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<font size=4><b>Second Coming Shocker!<br>
Karl Marx Returns to Earth Instead of Jesus!<br><br>
</b></font>by Susie Day<br>
4/24/2012<br>
<a href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/day240412.html" eudora="autourl">
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/day240412.html<br><br>
</a>NEW YORK, NY -- Millennial Christians and godless communists alike
were stunned when nineteenth-century economist and revolutionary Karl
Marx suddenly returned from the dead about two hours ago to land, in
bodily form, at the corner of Nassau and Wall Streets.<br><br>
His appearance interrupted Occupy Wall Street protesters as they
negotiated the preparations for an anticapitalist May 1 General
Strike. Seeming irritable and out of sorts, Mr. Marx sat glowering
astride a fiery white horse amid apocalyptic clouds of glory, as hordes
of journalists and OWS activists waving cell phones crushed in to record
the event.<br><br>
"HA HA! You're undead!" laughed a cub reporter from The
Wall Street Journal, pointing derisively at socialism's greatest
sage. "Where's your dialectical materialism now,
huh?"<br><br>
"Shut up, kid," grumbled Mr. Marx, massaging a carbuncle on his
left buttock.<br><br>
"Karl Marx!" cried CNN's Anderson Cooper, thrusting a
microphone at the stern, famously bearded visage, "now that you've
obviously come back from some sort of Afterlife, don't you think it's
silly to explain existence in terms of social class and the means of
production? How about giving a little credit to the Man
Upstairs?"<br><br>
Karl Marx wrested the microphone from Mr. Cooper and declared to the
multitudes, "Religion is still the opiate of the masses, you
guys. In fact, Jesus is so hopped up on opiates, he can't even see
straight. Furthermore, Jesus thinks you all suck."<br><br>
The crowd gasped and shrank back. "Burn him!" screamed a
bevy of middle-aged tourists, sporting green foam Statue-of-Liberty
crowns and carrying multiple shopping bags from Century 21.<br><br>
Unruffled, Mr. Marx continued, "Hey, I tried to give you people a
break. I explained to Jesus that your bourgeois consumer fetishism
was created by your alienating social conditions. So Jesus said,
'Fine, one bearded Jewish intellectual is as good as another -- you go
down there and sort them out.' I said, 'Bite me.' Next thing
I know, here I am. True story."<br><br>
Marxist scholars express doubt that the mortal being who formulated the
paradigms of dialectical and historical materialism could have triumphed
over death itself. Dr. Harvey B. Papershredder, adjunct sociology
professor at Sarah Lawrence College, represented the going academic
consensus when he stated, "Because I have invited Marx into my heart
as my personal savior, I believe he no longer exists. Conversely, I
exist. So does my latest book on capitalist injustice, premised on
the hard-hitting Marxian fact that, when oppressed workers die, they
don't come back. So please buy my book because we only live once
and I want to feel good about myself before we all perish miserably in
some capitalist-induced nuclear and/or global warming disaster.
It's also available on Nook and Kindle. The book, not the
disaster."<br><br>
Other leftists, less empirically grounded, are joyfully celebrating Mr.
Marx's return, saying they look forward to living in a promised classless
society at the end of history. Many, having prided themselves for
years on living "politically correct" lives by eschewing fur
and meat products, and demonstrating regularly against imperialist wars,
have celebrated Marx's return with delirious blog entries, tweets, and
pilgrimages to Lower Manhattan in the belief that the "End of
History" has arrived, and the chosen will soon be raptured over to
the Financial District to build a glorious "Worker's
Paradise."<br><br>
Meanwhile, at Union Square, devout progressives can purchase
hand-lettered t-shirts sporting such slogans as "Better Dead AND
Red" and "Prole-ier than Thou," along with political
buttons emblazoned with the images of martyred radicals and political
prisoners. Even the local chapter of the Jehovah's Witnesses has
switched from distributing its signature magazine "Watchtower"
to giving out free copies of Mao's "Little Red Book."<br><br>
But the transcendent atmosphere of jubilation was marred in the last hour
or so, when a rumor was tweeted that Mr. Marx is preparing to condemn the
entire Revolutionary Workers' Labor Party to hell for all eternity for
the sin of infighting.<br><br>
"Serves them right," remarked Milo Kronstadt of the anarchist
Party Against Workers' Parties Party. "Lousy bunch of
middle-class Marxist-Leninist white liberal Stalinist so-called
activists. They should all die and rot."<br><br>
Another so-called activist from a more hierarchical tendency then pointed
out the "lameness" of an anti-authoritarian "dude"
who expects justice from the ultimate Authority on Marxism, and a general
melee broke out. Fisticuffs finally abated about nine minutes ago
when someone noticed that Mr. Marx was no longer to be seen.<br><br>
Four minutes later, Mr. Marx was discovered at the pharmacy counter of
the nearest Duane Reade, discussing the efficacy of Preparation H to
treat his carbuncle. He reportedly confiscated and damaged the cell
phone of the OWS politico in the act of tweeting a photo of Mr. Marx's
first back-to-earth purchase. As of the last twelve seconds, Mr.
Karl Marx remains inside the Duane Reade, refusing to come out.<br><br>
Given the complex coordinates of time, space, and this exact dialectical
moment in material History, no one -- as usual -- knows what will
happen. It remains for each and every one of the 99 percent to keep
watching the skies.<br><br>
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