Karl Marx: Copywriter

First appeared in The Guardian

Several weeks ago in a Guardian blog post, Ben Myers suggested that copywriting is as valid a literary discipline as any, citing many writers who "have churned out lines to help companies sell their wares, especially since consumerism went into overdrive in the 20th century". Fay Weldon, Joseph Heller, Meg Rosoff, Don DeLillo, William Burroughs, Dorothy L Sayers, Ogden Nash, Victor Pelevin, Dashiell Hammett, Antonia White, Augusten Burroughs are all mentioned.

This got me thinking about the similarities between copywriters and polemicists. Jesus's apostles, Thomas Paine, Christopher Hitchens, Karl Marx - all would make great copywriters. In fact, although he wasn't exactly into consumerism (more consumed by what he was into) and didn't shill for corporate communicators, one could argue that Marx would have been the best of the lot. Let's look at the Communist Manifesto as advertising copy.

First off, it doesn't waffle. It goes straight to the point. It's specific. It contains facts. It's enthusiastic, memorable and brutally honest. It speaks to its audience with passion and understanding. It attracts attention. It is concise and easily understood. Its message is straightforward and unambiguous. It eloquently expresses the major concern of its target audience, and provides a compelling solution.

Communist propaganda and capitalist advertising are essentially the same thing; both use branding to achieve their respective objectives. In fact, Marx mentions branding in the second paragraph of his famous Manifesto. He was ticked off that others were recklessly and inaccurately hurling about, to use his own words, "the branding reproach of Communism", without really knowing what they were talking about. The Manifesto of the Communist Party clarified to the world what Marx meant by "the real thing"; it contains, I think, some of the best promotional literature ever written.

Here are several examples of how Marx deftly disses competing pretender brands:

"Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart burnings of the aristocrat."

"Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this [petty-bourgeois] form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues."

In condemning German Socialism's hypocritical, soft-sell, non-violent, non-revolutionary approach to branding, he wrote: "The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry 'eternal truths', all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst [the] public."By contrast, how's this for a powerful and distinctive message? "The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property."

Or this, for hitting the right nerve with me, your average, run-of-the-mill, overworked, underpaid 1840s proletarian? "Does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e. that kind of property which exploits wage labour. And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at."

Is Manifesto ad copy easy to understand? You judge: "Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things." Clear enough?Advertising great David Ogilvy once suggested that people are more likely to read body copy if their curiosity is aroused early on. Here's Marx's opening line: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism." Ogilvy also talks about appealing to the reader's self interest - what exploited wretch wouldn't wish to throw off his or her chains? - and about the importance of getting mileage from words such as "free," "new," "revolutionary," "truth," and the like. Marx uses them all with consummate skill and precision - almost as if he'd invented them himself.

Leaving his best for last, the masterful Marx delivers one of the most powerful calls to action the world has ever heard: "The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of the world, unite!"

You want to change attitudes and behaviour? You want to write great ad copy? In a twist of logic, copywriters who want to thrive in the capitalist world of advertising would do well to read Karl Marx. Who knows, if they follow him faithfully, they may be able to earn enough to retire and experience the heaven on earth that is writing for oneself.