Analysis of “Prison Break” From the Perspective of Marxist-Leninism
Posted by MyLaowai on Monday, April 23, 2007
Thanks to Hegel Chong (and Roland at EWSN) for finding this:
This TV drama talks about an American young petty bourgeois helping his elder brother framed to jail to escape and (possibly) acquit the charge. It sharply criticizes the evil rule of the capitalist class and attacks the darkness and hypocrisy of the capitalist legal system. It deeply reveals the inevitable historical trend of the capitalist system towards extinction.
The team of escapees is definitely a revolutionary army of fighting against the capitalist system and legal authority. But the team members vary in their purposes and their backgrounds are extremely complicated.
Lincoln is a righteous and good-hearted unemployed proletariat. In order to support his brother’s study, he borrowed from loan shark. It resulted in being exploited by the accomplice of the capitalist class. He was forced to back murder charge and was put to the row of death penalty. He had given up on all resistances against his injustice fate. But with the encouragement by his younger brother, he picked up the pieces and steadily walked on the revolutionary road.
Michael is a highly educated petty bourgeois intellectual. His job was highly paid and very decent. He enjoyed the life of abundance but emptiness until he realized the truth that his brother was set up. He knows clearly the true nature of the dictatorship of the capitalist class. He determined to abandon his petty bourgeois life of luxury and help his brother to get rid of the charge. In the process of escape, he turned into an outstanding revolutionary leader of proletarian revolution and a strong force in the process of revolutionary escape. But due to the complication and difficulty of revolutionary struggles, Michael cleverly adopted the strategy of united front to recruit people from different class backgrounds in solidarity and effectively expanded the revolutionary base.
At the same time, Michael had been threatened by the internal conflict and split within the revolutionary army all the time. He kept alert to the dangers of revisionism and capitulationism. Michael’s political line was fundamentally correct until the first episode of the second season. He united the majority and decisively cleared the traitor (the petty thief) out of the revolutionary army. He appropriately settled down the struggles between different political lines within the party (t-bag vs. Abruzzi). But thereafter, how to guarantee the correct way of revolution is a long-term mission for Michael and a great challenge to his political wisdom.
… …
Veronica is a petty bourgeois lawyer. For sense of justice and friendship, she worked very hard in searching for evidence to help her former lover Lincoln. She relied on the capitalist legal system to clear Lincolin of charges. But the cruel reality relentlessly smashed her innocent idea into pieces. When an FBI agent pointed a gun towards her, it demonstrated the complete bankruptcy of the wishful thinking of the petty bourgeois who hoped to actualize social justice through political reform. In order to achieve justice and fairness, one has to join the violent revolution. Reformism is not going to work in America.
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