Hillman: Well, I think, you know, to be ahead of the crowd -- I mean if I'm
going to be light about it -- then the best thing you could be today is to be a
Marxist. No one -- there isn't a Marxist left in Eastern Europe, there isn't a
Marxist anywhere -- no one will stand...I wanted to write a piece the other day
and say, "Yes, I'm Red!!" (laughs)
All the values that Marxism held have been jettisoned. And there were real
values in there. There were the values, for example, of class consciousness --
awareness of class -- which in America we don't want to be aware of. And class
is terribly important. "Baraka," Leroi Jones, said the other day, I was told,
"Listen, Brothers, this is not about black and white, O. J. Simpson. This is
about poor and rich." In other words, the people who stood up and cheered that
O.J. got free. And then he said, "Listen Brothers, and Sisters, O.J.'s not going
to show up, didn't show up in your neighborhood for twenty-five years---and he's
not going to show up now in your neighborhood.
Meaning this is a question of rich and poor. This is a class question. And I
think, to use "Red," or "Marxist" thinking, and I'm not up on it, but my idea of
it is that nothing could work better for the ruling class than to divide the
lower class by turning them against each other. This is a classic mode,
political mode! So, that's what we have. We have the whites turned against the
blacks, the blacks turned against the whites. They have exactly the same
interests, which is to control the corporate world in some way or another. To
get back into the action. But instead, they turn against each other. Who does
that suit? That suits the upper class, the ruling class, the rich. So I see much
more -- I mean this sounds ridiculous for a Jungian psychologist to be talking
this way -- but I see the way of looking at a lot that goes on today -- it would
be good to put back on a pair of Marxist glasses.
Another reason for this is the Marxist idea that capitalism can only survive by
its last phases, which is through war material. Producing. Having wars and
producing useless goods, which are not good for the people. That's what we're
doing. The biggest part of the budget is still the defense budget. We've got no
enemies anywhere. And it's still space shots. The spin-off of the trickle-down
from them is so remote, but it keeps all the constituencies voting, because
they've got a little piece of the defense industry, everywhere in the country.
Look at that through Marxist glasses. This was all said fifty years ago, a
hundred years ago, the way we are -- the way the country is functioning was
predictable according to Marx's view of capitalism.
Capen: So, where is the Left at this point? Is there a Left? How does one, how
does this mass of people become revived? You know, the term, the handle, "Left,"
is about the best you can find, I guess; but it doesn't really say what people
who would band together in this matter are all about...nevertheless --
Hillman: The Left? Right now, I read just recently that the unions are waking up
again. But if you would -- Did you see that? There's an election out: a man has
come in to run the AFL and the CIO.
It's a guy named [John] Sweeney, I think. But they said it may be necessary to
do insurrection in order to---in order to get justice, we may have to use
injustice. Things like that. Those are revolutionary sentences that you haven't
heard around here for how long? And he's the man who shut down the bridges
around D.C. There was a labor strife going on a year ago, and he shut the
bridges down, preventing people from moving in and out of the city. So he's an
activist. The Unions have lost all influence and, again, there's a tradition of
American spirit in the Unions. Their songs. There's great poetry about the
Unions. Go back into the '30s, the '20s, the beginning of the century. All of
that got wiped out. So there's some Left there. There's a little bit of the Left
left there.
Where else is the Left? See, the Left also turned away from Marxism, doesn't
even want to use the term, because that's outdated, that's means you're a
Stalinist, or a communist, or a, you know -- this dysfunctional system over in
Eastern Europe. Agreed! That's the way the Right Wing gets you: it says,
"Christ, you're a Marxist! Look how fucked up they were in Eastern Europe."
Of course they were. That isn't the point. The point is that Marxism is
essentially a Western -- Marx was a German, a Jew, and lived in England. It's a
Western set of ideas that belong in our world. We shouldn't have exiled it into
Communist China or somewhere. It belongs in ours! (laughs) Not Ho Chin Min's
world. It's our world! And it's a critique of our world. It's an insight into
the destructiveness of American -- of Western capitalism. That's the thing we
need to wake up to. In that sense, I'm a Marxist.
Capen: Maybe the intentions of Communism and the intentions of unions in America
fell for the same reasons, i.e., corruption. The system never really worked the
way it was intended to.
Hillman: Yeah. And usually the ruling class co-opts its enemies. The British did
it by giving them titles and knighting them. The old kings in the Middle Ages
gave them land and gave them, you know, made them whatever they wanted to be.
And the knights and baronies and so on were ways of keeping potential rivals
pacified. Then the British even gave their rebels in Africa, people who fighting
against them, gave them titles and brought them to England -- you know, that was
a way... The unions got bought by Capitalism, too. That was one of the reasons
they became ineffective and corrupt, yes.