Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young

By Helen Razer

A cheeky introduction to Marxism and socialism for everyone fed up with their capitalist woes.

Millennials have it bad. They face the problems of underemployment, unaffordable housing, and economists who write crap columns telling them it’s their fault for taking an Uber to brunch. Today the future’s so dark we need night vision goggles, not a few liberal guys shining a torch on a sandwich. Maybe today we could use the light of Karl Marx.

Marx may not have had much to say about brunch in the twenty-first century, but he sure had some powerful thoughts about where the system of capitalism would land us. Over time, it would produce a series of crises, he said, before pushing the wealth so decisively up that the top-heavy system would come crashing down with a push.

Pushy old communist Helen Razer offers an introduction to the thought of Marx for Millennials and anyone else tired of wage stagnation, growing global poverty, and economists writing desperate columns saying everything would work better if only we stopped eating avocado toast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Sep 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781459747746

Book preview

Reviews for Total Propaganda

[philipjhunt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What can one say about Helen Razer? She writes like a maniac. A torrent of top-of-the-mind ideas, sidetracks, dead ends, and profunditiy. Yes, she's worth reading for all these things, regardless of whether you are inspired to read Das Kapital. It's deep and funny and just a bit exhausting to read.

[pomo58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young by Helen Razer is one of the better humorously educational books I have read. My introduction to Marx was a long time ago and went through several periods of wrestling with making connections, until I had finally worked my way through the primary texts and many secondary texts. A book like this would have made my journey so much easier and ordered.The main reason I deducted a star in my rating is because, as someone not new to the topic and someone who is, shall we say, a couple of generations older than the target readership, I found the colloquialisms sometimes disrupted the flow of the ideas. I am also more than willing to acknowledge that it is less disrupting for those who actually communicate with those terms, so it is more a deduction based on who I am than the book itself. Marxism, like most schools of thought, is not a monolithic block, so even the most diehard Marxists will find some things to nitpick here. If they are honest with themselves, however, they will also admit that those differences aren't ones of right/wrong but rather of interpretation and understanding. Razer mentions more than once where her views differ from other forms of Marxist/socialist thought. She also highlights why she chose one understanding over another.I recommend this to anyone interested in Marxism regardless of one's previous level of knowledge about it. For those new to trying to actually understand it, this is a wonderful overview that makes connections between primary works while pointing those readers in the right direction to learn more. For those with some understanding but maybe only through The Communist Manifesto, this serves a similar function of connecting dots and providing real world examples. For those who have read Marx extensively and have a lot of strong opinions and views, this will help us to both keep our views open to modification and give us ideas for how best to explain the concepts without either boring or alienating those we talk to about our beliefs. Don't let something as minor as humor and contemporary language keep you from gaining the benefits of this work. We all have to do a lot of work to make this world better and every tool we have to do so is helpful.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.