CB
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I spent five days in MontrTal at the end of September to speak at a broad left conference organized by the Concordia University Students Union (which was actually one of the best conferences I've been to in some time)... also speaking was Mitchel Cohen (Red Balloon Collective, formerly of the "Independent Caucus" of the Students' for a Democratic Society), who I had a fun time chatting with, even if we disagreed on many things.
I came home to Vancouver with a bunch of Mitchel's Red Balloon Collective pamphlets (largely 'cause they were super-cheap), including several from his "Zen-Marxism" series.
Earlier this evening, I was sitting in my home with a bunch of largely-anarchist friends who dropped by to watch a film with me, and one of them picked up a copy of Cohen's pamphlet "'What is to be Undone?' or, How to Spot a Vanguardist at Twenty Yards" and read aloud the following passage, which elicited great howls of laughter from both the anarchists and the marxists in the room.. thought I'd share:
An incorrigible anarchist was on her deathbed when she announced that she'd become a marxist. Her affinity group was shocked! They spraypainted slogans all over her room, threw rocks through the windows, slamdanced to blasting MDC, and paraded around her bed with a black flag. Finally, one of her lovers asked: "After all these years and all we've been through, how could you become a marxist?"
"Well," said the turncoat, "my time is up. So I says to myself, if anyone's going to die, let it be one of them marxist bastards".