by PETER TURTON

Copyright Peter Turton 2004

THE JUDGEMENT OF KARL MARX

by Peter Turton

ACT 1

A small congress hall illuminated by magnificent chandeliers. The walls and ceiling are

bright red. A rostrum facing wooden benches made of antique mahogany. A door at the

back and a door at the side. A handsome young man of somewhat androgynous features

comes in through the back door. He is dressed like a dandy, rather in the style of the

American writer Tom Wolfe, in a dazzling white suit and mauve tie, spats and expensive

brown shoes. Although slim, his back seems disproportionately bulky, as if he were

carrying something there beneath the shoulders of his jacket. His name is MICHAEL.

MICHAEL [addressing the side door] You may enter now, Professor MARX.

Enter a Jewish-looking man with a large forehead and bushy beard. He is wearing a black

suit.

KARL MARX [testily] Where am I and why was I brought here?

MICHAEL. This is your big day, Karl. A symposium on your philosophy has been

arranged. We painted the walls red to make you feel at home. The most important of the

practitioners of Marxism will be brought before you and you can question them about why

they did what they did in your name. We want to find out exactly where you and they went

wrong.

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MARX. Who’s we? And where am I?

MICHAEL. I’ll answer your second question first. You’re in the after-life. ‘We’ are the

Boss and his associates.

MARX. The Boss?

MICHAEL. Usually known as God. I’m his special messenger, Michael.

MARX. Nonsense. There is no God or after-life.

MICHAEL. How do you explain being here in the earth-year 2004 when you died in 1883?

MARX. Me die? I don’t recall, although I was very ill in 1883.

MICHAEL. I can assure you you are dead. In the world beyond we’re not allowed to tell

lies. Not that I ever felt the inclination, unlike some of the Boss’s associates. Let me ask

you a question. Do you know the names Lenin and Stalin? Or MaoTseTung and Ho Chih

Minh? I think you do, although they all came to prominence after your death.

MARX [surprised] I do. I saw these people in my dreams. Some of the things they did

shocked me.

MICHAEL. No, Karl. You did not dream these people. You were allowed to see what they

did in your name from the vantage point of the after-life. The Boss likes to use the after-life

to set people straight. Some are actually punished. Not you, though, because the Boss

actually quite approved of you. Even though you didn’t believe in Him, He believed in you,

in His own way. Helping the struggling masses and all that. You were a good sort, in spite

of your pedantry and your vicious polemics with others on the left who didn’t agree with

you. He didn’t much like your letting your family starve, either. But all in all, He was a fan.

Hence this symposium. Not everybody in the after-life gets a symposium all to himself.

You’ll be able to confront your followers and your enemies. They will also be allowed to

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question you. We’re fair here. Not like on Earth. Between you and me, the Earth’s a bit of a

shit-hole.

MARX. It certainly is. That’s what I was trying to correct. But it seems that things didn’t

work out. In fact, I may even have made things worse. All those millions of peasants that

died under the Bolsheviks. All those people put in slave camps by Stalin. Oh, my God.

MICHAEL. I’m glad you believe in Him.

MARX. That was just an exclamation.

MICHAEL. I think not. You do realize you’re in the after-life, don’t you?

MARX. Oh, I suppose so.

MICHAEL. And who could have kept you alive but the Boss?

MARX. You may well be right. I’m so confused.

MICHAEL. Don’t worry. The Boss understands the fallibility of the human race. After all,

he created it, unfortunately.

MARX. Unfortunately? You mean God repented of having produced man?

MICHAEL. You know that as well as I, old son. You’re a Jew and have the Old Testament

imprinted in your brain. You know what it says there. How Adam and Eve were given free

will and chose the wrong tree, the Tree of Knowledge instead of the Tree of Life. Right

from the start the human race was discontented. Thought it could be as powerful as the

Boss Himself. Remember the Tower of Babel. The Americans, as you know, put two men

on the moon. And now they have two vehicles on Mars. And for what purpose? To be able

to examine a few rocks, apparently. Of course, they really have larger schemes afoot, to do

with political and military power. You will have noted that the Soviets never managed to

get a man on the moon. Capitalism won there, didn’t it? And went on to crush your system

generally. But we don’t really blame you. As I said, the Boss esteems you highly.

3

MARX. Er, I don’t quite know how to put this, but could I talk directly to your Boss, as

you call him? Person to Person, so to speak.

MICHAEL. I’m glad you’ve finally admitted you believe in Him. But you can’t. He’s

invisible. By definition.

MARX. But people in the Bible saw him.

MICHAEL. No. He appeared as an image in their brains. They assumed it was Him.

Nobody has seen Him face to face, even in the after-life, despite what that lunatic St Paul

says.

MARX. I would dearly like to know why he made such a mess of man. Adam and Eve

went wrong from the start, choosing disobedience. Then Cain killed his brother. Then

Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did he let it all happen?

MICHAEL. He did try to correct man, giving him warnings. Remember Noah and the Ark.

The idea was to save all the good people from the destruction of the Flood. But even Noah,

one of the Boss’s chosen, turned out to be a bit of a drunkard. So imagine what the bad

guys were like. The prophets leave us in no doubt. Just one example: Jeremiah. You know

what he said.

MARX. He said such a lot. All good stuff. The truth.

MICHAEL. Get an earful of this. In one place Jeremiah repeats the Boss’s words verbatim:

‘Thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them

to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the

harlots’ houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his

neighbour’s wife. Shall I not visit thee for these things, saith the Lord, and shall not my

soul be avenged on a nation such as this?’

4

MARX. I get the point. Magnificently phrased, too. But tell me. If God is God, why did he

make such a mess? Didn’t he know what was going to happen?

MICHAEL. I was going to say, you must ask Him, but of course you can’t. It’s a tricky

question that’s beyond me. I’m only a messenger.

MARX. I mean, if your Boss is really all-powerful God, he doesn’t make mistakes.

MICHAEL. That point was made by St Augustine, who had trouble in squaring it with his

acceptance of the literal truth of the Bible, where it states that God repented, got angry, and

so on. Augustine said that God cannot get angry or repent.

MARX. And there it is, in black and white, in the Old Testament.

MICHAEL. Between you and me, the Old Testament is right. I myself know the Boss got

furious many times. I think all the problem comes from the Devil. The Boss let him loose in

the world, to test people, and I think he got out of control. Humanity seemed to admire him.

He’s a handsome fellow, you know, a former close colleague of mine. But he got too big

for his boots, and the human race took after him. That’s why the world is such a scummy

place. That’s why you get all those stinking politicians ruling everything and lining their

pockets at the same time. What’s it they say on Earth? ‘The shit floats to the top’. It

certainly does. An honest person doesn’t have much of a chance. [Sighs] I repeat, I think

the Devil’s out of control. I don’t like to say this, but I think he’s become the real ruler of

the world. That’s only my opinion, mind, and the Boss has always given me freedom to

think as I like, so I’m not afraid of voicing it. But I’ll tell you something really interesting.

[Whispers] I think there’s something or someone even more powerful than the Boss. I’ve

heard the word Brahman muttered several time here. [A deafening thunderclap] Oh my, I

think I went too far. The Boss is angry again.

5

MARX. You’re talking a lot of nonsense and I must be hearing it in a dream. I actually

prefer to believe in evolution. Darwin.

MICHAEL. So you think the human race had its origin in primaeval slime. Thinking about

its history and its leaders and politicians I can see your point. Of course, you can believe

what you want. Free will and all that, given by the Boss to all and sundry. Actually, there

was a Jesuit priest in the twentieth century who also believed in evolution. He was a

palaeontologist and had terrible trouble from his superiors. You may have had a glimpse of

him. Teilhard de Chardonnay, or something like that. Curious name. His family must have

been in the wine business.

MARX. Can’t say I did. I’ve never had much time for Catholics, however heretical. Look

here, why can’t we start the symposium? I’d be more on my own ground there. Nice talking

to you, though. And thank you for bringing me here, even if the whole thing is my dream.

MICHAEL. As you wish. After all, it is your day, by the Boss’s command. We have a

whole crowd of Marxists waiting outside. You would probably prefer to see them one by

one, wouldn’t you?

MARX. Certainly.

Michael goes over to the side door and lets in a small, bald man with Mongolian eyes and

dressed like Marx in a sober black suit.

MICHAEL. Announcing comrade LENIN.

Lenin goes up to the rostrum in front of where Marx is sitting and bows respectfully.

MARX. Greetings, comrade. You were the first of my followers to actually carry out a

revolution. I saw what happened. There was a terrible mess because no-one was supposed

to start a Marxist revolution in such a backward place as Russia. You jumped the gun, my

6

friend. Trying to emulate your brother, the People’s Will fellow who was executed for his

attempt on the life of the Tsar. And you’re not really a European, are you?

LENIN. Racially, very few of us Russians are. But I am surprised at such a remark coming

from you, my most esteemed sir. I thought you were an out and out internationalist.

MARX. Never had much time for the Russians, beg your pardon. After all, I am a German.

What’s it that an English writer said about you lot? ‘The Russians are a people that have all

the virtues and vices of everybody else, except common sense’.

LENIN. Shame on you for quoting an imperialist.

MARX. Who was it?

LENIN. Kipling.

MARX. Quite an exciting writer, actually. I read some of his stuff from up here, after my

death, through a special facility in the after-life library. Yevtushenko was very fond of

Kipling.

LENIN. Who was he?

MARX. A Soviet poet of the fifties onwards. An artist at being well-in with the system and

making criticisms of it at the same time. Now he lives in New York.

LENIN. In my time we also had problems with writers. A slippery lot. Even Gorki

deserted us for a time. And then after I died Esenin and Mayakovsky committed suicide. I

never liked either of them much. Hooligan types. But to get back to the point. Where did I

go wrong?

MARX. The revolution was supposed to occur in an advanced capitalist country. England

or Germany.

7

LENIN. Quite so, but the English were never going to do it. You yourself were always

blasting them for being milksops. And the Germans ended up with Hitler. Most of them

seemed to love him. Respectfully, you would not have lasted long under his regime, being

what you were. After the junkers had dealt with Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg he

certainly polished off the rest of the communists, to say nothing of the Jews. You say we

Russians are primitives, but the German race didn’t exactly cover itself with glory in those

times.

MARX [to Michael] Please take this man away. He’s getting on my nerves.

MICHAEL. By the laws of the symposium he is allowed to remain here to hear the rest of

the proceedings.

MARX [glares angrily at Lenin] Oh, alright. [Lenin goes sadly to take his seat on the

benches, a disappointed man] Who’s next?

MICHAEL. I’m afraid you’ll like this one even less. In fact, we had to fish him out of the

punishment cells. The Boss decided he was a bad case and gave him a sentence for eternity.

Goes over to the door, opens it and calls ‘Dzhugashvili’.

MARX. Who?

Enter STALIN, dragged by two uniformed men with ferocious expressions.

MARX. Oh my God, it’s one of my worst bastards. Not even a Russian. A damned savage

from the Caucasus. An ex-seminarist to boot. And I thought I understood the processes of

history. Well, what have you to say for yourself, you scoundrel? I’ve seen all your crimes.

