Re-reading Marx on cricket

No Marxist exegesis, however brilliant, has ever gone undisputed. Someone, then, must challenge Norm's contention that, in his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx was "attempting to signal to us, across the intervening years he knew would intervene, his choices for a Test XI."
Now, Norm's insight that Marx was anticipating a cricket team is a brilliant one. Why else would Marx have eleven theses? And in accusing Feuerbach of "not grasp[ing] the significance of revolutionary...activity", he's clearly complaining about Feuerbach's failure to pick a spinner.
But Norm makes the same mistake Marx accuses Feuerbach of making in thesis VII: he fails to see that "the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs in reality to a particular form of society." Norm's XI is precisely a series of abstract individuals, isolated from their particular form of society.
No. What Marx had in mind was a particular team, an "ensemble of social relations." That team was the Leicestershire side of the late 70s.
The first sign that this is the case is the famous 11th thesis, where he selects his tail-ender: "the point, however, is to change it."
The key word here is "point". A point has no dimensions. What particle has no dimensions - so much so that it has not yet been discovered? A Higgs boson.
It is obvious, therefore, that Marx's number 11 was Ken Higgs.
Turn to thesis VI. Norm is right to say the reference to social relations  means brothers. But he gets the wrong ones. Put the thesis in context. It's about materialism. What was the material on which  industrial capitalism was founded? Steel(e).
He  clearly means John Steele, brother of David.
Consider too his talk, in the same thesis, of the "abstract - isolated  - human individual." What's the most isolated position on the field - in the sense of most specialized (remember - alienation arises from the division of labour)? Wicket-keeper. Which wicket-keeper had a cricketing brother? Roger Tolchard.
Thesis 4 gives us another player. Here, Marx talks of the "self-cleavage and self-contradictoriness" of the world, and the removal of the contradiction "revolutionized in practice." The greatest cleavage in the world is that between cricket and football. Who removed this contradiction?
Chris Balderstone, the last man to play both test cricket and first division football. And he bowled left arm spin - that's a revolutionized practice.
Thesis 3 also talks of revolutionizing practice - spinners again. Marx says here that "the educator himself needs educating." Obviously, this is a reference to men who were coaches as well as players. And his talk that "changed men are products of other circumstances" is a reference to players who changed counties.
He means Jack Birkenshaw and Ray Illingworth.
In thesis 5, Marx writes of "human- sensuous activity." We can take this as meaning David Gower's batting.
Thesis 2 talks of a "purely scholastic  question" - a reference to Nigel Briers, who made his Leicestershire debut as a schoolboy.
You might wonder why Marx was so keen to discuss the Leicestershire side of the late 70s. The reason's simple. Think about how Marx would have been atracted to cricket in the first place - by the most famous cricketing achievement on German soil.
This was the occasion when Alan Ward, the Leicestershire fast bowler took three wickets in three balls against a German club side - an achievement for which he earned the name Gerry hat-trick Ward.

Comments

[Paul Davies]

Quite possibly the coolest pair of posts the blogosphere has yet witnessed.

One minor point: according to Norm, Feuerbach/Marx did pick a spinner - ol' Shane.

Awesome stuff :)

[chris]

500 words for that punchline! Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. Brilliant.

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