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The Proletariat Spectre | Jesse A. Johnson
Jesse Johnson is an undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Their work focuses on the significance of observing the proletariat as the spectre as opposed to the zombie when drawing metaphorical allusions between monsters and social realities. They draw inspiration from a deep involvement in both activism and fantasy literature.
Abstract: Creatures of myth have been used as a means of social control and metaphor for as long as they have existed. Often we like to think that the use of mythological creatures in understanding the world is a thing of the past, however with a deeper analysis of them we can see clearly that they are still very much effective metaphors and expressions of society today. In this paper we will respectively be observing the significance of the metaphorical zombie and vampire as representatives of the proletariat and bourgeoisie before focusing on a third entity as the true spirit of the working class and labor-friendly social movements by analyzing the first line of the Communist Manifesto and its implications of the proletariat being better represented as the spectre.
Two of the most well-known monsters of myth are the vampire in all its decadence and the zombie ever hungering as it shambles onward. Monsters arise in stories and myth for many reasons, but it is no question that the ones which achieve infamy do so by connecting on some level to the social reality of the time. These creatures touch upon some buried knowledge or social anxiety and manifest it in a reflective way.
The current era can be considered the age of the zombie, its popularity raising in tandem with the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth and further decline of livable wages. The zombie fulfills a dual purpose to the proletariat as a creature of metaphor. As the proletariat continues to struggle to make ends meet, pay bills, eat, and combat the ever-growing tide of expenses and mounting complications, the zombie becomes an outlet reflective of this sea of responsibilities and dire necessities. Each individual zombie by itself is mundane and unremarkable, but en masse they become an overwhelming force that the hero can do little more than attempt to dispatch one by one or fee from only to be inevitably surrounded once more.
Conversely, the zombie fulfills another role altogether to the proletariat, as the proletariat itself. This may be the most accepted metaphor of the zombie, as it paints the proletariat as a mindless, unkempt and hungering creature. Faceless among a sea of thousands, able to do little more than shamble along desperately seeking its next meal, or to pay its next bill. Interest in the metaphor of the zombie has grown and zombies have been tied to everything from growing fears of disease to a growing desperation in consumerism.1 The zombie is simple, cheap and easily replaced, in stark contrast to the vampire and the bourgeoisie.
Records of vampiric mythology date back to before the time of Lord Byron as having caused panics and terror among the peasantry and the working class with people going as far as to exhume and desecrate the corpses of loved ones.2 It is a soulless abomination instilled with eternal youth and health, known for its decadence and its ravenous thirst for blood. It is upon this latter note that many scholars make the connection between vampires and the aristocracy or the ruling class bourgeoisie. By drinking the blood of its victim, the bourgeoisie vampire is in effect exploiting the working class, drinking their very life-blood. It is taking their labor and life to artifcially extend and empower its own. The very visage of the vampire expands upon this in contrast to the proletariat zombie. Its unnatural youth is an effect of the lifestyle it affords at the expense of the proletariat, eating the fnest foods and the best wines. Affording unrivaled medical care and legal representation, it is undying and unaging.
One need only look to the aristocracy of the time, the CEO, to see how even in their extended age they rarely show the same signs of aging as their exploited workers. What is most peculiar about the vampire however is that its greatest threat is not starvation, or even bodily destruction, but the light of the sun. To drag it into the light, so that it can be seen clearly and understood fully, is the greatest threat to its power and the most assured means of its destruction.
“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.”3 It is likely that the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto was written metaphorically with these allusions in mind, attributing the likeness of a spectre to the spirit of the working class. While the zombie can be dispatched, and the vampire can be destroyed, the spectre is truly immortal. Born of humankind, not unlike the zombie, it is an entity that anyone can become given simple-to-meet conditions. When Karl Marx wrote of the spectre it was likely to speak to the implications of such attributions.
The spectre is no ordinary ghost or apparition; rather it is an insidious force which looms ever present beyond the periphery. The spectre is defned as something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence. In a world where the primary actor and wielder of agency is the ruling class bourgeoisie, this defnition accurately defnes the growth of labor- friendly ideologies. These include the ideology of international socialism, due to the inherent threat and danger it poses to the established dichotomy of labor and exploitation wherein the elite few are able to proft off of the exploitation of the many. Such a disruption would no doubt be unpleasant to the ruling class who stand to be displaced and made equal to the common laborer, as opposed to the unseen master.
The spectre’s form is ethereal and bound to the masses, making it particularly hard to eliminate, as through the destruction of its form a harm is done not only to the haunting but to the vampire as well. Its destruction means the destruction of the proletariat to which it is bound and in effect means the loss of a potential source of subsistence for the bourgeoisie vampire. What’s more is that unlike its counterparts, even if it is destroyed, the spectre can rise once more in such a way that neither the zombie nor the vampire can achieve. Wealth and poverty must be reproduced, yet even in isolation a spectre can manifest itself as it takes only the dream that all should be treated fairly and be afforded what is due to them, paired with the will to defy exploitation, for a spectre to be born, and from its birth another haunting can grow to engulf the world.
The way in which the haunting of the spectre works then is to be the beacon of light which the vampire so direly fears. The haunting then is known by another name, class consciousness, as the spectre is not an isolated haunting and by its nature inspires solidarity. This historically has caused such things as the invention of the labor union and work regulations. Every labor strike and combined effort of the proletariat is an effect of the haunting. Every question raised and law passed against the institutionalized violence of the ruling class is a ripping of the curtain veil releasing a beam of light which burns the vampire deeper.
The notion of the spectre haunting Europe, as expressed by Karl Marx is one of incredible accuracy and metaphorical relevance speaking volumes of its own as to the indomitability of the spirit of the working class in its enduring effort to effect social change within the world as the citizens of it. This concludes that the proletariat is indeed not the zombie, but rather the spectre.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Klosterman, Chuck. “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead” New York Times, 3 Dec. 2010. https://www.nytimes .com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html?pagewanted=all.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Edited by Samuel Moore and David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Tucker, Abigail. “Meet the Real-Life Vampires of New England and Abroad.” Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Oct. 2012. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-the-real-life-vampires-of-new-england-and-abroad-42639093/.
1 Chuck Klosterman, “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” New York Times, December 3, 2010.
2 Abigail Tucker, “Meet the Real-Life Vampires of New England and Abroad,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 1, 2012. https://www.smithsonianmag.com /history/meet-the-real-life-vampires-of-new-england-and-abroad-42639093/
3 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. Samuel Moore and David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1.