Happy May Day everyone. Well, this wouldn’t be a left-wing blog if we didn’t ever mention the real Labour Day, would it now?

I’m somewhat gratified by the whole focus on inequality that for the time being is making the rounds of the English-speaking intelligentsia that seem to have been instigated by the publication of a book by the French economist Thomas Piketty. I know when the mainstream gets its hands on a worthwhile thought, the discussion will hardly conform to some sort of ideological purity, and there’ll be lots of opportunity for the proponents of the salutary effects of ludicrous inequality to quibble.

But maybe we can celebrate, while it lasts, a moment in the turning of the discourse?

And I would like to close with some wise words from the holy martyr Valerie Solanas:

Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society: There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants.

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5. Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to, and money provides him with an eternal, never-ending goal: Just think of what you could do with 80 trillion dollars — invest it! And in three years time you’d have 300 trillion dollars!!!

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Isolation, Suburbs, and Prevention of Community: Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual nu becoming a `rugged individualist’, a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality.

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5. Lack of automation. There now exists a wealth of data which, if sorted out and correlated, would reveal the cure for cancer and several other diseases and possibly the key to life itself. But the data is so massive it requires high speed computers to correlate it all. The institution of computers will be delayed interminably under the male control system, since the male has a horror of being replaced by machines.

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A completely automated society can be accomplished very simply and quickly once there is a public demand for it. The blueprints for it are already in existence, and it’s construction will take only a few weeks with millions of people working on it. Even though off the money system, everyone will be most happy to pitch in and get the automated society built; it will mark the beginning of a fantastic new era, and there will be a celebration atmosphere accompanying the construction.

(I know I’ve quoted some of these before, but they’re just so marvellous.)