It’s full Marx for Will

Will Young is a Marxist. These are words I never imagined I would see in the same sentence, in that order. You might, if you were a committed revolutionary type, imagine a slightly re-ordered version of the same sentence - "Marxist will is young", say - as a headline in the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ Weekly, but Marxism, and the winner of Pop Idol? Surely not.

Sadly, during the course of an odd interview in the Sunday Times, young Will was not pressed on the true nature of his Marxist allegiances. "Marx did get me to where I am," he said. "Marx warned against losing creativity."

There was, he revealed, a job he could have done at Sony. Instead, he took out a loan and did a three-year course at drama school. By being true to himself, he got where he is today.

"It’s strange me being a sleeping anti-capitalist working in a business that is all based on money," Young said. "A friend saw an anti-capitalist protester during the riots sipping a Starbucks cappuccino: the compromise of the modern revolutionary!"

He was asked how he kept the red flame alight. He replied: "I do my bit. I always try to go to small places. I used to work in an ASK pizza chain, but you wonder where individualism has gone. Everything is so marketed, you don’t get anything raw."

Now, Marxism is a much misunderstood concept, especially by Marxists and Sunday Times writers, so it is no surprise that Young’s remarks have been forced to exist in a contextless vacuum. My own, limited experience of Marxism - mostly of a post-structuralist variety, since you ask - had a lot to say about the exigencies of the undeveloped world, but precious little about television talent shows. Nicos Poulantzas, Ernesto Laclau and the lads didn’t seem to have much time for New Faces, or Opportunity Knocks. If they had done, instead of wittering on about starvation and stuff, I suppose it’s possible that they might have drawn an analogy about purity of intention, and the corrupting nature of the market. Just possibly, they might have seen the television talent show as a metaphor for late capitalism, with its tinselly glamour, its fetishisation of success, its corrupt democracy, and the way in which popularity is confused with talent.

When I was a lad, Marxists were taught about alienation. Under capitalism, people would be known not for their talents, or tended to according to their needs. They would be jammed into whatever jobs suited the requirements of the state. Thus, Mr Jones would not be seen as a father, a Dean Martin aficionado, or a stamp collector, he would be The Man in the Post Office. The strictures of society would be such that we would never have cause to discover Mr Jones’s many merits, and would, instead, define him in relation to his work. The workers would be, as Dennis Waterman said on Tuesday night’s Murder in Mind, "cogs in the water"(or was it "fish in the machine"?).

One of the great misunderstandings about Marxism concerned its hostility to capitalism. Sadly, Lenin and the lads got a bit muddled with this, and invented their own brand, Marxism-Leninism, which was actually state capitalism, with better uniforms and fur hats. Proper Marxism wasn’t so hostile to capitalism. It understood that capitalism was necessary, and that it was better than all the preceding economic models: feudalism, serfdom, slavery. But capitalism was unstable, because it was based on ruthless competition, and hence would collapse. Hurrah!

Sometimes, in my Marxist-indoctrination class, we talked of utopias. This is what would happen when the inevitable contradiction of capitalism led to the collapse of its apparatus, the withering of the state etc. In proper Marxism, none of these constraints would exist. The masses would be free to frolic, dance barefoot, and otherwise express their true, un-alienated selves.

How could this be? It would happen because society would evolve to the point where everyone could understand that tolerance and respect was in the interests of all. Law and order would be like traffic lights. We all stop at them because we know that they operate fairly, and that the small restriction on freedom which they imply will be as nothing, compared to the benefits of accepting their diktats. This is why we stop when the pelican crossing turns red, even when no-one is crossing the road.

I can know all of this, and still not know what Will Young meant when he said that he was a "sleeping anti-capitalist". I can appreciate that he used to work in a pizza chain, but I still fail to see how, by murdering a Doors song, he is expressing individuality, rawness, or individuality.

But, hey, as utopian motoring metaphors go, I always preferred roundabouts.