STALIN. Tell these devils to let me go. I can’t escape.

Michael motions Stalin’s guards to stand to one side.

8

MARX. Lenin was bad enough but you’re the pits. Some say you were a Tsarist spy. Who

knows the truth? The Russians were always a race of liars.

STALIN. I was never a Tsarist spy. That rumour was put about by my enemies, those

damned Trotskyites.

MARX. What about the Bukharinites, the Kamenevites, the Zinovievites, the Radekites

and all the rest you polished off?

STALIN. I had to. The country was ungovernable with so many Bolshevik prima donnas.

To get anything done there you always needed a heavy hand. One heavy hand.

MARX. So you hid our friend Lenin’s testament warning the Bolshevik party of your

greed for power, surrounded yourself with mediocrities and chopped down all the old guard

with your show trials. You wanted ‘Socialism in One Country’. I never talked about that.

STALIN. Well, you never had to rule the Russian Empire, fight off the imperialist nations

and destroy capitalism all at the same time. I even got the better of your countryman Hitler.

You just sat in the British Museum writing your fantasies. That’s when you weren’t pub-

crawling with your cronies. I was a professional revolutionary, like comrade Lenin here.

Lenin, disgusted, turns his back to Stalin.

MARX. Why did you make a pact with Hitler? I never even imagined Fascism, let alone

Nazism. You turned most of the German communists left in Germany over to him and even

gave him the names of your secret agents there.

STALIN. I had to, so that the pact would stick.

MARX. But why did you make the pact in the first place? Hitler from the start said he

would destroy Bolshevism as a ‘Jewish plot’.

9

STALIN. The British imperialists were hoping to provoke Nazi Germany and the Soviet

Union into fighting a war against each other so that Britain could move in afterwards and

rule. What would you have done?

MARX. You’re an unprincipled scoundrel. You even killed your own wife after she had

complained about you at a dinner. And what about all those millions of peasants you made

starve under you?

STALIN. We had to industrialize and create a modern state, as one of the preconditions for

socialism. You should know. It’s in your writings. I inherited a backward country, as you

also know. And I seem to remember some little remark you yourself made about ‘the idiocy

of rural life’. You weren’t exactly a follower of Rousseau, like that old goat Tolstoy, were

you? As for my wife, a revolutionary’s family has to take a back seat. Yours certainly did

to you. Anyway, my bitch committed suicide. Only my enemies say I murdered her.

MARX. You set up the Russian Orthodox Church again and allowed icons to be paraded in

the streets. You made the Red Army almost like a capitalist army, with the whole

paraphernalia of rank. You even re-established the family as the basis of the state. You

called the war against Fascism the ‘Great Patriotic War’. You encouraged film-makers to

make films about despots such as Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky. You in fact

initiated a counter-revolution. All to keep yourself in power.

STALIN. You’re sounding like Trotsky, now. Watch your step if you don’t want to go the

same way as him. I’d like to have seen you in my place, you old Jewish skunk.

MICHAEL [interrupting] No threats or abusive language from you, you cur. Otherwise

you’ll be taken straight back to the dungeons. [To Marx] He has a cell next to Hitler’s, who

also got eternity. I believe they comunicate by tapping out messages in Morse code on their

cell walls. [To Stalin] Did you ask your Nazi friend why he suddenly attacked your

10

country? You never understood, did you? You thought Hitler was a man of his word, at

least with regard to you, you piece of slime. [Stalin scowls and spits on the floor] No

spitting, you dog. [To the guard-devils] Sit him down on one of the back benches, away

from our friend Lenin. [Stalin is dragged off there]

MARX. Michael, call the next one in please. I hope it’s someone a bit more decent.

Michael goes over to the side door and a large fat Chinaman emerges, in handcuffs but

with no guards.

MICHAEL. Announcing Chairman MAO TSE TUNG.

MARX. Ah, the Chairman. Strange title for a Marxist. If I remember rightly, he also

called himself the Great Helmsman. I don’t think the maritime metaphor is very

appropriate. The Chinese always preferred to keep themselves to themselves.

MAO. I often talked about meeting Your Excellency in Heaven when I died, for a

discussion on Marxism.

MARX. Well, here I am. I learned, by the way, that you were a staunch defender of that

piece of shit [pointing at Stalin]. What was that all about, especially when you also used to

ask why the Chinese, whenever the Russians farted, had to say the smell was good?

MAO. Practical politics, my dear sir. At that time I was conducting my campaign against

the ‘Chinese Khrushchev’, Liu Shao Chi, a capitalist-liner.

MARX. Capitalist-liner my eye. Merely a civilized man. And what about the so-called

Cultural Revolution, when you paraded many of your oldest comrades in dunce’s caps and

then locked them up or shot them?

MAO. As a western gentleman, you have no idea of the depth of our corrupt ancient

culture in the Middle Kingdom. I say Middle Kingdom so as not to offend your

susceptibilities. The real translation is Centre of the World. We Chinese, however

11

communist, cannot bring ourselves to take barbarians seriously. I believe it was the same

with the so-called ancient Greeks (so much less ancient than ourselves) in the West. You,

sir, would know, having been a Greek scholar.

MARX. But gangs of fanatical youths being encouraged to humiliate tried communist

revolutionaries?

MAO. I repeat, my dear sir, the only way. This was in fact my own special contribution to

Marxist thought and practice. Surely the learned gentleman did not think that Marxism

stopped at him?

MARX. I believe that your doctor wrote his memoirs and published them in the United

States. He talks of the hordes of maidens you deflowered, and orgies in swimming-pools

with these girls before foreign diplomats.

MAO. To be a revolutionary is to be a man. My predecessors the Chinese emperors

committed greater excesses. Think of the weight of my responsibilities. I hear that one of

your favourite authors, the barbarian Shakespeare, was always emphasizing the tremendous

burdens of kingship. Surely this great load can be legitimately lightened with a little fun-

and-games? I am only human, after all, though many of my followers insinuated otherwise,

no doubt to keep their place in the pecking order.

MARX. Why did you invite your arch-enemy Richard Nixon to China?

MAO. Ah, yes. An American even made an opera of that. Nixon in China. Of course I

never allowed it to be performed in my country. As for my invitation, it is very clear. If you

had read my Little Red Book you would have known that one has to deal with the main

contradiction first. And that was the Russians. The fat clown Khrushchev refused to give us

the bomb and even threatened to use it on us. We would have survived, of course. You

know how many we are?

12

MARX. But wasn’t the Nixon visit rather like Stalin hobnobbing with Hitler?

MAO. Perhaps. I believe the barbarian term is Realpolitik, whatever that means. We

Chinese call it ‘luring the hyena to the lion’s feast’. We concluded an alliance with Nixon

and at the same time made him lose face by having to come to our country. So we dealt a

blow to our two main enemies at the same time.

MARX [to Michael] Please take away this oriental despot. This is becoming a nightmare.

Don’t you have someone a bit better than this among my followers?

Michael leads the handcuffed Mao towards Stalin, but Mao indicates his dislike of ‘Russian

farts’ and is allowed to sit on another bench. Lenin stares goggle-eyed at Mao, as if at a

freak of nature.

MICHAEL [coming back in front of Marx] Well, let’s see. They’re all pretty monstruous,

if you don’t mind me saying so. Of course, I’m not blaming you. It’s the human race. [In a

whisper] My Boss’s fault. [A faint rumble of thunder] Hmm. Actually, there’s another

oriental fellow who’s a little bit better than the last two of your followers we heard. Name

of Ho Chi Minh. Actually, it’s not his real name. I’ve forgotten what that is. I think his nom

de guerre means something like Light of the East. The orientals seem to go in for flowery

names. I may be mistaken, of course, because Vietnamese is not one of our main languages

here in the after-life. Do you want him?

MARX. I’d much prefer a Westerner. Don’t you have any? You’ll be offering me a

Japanese yellow-belly next.

MICHAEL. Well, we have the eastern Europeans, but I’m afraid they were all rather small

fry who had to lick the Russians’ arses, even the arses of the Russians after our friend

Stalin. That will help you to gauge their stature. Let me see. What about Walter Ulbricht?

13

Stern and very disciplined, so I hear. Or Novotny of Czechoslovakia? I heard a few good

things about Todor Zhivkov, the Bulgarian. Seemed quite human for a communist.

MARX. No thank you. I have seen all that crowd in action. Bring on the Light of the East.

MICHAEL [opening the door] Announcing HO CHI MINH.

A little oriental man with a bulging forehead and a wispy beard, wearing a khaki shirt,

shorts and sandals, emerges.

HO. I salute the esteemed Dr Marx. Before you ask me questions, I have a little confession

to make. I was rather more of a nationalist than many communist comrades approved of.

MARX. Don’t worry, Ho. We already went over what Stalin did with his Great Patriotic

War. But you did beat the American imperialists. I remember seeing helicopters taking off

from the roof of the Yankee embassy in Saigon and people having their hands stamped on

so they couldn’t get away.

HO. Oh, a great day for us and humiliating for the Americans. Our tanks rolled in and the

drivers had to ask the way to the government house, from the locals, who of course told

them at once. My greatest sorrow is that by then I was dead.

MARX. Never mind. You won. I heard you had a lot of trouble from the Chinese, one of

your two main allies.

HO. We did. The Russians, our other one, on the contrary, tried to help us all they could,

without offending the Americans too much at the same time, of course. You know, the

only prison I was ever in was a Chinese one. Not a communist Chinese prison, I admit. But

Chairman Mao gave us a lot of problems. The Chinese think Vietnam should be a province

of southern China. This is why I had to be more of a nationalist than befits a communist.

14

MARX. You were, I believe, the only one of the great communist leaders to have worked.

The rest were professional revolutionaries.

HO. That may be true. Yes, I worked as a chef in hotels in Paris and London.

MARX. Very useful for a Marxist revolutionary to have worked with the proletariat. I

myself did not have that privilege.

HO [hesitantly] No.

Michael goes over to Marx and whispers some words in his ear. Marx turns bright red.

MARX. Let’s change the subject. I congratulate you for living like a poor man, in a hut

and only eating the most basic food. This makes a great contrast with friend Mao Tse Tung.

HO [smiling] You see the difference betwen us and the Chinese.

MARX. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why, just a few years after beating the

Americans, did you start to go capitalist? You even opened your doors to American capital.

HO. I know. I didn’t really approve of that. But we had been very heavy-handed with our

peasants and they rebelled. Also we lost two million people in that war. The imperialists

only lost fifty-eight thousand. We were forced to be pragmatic. After all, we wanted to

survive as a nation. The Chinese, of course. If we had had any more disasters we would

certainly have become one of their southern provinces. So again we have bar-girls and

opium smoking and so on. Inevitable, I’m afraid.

MARX. I can see I was too optimistic in my theories. You practical politicians have had to

give a lot of ground to capitalism. However, you have my congratulations. If you have

nothing more to say you may take your seat.

Ho Chi Minh goes off and selects a seat on the benches away from the other communist

leaders.

15

MICHAEL. There is a whole mob of others waiting to talk to you. How many more shall I

let in?

