I have written elsewhere that I believe Victor Lewis Smith employee a ‘Marxist’ approach to deconstructing contemporary Bourgeois society. His revealing of the ‘inversion’ – and then his presenting of reality the ‘right way around’ equals the production of humour. Another approach he often uses is to reveal the ‘inversion’ (using many and varied devices) whilst then expanding upon the original ‘inversion’ through all kinds of different and absurd avenues of perception. Again, the product is humour. Regardless of the subject matter, the result is always exactly the same in the mind of the listener – and that is the generation of a deep ‘questioning’ of (Bourgeois) reality as it presents itself to the senses. Perhaps, upon reflection, we might be seeing an Antonino Gramsci influence. Was Victor Lewis Smith attempting to undermine the capitalist system from within? Certainly, as he was the product of his material environment, the UK was a much more culturally left-wing place then (during the 1980’s) than it is today, and this might explain his continuous reference to Marxist-Leninist theory and culture.
Yes, the right-wing Thatcher government was in power, but it was occupying itself with the destruction of British Socialism and the transformation of British society and reconstructing it in the image of the US. At the time this seemed to be a policy unlikely to be achieved – but Thatcher showed she meant business when she abolished ‘free’ higher education in the UK during 1988 – three-years earlier than it would be abolished in a collapsing Soviet Union (during 1991)! It is interesting that by the time he wrote TV Offal in the mid to late 1990s – the overt references to Marxism and the USSR were virtually ‘zero’ – even though his Marxist deconstructive technique remained exactly the same. Looking back at his work, Victor Lewis Smith makes generally negative and neutral references to Stalin, Trotsky, Mao and Pol Pot – whilst simultaneously inserting exact Marxist interpretation regarding the plight of the working-class (he likes the term ‘Lumpen Proletariat’). It is difficult to discern whether he agrees with these interpretations of Marxist-Leninist leaders – or if he is simply ‘reflecting’ what the Bourgeois State believes these beings to be – and are telling us to believe.
Whereas many people believed in Churchill’s fake ‘Iron Curtain’ – Victor Lewis Smith actually penned a sketch where himself, his pet Whippet and his Landlady – all stayed for a debauched weekend of sexual shenanigans in an ‘East German’ hotel – thus proving that he understood that a free exchange of people (and things) existed between the Communist East and the capitalist West. Furthermore, his humour ‘humanised’ those people living within ‘Socialist’ regimes the Americans continuously strove to ‘de-humanised’ and the Nazi Germans attempted to eradicate (who can forget NATO’s 78-day blanket-bombing of ‘Socialist’ Yugoslavia in 1999)! Of course, he may well not have been a Marxist-Leninist – as many lost their ideological way, firstly with Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin in 1956, and the collapse of the USSR in 1991! Indeed, he may not have been a Marxist-Leninist at all – and I am barking up the wrong tree! However, I stand by my assessment of the structure of his humour and although it is said that Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker ‘copied’ his style – it is also true that neither of these two comedians can remotely be said to be ‘Marxist’ – as clever as some of their humour has been. After-all, where Victor Lewis Smith would have been referring to the Maidan Junta of West Ukraine through the medium of the Neo-Nazi ideology it upholds – all we get from the likes of Morris and Brooker is either ‘silence’ about or ‘collaboration’ with – the enormous hoax being currently perpetuated by the US upon the British people!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 