Syriology

The best book review I have ever read. Somehow, it sums up my life in the last 6 years or so.

The review below is written by Clary Antome.

Your mum has taught you lots of valuable things (eat your vegetables, be nice to old people and little dogs, don’t be late to school, keep a clean nose) but she was never really able to explain why you had to WORK for a living – instead of, you know, just living;

Your teachers packed your head full with all kinds of useful knowledge (about prepositions and adverbs, mineralogy and astrophysics, the reproductive organs of plants, x+2-y=0) but they never told you how exactly PROFITS are made – and why anybody would want to make them anyway;

Your friends and lovers can spend hours yakking about various interesting topics (the latest music machine, videogames, designer shoes, imitation leather sofas, blockbuster movies, pink underwear and cherry flavoured bubble-gum) but they call you a bore and a nitpick whenever you wonder why you’re all surrounded by so many COMMODITIES and publicity ads promising you bigger, better and faster useless things.

You often have the impression that some greater truth is lacking in your life (and you’ve tried all the legal/illegal drugs, exciting TV shows, gurus and psychoanalysts, help-yourself books and bestsellers about kid sorcerers)…

…Then the time may have come to have a long talk with good old Uncle Karl – the black sheep of the social sciences, the guy nobody likes to mention at social occasions (except in the form of a joke: “have you heard the one about Karl Marx in Las Vegas?”), the most misquoted and misinterpreted modern thinker.

In “Capital”, he kindly invites you to break on through to the other side (that’s how countercultural he was) and check out what’s really happening behind the glitzy appearances of everyday life. You don’t even have to be a genius to understand him (it will be enough if you can count to ten without choking). And you might be surprised about how obvious some things will seem after he explains to you about the cage you’re sitting in.

Of course, mum will probably be broken-hearted and fear that you’ll join the next anarcho-pinko-terrorist organization down the block. Your teachers might refer to a vast list of successful anti-Marx books and charity organizations. And your friends and lovers will find you an even greater bore than before.