MARX. Just one. The rest can take their seats afterwards and I will make a short speech to

them collectively. Let’s see, who is left? Kim Il Sung of Korea. Oh God, another oriental

despot, worse than Mao. Enver Hodzha the Albanian. No, I don’t think an Albanian will

have anything very enlightened to say. And he was a close ally of the Chinese. Tito, mmm.

A remarkable man in many ways. Faced up to Stalin, created a more human model of

socialism, but when he died the whole system collapsed. No, I think I’ll have Fidel Castro.

MICHAEL. Are you sure? Fidel Castro’s still ‘alive’, so to speak. He hasn’t died because

God decided not to have him here yet.

MARX. Why?

MICHAEL. Because He wanted to hurt his pride. Rub his nose in the dust a little. The

Boss got the idea from the Americans. They decided not to invade Cuba again, and not try

any more to assassinate Fidel Castro, but just let him rot on the vine, so that Cuba would be

a show case for the failure of the communist system.

MARX. So God’s anti-communist, then. But you said he liked me.

MICHAEL. He did and still does. But He thinks your ideas were wrong. That’s why He’s

allowed the destruction of communism. The Boss is a great one for the Truth, above all. As

one of His religious supporters used to repeat, ‘God is Truth’. Usually those professional

religious fellows are wrong, and just as wicked as anybody else, but this guy hit upon the

truth. It happens sometimes.

MARX. I feel I’m being put through the mill.

16

MICHAEL. That is correct, but it’s for your own sake. You are here to learn. Just wait

until the other sessions of this symposium. You’re going to have to confront your declared

enemies, the capitalists and the priests and so on. It’ll be much tougher than with this bunch

of communists. But it’s all in aid of the Truth.

MARX [sighing] I suppose you’re right.

MICHAEL. Of course I’m right. I’m carrying out orders of One far greater than you. But

you have one last communist leader to meet. Whom do you want?

MARX [reflecting] Fidel Castro. But can you get him if he’s still alive?

MICHAEL [laughing] Certainly we can. We do this all the time. He’s waiting outside the

door now. [Going over to the side door] FIDEL CASTRO, please.

Fidel Castro enters, in his usual army fatigues.

FIDEL CASTRO. Honoured to meet you, comrade.

MARX. Welcome, Mr. Castro. Or is it General Castro?

FIDEL CASTRO. My people call me Comandante en Jefe. Some others use Dr. Castro.

MARX. I didn’t know you had a doctorate.

FIDEL CASTRO. I don’t, actually. I was just a lawyer. But in my continent everybody

literate is addressed as ‘doctor’.

MARX [coldly] How sad. And it seems to me that your claims to Marxism are also rather

dubious. You were a what is it, a Martian, when you made your revolution?

FIDEL CASTRO [flushing] Not a Martian, a Martí-an. A follower of José Martí.

MARX. Who the hell was he? I’ve never heard of him.

FIDEL CASTRO. Er, he was my boyhoood hero. A Cuban nationalist who fought the

Spaniards, back in the nineteeth century. Also very anti-American. Almost a Marxist.

17

Michael beckons to Marx to approach him and whispers something in Marx’s ear. Marx

goes back to the rostrum and addresses Fidel Castro.

MARX. Michael says you’re lying. In fact Martí was quite critical of me. He hated the

class struggle, although he gave credit to me for being on the side of the poor. Martí in

philosophy was an idealist, a neo-Kantian in fact. He thought that I ‘went too fast’. Tell that

to comrade Lenin. God help the human race. Some said I was too slow and the others said I

was too fast.

FIDEL CASTRO. Can I tell the truth?

MICHAEL. A good question. Whatever you did on earth, you have to tell the truth here.

FIDEL CASTRO. The fact is that I needed the Russians against the Americans, although

they also let me down in the end. I went to see Eisenhower after my revolution, but

couldn’t even see Nixon. The Americans didn’t even offer me a cup of coffee. I needed

them to understand what I was doing. But it affected their economic interests. So I was

humiliated and went Marxist, to please the Russians.

MARX. You had grandiose ideas of conquering Latin America for ‘socialism’, did you

not?

FIDEL CASTRO. Not only Latin America. The whole of the Third World.

MARX. What’s the Third World?

FIDEL CASTRO. Well, at that time, the First World was imperialist capitalism.

MARX. Go on. And the Second World?

FIDEL CASTRO. The socialist countries.

MARX. Meaning Khrushchev and the eastern Europeans, Ulbricht and all that lot?

FIDEL CASTRO. Yes. The Third World was the rest.

18

MARX. My God, how crude. And that’s supposed to be Marxism. The Lord help me.

Anyway, you seem to have failed pretty disastrously. I hear Cuba is barely surviving, and is

neither capitalist nor socialist. Which makes it what?

FIDEL CASTRO. I don’t know, but we shall fight any invaders till the bitter end.

MARX. What happens if you die?

FIDEL CASTRO. The Americans will be in the next day. In fact for a dozen or so years I

have been inviting American businessmen to invest their capital in Cuba. But their State

Department won’t allow it. They decided not to try to assassinate me any more or stage an

invasion because it was easier to let Cuba fall to pieces by itself.

MARX. One more question, Mr Castro, before you go back to earth to continue to ‘wither

on the vine’ [laughing]. How come that after your revolution there was never enough food

in Cuba? For the general population, I mean. I know they say there that you have only to

drop a seed and a banana tree sprouts. Don’t you know that you have to fill people’s bellies

first of all? Even St Thomas Aquinas knew that, and he wasn’t preaching dialectical

materialism. You yourself and your associates from the radical middle classes always had

enough food, unlike the working class, in whose name the revolution was supposed to have

been made. Most of the countries practising my ‘dialectical materialism’ seemed to have

made matter disappear to a great extent. But especially Cuba.

FIDEL CASTRO [sullenly] We didn’t make a revolution to fill people’s bellies.

MARX. What for then? Are you another one with illusions of grandeur?

FIDEL CASTRO. I shan’t answer that question.

MARX. Take him away.

Fidel Castro is led to the benches where he, too, avoids the other communist leaders.

19

MICHAEL. Well, that’s all, Karl. Let me let the rest of the communist leaders in and while

they’re settling themselves you can prepare your speech.

He opens the door and a chattering mob rushes in and over to the benches. The leaders

already there recoil from contact with their humbler fellows.

MARX. I don’t need any time to prepare what I’m going to say. It’s very short. Could you

get them to be quiet and listen?

Michael makes a stern gesture towards the benches and the noise stops.

MARX [addressing the floor] I’ll keep my remarks short because I’m very tired and

disillusioned, after my conversations with a few of the big fish among you. I won’t repeat

what I said to them. With very few exceptions, I’m deeply ashamed of the lot of you. Most

of you spent more time cutting down your enemies in the same party than furthering the

cause of socialism and raising the standard of living of the working classes. And when did

these working people get a chance to direct their own lives? Some of you feathered your

own nests in a disgusting manner. You, Tito, with your marshall’s uniform and your vulgar

bourgeois wife you loaded down with jewels, what example was that? And Brezhnev here,

what I most remember about him was his hunting parties with his cronies, as if he were the

Tsar and his retinue. Even though my own wife was an aristocrat we lived like proletarians.

A VOICE FROM THE FLOOR. You never had a job in your life, you old faker. What

contact did you have with the real world? Living off comrade Engels’ money while your

family starved.

MARX. Pardon me, sir, whoever you are. I did apply once for a job as a railway clerk with

British Railways. They turned me down because of my bad handwriting.

Hoots of laughter from the floor.

20

ANOTHER VOICE. You get personal with us and we’ll get personal with you. How did

you expect us to work with your half-baked theories? You were a utopian like those idiots

Kropotkin and Bakunin. Both aristocrats, like your damned wife. We should have seen

through you from the start.

MARX [turning to Michael] This is preposterous. Are you going to let this go on? [More

catcalls from the floor. Ho Chi Minh stands up but cannot make himself heard. Two burly

eastern European thugs pull him down back into his chair. Stalin growls ferociously, his

yellow eyes fixed malevolently on the venerable figure of Marx. Mao smiles cattily. Lenin

tries to calm the mob down but fails]

MICHAEL. You’re right, Karl. We cannot allow this, especially as the Boss wanted to

honour you. [To the crowd] You are dismissed, all of you. Go out of the side door, one by

one, and you will be escorted back to where you belong. Make it sharp.

They are all afraid and get up sheepishly to go. The lights dim and the curtain falls.

21

ACT 2

Afternoon on the same day. The same hall except that its walls and ceiling are now white.

The benches are already occupied, by a collection of prosperous-looking individuals.

MICHAEL makes an entrance from the door at the back.

MICHAEL. You people all know why you have been brought here. You are being allowed

an opportunity to question Karl Marx, whose symposium this is. Although you were his

enemies I must demand that you show respect towards him. Those who do not do so will be

severely punished. You know the Boss has no great love for you. He never imagined the

human race would turn out to be so selfish and greedy. Allow me to introduce our guest of

honour himself. [Michael goes over to the side door, opens it and KARL MARX emerges,

blinking]

MARX [to Michael] Am I in the same place? The walls and ceiling were red before.

MICHAEL. Yes, we had them changed in the lunch-break.

MARX. But workmen wouldn’t have had time to re-paint them.

MICHAEL. Oh, there were no workmen. Let’s just say that it was ‘at Heaven’s command’.

We changed them to white to put the capitalists here more at their ease. Some of them have

a bad conscience, you know. Please mount the rostrum and address them.

Marx takes his place at the rostrum. A stony silence. He seems disconcerted.

MICHAEL. Go on. You hardly expected applause, did you?

Marx clears his throat.

22

MARX. First question, please.

A CAPITALIST. Mr. Marx, your idea that the working classes could organize a better

society has been proved ludicrous. A cultured man like yourself should have known better.

The only reason that those creatures work is that they need to feed themselves and their

family. Some do not even feed their family, but spend their wages on drink, gambling and

women. If history had been left to them, there would have been no progress at all. I believe

you adored Shakespeare above all writers and had readings of his plays in your family

circle. You even quoted him in that absurd and tedious book of yours called Capital. Yet

Shakespeare always despised the common man as stupid, easily led and fickle in his

political opinions. A thuggish dolt with stinking breath.

MARX. I know, but that was the general prejudice of the time. And perhaps also a

personal foible of the Bard. But the fact is that the working classes were never given a

chance. In England they were driven off the land by the enclosures and herded into city

slums to become factory fodder. No wonder so many became degraded, with only their

labour to sell.

CAPITALIST. A good man always makes his way up from poverty, acquires property and

becomes a respectable and useful citizen. Most workers neither want nor have the

intelligence to do this.

MARX. A lot of the labouring people despise riches as the fruit of greed.

CAPITALIST. You sound like a parson, a caste of society I thought you always despised.

MARX. Unfortunately many of the common people do fall into the trap of religious

fantasies after being driven to their wits’ end by the cruelty of the capitalist system.

