There is a particular type of person — you have met them, you may be them — who has spent the better part of three years posting about dismantling capitalist structures while perfecting their sourdough discard crackers. They want communism. They want it badly. They have opinions about Gramsci that they will share with you whether you asked or not.
What they have not fully stress-tested is the bit where a central planning committee, indifferent to their personal brand, looks at what society actually needs and hands them a shovel.
In the spirit of historical materialism — and also because this is extremely funny — we present ten archetypes who were, to use the technical term, absolutely cooked the moment the state got involved.
1. The Ceramics Guy
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Functional art that reconnects us with pre-industrial craft traditions and challenges the commodification of the handmade.'
Assigned post: Brick manufacturing, Sector 7.
Oliver has been making lopsided mugs in his flatmate's spare room for eighteen months. He sells them for £45 each, which he acknowledges is 'a tension he sits with.' The revolution will resolve this tension immediately. Oliver will make 4,000 identical bricks per shift. They will be perfectly uniform. He will hate this.
2. The Boundaries Podcaster
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Emotional education, nervous system literacy, and helping people unlearn capitalist productivity culture.'
Assigned post: Fishing trawler, North Atlantic rotation.
Photo: North Atlantic, via www.expeditions.com
Sophia hosts a podcast called Soft No which has 11,000 listeners and a Patreon. She is a firm believer that rest is resistance. The fishing trawler operates on four-hour sleep rotations in twelve-foot swells. There is no nervous system literacy module. There is haddock. There is so much haddock.
3. The Guy With The Trotsky Tote Bag Who Works At The Independent Bookshop
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Curating access to radical thought and maintaining a space of intellectual community outside corporate retail.'
Assigned post: Timber felling, reforestation division.
Marco has strong opinions about which edition of Capital is worth reading and will tell you. He hand-sells books with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb. The state, having conducted a literacy audit and found that it has plenty of books and not nearly enough lumber, has reassigned Marco to a forest in the interior. His tote bag is holding up remarkably well, all things considered.
4. The Astrology-Meets-Marxism Girl
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Synthesising materialist analysis with spiritual frameworks to reach people that traditional leftist organizing doesn't.'
Assigned post: Coal sorting facility, graveyard shift.
Jasmine's Instagram is genuinely impressive — she has built a whole aesthetic around hammer-and-sickle imagery rendered in muted terracotta tones. Her Mercury retrograde posts get 40,000 likes. The planning committee does not factor Mercury retrograde into the coal sorting schedule. Jasmine has requested to at least be assigned based on her rising sign. This request is pending. It will remain pending.
Photo: Mercury retrograde, via i.dailymail.co.uk
5. The 'Decolonise Everything' PhD Student (Year Six)
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Producing theoretical frameworks that will fundamentally reshape how we understand labour, land, and knowledge production.'
Assigned post: Potato harvest, agricultural collective, western region.
Dr. (nearly) Priya has 80,000 words of thesis arguing that the concept of 'productivity' is itself a colonial imposition. The agricultural collective requires that 200 tonnes of potatoes be lifted before the first frost. These two things are in conflict. Priya is in the field. The potatoes do not care about her theoretical frameworks, but they are, in a sense, very material.
6. The Kombucha Brewer Who 'Wants To Eventually Do Something With It'
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Fermenting knowledge, gut health advocacy, and exploring decentralised food production at the community scale.'
Assigned post: Industrial fish processing plant.
Ethan has fourteen SCOBY cultures named after different Rosa Luxemburg speeches. He has been 'scaling up slowly, intentionally.' The state has reviewed his fermentation skills and determined that the fish processing plant needs someone with a tolerance for biological matter and a willingness to work in cold rooms. Ethan's tolerance for biological matter is, it turns out, quite specifically limited to his own biological matter.
Photo: Rosa Luxemburg, via www.enciclopediadelledonne.it
7. The Person Who Does 'Community Wealth Building Consultancy'
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Facilitating regenerative economic ecosystems at the hyperlocal level through co-design and stakeholder engagement.'
Assigned post: Road resurfacing crew.
Amelia charges £800 a day to sit in rooms and draw circles on whiteboards. She is very good at this. The circles represent stakeholders. The state has looked at the roads — genuinely, the roads are in terrible shape — and has determined that what the collective actually needs is not circles on whiteboards but rather tarmac on roads. Amelia is learning to operate a plate compactor. She describes this as 'embodied praxis.'
8. The Guy Who Got Really Into Permaculture After Reading One Book
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Regenerative land stewardship, food forest design, and healing the human relationship with soil.'
Assigned post: Deep-sea kelp harvesting.
There is no gentle way to say this. Jake read Gaia's Garden in 2021 and has not stopped talking about guilds and zones since. He envisioned himself tending a food forest with great wisdom. The state has determined that kelp is a critical resource and that the harvesting operation requires bodies in wetsuits at 5am. Jake is in the water. There are no zones. There is only kelp, cold, and the profound indifference of the ocean.
9. The Leftist Tattoo Artist Who Only Does Nature Motifs
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Bodily autonomy, permanent art as anti-capitalist self-expression, building community through the ritual of tattooing.'
Assigned post: Asbestos remediation, former industrial district.
Clem does beautiful work — botanicals, moths, the occasional fist holding a flower. Fully booked six months out. Has a sliding scale, which is admirable. The state, surveying approximately forty years of deferred industrial maintenance, has noted that Clem has a demonstrated fine motor skill set and a tolerance for working in protective equipment. The hazmat suit fits. The work is, in its own way, quite permanent.
10. The Person Whose Entire Personality Is Owning A Particular Tote Bag
Self-assessed contribution to the collective: 'Visibility. Normalising the conversation. Starting dialogues.'
Assigned post: Dialogue has been suspended. Report to the turnip collective by 6am.
A Final Note From The Planning Committee
We wish to be clear that we appreciate the enthusiasm. The reading groups, the mutual aid networks, the very detailed Instagram infographics — all noted. The revolution genuinely does require passionate people.
It also requires someone to harvest the turnips, remediate the asbestos, process the fish, and surface the roads. Central planning has reviewed the available skill sets and the outstanding societal needs and made its determinations accordingly.
Your ceramics practice has been logged. Your podcast will be archived. Your contribution to the collective begins Monday at dawn.
Dress appropriately. The kelp doesn't care about your aesthetic.