in the context of the GREC Festival, is set in 1848, the year of the revolution within another revolution, which would lead to the constitution for a few days of the Paris Commune. Creuzevault brings together Raspail, Blanqui, Engels and others at the Club des Amici du Poupé in Paris to discuss whether it makes sense to attack the Paris Assembly. The author takes advantage of the moment to expose the different Marxist concepts in a context of economic, political and social uncertainties that, if you look closely, is not so different from the current one. In fact, there are also similarities with the questions raised by citizen platforms and new political parties here and now such as Podemos or Guanyem.
Fifteen actors play the different characters and question, in a comedic tone – although it may seem unbelievable – the current state of notions such as salary, democracy or power and have no qualms about creating imaginary conversations between Freud and Foucault, for example. The comedy – as its author insists – sometimes seems to be close to Shakespeare, other times to a political meeting; sometimes it seems like a play by Brecht and other times, a conversation that takes place at the bar of a bar. That is why it is so contemporary and why Creuzevault’s Capital is so exhausting. Perhaps only with a background of black humour is it possible to approach things that are so transcendent, because our lives depend on it.
Black humour and also disenchanted pragmatism, not lacking in enthusiasm, is what Slavoj Zizek’s words exude at one point in Marx Reloaded: “We are in deep shit and we know it.” Zizek’s words could not be clearer. Something must be done about it.
