He discusses a shipwreck that took place in the Azores in the autumn of 1957. The ship had encountered a hurricane, which it should have been able to survive. The problem was that it had been hauling loose barley, as opposed to barley in sacks. In the storm’s upheaval, the barley shifted around and unbalanced the ship, causing it to capsize. While Jäger connects this tale with a previously discussed anecdote from the work of Peter Sloterdijk, with the loose barley representing atomized citizens in the hold of the ship of state, unbounded by being held in the sacks of communal and political organizational bonds, it also functions as a commentary on a much earlier metaphor. Marx in the “Eighteenth Brumaire” compares the French peasantry to a loose sack of potatoes, similar in form but unable to organize and recognize their position in society, which leaves them as easy pickings for a demagogue to throw them together toward his own aims.
We find ourselves in a similar predicament, caught between being shapeless potatoes scooped into arbitrary sacks by strongmen, or resembling loose barley that can only show its power by destroying the system that binds and carries it. Marxists uphold the dictatorship principle and . . . would you like fries with that?
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