Lenin Sunday March 5th 2023
Lenin
What I have read on the newspaper is just outstanding. Such a world would be the ideal nest for any kind of well gifted and ambitious revolutionary leader. The institutions to subvert are however so complex, with such a redundancy, that I would not be able to seriously take over the power. I would not either be able to dismantle the slightest gear of such a huge system. Perhaps the humankind is now doomed to follow the rules of a society established fifty, or seventy years ago. A tradition that I am sure will be consolidated during the centuries and millennia to come. Perhaps Marx was right, it is just a matter of structure. I have however never been convinced of his theories. There are thousands of ways to use a hammer and any other kind of inventions, of tools, of gears that even the superstructure generated by the technological improvements can be developed and interpreted in many other thousands and more individual ways. Marx was just a good label, that for some reason sounded good among lazy European and American intellectuals. He wrote far too much, like the fishmongers who, along the years, established himself as a wise man within his village. He is just someone who knows how to speak and express the anger, the fear and the hopes of the villagers. In the end Marx was not so different than me, he was not even better than me. He was simply satisfied to beat his wife when needed, made pregnant his housekeeper only for his pleasure and nevertheless managed to get adored by a wide range of persons and circles. Perhaps he was even much more brilliant than I could deem, since he avoided to get the power, the actual power of a revolutionary leader and to end up like me. A walking mummy who after one hundred years is so well preserved to be able to order a beer at the Café de l´Odeon without even being noticed. On the contrary, one hundred years ago, when my funerals had been celebrated, quite a good number of comrades were forced to express their condolences. I felt like a Mongolian Khan at the end of his reign. In my case, however, nobody who saw my body passing by had to be decapitated. In my time, executions were not so theatrically conducted. We were much more relying on discretion. History proves to me that we had operated in the cleanest way since, even if my organization contributed to the death of tens of millions of people, intellectuals still celebrate us, and my legacy, as the good one. Well, it is really time to take a walk. Perhaps in the direction of the Opera. In that area, I could easily find something interesting to comment about.
The art dealer
What a day and also what a night I have left behind me. It was really impossible to sleep, in that strange area of Zurich near Langstrasse. The hotel sold the place as quiet and central; another advertisement, definitely more expensive, defined the neighborhood as the design district. I have just been able to notice the loud voices of students and drunkyards along the street. Yet the buildings are beautiful and many have been recently refurbished. They should be quite expensive on the market, but apparently the police do not care. I have already been warned that the local city council has been for years in the hands of immoderate leftists. I was wondering how and how many have explained to me that most successful and well paid professionals do not vote here. They cannot vote here because they do not possess Swiss citizenship or they do not actually live here, but in other cities and towns where the tax conditions are more income and wealth friendly. In the end Zurich voters are mainly living on social support and they kindly show their gratitude by choosing radical liberals as their leaders. Even policemen, sometimes covered with tattoos and piercings, remind me more of the occupants of an anarchist community, than actual law enforcers. It is also the truth that laws vary according to the local community. In some areas of South America, controlled by the narcos and the gangs, the order enforcers should not look more respectable. However, it is not the kind of market I am into, although I do not doubt that also mafia bosses should have their private art collections. On the contrary I patiently follow the AML processes and all that is foreseen by due diligence. My clients are more institutional ones, as those I have met after such a terrible night. Perhaps, to be almost asleep helped me to sustain all the personal attacks that I received in a few minutes, one following the other. I had been trained for that, but it is still unpleasant. Only a few of the people sitting around the table had been kind to me, staring in my direction with a reproachful sight beginning with the moment when I introduced myself. Despite the cold I felt on my skin, just slightly mitigated by my fatigue, my counter-parties could acquire a whole block of a collection by paying at least fifteen percent below the average market price. The artist has good potential for the future and its trading volume has constantly increased along the years. Also my company, and the seller, managed to make some profit, although not an optimal one. I need to take a flight and speak face to face with my boss to understand whether I have been wise enough.
The consultant of undefined age and experience
The project will start tomorrow, thus I still have got an evening to enjoy my time and be able to touch my bed at a reasonable hour. The forty hour week has got no sense in advisory and only those who have got no ambitions to make a career keep track of their time. Perhaps we are wrong, but those are the rules of the world we are living in. Moreover, I also enjoy spending long days on slides and meetings. It is even a great way to socialize with colleagues and clients. The latter are sometimes friendly, sometimes so proud to have settled in a position that will allow them to survive in a comfortable zone to the end of their time. I would not be so enthusiastic at the idea, but I am more and more convinced that the public educational system cannot avoid instructing westerners towards the road of socialism. Or at least of a sort of bureaucratic indoctrination. The free spirit of professionals should not be so easily harnessed into hierarchy and a precise cursus honorum, but it is also on me to decide whether to fight and get more independence. What I really doubt, on the contrary, is if I shall ever acquire some financial independence. Perhaps I need to keep some savings on the financial market and give a look at the right stocks. I have never been a wise trader, I lack the strength of an experienced dealer, but perhaps I do not need to handle conditions. I just need to focus on the market and pay attention to do a good shot. To think too much about my future and rent is however not so productive and distracts me from actual goals worthy of focus. For instance, I plan to go to the cinema tonight and relax a little bit far away from the desktop. Perhaps some local production, that could avoid me to pay for something similar to what I could watch on Netflix at a much lower cost. I only hope that I will not be forced to sustain some politically correct narrative about genders, feminism, colonialism or any other ism from which Bertrand Russell recommended to stay away. He means others than those in my list, but I hope that the same concept can be applicable. Last week in Milan I attended a brilliant klezmer show, dedicated to Jewish traditions in America. It was totally ruined by the actor who preached about McCarthy and appealed to the public for having been forced to pay the copyright for the music in the DVD version of the show. DVDs that he however sold, during the intervals, in the foyer of the theater, for quite good money. Consultants and advisors are however not less hypocritical than liberals, perhaps we have learnt something from each other during the last decades.
