our intellectual insurrection

When I was 17 I got kicked out of his­to­ry class for bring­ing a copy of The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo to school. 

I had been read­ing it on my own time be­cause it in­ter­est­ed me. 

Mr. Pang­burn did­n’t even let me get a ques­tion out be­fore ex­claim­ing “Get that com­mie shit out of my class­room!” as though i’d brought a weapon in and was aim­ing it at my fel­low stu­dents. I’d brought it be­cause he was my his­to­ry teacher and I had some ques­tions af­ter read­ing it. 

I was used to get­ting kicked out of class. Most times I did it pur­pose­ful­ly be­cause I was bored, but this time I hadn’t. And I did­n’t un­der­stand. As I left the class I asked, “Have you ever read it?”

I was met with an even loud­er yell. “WHY WOULD I READ THAT SHIT!?”

I’ll lay you odds that he nev­er read Marx and prob­a­bly vot­ed for the or­ange fuhrer in that lit­tle cen­tral val­ley town while yelling some undis­tin­guish­able jib­ber­ish about the so­cial­ists and the marxists. 

And the worst part is that he might still be teaching.

Words like “so­cial­ism” and “marx­ism”” can be scary when you’ve been pro­grammed and pro­pa­gan­dized your whole life. 

Tell me again how so­cial­ism is the death of Amer­i­ca un­til cap­i­tal­ism needs an­oth­er bailout. Then sud­den­ly the same peo­ple scream­ing about marx­ism are de­mand­ing col­lec­tive in­ter­ven­tion to pro­tect pri­vate profits. 

So­cial­ism for the shareholders.
Rugged in­di­vid­u­al­ism for the workers. 

Marx did­n’t need to pre­dict the hypocrisy. He ex­plained the ma­chin­ery that pro­duces it.

I don’t ful­ly blame the old­ers. Y’all had nu­clear fall­out drills and were taught the boogey­man was com­mu­nist your en­tire great amer­i­can child­hoods.

But y’all have had like 70 years since to read up and a lot of you nev­er have. That’s on you. And that’s why you feel like the young gen­er­a­tion is against you. Be­cause they’re frus­trat­ed you did­n’t read the study ma­te­ri­als be­fore tak­ing the test. 

These evil id­iots have proven they will drain every drop of wa­ter to count mon­ey while dy­ing of thirst. They can not be trust­ed with the fu­ture. You have to rip it out of their hands every chance you get. 

By any means. 

This is our rev­o­lu­tion­ary work.
Ours is an in­tel­lec­tu­al insurrection. 

Every. Sin­gle. Day.

 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Emer­i­tus Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2026 An­dru De­f­eye. Pic­tured: Josep Re­nau, The Uni­ty of the Work­ing Class­es and Found­ing of the Ger­man De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic, mo­sa­ic (de­tail), 1974, re­stored 2023.

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