One of my favorite lines in Mad Max:
Fury Road comes when The Dag says that because the dictator Immortan Joe owns
all the water at the Citadel, he owns everyone who lives there. This speaks to
the Marxist in me (previous post), so I can’t refrain from taking a closer
look.
Class Struggle
When, deep in the desert, a ragtag band
of escapees from the Citadel finds their green paradise has succumbed
to the desert, Max suggests they go back and seize the Citadel:
The Vuvalini: What's there to find at
the Citadel?
Max: Green.
Toast the Knowing: And water. There's a ridiculous amount of clear water. And a lot of crops.
The Dag: It's got everything you need, as long as you're not afraid of heights.
Keeper of the Seeds: Where does the water come from?
Toast: He pumps it up from deep within the
earth. He calls it "Aqua Cola" and claims it all for himself. The Dag: And because he owns it, he owns all of us.
Keeper: I don't like him already.
In Marxist theory, every society
throughout history has been divided into oppressors and oppressed. Ancient Rome
had its patricians and plebeians, and the Middle Ages had its lords and serfs.
In Marx’s day, the masters were the bourgeoisie and the slaves were the
proletariat. The bourgeoisie owed their status to being capitalists--those who
possessed the means of production. Proletarians had nothing but their labor, so
they worked for the capitalists. Marx predicted that one day the proletariat
would revolt, resulting in a society in which the means of production are owned
by all and used for the equal good of all.
In Fury Road, the oppressors are Immortan
Joe and those who appear on the Citadel balcony with him. It is they who
possess and control the water. The oppressed are everyone else who must work or
beg for water from Immortan Joe. They are the haves and have-nots in George
Miller’s post-apocalyptic vision. Since water is necessary for life and the
have-nots have none, their lives are no more their own than a factory worker’s
life was his or her own in Marx’s day. In our own day, the 99% are slave to the 1%’s
dollar and generally grateful for the opportunity, for the oppressed must
always rely on their oppressors for what little they have.
In “The German Ideology,” Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels explain how material circumstances such as the division of
labor give rise to inequitable social divisions supported by a superstructure
of religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. The oppressed exploit this situation to
preserve their own status, and because material circumstances and
superstructure (diagram) are a kind of matrix within which everyone exists,
even the oppressed accept the status quo. One of the most depressing
observations of the Marxists in the Frankfurt School was how even criticism of
the status quo is often carried out according to the paradigms of the status
quo. Thus, the status quo always wins (previous post).
From “The German Ideology”:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”
Immortan Joe, like any good oppressor, plies ideology. Early in the film, he briefly opens his aquifer, raining water upon the people who have gathered to catch it in tin cups, earthen bowls and open mouths. Within moments, he cuts off the flow and declares:
“Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!“
In other words, “Trust me, you’re better off this way.” The oppressor always tells the oppressed this. The Nazis hung signs reading “Work makes you free” at the entrances to concentration camps. Christianity teaches that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10) and “blessed are the meek” (Matthew 5:5). In America, we learn as schoolchildren that while capitalism does result in economic inequality, it is the best way to ensure a rising standard of living for more people. Despite the obvious falsehood--American society exhibits rising income and wealth inequality, stagnant wages coupled with increasing prices, a shrinking middle class, and swelling ranks of the poor--few today, even those who still claim the labels Marxist, communist or socialist, can see a way to seriously undermine the system.
Division of Labor and Commodification
The
film holds much more that makes Marxism an incisive interpretive tool. For
example, the division of labor in Fury Road is stark, with some serving solely
as soldiers while others are mere child-bearers and milk producers. We also see
a military general, an accountant, a medic, slaves and the work of agriculturists.
Any film’s characters would have professions, but not any film would show with
such clarity how their fortunes in society and their worldviews stem from their
professions.
According to “The German
Ideology,” division of labor and specialization result in a work force of
people who feel alienated from their own major lifetime activity and its
produce. Once upon a time, a mason, for example, was privy to a craft and
accompanying secrets that bound him to his work, made him special, and rewarded
his effort. By contrast, the unskilled laborers that so concerned Marx could do
little more than perform a narrow band of rote tasks and were therefore
expendable and replaceable by just about anybody. In today’s world, most
workers, skilled or not, are of no value whatsoever when the company’s profits
or a superior’s own job are on the line. This takes a psychological toll on
workers, separates them from their own lives, and makes them less than a whole
person:
“ . . . man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.”Fury Road illustrates this wonderfully. The War Boys are little more than living weapons, showing slight emotional depth beyond the desire to kill for their lord. The Mothers, in order to produce their milk, have lives restricted to a cell and connected to machines. And is it reaching too far to say that Imperator Furiosa symbolizes this, having lost her arm in service to Joe?
Commodification is another Marxist theme detectable in Fury Road. In Marxist theory, the forms of economic intercourse in any given epoch greatly influence how people treat each other. Commodification describes how we treat other people in these modern times. We treat each other like things from which we derive profit or suffer loss, rather than as the rich individuals we actually are. In this light, the Wives’ message “WE ARE NOT THINGS” holds import beyond that of a feminist declaration.
I have discussed the feminist slant in Fury
Road in previous posts, and even this theme works synergistically with a
Marxist critique, for radical thinkers have long connected patriarchy and
capitalism. This, however, is something about which I know too little, so I end this series of posts here, feeling as if, despite the film’s
minimalism, I have barely scratched the surface of Mad Max: Fury Road.
Previous posts in this series:
Mad Max: Out of Eden (4/5) 
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