November 04, 2014
Russel Brand
Source: Shutterstock
Not so with the actor-turned-agitator. Nick Cohen of the Guardian calls Revolution “smug,” the writing “atrocious.” Naomi Shavin of The New Republic says Brand may be “fiercely committed” to the idea of revolution, but his literary attempt is a bunch of “messy problems” that don”t amount to very much. Chandran Kukathas, the chair of political theory at the London School of Economics, was not so forgiving. On the comedian’s juvenile ideas to cancel all debt and repossess corporate-owned assets, Kukathas professes: “I”m sure Mr Brand’s heart is in the right place. I”m now less confident about his head.”
Few people are taking Russell Brand seriously because his theories amount to leftist babble and his public persona hardly differs from that of a street bum. The labor theory of value might be wrong, but it played to the ambivalent sensibility of the working class. Brand’s myopic policy proposals are every progressive’s wet dream. Yet the proletariat isn”t biting. Somehow, the menial laborer knows it’s all a crock coming from a man who lays his head to rest on a feathered pillow in a Hollywood Hills mansion.
Brand does get one thing right: there’s a lot wrong with Western democracy. Politics has the nasty tendency of breeding favoritism of the proud and moneyed. Voting doesn”t always make a difference; the few times it does, the built-in stabilizers of the system ensure government grows bigger, delegating itself more authority. Lobbyists don”t just pick up the ball and go home after voters announce their concern at the ballot box. Whether liberals or conservatives govern, the connected few still make their money.
Brand wants to tear all this down in the name of humanity’s need for a greater, transcendent truth. If the actor is looking for fulfillment, he should stick to his dime-store spirituality. Politics is a bore. Brand’s treatise on political revolution is no different.
