What's it like to be a worker in a communist country?

THIS MAY BE A LITTLE OFF TOPIC--BUT I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. Move it,erase it--I don't give a shit. It will happen. Capitalism will have to end. It won't happen with the so-called greatest generation. They're in their 80s-90s. Not my generation. We're right behind the GG. Not with you youngins on here. Maybe the grand children or however many greats one would like to stick in front of grand children. This is the elephant hiding in the corner of the "room"as it were. "we have to get this country moving again. we need good jobs--progress",they continually bleat to the masses of people who eat it up time and again.

Face it. The whole controlling aspect of constantly being told that everyone needs to buy material goods that are used for a period of time and then discarded, only to be induced ,cajoled (even tricked)to buy more "goods"to replace that which was more than likely adequate, is a one way road to destruction and chaos.
Obviously all the material "goods" we purchase begin as earth resources. We're beginning to see the results of the push worldwide to obtain and use as much of earths resources as possible as fast as possible. We buy. They make. We don't buy--they have no reason to make. The whole system depends on us buying. The idea that this can go on and on with "consumers" buying and using,buying and using is ludicrous.
I haven't read Marx or Engels for probably 50 years,but I think can see the basic ideas they had regarding some kind of equality for all workers, but --alas--human greed and lust for power over others, while the powerful enjoyed the fruits of the labor of those who did the actual work, ruined the whole scheme. OOps. Same here. Especially now.
So, what differance does it make whether one is a worker in a communist country or a capitalist country,other than the worker in the capitalist country has more opportunities to keep buying and buying, therefore keeping the whole "use it up-short term profit" paradigm?
Most of us on this planet are ensnared in the mind-set of endless aquisition, which will eventually be to our detriment.
What I'm getting at,is that a brand new system of running the earth will have to be undertaken-later if not sooner. Communism hasn't worked. Capitalism has worked for many,but is now showing its inherant inequities in addition to being unsustainable.
What's next? Who will even step up and broach such a subject as a REAL new world order? Will the powerful give up their power to make substantial changes in the way we as humans determine the destiny of ourselves and the earth? Will the powerless be able to overcome the constant barrage of hate ,the divisiveness that is employed so well, the phony election processes, the constant wars that seem to endlessly occur? Will someone-anyone who has influence and power please at least mention population control? Does it matter?

Sunlight is free. They stall. Hydrogen will run machinery with no polution. They stall. Small diesel engines that run on hemp or other veggie oils would eliminate the polution of all vehicles. They stall.
Remember,most everything we buy and have is what we want. Not what we need.
One of the saddest situations is that we can't even feed ourselves. We depend mostly on conglomerates. Woe is us if markets close for any reason. Now,that's power.

 

Capitalism cannot end.

To think it could is to ignore the facts that we're just made of matter, and that we require matter for life, and thus, we must be able to extend our sovgernty over objects that are not ourselves.

There is no reason that the use of money and exchange and ownership must be linked to a dangerous society with rampant exloitation.

Nor is there any reason it's bad to understand that people can be a part of something bigger than themselves, and that a share is due to all, not just the guy putting the iphone screens in, but the guy designing the iphones, the guy writing the software, the guy marketing them, etc. BUT they should all be earning living wages, and there should not be massive disparity.

Further, one should not have to work to survive, chronictom made a great thread on this. minimum wage is something that everyone could make, simply not working should leave one at the poverty line, and the human desire for more would ensure that people are industrious and create enough to also account for these who do not work.

 

Nope. You don't get it.

 

This relates to my post---2 posts above. This is one of the Post-Modernistic Crisis. Capitalism, like all things, will come to an end. Hopefully it will evolve into something better rather than to end in some chaotic Malthusian scramble to gobble up the last of our resources before the bulk of the remains of mankind suffer and die.