23

CAPITALIST. Good for them. It keeps them from attacking us, the true providers of

wealth and prosperity. You yourself, begging your pardon, remind me of nothing so much

as an Old Testament prophet, good indeed at cursing the state of society but with no

solutions for its evils. Unless you accept, as I am sure you do not, a turning to the Law of

God as a remedy.

MARX. When I was alive I indeed scorned that solution. Now I am not so sure. I used to

think that revolution was the remedy, but having seen what happened after my death, I

admit I may have been wrong. But at least a real socialist revolution would have put your

lot in its place.

CAPITALIST. But that never happened, did it? Instead your wonderful working classes

ended up as slaves of their self-appointed leaders, none of whom was from the working

class. It was that unpleasant little radical Bertrand Russell who gave me the idea about you

being an Old Testament prophet. Do you know what he wrote about you?

MARX. No, never read him. I thought he was a mathematician. Logic chasing its own tail.

CAPITALIST. He said you saw yourself, in the best Jewish apocalyptic tradition, as a

Messiah. Your God was Dialectical Materialism.

MARX. What?

CAPITALIST. Your Elect were the Proletariat, your Church the Communist Party, your

Second Coming the Revolution. Hell was the Punishment of the Capitalists and the

Millenium was the Communist Commonwealth.

MARX. Russell was talking nonsense. What else could you expect from an English lord?

A dirty little anarchist, into the bargain, like my arch-enemy Bakunin. [To Michael] Can we

get this man to sit down and be quiet? I would like to debate with someone on a higher

level.

24

MICHAEL [to the capitalist] Be so good as to take your seat again. [To the floor] I need

a volunteer capable of matching Dr. Marx on a theoretical level. Are there any professors of

economics here? [A tall, balding, donnish figure stands up] You sir.

MARX. Have you studied my writings in all their complexity?

PROFESSOR. I have, sir. They are fatally flawed.

MARX. Show me how. You look as if you had never seen anything outside an Oxford

college.

PROFESSOR. That’s as may be. But, for a start, your Theory of Value is wrong. You

seem to believe that all value is created by the labour of the working classes. ‘The value of

a commodity is given by the number of socially necessary labour hours spent in making it’.

MARX. Indeed. That theory in fact was not my own, but inherited from the British

economists David Ricardo and Adam Smith.

PROFESSOR. Quite so. But what it left out is the factor of management and brain power,

which the working class cannot provide. These human machines have to be brought

together and organized according to a disciplined plan. Left to their own devices they

would produce nothing.

MARX. Poppycock. When the capitalist system has been overthrown by true socialists,

you will see intellectuals springing from the working classes.

PROFESSOR. We did not see them in the Russian revolution, did we? And I never heard

about these people appearing in China, either.

MARX. I already dealt with Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung in the morning session

which was closed to individuals like you.

25

PROFESSOR. Do you think that those dictators emerged just by chance? No, sir. The fact

is that the common man is a herd animal, with little initiative or capacity for bettering

himself. Someone had to organize the population and compel it to move in the desired

direction. In the early years, of course, there was still a belief that the ‘new socialist man’

could be produced on a massive scale, devoted to the cause of the collective. But when this

creature failed to appear in any great numbers, the sluggish and undisciplined masses had to

be moved by force. Of course you had your Stakhanovs and other model workers busily

over-fulfilling productive norms and carrying out similar acts of selfless heroism, but these

were few and far between. And even these few ceased to appear after a generation and you

ended up with a work-force that never appeared on a Monday because it was still hung over

from the alcoholic excesses of the weekend. You had regular inflation of production

figures, a more modern version of the Potemkin villages of the late eighteenth century. And

by the time the Soviet influence had spread to Cuba, the Soviet technicians stationed in

Cuba to help the Revolution were not even expected to do productive work on rest-days

like the rest of the population. Fidel Castro, whom history taught very little, tried to

produce the ‘new man’ from amongst the Cuban population, modeled on Che Guevara. But

the Cuban man-in-the street soon got tired of endless meetings and sacrifices and a diet of

poor Soviet propaganda films and worried mainly about filling his belly. People went

around complaining about ‘the problem of the merienda’, in other words, how to get their

hands on some food. In the seventies, a joke went the rounds. The ‘new man’ had finally

appeared.

MARX. That’s interesting. What was he like?

26

PROFESSOR. ‘He had huge shoulders to carry very heavy burdens, a tiny brain incapable

of thought and weak legs to prevent him running away’.

MARX. Not so funny.

MICHAEL. May I butt in? I have a little tale also about Cuba. The Boss was originally

quite interested in their revolution and told one of my colleagues on one of his periodical

visits of inspection to Earth to drop in there. But first the angel went to see Nixon in the

White House. Nixon was weeping profusely. My colleague (I forget his name) asked him

why. ‘Oh, it’s those damn Russians, with their heavy industry and their production of

weapons. It’s a terrible job keeping up with them’. My friend thought, and then said, ‘Oh,

Nixon, don’t worry. Look at all the consumer goods you produce. The Russians are making

a very poor show there’. So Nixon cheers up. The angel flies off to see Brezhnev in the

Kremlin. Brezhnev is also weeping. ‘What’s up, Brezhnev?’ ‘Oh, it’s those damn

Americans. They never have any shortages of things the general population needs. In fact,

they are glutted with everything’. The angel replies, ‘But you have great rockets and atomic

weapons. And what about those Sam missiles that are downing American aircraft in

Vietnam?’ Brezhnev smiles and perks up. The angel takes his leave and flies off to Havana.

When he sees Havana, he starts to weep.

MARX. Was it really as bad as that?

MICHAEL. It was, and it was mainly your fault, although one must never forget the Latin

American custom of trying to build houses without plans or bricks. They believe there that

if the idea exists, then the thing itself will appear, somehow. I don’t think they ever quite

grasped the idea of dialectical materialism.

27

PROFESSOR. I agree with Michael. You yourself are to blame for this. You once

mentioned in your writings how amazing it was that the characters in Homer and the Greek

tragedians were still a source of fascination to modern man. The fact is that mankind has

hardly changed at all since the emergence of so-called homo sapiens.

A VOICE FROM THE CROWD. Homo-sap, you mean. [General laughter and applause]

PROFESSOR. Dr. Marx, why did you think that your socialist revolution would produce a

new man? Wasn’t it wishful thinking?

MICHAEL. May I butt in again? The Boss sent down several of these ‘new men’ to set

examples, and they usually ended up by being killed. Think of Socrates, Gandhi, Martin

Luther King, Malcolm X. Even Che Guevara, although in my opinion he was too naïve and

schoolboyish. Thinking he could go off with a pop-gun, revolutionize a continent and

create a new society, just like that. Of course, after their death all these people were

revered, just like Jesus Christ.

PROFESSOR. Even Nietzsche had his idea of a ‘new man’ to go ‘beyond humanity’. The

Nazis borrowed the idea and came to a sticky end, defeated by nations of muddlers like the

British and the Russians.

MARX. Have you finished?

PROFESSOR. Yes, sir.

An arm shoots up from the floor, belonging to a young man in his twenties.

MICHAEL. Identify yourself if you want to speak.

YOUNG MAN. My name has no importance. Suffice to say that I was an idealist and a

follower of Karl Marx in the Britain of the 1960s.

28

MICHAEL. How could you be an idealist and a materialist at the same time? You were

obviously very confused.

YOUNG MAN. I was. But I would like Dr. Marx to hear my story.

MICHAEL. Go ahead.

YOUNG MAN. I came from a very poor family with eight children but won a scholarship

to one of the two best British universities. However, I left after a year to study the working

classes and, if possible, to help in organizing them.

MARX. Admirable.

YOUNG MAN. I got a job on British Railways in London unloading goods wagons that

came in from the continent with produce for Covent Garden market. Fruit, vegetables,

cheeses, meat, flowers, and so on. This was in the year of the Cuban missile crisis. I clearly

remember that night in October 1962 (I worked night-shift to earn more money). We had a

radio on all night, expecting at any moment to hear that nuclear war had broken out. The

Russians had stationed missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba pointing at the United

States, and more of their ships were arriving with more missiles. The United States knew

all about this from their satellite pictures. Kennedy gave Khrushchev an ultimatum:

dismantle the missiles or you will have war. Khrushchev backed down.

MARX. I saw it all. Fidel Castro actually wanted to fire the missiles, but because the

Russians had control of them he could not. What a lunatic, even worse than Khrushchev.

And they said they were my followers.

YOUNG MAN. It was a bad time. But please listen to my story. At the railway depot

where I was employed we worked in gangs of three: two labourers and a checker. At first

the other workers were suspicious of me because they knew I had been a student. But I kept

my mouth shut and tried to fit in. The work was heavy and you had to eat a lot to keep your

29

strength up. I saw some shocking stuff. There was a Jamaican worker there who was the

butt of the ‘meat men’, the top gang that got the best loads. Every time one of this gang saw

the Jamaican they would subject him to the filthiest abuse. Such as: ‘What are you doing

here, you black cunt? Why did they let you into this white man’s country? (Remember this

was the early sixties before there was mass black immigration into Britain). Go back to the

jungle’. Or: ‘How your wife could sleep with you is a mystery, you’re so fucking ugly’.

The Jamaican would smile or even laugh because he did not dare to talk back. In the end

they succeeded in getting him the sack by tipping off the guards at the main gate that he

was stealing some of the produce to take home. Everybody thieved there. The management

actually allowed a margin of ten per cent losses as ‘natural wastage’. One night a huge

Parmesan cheese worth nearly a thousand pounds vanished. The gangs regularly ate some

of the fruit that they were unloading. A crate of Jaffa oranges would be damaged

‘accidentally on purpose’ and the gang would devour as much of the fruit that they wanted.

But if you got caught taking out stuff at the gate, that was the end. Of course, people did

take things out through the gate, but a blind eye was turned if the gatemen were their

friends or had been especially intimidated beforehand. Anyway, the Jamaican got the boot

because the ‘meat men’ had tipped of the guards to search his bag after he left the shift

early one morning.

This gang of ‘meat men’, south London thugs, ran the whole show. The wagons would

come in on a train from the continent and they would get first choice. If there was a meat

wagon it always went to them. They could clear it in just half an hour (other kinds of

produce, such as grapes, could take up to two hours and give much less weight). Because

the jobs were paid by weight, the meat gang made much more money than anybody else

and in much less time. Once several meat wagons came in and our gang got one of them

30

because the stuff had to be unloaded and shifted out quickly to Covent Garden. After we

had unloaded those frozen carcasses we had to go back to the canteen for meat pies and tea.

The last gangs in the pecking order inevitably got the ‘shot’ wagons, ones that had had their

cargo shifted during the journey and were difficult because the produce was sometimes

jammed tight.

Our checker was a little south London cockney called George, an unbelievable ringer for

the stereotype of the local ‘cheeky chappie’. He even did tap-dancing and dressed as a

‘Pearly King’. I thought people like him only existed in music-halls, but there he was. One

night he told me and my work-mate Tony a story about the ‘meat men’. They had been

concealing goods stolen off the bank in loads on lorries setting off for Covent Garden. One

of the fork-lift drivers had seen them do it and told the management. The management

merely gave them a warning, obviously not wanting to have trouble with them. One of the

meat gang beat up the fork-lift driver with an iron bar, leaving him temporarily blind. When

I was there, he was back at work again, but every now and again he had attacks of epilepsy.

