When I was a young lad I read an
essay by Oscar Wilde, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism. It was very Wildean and
somewhat naïve. Wilde’s vision was a socialist utopia where, if a machine was
invented to sweep the streets, the street sweepers – instead of being tossed
out to starve on the scrap heap of unemployment – would be free to write
romantic poetry and perform interpretive dance in the manner if Isadora Duncan.
Okay so this was gay 1890s over-the-top but utopian aspirations do tend to be
forgotten in the struggle for survival in the sinking mess that is 21st
century capitalism is Thus I was happily surprised to come across this comment
on the Common Dreams newsletter from someone using the name Durrofix.
“Why do our leaders not embrace the policies they know to
work? Because they're not interested in solving the problem.
They're interested in getting rich, militarizing police, selling weapons,
locking up the poor and so forth. The liberal dream of "work for
everyone" is not a laudable goal. The goal should be to eliminate
work entirely. Many "primitive" tribes studied by
proto-anthropologists did not even have a word for "work". The
concept was completely foreign to them. Indeed, if you study the origins
of capitalism you find that no one, anywhere, voluntarily decided that working
all day for a boss was a desirable way to spend the rest of their lives.
The process invariably involved expropriation of communal lands and severe
punishments for those who resisted. In England, the first
"vagrants" (ie people who refused to toil all day in the new
industrial factories) were subjected to extreme tortures, including branding.
So much for the "free contract".
Click here for “Cease To Exist”
The secret word is Idyll
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