Most people hold a number of misconceptions about Marxism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed Marxist theory to evaluate class struggle in capitalism through economics and history. The Communism of the Soviet Union or Maoist China is a far cry from Marxist sociological theory. In a nutshell, Marxism examines the exploitation of the working class by the upper class. He predicts that because capitalism is inherently unstable, the working proletariat will unite and rise up against the bourgeois in a revolution that will ultimately create a classless society. Chuck Palahniuk ‘s Fight Club may as well have been written in red ink. This blog explores the Marxist message in the popular book. The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club – naturally, the first post in my series is ‘Breaking the 1st Rule.’
Breaking the 1st Rule
“It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” Tyler Durden words echo through out his novel and in my mind. Every single thing in your life, every physical possession, every title, role, relationship – they all come with subscribed behaviors that you have to conform to. Infamous philosopher Karl Marx put forth the idea of ‘dominant ideology.’ Dominant ideology is the way a nation thinks, or the set of values the nation holds as a whole, handed down by the ruling class. It’s a form of social control.
In China, the government tells the citizens that the Communist Party brought an end to Japanese occupation during WWII – not the United States. Crazy, right? In America, we are told that with hard work, we can do anything we want, be anything we want, and accomplish our dreams. In church we are told to be good because Jesus is watching us. In school we are told that we are unique, high-spirited, creative, and special. These all have one thing in common, they are lies.
Chuck Palahniuk‘s Fight Club is an exceptional – and exceptionally disturbing – Marxist critique of the American way, penned by a diesel mechanic and member of the anarchist Cacophony Society. I choose to write about Fight Club – to break the first rule of Fight Club – because I am alive and I can think. I’m awake, and you need to wake up too.
I am Joe’s Marxist Inner Monologue
We, the readers, are inside the narrator’s mind with him. Palahniuk’s style can be called ‘stream of consciousness,’ though in the case of this particular narrator, it is less of a stream and more of a hailstorm. The narrator’s inner monologue provides the reader with the narrative and perspective needed to interpret the setting and to put it within the Marxist framework that Palahniuk intended.
The book was published in 1996. The Soviet Union’s collapse had ushered capitalism and free trade to the forefront of the world stage, and the narrator’s ‘Anycity, USA’ seems a fair parody of the social strata of the time.
From his condo – “a filing cabinet for retirees and young professionals,” to Marla’s pseudo-permanent residence within the roach-infested Regent Hotel, all the way to the house on Paper Street where the narrator lives and works with Tyler Durden after his condo explodes, we are practically bombarded with example after example of a city in which social polarization has left the poor (proletariat) getting poorer and the rich (bourgeoisie) getting richer.
It feels too familiar, though – and that’s what Chuck Palahniuk wanted. He was a diesel mechanic. I’m a waiter. Maybe you work for a cable network or the Home Depot or Target. It doesn’t really matter – what matters is that we, as in you and I and the rest of the world that has to work to support ourselves, are able to imagine that Tyler is talking to us. That when we read the words, we’re truly there in the basement with him, circled by our equals, raising our fist for something right. Palahniuk writes the setting ambiguously for a reason – so that when we look in the mirror, we see a champion, pure and victorious enough to be a Space Monkey; so when we sit down for a moment and actually evaluate the consumer culture that we exist within, we understand that the hotel in the book is called the Pressman because its’ guests are the ones who opPress the working Man.
Why So Serious?
To not draw a parallel between Tyler Durden and Heath Ledger’s Joker would be a failure on my part. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight presents a villain who has a strangely familiar worldview. The Joker isn’t meaninglessly sowing chaos and anarchy; “when the chips are down, these… these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.” His intention is to act as an equalizer in a corrupt city. Gotham, in fact, is so corrupt that every single level of their law enforcement has been infiltrated by the city’s criminal underbelly, and all of them are scrabbling to get on top.
While the city presented in Fight Club isn’t necessarily swarming with killer clowns or superheroes, the parallel is there. The city the narrator describes is corrupt in its’ formation, infrastructure, and class system. Its’ existence is profane, necessarily demanding equalization by some force. Project Mayhem is the equalizing force; its’ ultimate aim is to dismantle, dissemble, and destroy civilization. In throwing us back into a hunter-gatherer society, the Space Monkeys of Durden’s Project Mayhem have exacted what Nolan’s Joker would call a fantastic plan.
