What is this social and cultural ‘space’ within which the likes of William Burroughs operated? William Burroughs was ‘White’ and middle-class and so he had no real or pressing need to work. He was the right colour, the right class and possessed the socio-economic resources not to starve or remain homeless for any other reason than personal ‘choice’. A far more important question is where does this ‘leisure’ space he exploited so spectularly originate? Leisure is a form of surplus profit earned by the collective working-class – stolen and used for their own personal use by the middle and upper classes to be used as they see fit. The working-class a) generates and b) earns the agency of ‘leisure’ through their labour – whilst the middle and upper-classes appropriate and spend it as they see fit! The capacity for a society to possess ‘leisure’ arises from the disciplined activities of the collective working-class earned over long periods of time. How many millions of workers clocked-on each day in the factories throughout the generations to ‘earn’ Burroughs the right to lay down in puddles of his own piss – and then make a career writing about it?
The only people who think that the work of Burroughs is ‘Revolutionary’ are the Trotskyites – as the Trotskyites align themselves with the ‘inversion’ of reality as perpetuated by the Bourgeoisie, and deliberately attempt to mislead the working-class by pretending to support the wants and needs of the Proletariat – whilst in reality striving to sully all the working-class requirements – presenting what amounts to ‘Counter-Revolution’ as a replacement for genuine (Marxist-Leninist’) ‘Revolution’! For the average Trotskyite – ineffective Revolutionary activity is interpreted as effective Revolutionary activity and is encouraged over that of genuine Marxist-Leninist endeavour that possesses the ability to formulate genuine and permanent change throughout society. For the Trotskyite – no change is ‘change’ – and the maintaining of the capitalist status quo is ‘Revolution’. This is why the Trotskyites strive to ensure that the means of production remain firmly in the hands of the brutal and vicious Bourgeoisie.
What did Burroughs do with the leisure space the working-class earned for him? He chose not to work and instead lived-off the wealth of his parents and that of the people who surrounded him (this included the agency of ‘theft’). He lay on sofas and voluntarily entered the state of material poverty whilst imbuing all types of chemical compounds. Inbetween bouts of this stupor – he would ‘write’ about how his awareness was ‘changed’ so that its area of activity was diverted away from the world of the outer (material) environment to the inner world of ever-changing subjective experience. As well as this chemically altered perception – Burroughs would participate in all kinds of deviant sexual activity – which he admitted in his books also included the ‘illegal’. How did the hypocritical Bourgeoisie respond to these revelations? By turning a blind-eye, of course, Everything that titillated the Bourgeois imagination was viewed as prime examples of an ‘alternative’ lifestyle well-lived, whilst anything that was or could be ‘illegal’ was simply declared as ‘imagination’ and pure ‘art’ – and nothing else was said! Losing control of the material world is NOT Revolution and is the process of effectively ‘abandoning’ the field to the opposition. Participating in various forms of illegal and/or sexual deviancy (as a form of ‘lack of control’) is nothing more than William Burroughs letting his ‘Bourgeois’ side shine through!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 