THE MANCHESTER DERBY

Another cartoon from the inimitable pen/brain of Jake Goretzki, one that is especially appropriate ahead of Sunday’s Manchester derby, contested by two clubs born in the narrow Victorian streets of the world’s first industrial city. 

There is enough in this cartoon to prompt a Marxist investigation of the way in which these entrenched group identities (neo-tribalism) form perhaps the principal barrier to the overthrow of the capitalist class; a sort of divide-and-conquer strategy from the top down intersecting with a football-as-opium-of-the-masses dynamic from the bottom up, the net effect of which is to prevent a co-ordinated mass protest from fans of all teams at the obscene salaries paid to players and the exorbitant ticket prices they are charged. But we won’t go there... 

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