The two are self-described agents of chaos, harbingers of what they perceive to be fair and just. Is it coincidence that the American public holds both to be sort of dark heroes, even in spite of their flagrant disregard for humanity?
The two stand outside of society, lacking material attachments, and have taken on their respective shoulders the burden of bringing change to society – with violence if necessary.
That we hold them both in such esteem seems an indication that maybe we do understand the gravity of humanity’s plight and our own situation.
When the Joker asks ‘why so serious,’ Tyler Durden’s Space Monkeys raise their fists in answer.
Bob Has Bitch Tits
Chuck Palahniuk, in keeping with the titular theme, goes for force rather than subtlety in his application of symbolism. His crucifixion of the weak-minded mainstream is violent and ruthless – and maybe it should be.
A culture in which the ideals of physical appearance have lead to mainstream acceptance of elective cosmetic surgery – choosing to go under the surgeon’s knife to have the fat sucked from your body deserves more than a crucifixion in text. Body builders who shoot up steroids to compete for wholly arbitrary titles are trading in their essential function – reproduction – for absolutely jack crap nothing in return. Robert Paulson’s ‘bitch tits,’ a physical side effect of his treatment for testicular cancer resulting from steroid use, symbolize how our culture has embraced a norm and a standard that leave us useless – unnatural, and without function.
The Paper Street Soap Company makes their soap with fat. More specifically, they make soap with the medical waste from liposuction procedures performed on unknowing individuals; the epitome of the upper class that is so reviled by Tyler . Holy. Effin’. Crap. That the soap is made from human fat is vile. That the soap is sold in department stores and only the same people, the bourgeois, can afford it? That’s karmic gold. The people that make life miserable for Tyler and his proletariat Project Mayhem are paying them for soap made from their own castoff fat. Fat symbolizes excess. Soap symbolizes cleanliness. You do the math.
Oh – incidentally, the byproduct of making soap in mass quantities – nitroglycerin – is what the space monkeys use to make the bombs that they intend to use to cleanse society.
All of this is contained (in the 2005 release of the paperback, at least) within a red cover, boasting a closed fist. To overlook the Marxist symbolism is impossible.
Durden Dogma
Fight Club is about breaking chains laid down by your oppressors. It is about every single one of us, our individual struggles, and our existence either enslaved to a pre-selected dominant ideology or in service of a greater cause – the destruction of an inherently flawed system of rich and poor.
Traditionally the American dream is a source of inspiration. It is the belief that economic success and social mobility can be achieved by perseverance and education, regardless of the class one is born into. The American dream promotes optimism and an entrepreneurial spirit. ‘If you believe, you can achieve’ and ‘you can be anything you want to be’ are the mottoes instilled in children by public educators and mass media. Adulthood brings the shocking realization that pursuit of this dream is fruitless – it is simply a means for the bourgeois to control the proletariat.
We are not special. You cannot be anything you want when you grow up – you are just one of billions on a warm ball of mud, flying through space around a giant fireball that is older than you can count. You are nothing and your actions don’t matter. You could die tomorrow or in the next ten seconds and nothing about the world will change. Tyler’s nihilistic dogma uproots the consumerist mindset we were all raised with and razes it to the ground. The cold truth that you are not your hair, your belongings, your money, or your beliefs invalidates your will to conform. The anger within each member of fight club grows as they distance themselves from the temporal things they once held dear. Fight club becomes a place where they can shed all of the affects of society and exist simply as men. A sense of community arises, and something Marx described as ‘class consciousness,’ or the proletarian looking beyond personal suffering and viewing themselves as one part of a whole. It is a paradigm shift from ‘me’ to ‘us.’ According to Marx, this is the quintessential step toward revolution.
Fight Club is right. It may be a grotesque caricature, but the truth is irrefutable. Tyler Durden isn’t a savior, his dogma isn’t a cure-all, but it sure as hell looks a lot better than where we are standing now.
“Let the ruling class tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. they have a world to win.” -Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto
Fight Club Manifesto 