Marc was my oldest friend. He knew the names of my stuffed animals. We read Capital together and agreed that Marx was right, but that Lenin and Stalin’s example demonstrated how difficult it would be to achieve the workers’ paradise. Marc thought that Mao had it figured out, but the Cultural Revolution was such a disappointment.
The day after Marc passed, and again after reading Beyond Betrayal, I was moved to poetry. I have hijacked the photo-share function in an attempt to share it.
Thank you all for loving my friend and believing in a peoples’ future.
Marc W. Steinberg 6 21 1956-6 7 2019
The problem with dialectical materialism
At times like these
Is the absence of messages of personal comfort
History rolls like a collision of sumo
Enormous forces
Replacing and displacing partners after every throw
A wave (no, a tsunami!) theory of history struggling toward perfection
Tended by high priests
From Marx to Stalin to Mao; From Smith to Mellon to Ailes;
Their victory is sure because their logic is beyond reproach
We know how that goes
They say our only flaw is that we do not yet believe in their assumptions
But the only world to come they offer is this one. Their Paradises will live on earth
Until, in turn, they don’t.
But history, your story, ends where materialism dares not tread
Or does it? You reported on a theory of history of empowered particles
And showed us how to act in it
Every time you had a chance to help and bravely did
Each example of radical compassion
Assures your immortality
In the radical compassion of those who witnessed it
9/2/2019