A Philosophical Book Review: "My Revolutions" by Hari Kunzru

My Revolutions is one of the best books I've read recently. Not only is it incredibly thrilling and interesting and at times funny, it raises a whole lot of philosophical questions, as any book should. It is the story of a middle-aged man who in his youth was involved in an extremist left-wing political party. The story alternates between scenes from his youth in 60's England to his present-day life, in which he has reinvented himself completely and is another person altogether.

The scenes from his youth depict a bunch of 20-something Marxists. Their struggle is against capitalism in general, and they rail against everything from the Vietnam War to the telephone exchange. Their activities become more and more violent, and although they start off handing out leaflets on the street, by the end of it, they are hatching plans plans to murder people.

What interests me the most was that none of these revolutionaries knows what they are working towards. This is also one of the central points around which the plot revolves. It seems that their Marxist revolution is not so much a battle of ideologies as a battle against authority-- for the most part these people are rebels without causes. Some of their actions sound almost funny, like robbing a supermarket and distributing the food to poor families in the neighbourhood, but the seriousness with which they are described is quite scary. They plan to liberate England, but they have no plans for what a liberated England will look like. This is even addressed in the book, and there is no answer. Apparently it is a question that doesn't need to be answered.

This book touched me because in a sense I can relate to this sense of rebellion. It is something that all stereotypical young people have. Except I feel that today we don't live in such an idealistic world. Today, more than ever, I think that people have come to accept that capitalism is an end in itself. And in fact this is not so much an acceptance as an active desire to make money for money's sake. For me this is very sad, and I sometimes feel I was born a few decades too late, but then I realise that even then people didn't know what they fighting, and so it was not really a fight worth fighting. The final conclusion that the book comes to seems almost completely unrelated to the main content matter of the book, which is revolution. It is that ultimately, love is all you need.