Story Behind The Song

Life is not, as Hobbes asserted, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" because humans are naturally selfish. That brutishness is a product of what Marx called "commodity fetishism." The system of enforced scarcity alienates human beings from our true cooperative nature. As the crises inherent in capitalism roll from one into the next, the working class has no choice but to focus on the brutal task of survival, barely noticing that those who exploit them are wrapped in the American flag and waving their own distorted versions of the Constitution.

Lyrics

We were made this way
Our souls vacant and torn
Self-worth measured by progress
Progress measured by bone

Work. Breathe. Dream. Die.
Your saviours lie

You never read it
You manufacture
You tell the truth
You manufacture

Relations of production
We learn to ignore
Unplanned, unassumed
Crisis comes to the fore