Check out this goal video of Vucinic, courtesy of DirtyTackle…
You saw the well-timed run. You saw the diving header. And you saw the fiery celebration. But what you didn’t see was….
The simmering tensions amid the eternal struggle between proletariat and owner. First, read John Foot’s excellent piece at Goal on the history of the infamous “Sindacato Miliardari”, the Serie A players’ union. Up to speed on the current crisis? Basically, the players don’t want forced transfers or to play on Christmas. As a fellow human being that is employed, I also don’t like working on Christmas and would not like my boss to be able to ship me out without my consent or the option of resigning.
But let’s not confuse the true issue – can Vucinic’s actions be ascribed to dialectical or historical materialism?
The temptation to view Vucinic’s goal in terms of historical materialism is quite seductive. After all, Karl Marx’s own words seem to perfectly depict Roma’s build-up play and the resulting rebellion.
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.
Vucinic entered the game as a late substitution for Totti. His definite role was the point of the attack. Necessarily, this depended upon the creation of service from the flanks. Vucinic was a cog in the assembly line, he did not control the means of production. When the ball came his way, when the assembly line churned and placed materials in his hands, he assembled his part and the line kept churning.
However, this historical perspective fails to explain the celebration. Why did Vucinic feverishly and furiously stomp the advertising board? He has a mortgage, a car; he needs euros for food, gas, basic needs. Why bite the hand that feeds? The irony is apparent – his quality of foot attracts the sponsors to be associated with that foot, yet he then turns that foot against the very same sponsors. Only dialectical materialism can deal with such cognitive dissonance.
Let’s recall Engels’ first law in the Dialectics of Nature: “The law of the unity and conflict of opposites.” Yen needs Yang. Grouch requires Marx (not Karl). It is precisely because Vucinic depends upon the sponsors, the means of material reward for his on field production, that he hates them. Dependence breeds love and hate, in equal doses. That is why the revolution is possible. That is why the Serie A Sindicati possess the power to fight the encroaching power of capital in forcing them to run around a field for 90 minutes on December 25th.
Thus, dialectical materialism more accurately explains Vucinic’s actions. I”m sure the frustration had nothing to do with being benched behind a 50% fit Totti while his team struggled to score goals.
I don’t suppose that Vucinic reckoned with Marx’s general fuzziness and inability to resolve the logic of culture and ideology with economic forces in anything but a clunky sort of one-to-one relationship, did he? In other words, is he able to find meaning in his shoes in ways other than those which reflect his relationship to the means of his shoes’ production?
Ted,
I wouldn’t put it past Vucinic – anybody who can bury a glancing header from that angle should be watched out for at philosophy conferences ’round the world.
But, of course, your argument presupposes we can ever escape the role of production’s effect on framing how we view the world, which is at odds on a meta-level with most Marxist thought. And Claudio Ranieri.