After those experiences I got disillusioned with the British working class. Most of the men

in that job seemed reasonable enough, but their main goal was to get as much money for

themselves for the least work. They certainly had no ideals about making a better society or

being in solidarity with their fellow-workers. It was merely ‘I’m alright, Jack’. They had a

strong union and the pay was good, so why complain? When I left the job and went to get

my final pay from the railway booking clerk in the passenger station down the road from

the goods depot, he told me he thought I was crazy to give up such a good job. He was

getting much less money.

31

MARX. I see your point. I myself might have been that booking clerk had my handwriting

been better.

YOUNG MAN. Then I read Orwell’s 1984 and my feelings were confirmed. I presume

you know the book. Winston Smith is trying to retain some individual freedom and

integrity under the régime of Big Brother. His one source of optimism comes from

thinking: ‘If there was hope, it was in the proles’. But he soon sees that the proles are an

anarchic mass of savages on whom the Party has long since given up. They merely want to

fill their bellies and have a good time, and since they pose no threat to Big Brother’s state,

they are tolerated. Winston meets an old prole in a pub one day, and listens to his nostalgic

chatter about when ‘a pint of beer was a pint’ and how in the olden days you could admire

the upper classes in all their finery and top hats. The old man also boasts that it has been

thirty years since he has had a woman and thank God for that.

MICHAEL. 1984, Animal Farm and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon are all required

reading here in our courses of reform. But we don’t let Stalin read at all, despite the fact

that he inspired all those works. I understand that when Russian intellectuals used to lend

him books during his dictatorship they would get them back spoiled with greasy thumb-

prints. Young man, I thank you for your story. It was very beneficial for the further

enlightenment of our honoured guest Dr. Marx.

Clamour from the floor. Yells of ‘MacDonald’s, MacDonald’s’. Jeers and laughter.

MARX. What are they shouting about?

YOUNG MAN. May I reply?

MARX. Certainly.

YOUNG MAN. You mean you have never heard of MacDonald’s?

32

MARX. Can’t say I have. MacDonald’s what?

Drunken voice from the floor, singing: ‘Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-aye, ee-aye, ee-

aye-oh’.

YOUNG MAN. With all due respect, sir, I think you’ve been neglecting to keep up on

history. Or perhaps you are so disappointed with it that you have lost interest.

MARX. Please get to the point.

YOUNG MAN. Let me ask you a question. What is the advanced nation with the worst

food in the world?

MARX. England.

YOUNG MAN. No, sir. It may well have been England in your time, but there was

massive immigration from the continent into England at the end of the twentieth century.

The Common Market, you know. Hence the improvement in English food. The worst food

in the advanced world is produced in the United States. You must have seen all those obese

Americans waddling around. Quickly-made, low quality food, full of starch and sugar.

MacDonald’s (and other food chains which are worse). Well, before the collapse of

communism MacDonald’s were allowed to open franchises in Moscow and Beijing. The

authorities had to control the mobs of people trying to eat there. It was symbolic of the

failure of the system. Of course, after Chernobyl, too, the Russian government never was

itself again.

MARX. But the Americans had nuclear power-station disasters, too.

YOUNG MAN. True, but they were able to ride them out because your average

American believed in the nation.

33

MARX. Well, I myself stated that the United States would not necessarily follow the

European course of history. Thank you, my boy. I should like to talk to an American now.

One arm shoots up. Michael gives its owner permission to take the floor. The next speaker

is a bespectacled intellectual type. When he opens his mouth he has a New England accent.

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL. Communism was never very influential in my country.

All those immigrants, jostling for a piece of the pie. It never got going even in the

Depression.

MARX. What about the Rosenbergs and McCarthy?

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL. Transitory events. We were so successful that we

could afford as presidents such nincompoops as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

MARX. Certainly you produced massive quantities to fill people’s bellies and satisfy

their other material desires. In that field my system, or what passed for my system, failed

miserably. But what sort of an individual emerges in your country? It’s dog-eat-dog, isn’t

it? Not very edifying. All those stretch limousines, Disneylands and Bank Number Ones.

At the same time as a bowing and scraping to religion. ‘In God We Trust’ on your

banknotes. Of course you do, if He gave you all that money. Actually the banks in your

country are the real churches. That’s where you get the true hush of religious ecstasy, as the

dollars are taken in and paid out. It’s the worship of the Golden Calf all over again. ‘The

Church of Christ Capitalist’, as somebody once remarked.

The drunken voice, singing again: ‘Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon’.

Another voice: Not those banks, you fool.

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL. You’re right there, sir, and I regret it. Nobody has any

reverence for anything. It’s grab as much as you can.

34

MARX. And US foreign policy is pretty louche, isn’t it, for a country claiming to be the

champion of democracy. Eating up half of Mexico in the nineteenth century, supporting the

Fascist Franco after the Spanish Civil War so you could have bases in Europe. To say

nothing of Vietnam and Iraq. You blunder into countries, destroy them and make a quick

exit. Then you wonder why you’re not liked and your citizens are afraid to go abroad. Of

course, your businesses later on get big fat contracts for clearing up the mess. I must say

that the capitalist system has far outshone my own followers in ingeniousness.

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL. You’re right. I often had occasion to be ashamed of my

country. But I could do nothing. Politicians there have no time for moralistic intellectuals.

It’s things like oil that count. One of our best writers, now in exile in Italy, chronicled two

hundred and fifty acts of American aggression in other countries since the end of World

War Two. And people pretend not to understand why September 11 happened.

MARX. Which September 11? You do remember that was the date of the bloody

Pinochet coup in Chile, in 1973, backed and coordinated by the United States?

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL. I often wonder whether there isn’t some connection

between those massacres and the World Trade Centre attacks in New York. But let us get

away from the sins of my own country for a moment. I would like to make a point about

another area where your ideology failed. Religion. I believe your father was a Protestant

convert from Judaism, but you yourself entertained only hostility to any form of religion.

MARX. Quite so. History is the development of the process of material production, to

which the production of ideas is linked but subordinate. However, my system, when put

into practice by those who purported to follow it, signally failed to provide as many of the

material things of life as the population expected. But my basic idea was correct, proved by

the fact that capitalism, a greater producer and provider of material things, has won out.

35

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL. Then you must agree that where you went wrong was in

your assessment of mankind’s capacity to progress intellectually and spiritually at the same

rhythm as material development.

MARX. What I have learned here today, I am sorry to say, has finally convinced me of

that. I misunderstood and overestimated man. For example, I expected him to forget his

religious alienation. Just as he still uses drugs as he used opium in my day, so religion is as

strong as ever. That vile creature Stalin, as I remarked in our morning session, even brought

out religious icons to encourage the Soviet populace to fight Hitler. Another factor in the

persistence of religion is the human capacity for hypocrisy in the political and social areas.

So George W. Bush, after invading Afghanistan and Iraq, has let it be known that he is a

born-again Christian. Human beings need the entity called ‘God’ because they cannot stand

on their own two feet. My esteemed intellectual colleague Dr. Freud, like myself a

renegade Jew, also wished that humankind had found something else to replace the Deity.

MICHAEL. Excuse me, Dr. Marx, but you appear to have forgotten where you are. I

thought I had persuaded you this morning of why you are here, but you seem to be a

backslider.

MARX. The habits of a lifetime die hard.

MICHAEL. Of course, but remember, you’re no longer in the land of the living. I hate to

emphasize this to a materialist, but you are a spirit, even if a ‘materialist spirit’. [Chuckles]

I see a clerical hand raised in the audience. I think we should allow a representative of

religion to confront you.

MARX. If you say so.

36

A Roman Catholic bishop in all his robes and with a crozier stands up.

BISHOP. Mr. Marx, I seem to remember a foolish rhetorical question put by one of your

followers now suffering, I am glad to say, eternal punishment for his sins. ‘How many

battalions has the Pope?’

MARX. Oh, that dog Stalin again. I disowned him in the morning session.

BISHOP [complacently] You do now recognize the strength of the Pope’s battalions?

MARX. I do, but it’s only because of the poor development of the human race.

BISHOP. We were a little more perspicacious than you, I take it you will admit. Original

sin, you see. And it is a fact that nobody has been able to stamp out religion.

MARX. The human race is still a rabble of children in search of a Father. What, in his

more lucid moments, the deranged English poet William Blake called ‘Nobodaddy’.

MICHAEL [peevishly] Excuse me again, but you must remember where you are and that

you are here solely because of the existence of the Boss. Don’t play with fire, Marx, we are

trying our best to set you on the right track.

MARX. I’m so bewildered. I didn’t mean to offend your Master.

MICHAEL. Please watch your tongue, then. But [turning to the bishop], you sir, you

surely didn’t expect the kind of after-life we’re giving you, did you? You thought you were

in for something better. I know you’re not taking your medicine very well.

MARX. For curiosity’s sake, what is his medicine?

MICHAEL. Guess.

MARX. Sorry, I have no idea.

MICHAEL. You greatest book, Das Kapital. Especially heavy going for one of his ilk,

but prescribed so that he should see that you also made great efforts to alleviate the lot of

the downtrodden. [He makes a sign to the bishop to sit down] And now I have a special

37

surprise for our honoured guest. To conclude this session, I have brought along a bosom

friend of yours. He is allowed to attend because, after all, he was a capitalist. In the textile

business in Manchester.

MARX. You mean Fred? Oh, how kind of you to fetch my dear comrade and benefactor.

Not quite up to scratch intellectually. A bit of a vulgarizer of my ideas, actually, but

otherwise a lovely man.

Michael goes over to the side door, opens it and FRIEDRICH ENGELS appears.

MICHAEL [to Engels] Please step up to the rostrum to be with your former comrade. I

know you have really nothing in common with the audience so I’m not going to ask you to

put your questions from the floor. In fact, you gave up your business in Manchester to

devote yourself to the cause of the working class.

ENGELS [shaking Marx’s hand] Delighted to see you again, my dear fellow. Just one

question which has been puzzling me. You remember my book The Origin of the Family,

Private Property and the State in which I suggested that the family was a pernicious locus

of potential slavery?

MARX [uneasily] Yes. Go on. You yourself never married but had two Irish girls as

mistresses. I didn’t quite approve.

ENGELS. Yes, I know you were a family man. But you also had a son by your

housekeeper, did you not? You tried to keep this fact hidden from your wife.

MARX. A slip of mine, very embarrassing.

ENGELS. Well, Karl, the family, like religion, has proved more durable than we thought.

The early Soviet régime tried to discourage it, but it was brought back by our friend Stalin

in the interests of the cohesion of the state. Opponents are very vulnerable if they have a

family. The Church also backed the family as a factor of stability, although Christ and his

38

Apostles lived in a kind of communist régime. It seems that the human race cannot do

without the family, and I see this fact as contributing to the failure of our cause. Your

ordinary citizen has neither the capacity nor the benevolence to feel solidarity for

everybody else, so he falls back on his own individual interests and those of his family.

