I'm confused.

[Mazzen]

Hello comrades. It's taken me a while, but I guess slowly I realised that I love some products of Capitalism. Though capitalism has caused my family and me more grief than goodness, I realised that it has some qualities that are very comforting that communism may not provide. I could be very wrong and missing something, that is why I have presented the subject. Kids love Saturday morning cartoons...may there be saturday morning cartoons in a commie society? I grew up loving the Ninja Turtles. I can't really imagine my childhood with out them :lol: . I love wearing K-Swiss tennis shoes b/c I have wide feet and they're the most comfy shoe I've ever worn and they don't hurt my feet like other shoes. I love driving a manual transmission Nissan, b/c it's the smoothest ride in a dependable, affordable vehicle I've ever driven. I love watching TV sitcoms like That 70's Show and The Simpsons, &c. I love classic video games like Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo Entertainment System. I love to eat at Mexican restaurants and speak spanish w/ the waiters. I love the Braves baseball team. I love aggressive rollerblading, which is a very costly hobby to have. I could go on all day. The point is...where do all these comforts that I know and love play into communist society? In essense, where do all the parts of my life that I love and don't hate play into a post-capitalist society? I'm all for communism, man's love for one another and helping one another out in the highest manner. I'm very confused here. I don't know how happy I'd be if I had to sacrifice so many things that I know and love. I know some of you are going to say "think about people starving, think about this, think about that"...I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THAT SHIT. Those are very important issues, but they have no correlation to this post, so please leave that shit for another post where it fits into the topic. Thank you all. Chau.

[Pete]

Atleast have the point of our struggle is comfort and relaxation. The only difference is that in communism no one would be trying to make a profit out of these things.

[Mazzen]

So you're saying that those things would exist in a commie society, but no one would be tryin' to profit? I see what you're saying, but I'd really like someone to elaborate on the mechanics of how they'd exist in a commie society.

[Iepilei]

You make it sound as if it's the capitalists themselves who create most of the goods you and your family enjoy.

Ha!

The designers of shoes, the creators of the shows, the concept artists behind automotive engineering are not the company owners. They're workers, in various areas, under the employ of the big wigs. Do you honestly believe, that without the CEOs to give the final "ok" and to reap the profits of their overpriced merchandise, they simply wouldn't exist?

Not such is the case. Matt Groenig (sp?) created the Simpsons long before he was under the crushing wing of the Fox Network. Even still, the show would be nowhere without it's writers - it's voice actors - it's animation studio - etc,etc. The creation of ANYTHING you enjoy in a capitalist system is not the work of a single individual, usually. It's the collaboration of many individuals expressing their talents together to form one concrete idea.

We, the communists, simply put wish to reallocate the wealth accumulated by such ideas.

[Mazzen]

thank you for the clarification. Good lookin'.

[redstar2000]

There are actually quite a few ideas--or implications--in your post.


I know some of you are going to say "think about people starving, think about this, think about that"...I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THAT SHIT.

You mean you don't want to be "guilt-tripped" into communism?

You mean you don't want to think of communism as some kind of "mega-charity" of global do-gooding?

If so, good for you!

Communism is about liberating ourselves from wage-slavery...not about warm, fuzzy, feel-good "generousity" towards our less-fortunate "inferiors".


The point is...where do all these comforts that I know and love play into communist society? In essense, where do all the parts of my life that I love and don't hate play into a post-capitalist society?

The "common sense" answer is that some of that stuff will still be around, some of it will be in a museum, and some will disappear entirely.

But what of the new pleasures in your life? Do you think that all is known to you and there's nothing left to discover? No unsuspected, fresh enjoyments just over the horizon?

When we grow up, we select as part of that process a mixture of preferences for the artifacts of our culture. As we age, the mixture changes, as do the artifacts available for choosing.

But there's always "stuff going on"...there's always a range of choices available. New choices replace old choices. Someone will mention some cultural artifact and you'll say "Gee, I used to really like that...and then I sort of lost interest."

Thus, even if you never live long enough to see a proletarian revolution and the establishment of capitalism, you will still lose the "comforts" of the present...and willingly so, for you will have acquired the "comforts" of the future.

Such as they may be.

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Don't Change Your Name]

"Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriations." - Karl Marx and Frederik Engels

"It is the task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile." - L Trotsky

I think those quotes that I found gives you an idea...
I think it was Kropotkin who wrote something about this in The Conquest of Bread.

[synthesis]

I was reading this piece earlier today about words in other languages that have no direct translation to English. One of the words that stuck with me was a Russian one that meant "the feeling a person retains for something he or she once loved", called "razbliuto."

I can't back this up, but I suspect that both the usage and the feeling of "razbliuto" were at their height during the later years of the Soviet administration.