Glorious comrade George Carlin tells it how it is...

[ВАЛТЕР]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z2yrm2aBvE&feature=youtu.be

[Susurrus]

Problem is, he doesn't think that anything can be changed, it's all irreversibly gone wrong, and life is "a ticket to the freak show."

[CommunityBeliever]

What I wonder is what does the phrase "is this Karl Marx talking to me?" supposed to mean?

[CynicalIdealist]

George Carlin had a combination of liberal, Marxist, anarchist and primitivist views. At the very least, he was definitely disillusioned.

[Dumb]

George Carlin had a combination of liberal, Marxist, anarchist and primitivist views. At the very least, he was definitely disillusioned.

Well, that's half of it. The other half is a big, fat hunk of nihilism. He's often said something to the effect of, "This whole world's going down the drain and I'm just having fun watching, because I've got nothing invested in the end result."

Terrific satirist, but in terms of pointing the way forward...just let somebody else do that.

[Prairie Fire]

I dunno...

It is nice to see something like this coming from a relatively mainstream comic, but like anything else, it is tainted by the dominant narrative that he is accustomed to.

For example, he repeats the official line justifying out-sourcing: "...(the United States) Can't build a decent car; Can't build a TV set or a VCR worth a Fuck!"

This is repetition of the line that the reason that the manufacturing industry in the US declined was because they 'Stopped making quality products', not because decisions were made at the top to out-source manufacturing to where labour was significantly cheaper and much more readily exploitable (i.e. absence of even the most pedestrian labour laws, minimum wage, environmental regulations, etc).

So, in effect, Carlin blames the workers and/or some intangible concept of "American ingenuity" that could no longer make quality products that were 'competitive on the world scale'. This is also repetition of the free-market dogma that 'better products always triumph and rise to the top of a given industry', when McDonalds alone disproves this fallacy every day on an hourly basis.


He also (like Bill Hicks,) turns paradigms of imperialist war into a reductionist scenario where the US is simply killing "Brown people" for the sake of itself. American intervention in the Balkans in the 90's, the US intervention in the USSR on the side of the Czarists during the Bolshevik revolution, and the US role in Greece during their civil war are not explored, as these would invalidate his simplistic scenario, and hint that perhaps there is a determining factor in Imperialist war that transcends ethnicity (Not to say that ethnic/ national differences are not exploited and manipulated to the fullest when an imperialist war is in swing, though).

That he is still using the term "Middle Class" and "Lower Class" demonstrates that he is still using the bourgeois perception of "class", where "class" is simply a yard-stick to measure disparities in salaries and income. He doesn't understand the scientific socialist (i.e. Marxist) conception of Class, as a relation to the means of production and in relation to exploitation of labour.

Next he proceeds to make a garden variety,lukewarm criticism of the effectiveness of elections and whether or not political power is vested in the people of the US ,which might be useful to those who have literally never heard it before, but over-all it's a pretty watered down sentiment.

While he aptly points out the gradual effects of monopoly capitalism in the monopolization of various services and whatnot, it kinds of degrades into so much Liberal whining about reduction in "choices". Because he leaves so much un-said about what he favours as an alternative, the unspoken conclusion is that things would be better if there were more than three oil companies, more than two parties, more than a handful of newspapers... the lamentation of the petty-bourgeoisie in the face of crushing competition from the bourgeoisie, nothing more.

He seems to have a rudimentary understanding of class interests, but he doesn't take a moment to extend it into the interests of the other classes beyond the elite( most likely because he doesn't understand the basis of the existence of other classes to begin with, so he couldn't articulate their interests if he wanted to, beyond " getting money" and climbing the hierarchal ladder of a class stratified society).

In the end, as others have pointed out already, he had a basic awareness of some of the problems, but only retreads of liberal/social dem program highlights for his proposed "solutions". Like many others, he is useful in identifying areas in contradiction and in need of resolution, but he is lost on how to resolve them (where the heavy-hitters of Marxism-Leninism come in).

I like that he said certain political things on stage that even other "Edgy" comics never touched, and he said it to large crowds unlike other alternative comics ( I like Dave Chappelle for the same reason; he understood mass-line better than most politicians alive today), I like that he took a principled stand on Palestine (however briefly,), and that he did a whole bit taking shots at the concept of private property.

In English/British stand up, talk of 'socialism' of some stripe seems to be slightly more common*
( Tony Robinson, Mark Thomas, Mark Steel... even Ricky Gervais professed on-stage a youthful interest in communism/Marxism and his anti-fascist affiliations at the time.).

In Canada and the US, the English language Comedy scene is a political wasteland, broken only by the occasional brief interludes of cliché anti-war sentiments, health care advocacy (to solicit an obligatory applause break), mediocre bashing of the current overtly right-wing entity on the scene, and populist swipes at Bankers (because banks and financial institutions are the root of the problem:rolleyes:).

The few diamonds in the rough are some of the atheist material (when it isn't too smug and elitist,) and stuff on race relations, and even the occasional gender and sexuality stuff (although I find most womyns criticism and LGBT advocacy in stand-up comedy to be hackneyed and limited in it's scope).

For these reasons, as inadequate as what Carlin said is, it is something in a void of nothing. It is for similar reasons that myself and others often give Michael Moore a grudging pass (even when I flamed his "Capitalism: a Love story" to a crisp).

Carlin is over-all not bad. For other diamonds in the rough, check out Chappelle (specifically some of his youtube stand up; he said other stuff than "I'm Rick James, *****!") , Chris Rock is pretty good on the subject of race relations, and Eddie Griffin has his moments sometimes ( I was pleasantly surprised by most of his special "You Can Tell 'em I said it").

Hicks and Pryor are on and off, and of the two I would say Pryor had some more insightful things to say; Hicks just mused about shroom trips he went on and yelled at the audience, padded with hippie new age shit and predictable political observations that were not as subversive as he is given credit for.

* I'm well aware that most of these are not really 'socialists' in the revolutionary or scientific sense of the term (in fact, most are "left" capitalists,) , but even mentioning "socialism" on-stage puts them head and shoulders above their North American counterparts in stand-up.

[socialistjustin]

He was pretty funny and thats all I care about.

[Property Is Robbery]

I got to see him live before he died :)

[ВАЛТЕР]

I just posted it because of how true many of the statements were, and the fact that that guy sat there and said "Is this Karl Marx talking to me?" Trying to make it seem that Marxs' ideas were laughable.

The fact that he acts that this can't be stopped is something that I do not like. He brings up logical arguments and shows the people the holes in the system and then says "but there's nothing we can do, so lets just keep dong what we've been doing.".

[Princess Luna]

I think the only time I ever found myself disagreeing with George Carlin, was when he was talking about anorexia.

[Zostrianos]

George Carlin was a friggin genius

[Os Cangaceiros]

American intervention in the Balkans in the 90's

He actually did address this at one point. His excuse was that people in the Balkans were "swarthy", IIRC.

[RedGrunt]

George Carlin is an awesome comedian, and so was Bill Hicks but they're momentary steps to waking up if anything.

One of my friends listens to them big time(mainly Hicks), infact it's really how I was introduced to them but he, like Carlin, thinks there is nothing we can do pretty much.

[saigonxinh.us]

thanks ,it is very interesting