Christ himself saw this problem and advised his followers to leave their family, as he had

repudiated his. But very few people can do this, just as very few people were good

communists. You see, the family is the one thing a person, however stupid or destitute or

unworthy in whatever way, can have, as long as a sexual partner can be found and there is

fertility. In this sense, God (in whom of course I do not believe), is the perfect democrat.

But it leads to a lamentable state of affairs. Any brute can have children to be humiliated,

knocked about or exploited. To say nothing about passing on to them his diseases or mental

defects. That’s why in my book I saw the family as a locus of potential slavery.

MICHAEL. That’s very true, Mr. Engels. The Boss really did give the human race too

much. First free will and then the opportunity to produce progeny to order around. I hope

He comes up with something better, but if He’s trying to it’s taking Him a long time.

[Cocks his eye, as if listening for a rumble. Silence] Maybe He’s just sick of the whole

business and, as I remarked before, has given up the world to the Devil.

BISHOP [shouting from the floor] Heresy! The Manichaean heresy!

MICHAEL. Shut your mouth, you old eunuch, you cut no ice here. And by the way, Mr.

Engels, you’d better get in line with Dr. Marx, whom we have more or less convinced of

the existence of my Boss. No atheism here.

Engels looks nonplussed, then hangs his head. After all, he is a modest man.

Michael addresses the audience.

39

I think that Dr. Marx has been questioned enough. You’ve really put him through the

mangle. But it’s all for the good, his and yours. I thank him for treating his old ideological

foes in such a civilized way. The session is closed. Capitalists and their allies, please leave

through the side door, quietly, mind, back to the places assigned to you, your punishment

cells, reformatories, and so on. This evening, to close the symposium, we shall have one

more event to which neither you nor the communist leaders of the morning have been

invited. It will be a kind of garden party, rather informal, with drinks, food and a film

show. Specially selected worthies will appear for the benefit of Dr. Marx. The theme of this

event will be man himself. Not a very wholesome topic, I’m afraid, but a real challenge.

Maybe this was the point of the whole symposium. Between you and me I think the Boss

may need a little help. [A far-off rumble of thunder]

The curtain falls.

40

ACT 3

A beautiful garden – a lawn and flowerbeds - floodlit. At the sides there are tables full of

food and drink. Waiters are circulating offering these to the guests, who are dressed in the

most varied attire. At the back there is a large marquee, equipped with a cinema projector

and screen. MICHAEL and MARX, wine-glasses in hand, stand chatting in the centre of the

lawn. Slightly off-centre is a grand piano, at which a little man in late eighteenth century

dress, complete with powdered wig, is playing the last movement of his piano concerto no.

22. It is MOZART. The music can clearly be heard over the voices of the guests, who

gradually, entranced by its sublimity, leave off their conversations to listen. Mozart finishes

his concerto. The music lasts for twelve minutes.

MICHAEL. Bravo, magnificent. Just as I knew it would be.

MARX. You’re right sir. What a pity I never had much time to listen to such music. [To

Mozart] But I know who you are, sir. Let me congratulate you. Er, could you tell me one

thing? Are you paid for this?

MOZART. No, sir. Here I don’t have to suck up to any stupid patrons like the Archbishop

of Salzburg or the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. They just ask me very graciously whether I

would like to perform at special functions such as this. Of course, I agree, because I’m very

well treated here. Not like on earth, where I was buried in a mass grave.

MICHAEL. Mr. Mozart is one of most honoured citizens here. The Boss was very explicit

about that when he arrived.

41

MARX [to Mozart] It’s nice to know that people like you existed. I was despairing of

humankind. By the way, where was the accompanying orchestra?

MOZART. I know what you mean about despair. As for the orchestra, it was one of our

invisible ones. The other kind would take up too much space on the grass.

A bald, snub-nosed little man, with bare feet and dressed in a rough ancient Greek tunic,

makes his appearance. He is of startling ugliness. He is, of course, SOCRATES.

SOCRATES. Allow me to introduce myself, Dr Marx. I think you know who I am. You

were, after all, a Greek scholar. I have heard about you and approved of your efforts to do

something for mankind, although these were misguided and to no avail.

MARX. Hmm.

SOCRATES. Could you tell me why you are wearing those curious black clothes? Why

don’t you dress like me?

MARX. It’s what I always used to wear in England, where I lived for most of my life.

Terrible climate. Damp and cold. Not a bit like Athens.

SOCRATES. From what I hear, Athens has deteriorated since my time. Pollution, they call

it, by fumes from those awful vehicles. Taxis, strange name. In my time pollution was

something else.

MARX. It is a great honour to make your acquaintance. You always said that good men

in the after-life would be able to meet and discuss philosophy. And here we are. But I have

a question for you. All those things that Plato makes you say. Did he get it right?

SOCRATES. Plato was a good boy and a very faithful disciple of mine. I taught him to

tell the truth, you know. Of course, he didn’t have a perfect memory, so he got a few things

slightly wrong, but in the main he did a good job. Charming writer. Excellent style. I never

wrote a line myself.

42

MARX. Another point. When you were charged in the Athenian court with impiety and

corruption of the morals of youth, why did you defend yourself in such a cavalier way?

Proposing a ridiculously small fine instead of some real punishment which would probably

have satisfied the judges. Did you foresee you would be sentenced to death? And then in

prison, making no attempt to escape by bribing the gaolers.

SOCRATES. Of course I could have got away. Many friends were willing to help me and

the authorities themselves might have turned a blind eye. But the fact was, I was sick of the

whole human race, not only of my squalid little accusers, Amytus, Meletus and Lycon I

think their names were. And consider those idiotic judges, how they jumped at the

opportunity of finishing me off. I proposed that tiny fine half in jest, to see what would

happen. So much for democracy, or the rule of the common man. Of course, they went after

my accusers, later on, when they realized how stupid they had been in getting rid of me.

But there were other reasons for my acquiescing in the whole caboodle. A nagging wife, for

one. Then, I couldn’t get it up.

MARX. Get it up? Get what up?

SOCRATES. My virile member, my penis. I had got too old. Although I must say it was a

blessing in disguise, because I found out that I had ‘lost one of my mad masters’. Good

phrase, don’t you think? I always preached discipline and self-control, you know. Anyway,

I had already worked out that this place here was better than earth, by a long way. I saw the

possibility, too, that after life on earth there might be nothing, a dreamless sleep, so to say.

And what could be better than that? So either way I was going to benefit. Better than

hanging around the human race.

43

MARX. You’re not exactly a democrat, are you?

SOCRATES. Of course not. You were, on earth, weren’t you?

MARX. I was, though I’m having grave doubts about the whole business.

SOCRATES. You should have read Plato with a bit more attention. Then you wouldn’t

have had to learn the hard way.

A waiter appears with a tray of drinks.

MARX. Socrates, let me do the honours. What’s your poison?

SOCRATES [taken aback momentarily] Poison?

MARX. Oh, how clumsy of me. I do apologise. I picked up that stupid expression in

England. That’s what the host says to a guest on offering him an alcoholic drink.

SOCRATES. Actually, it was the hemlock that brought me to this delightful place and

your charming company, so you have no need to apologize. I think I’ll have what I usually

have. A white Ambrosia, Château Helicon. [The waiter hands him his drink]

MARX. I’ll have a stein of German lager. [To the waiter] Thank you my man. I must

say the service is splendid here.

SOCRATES. The best. What did you expect? In heaven everything is perfect, even this

waiter. Earthly waiters are only poor copies of this ideal one.

MARX. I’m not sure that I agree with that part of your philosophy. There are several

waiters here. Which one is the ideal one?

SOCRATES. It’s too complicated to explain, especially to a materialist like yourself.

Atoms colliding like billiard balls and all that. How boring. Mechanical. No room for the

spirit.

44

MARX. In my philosophy, sir, there is room for the spirit. It’s just that it is an emanation

of material circumstances.

SOCRATES. What a curious idea. I take it you’re not a religious man.

MARX [doubtfully] Well, that’s a sticky one, being as I’m here.

SOCRATES. Exactly.

Mozart comes over.

MOZART. I’ve come to speak with Michael. There’s a fellow here whom I know slightly,

a musician like myself, who would like to play for you. A great talent, but rough, rather

lacking in polish. Name of BEETHOVEN. Will you give him permission?

MICHAEL. Of course. He’s also one of the elect.

Mozart goes back to the concert grand, where a swarthy little man is standing with a scowl

on his face.

MOZART. He’s given you the nod.

BEETHOVEN. Thank you, illustrious master. May I play my Moonlight Sonata?

MOZART. No. There is no moon here. It only appears to people on Earth. You could

play your Floodlight Sonata instead. [Giggles uncontrollably] More appropriate for this

setting.

BEETHOVEN. What about my Appassionata Sonata?

MOZART. Can’t say I know it, but why not? Please go ahead. I’m going off to get a

sandwich.

Beethoven starts to play this sonata. When he reaches a specially thunderous passage,

Mozart comes rushing back, waving his arms frantically.

45

Stop, stop. You’ve lost all control of yourself, man. Music should be played with

refinement, polish and good taste. It’s not to express the emotions of a washerwoman or a

madman.

BEETHOVEN [stops playing. Surlily] My music is different from yours, master. In my

time there were more wars and general hurly-burly. It was the time of Napoleon. I was the

Napoleon of music.

MOZART. More like Attila the Hun. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But please

remember where are.

BEETHOVEN. You are the only person who could make me stop playing.

MOZART. Don’t take it too hard, young fellow, but I have a certain responsibility to the

distinguished guests.

Beethoven stalks off back into the crowd, dejected.

A plump, bewigged figure in early eighteenth century attire appears and approaches the

Michael, Marx and Socrates group.

MICHAEL. Ah, welcome sir. Allow me to introduce Dr JONATHAN SWIFT.

SOCRATES. Hullo, my friend. What strange clothes you are wearing. That is not your

own hair, is it?

SWIFT [pompously, offended] It is a wig sir. All gentlemen in my time wore a wig.

SOCRATES. I was never a gentleman, thank God.

MARX. Sir, I have had the pleasure of reading your works. But I am curious about one

thing. How could a clergyman be such a hater of mankind?

SWIFT. The whole of Christian doctrine is founded on the idea of original sin. Quite

right, too. Man is a stinker. In the barbarous Orient, I hear, they believe the contrary. Talk

46

about something they call the ‘Buddha nature’, man’s essential goodness. No wonder they

have not progressed.

MARX. I believe you had no great esteem for women, either.

SWIFT. Have you ever smelt a woman? Or looked carefully under the make-up on her

face?

MARX. Certainly. I was a happily married man. You were a bachelor.

SWIFT. But I had mistresses, of course. Once I got a terrible shock. I was going to the

privy one night and one of them was there, straining away. The stench was terrible.

SOCRATES. Pardon me sir, but I’ve just had a thought. That hair you have on top of your

head.

SWIFT. My wig, sir?

SOCRATES. Yes. Is it human hair? Your hair, or perhaps someone else’s? It doesn’t

look like horse-hair.

