(Self-released, digital)
No question, the collaboration of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels changed the course of modern history. With the benefit of hindsight, critics and devotees largely agree: A fundamental weakness of their Communist Manifesto and Marx’s later solo work in the unfinished Das Kapital series was the stark lack of guitars.
Stepping up to rectify this is Burlington collective Marxist Jargon, who operate out of the “Hungerfort” intentional living compound downtown. They are a folk-adjacent outfit who identify as no mere band but a “radical education initiative.” It’s a fitting descriptor that simultaneously separates them from a busy and talented music scene and liberates them from the oppression of learning their instruments.
Jokes aside, the results are charming. Their 2022 concept album, [anti] space opera, was entertaining and ridiculous in equal measure, but their latest release, to each according to their needs, is timeless agitprop that could have come from the days of beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
In theory, Marxist Jargon are a leaderless vanguard. In practice, the musical centerpiece of the band is the voice of Meg Egler, who shares lead vocals with Food Not Cops agitator Sam Bliss. The backing musicians are all having fun, but a special Order of the Red Star shout-out is due to Lindsay “Bar” Barbieri, whose accordion work is absolutely smoking both in terms of melody and timekeeping.
Opening track “Landlords” is a clunky jeremiad against the petit bourgeois ownership class. Anyone beefing with landlords in Burlington has no shortage of ammunition to justify their lamentations. The song ends with a call to collective action: “We ain’t paying the rent no more.”
Ignoring Leon Trotsky, who avowed that “swearing is an outcome of uncultured surroundings,” protest song “F-35s” deploys a generous carpet of F-bombs, embodying the fun side of vulgar Marxism. For “New Moon,” the collective gets down to classic revolutionary romanticism, and it’s a highlight moment, both inspiring and tragic. Egler throws another welcome curveball with “Oilman,” a sympathetic, nuanced look at Texas roughneck culture. It’s still a strident socialist anthem, but she does an excellent job tracing the shifting, uneasy borders of class consciousness.
By contrast, when Bliss steps back up to the mic for closing cut “Billionaires,” it’s more of a social media rant than an actual song. Plutocrats, he jokes, are “good people deep down … at the bottom of the ocean, there they can drown.” In terms of solutions, he only offers a pledge to “steal their kids / and teach them how to live.”
All in all, to each according to their needs is a quirky and entertaining ride, though not always intentionally. The mix of self-serious politics and raucously loose front-porch jams really works, and sure enough, Marxist Jargon are a hoot to catch live if you get the chance.
To each according to their needs is available on major streaming services.
This article appears in The Tech Issue 2025.
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