SWIFT. I have no idea how wigmakers go about their business.

SOCRATES. It struck me that you probably disliked women so much because one of

them had given you the pox. Hence your wig, to hide your baldness.

SWIFT. No, luckily I never caught it. Could have, though, from those vile creatures. Did

you ever get it, sir?

SOCRATES. No, I preferred young boys. In my time you didn’t get diseases from them.

No rent-boys then.

SWIFT. You preferred boys? How disgusting.

SOCRATES. A chacun son goût.

SWIFT. But you know French. It didn’t even exist in your time. How is that, sir?

47

SOCRATES. I’m having lessons here. Wonderful teacher, very funny. Filthy mind,

though. Wrote a book about giants.

MARX. May I interrupt? [To Swift] Did you really hate humankind so much, or were

the opinions voiced in your works an exaggeration so you could cause a scandal?

SWIFT. I hated the whole lot of them, with the exception of a very few individuals. My

opinions are voiced by the King of Brobdingnag in my Gulliver book. Doubtless you will

recall certain passages. Let me quote from memory. ‘I cannot but conclude the bulk of your

natives, to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to

crawl upon the surface of the earth’.

MARX. Strong stuff.

SWIFT. The King was talking about my hero’s compatriots, the English. Let me recite

further: ‘He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs

during the last century; protesting that it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions,

murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments; the very worst effects that avarice, faction,

hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition

could produce’. I notice that there are no trees in this garden. No perches for Yahoos to shit

on people.

MICHAEL. We would never allow that.

MARX. But had you no sympathy at all for the human race?

SWIFT. The Yahoos? Let me quote further, from a Letter from Captain Gulliver to his

cousin Sympson, written after he had been expelled from the land of the illustrious

Houyhnhnms. ‘I must freely confess, that since my last return, some corruptions of my

Yahoo nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and particularly

those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so

48

absurd a project of reforming the Yahoo race in this kingdom; but, I have now done with all

such visionary schemes for ever’.

MARX [sadly] I see what you mean.

SWIFT. May I take my leave of you, sirs? I cannot be in human company, even here and

amongst the best of their kind, for very long.

ALL. Goodbye.

SOCRATES. A real aristo. You know, he had a bit of a horsy smell about him, as well.

From amongst the crowd of guests emerges a man with fine drooping moustaches and fiery

eyes. He is raving ‘GOD IS DEAD’. The guests fall silent in an awed hush at this

blasphemy.

SOCRATES. How did they allow this lunatic here?

MICHAEL. The Boss seemed rather dubious about letting him come, but he was a

brilliant man and we think his madness may have some cure. His atheism is really only a

rather immature rebellion against his father’s profession. He was a brilliant Greek scholar.

Come over here, sir. [The man is, of course, NIETZSCHE]

NIETZSCHE [shouting] If you go to a woman, take thy whip!

SOCRATES. He’s got something there.

MICHAEL. Shame on you, Socrates. This man was madly in love with a woman called

Lou, along with a friend of his, and she got them to draw her in a cart as if they were two

horses. She had a whip in her hand.

NIETZSCHE. We have to go beyond mankind and create the Superman! Down with the

conspiracy of the weak and useless! No pity for the botched and bungled!

49

MICHAEL. Do you know how this fellow ended? With all his philosophy of strength

and lack of pity, one day in the street he saw a horse being beaten by some peasants. He

collapsed sobbing on the ground and had to be put in an asylum.

MARX. Quite right too. Just before he went mad he was writing things like ‘Why I am so

clever’ and ‘If there were a God I could not stand it if it was not me’.

MICHAEL Sounds like that handsome colleague of mine who got too big for his boots.

NIETZSCHE [raving] There was only one Christian! I adore and I execrate him!

MARX. What does he mean?

NIETZSCHE. And who was the man who founded the Christian Church? The very man

who denied Christ three times!

MARX. He’s got a point there.

MICHAEL. Very strange fellow. His doctrines led to the anarchists and the Nazis.

Nietzsche stalks off, muttering imprecations. He nearly bumps into DOSTOEVSKY, who is

approaching the group, drink in hand.

Welcome, Fyodor Mikhailovich. Do you know the man you almost collided with just now?

DOSTOEVSKY. I do, and I highly disapproved of him. Put very dangerous ideas in

people’s heads. But there’s one very curious fact about him. You know how he went

mad?

MICHAEL. Yes, I’ve just been telling our friends here.

DOSTOEVSKY. Well, I wonder if he hadn’t been reading one of my novels.

MICHAEL. What do you mean?

DOSTOEVSKY. In Crime and Punishment there is a scene where some drunken peasants

are beating a horse to death. One of them calls for an axe to finish the animal off. The

whole thing is dreamed by Raskolnikov, who also thought he had a right to make his own

50

laws. Of course, like our German friend, he had to pay the price. Crime and Punishment

came out in 1866, more than twenty years before Nietzsche’s collapse.

MARX. How strange.

MICHAEL. Not so strange. That’s all part of the plan.

SOCRATES. Mr Dostoevsky, I believe than in another of your books, Jesus Christ

returns to earth and the Grand Inquisitor has him put to death.

DOSTOEVSKY. Yes, in Ivan Karamazov’s dream. Christ has to die again because his

message is far too difficult for the ordinary man to carry out, much less understand. What

the crowd wants is bread and miracles. To fill their bellies and have something

incomprehensible to gape at.

MARX. You are a little hard on the common man, sir.

DOSTOEVSKY. That was the opinion of my great rival, Tolstoy. The ‘Christian

anarchist’, some called him. But he could afford to believe in the essential goodness of the

common man. He was a great landowner, not a desperate, penniless epileptic like myself. A

peasant-lover. My father was murdered by his own peasants. I know the evil in the heart

of man. Of course, I admired Tolstoy. Who did not? I believe he did not care for my

work, however. The strange thing is that, although we were contemporaries, we never met.

As if we were incompatible in some way. Incidentally, why isn’t he here?

MICHAEL. He asked to be excused. He had no desire to meet our honoured guest.

DOSTOEVSKY. Neither did I, but for politeness’s sake I am here and celebrating.

MARX. You are a gentleman, sir.

DOSTOEVSKY. Not exactly, but I accept your compliment in the spirit in which it was

given.

51

A bearded Indian guru-figure wearing a black woollen cap approaches.

SOCRATES. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. I always admired the way you kept the best

traditions alive. How would you like me to address you? As Bhagwan, or just plain

Rajneesh?

OSHO. Everyone knows me as OSHO. ‘The Great Ocean’. [Laughs. Calls over a waiter]

Whisky, please. Scotch. None of your Jack Daniel’s or other American stuff.

SOCRATES. You had a hard time there, didn’t you, when you set up your ashram?

OSHO. I certainly did. Oregon. ‘The Big Muddy Ranch’, I called it. I tried to knock

some sense into the heads of my followers, with little success. You see, what I most hated

was the herd-instinct.

SOCRATES. Like Nietzsche.

OSHO. Exactly. I had a great love for Thus Spake Zarathustra.

SOCRATES. And yet, there they were in Oregon, collected around you as their

shepherd.

OSHO. Most were very dim. One woman had the cheek to write a book against me after

she left the ashram.

SOCRATES. Accusing you of having many sexual relationships with your female

followers, and collecting thirty Rolls-Royces. What do you have to say about that?

OSHO. It’s all true. But it was only a joke. Between you and me, I got fed up on the

ranch, being adored and all that, by those nincompoops. So I messed around, just to show

them what I thought of them. Money-making and sex are the easiest things in the world.

SOCRATES. The American police started harassing you, for perverting the morals of the

local community. I had similar problems myself, as you know.

52

OSHO. Yes, my friend. They locked me up and then deported me. I died soon

afterwards, before reaching sixty. I had had enough. I had ‘lived life to the full’, as they

say, and there was nothing else I wanted to do. Actually, the local people didn’t mind me

all that much. It was some decision made by a politician.

SOCRATES. Typical. What was it you used to say about politicians?

OSHO. ‘A politician is a successful criminal. A criminal is a failed politician’.

SOCRATES. Excellent. I myself decided never to get involved in politics. You know that

my accusers had political motives?

OSHO. Yes. But that’s all behind us, and here I am, talking to you, and here you are,

talking to me. [They embrace]

MICHAEL. It’s nearly time for our film show. The other guests seem quite content to chat

with one another. I doesn’t look as though anybody else wants to join us. Wait, here comes

someone. He doesn’t look too pleased with the party. A real sourpuss, in fact, though if

he’s been invited he must have some great merit. Your name, sir?

SCHOPENHAUER. Arthur SCHOPENHAUER, philosopher. I wouldn’t have come

over, but I wanted to get away from Nietzsche, who used to be my follower, then turned on

me.

MICHAEL. Do you have anything to say to Dr Marx?

SCHOPENHAUER. Actually, no. But I have a question for you. Er, I don’t want to seem

impolite, but I think the whole universe is a bad affair. For a start, man is a botched job.

MICHAEL. We have already accepted that. Something certainly went wrong, and now it

occurs to me exactly what it was. The selfish gene.

SCHOPENHAUER. What?

53

MICHAEL. The selfish gene. A scientist who came after you had the idea. Somewhere

the selfish gene got into man, without the Boss knowing.

SCHOPENHAUER. Possibly. I, however, think that the very concept of man was wrong.

You know that doctor fellow in the novel who made a man out of bits and pieces and then

galvanized the lot to give him life? I think that’s what your Master did when he made man.

He created a monster.

MICHAEL. You’re right, sir. But I believe the whole problem is to be solved shortly.

By the way, if the entire universe and life itself are so bad, why did you not commit

suicide? Of course, you would not be here at this party if you had. We have a special

reformatory for suicides.

SCHOPENHAUER. I can’t really explain that. It was not cowardice.

MICHAEL So your philosophy was not coherent.

SCHOPENHAUER. I suppose it wasn’t.

MICHAEL. In your lifetime you had no success, but lots of people read you afterwards

because you were such an entertaining writer, despite your lugubrious message.

SCHOPENHAUER. In my lifetime they, left and right, preferred that ass Hegel.

MARX. I certainly did. In fact the best people of my youth were all left Hegelians.

SCHOPENHAUER [drily] Even your friend Bakunin.

MARX. Even an idiot like him.

SOCRATES. Dr Schopenhauer. [Laughs] I can hardly approve of your philosophy. But I

like your sense of humour. After you had some trouble with an old woman in your

lodgings, you threw her down the stairs. The court sentenced you to pay a pension to her

for life. When she died, what was that you wrote?

54

SCHOPENHAUER. Obit anus, abit onus.

SOCRATES. Translate please.

SCHOPENHAUER. The old woman dies, the burden is removed.

SOCRATES. Capital. I heard a song once, something like this: ‘Pick up your axe/Get up

on the chair/Hey, diddle, diddle/When the old lady comes through the door/Just split her

down the middle’.

SCHOPENHAUER. We’re kindred spirits, sir.

SOCRATES. Only in some things.

MICHAEL [clapping his hands] I have an announcement to make. All our guests are

invited into the marquee to watch a film show. A most important, not to say transcendent,

decision has been made, but you have to attend the film show first.

Everybody files into the marquee and sits down facing the large screen at the back. The

film show begins: Nazi rallies, the Little Red Book being waved by masses of young

Chinese, German concentration camps in World War 2, the Politburo over Lenin’s tomb in

Red Square, London during the Blitz, the carpet bombing of Dresden and other German

cities, A-bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, football hooligans, screaming

teenagers at a pop concert, etc., etc.

After the show the spectators emerge from the marquee. They are dazed by what they have

seen.

MICHAEL. Please pay careful attention. The Master has decided to destroy the human

race on Earth once and for all. This time there are no Noahs to be saved, because the whole

planet is only Sodom and Gomorrah. The human race is irredeemable.

A VOICE. But what will happen to us here?

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MICHAEL. You will be allowed to carry on. But none of that lot on earth will be allowed

up here. They are to be completely obliterated, body and soul. They have become beyond

correction. I am told that there is a plan to re-populate the earth with the Martians, who

have been living underground on their planet for millenia, after having destroyed its

surface. They have been petitioning the Boss for Lebensraum for some time. They are not

quite so wicked as the earthlings, so their request, I understand, is being considered.

ANOTHER VOICE. That’s not fair. It’s too cruel. And in every generation there are good

people who deserve to be saved.

MICHAEL [hesitating] You’re right. Perhaps I misunderstood slightly. You’ll know soon

anyway if a batch of newcomers arrives from Earth.

THE SECOND VOICE. I should jolly well think so.

MICHAEL. Watch your step, sir. Who are you to interfere with the Cosmic Plan? What

are your qualifications? Do you not recall my Master’s words to Job? ‘Where wast thou

when I laid the foundations of the earth? (...) Or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the

morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (...) Canst thou bind

the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth

Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? (...) Canst thou draw

out Leviathan with an hook? Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou

put an hook into his nose? Or bore his jaw through with a thorn?’ You’re very small fry,

sir. But just to show you all that my Master acknowledges the earthlings as his creatures, he

is prepared to give them a suitable requiem. Prepare yourselves for the destruction of the

human race. Silence please. [There is about ten seconds of total silence, then an almighty

CRACK]

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That’s it. They’re all gone. The other animals were left unharmed. They have done nothing

they weren’t supposed to. I wonder how they’ll cope with the Martians. [Michael feels

inside his jacket and produces a music score. He beckons to Mozart] You, sir. I ask you to

play this. [Handing the score to Mozart] Can you do it?

MOZART. Of course I can. I can play anything. [Thumbing through the score] Curious

style. Nothing like my stuff. But here goes. [Sits down at the grand piano and plays,

superbly, Chopin’s Funeral March sonata, Opus 35, from beginning to end. This lasts for

about nine minutes]

Curtain.

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EPILOGUE

A squalid apartment in Soho. Sunday morning in the early 1880s. Karl MARX is tossing

and turning in his bed, having nightmares. From time to time he screams. A scraggy,

poorly dressed, middle aged woman (the CHARLADY) comes in through the door, followed

by FRIEDRICH ENGELS.

CHARLADY. Here he is sir. He’s been like this for a whole hour. He must be waking up

now, because when you left him here at two o’clock this morning he fell asleep

immediately. I couldn’t even get him to take his clothes off.

ENGELS [bending over the bed] Karl, old fellow, wake up. [Shakes him. To the

charlady] Get me a bowl of cold water and a towel. [She leaves]

MARX [delirious] Oh, yes, sir, I promise to believe in you. Oo, I was wrong about

religion, wrong about mankind, wrong about everything.

ENGELS [alarmed] Calm yourself, calm yourself.

MARX. I was an honoured guest, so well treated. I renounce my atheism. Michael, help

me.

ENGELS. Michael?

The charlady comes back in with the bowl of water and a towel. She soaks the towel with

the water and applies it to the forehead of the struggling Marx.

MARX. Oh, it’s you, Mrs Green. What are you doing here? Where am I?

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CHARLADY. It’s alright, sir. You’re at home. [To Engels, disapprovingly] You’re his

best friend sir, how could you have let him get in the state he was last night?

ENGELS. You’re right. I should have brought him home when he fell down in The Dog

and Duck. I think he’s awake now.

MARX. Where am I?

ENGELS. Back in Soho, dear fellow. We went out on the piss last night. Our usual route,

from here, through Camden Town, Chalk Farm and Belsize Park up to Hampstead. You got

well sozzled. I should never have let you drink all that absinthe with your beer. Lethal stuff.

I hear Mr Gladstone’s going to ban it.

MARX. Oh, my head is splitting. Get me some water to drink, Mrs Green. [She leaves]

ENGELS. Who’s Michael? We don’t know anyone called Michael.

MARX. A young dandy in a white suit, in Heaven.

ENGELS. Heaven?

MARX. I assume it was Heaven. Michael called it the ‘after-life’.

ENGELS. Come, come, Karl. There’s no after-life. That’s parson’s talk, to lead the

working man astray. And you were saying something about not being an atheist any more.

How could you? Your nightmares must have been terrible.

The charlady comes back in with a jug of water and a glass. Marx drinks greedily.

MARX. That’s better. Now where was I?

ENGELS. You were talking all sorts of delirious nonsense.

MARX. You’re right. It must have been the absinthe. I saw some strange stuff in my

dreams. Communist leaders of the twentieth century. Nearly all scoundrels. I debated with

capitalists and a bishop. You were there, too. I spoke with Mozart and Socrates and other

outstanding fellows, in a garden party. I saw a film show.

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ENGELS. What’s that?

MARX. A big camera on a tripod projected moving images onto a white screen.

ENGELS. Have some more water. You’re still delirious.

CHARLADY. I’ve never seen him as bad as this. It’s all that reading.

MARX. I heard the end of the world. An immense CRACK, which destroyed the human

race. It deserved to be destroyed, from what I saw on the screen.

ENGELS [soothingly] And what was that, Karl?

MARX. Terrible things. Mass rallies of Germans at Nuremburg, all marching in step

saluting a screaming demagogue called Hitler. A grinning American president called

Truman after he had ordered a bomb of mass destruction dropped on the Japanese. Jewish

prisoners, scarcely alive, being released from Hitler’s concentration camps by British and

American troops. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese dressed in blue overalls waving a

Little Red Book in front of a plump-cheeked leader called Mao Tse Tung. Dresden being

annihilated by British and American flying machines. My beautiful baroque Dresden. A

man in Brazil, a German communist of the 1930s, being tortured by the police in Rio. They

heated up a wire with a blow-lamp till it was read-hot and then introduced it into his penis

through his urethra. His screams were awful. He went mad. I saw plain clothes police

putting rats in young women’s vaginas in Chile, under Pinochet.

ENGELS. You need a lot of rest, old fellow. [To the charlady] Mrs Green, you can go

now. It must be time for church.

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CHARLADY. I was wondering when you’d let me go sir, although I think Mr Marx

wants a lot of looking after. Perhaps he should be moved to one of those places that treat

his kind of illness.

ENGELS. You don’t mean Bedlam, do you? No, Mrs Green. He’s not mad, just

delirious. People with his great intellectual capacity sometimes imagine extraordinary

things. [Pompously] ‘Great wits to madness are oft allied’, Mrs Green. Pope.

CHARLADY. Sir, you know I’m a Methodist. I don’t believe in the Pope. All those fine

robes, all that luxury. Well, Mr Marx’s certainly lost his wits, if that’s what you mean, sir.

In my opinion, you German gentlemen do far too much thinking. You’re way above us

common folk. And the terrible thing is you none of you believe in God.

ENGELS. Off to church, Mrs Green. I’ll look after your master.

CHARLADY. Thank you sir. You know I never miss church of a Sunday.

ENGELS [sighing] I know. [The charlady leaves the room, but reappears a few seconds

later with a POLICEMAN. This is a typical local London bobby of the 1880s, blue uniform,

truncheon and all]

POLICEMAN [clearing his throat] Ah, Mr Engels, sir, I thought I’d just pop in to see

how your friend Mr Marx was. I saw him collapse in that pub in Belsize Park last night.

The Dog and Duck.

ENGELS. I didn’t see you there, constable.

POLICEMAN. Oh, I was there, sir, out of uniform, of course, having a drink. It’s my

local. I can’t understand why gentlemen like you and Mr Marx go to such rough places.

They’re for the working man, not the likes of you. Now I knows that you have plans to help

the working man, and I do admire you for that. And you being foreigners too. But nothing

will come of it, believe you me. The working man’s just rabble, sir, a worthless lout.

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Cowardly, too. When I gets sent to restore order in one of these marches they have, I

swings my truncheon and gives some of them a bloody nose. They can’t take much of that.

But, as I said, you’re generous souls, both of you. Coming here to a foreign country to help

the ordinary Englishman. And I know you’re both cultured men and in your own way

friends of law and order. Not like those damned bomb-throwers.

MARX. Thank you for coming to see me, constable. I assure you I’m alright. Just had a

drop too much, as you fellows like to say.

POLICEMAN [clearing his throat] I’m not sure if it’s in your line, sir, but do you know

that the Queen is going in state today down the Mall, carriage and all? I’ll be on duty there,

to keep order. I’m proud to wear the Queen’s uniform, sir, as you know. Wouldn’t you like

to see her? I might be able to get you good places along the route. There’ll be half of

London out to get a glimpse of her, and every borough will get out its brass band to

celebrate.

ENGELS. Thank you very much, constable. I think Mr Marx needs rest and I’ll stay

behind here to look after him.

POLICEMAN. As you wish, sir. I’m glad Mr Marx is getting over his little accident and

I’d better be off now. Good-day to both of you.

MARX and ENGELS. Good-day, constable. [The policeman leaves]

ENGELS. Doesn’t it make you sad, old fellow, to see the low level of development of

this man? And there are so many like him of his class in this country.

MARX [sadly] You’re right, Fred. At times our task seems hopeless. And Mrs Green,

never missing church on Sundays. I really believe she would like me to be converted to

Christianity. The terrible thing is that both she and the constable are decent people, when so

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many of the working class are worthless individuals. Oh, in my dream I heard a terrible

story about a man being blinded with an iron bar by one of his workmates.

ENGELS. But we can’t give up now. Your theories will revolutionize the world. They

just need time. [Loud music, from the street. A brass band. Engels goes over to the

window] It’s the Salvation Army.

MARX. Heaven help us.

ENGELS [smiling] Exactly.

MARX. But, beyond joking, Fred, what can we do? Is it all worth it?

ENGELS. We can’t give up now. We’re both old men. We’ll just have to soldier on.

MARX. Soldier on. Soldier on.

Through the window come strains of the Salvation Army Band playing ‘Onward Christian

Soldiers’. These die away after a minute or so and another band can be heard, playing

‘Rule Britannia’: ‘When Britain fir-ir-ir-ir-irst /At Heaven’s command/Arose, arose, arose,

arose/From out of the azure main’, etc. Marx and Engels look helplessly at each other.

FINAL CURTAIN

Copyright Peter Turton 2004

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