Herbert Marcuse wrote the book, One Dimensional Man. I read it many years ago---I don't recall all of it, but I do remember that his One-dimensionality refers to the fact that society programs us to work and consume. We may think that we have free choice as to what to do in our free time, what career to choose, who to marry, what products to buy, what games to play, and so forth, but much of that is programmed into us by society. He too talks about how everything around us including our culture is designed after the machine.

As Alvin Toffler reiterated in his book, this all gets down to the depersonalization and dehumanization inflicted upon us by the market, and how it divorces man from his production, creating an individual that is driven by the opposing forces of producer and consumer.

The hate and divisiveness of man is one of numerous serious problems. Our disregard for the future in the way we consume our natural resources is another problem, and so forth.

I do see positive trends taking place. For example, the rise of feminism. We may think that this is simply a trend relating to equality of the sexes, and the fairer sex demanding better pay, and equal job opportunities. But it has deeper hidden implications.

The rise of the feminine is a reversal of a significant psychological evolution that took place starting a thousand years or two after the dawn of agriculture, with the rise of the male God or Sky Father. It too represented a rebellion---but of the masculine against the feminine, as opposed to today’s reversal. It was what led to the later rationalism and objectivism of the later planter and and all cultures since. (It may not be, as some psychologists suggest, that the male is more objectivistic/rationalistic than the female (who is more subjectivistic/irrational—and by irrational I mean such things as intuitive and connected to the subconscious, not the popular meaning of irrational), but rather that the rise of the male caused a greater alienation between humans and their true selves, and men were programmed for and relegated to more objectivistic/rational roles, and women to subjectivistic/irrational roles).

This male-oriented culture, being more rationally-objectivistic, became a culture focused on the conscious mind, which is the seat of the rational and the objective. The conscious mind is ruled by the ego, which in Jungian sense is really just a filter with the purpose of maintaining consistency of personality. But the ego also defines who we consciously believe ourselves to be, and thereby creates an ego-ideal. Anything that doesn’t fit this ideal is repressed into our shadow---our dark side, hidden in the depths of the subconscious. The more rationally-objectivistic a culture becomes the more inflated this ego-shadow complex becomes. The evil and bad that we see in the world, is mostly either a reflection or a projection of the elements within our own shadow. The battle between capitalism and communism, or, during the Cold War, the battle between the US and the Soviet Union, was really a battle of collective shadows---the evil the soviets saw in us (the oppressive market system, for example), was an aspect of their own culture too—repressed into the collective shadow; the evil (State slavery for example) that we saw in them was an aspect of our own culture, though we did not want to believe it (we are free!) because it was collectively denied and repressed in our collective shadow—this is the same dynamic of just about all wars.

This inflated ego-shadow complex creates incredible divisiveness and hate. In fact I am certain that it is the rise of this complex, that created the dualistic zeitgeist of the institution of religion. A Jungian psychologist (whose name I forget right now) said that the older goddess cultures saw the world as if it was illuminated by moonlight—not just black and white, but a myriad of shades of grey and white in between. The later masculine cultures saw it in the brightness of the sun—sharp divisions of black and white.

In fact, if you read Genesis from a Jungian perspective, it is actually a very clever tale of ego-shadow development and a psychological account of the rise of duality.

The rise of the feminine, may very well over the long run, after male/female relations become largely equal (which I can argue is the more natural state of the hunter-gatherer), will reconnect man to a more whole individual, by breaking down the inflated ego-shadow complex to a more healthy and natural state. Our dualistic zeitgeist may very well return full circle to the multiplistic zeitgeist much like that of our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors. And our differences may no longer seem so different.

…If we can survive that long.

As I stated in my previous post in this thread, hopefully we can retain some of the good aspects of capitalism. But the Modern Age was certainly an improvement over the Industrial Age, and the early Industrial Age was an improvement over the earlier planter cultures. So one would think we at least have a chance to grow beyond the problems and ills of modern society.

 

One more point on the death of capitalism---whether it happens in the near term or the long run, no one knows, but here is another Post-Modern problem that threatens Capitalism. I posted this in another thread, but it fits here too:

Whether corporations are individuals or not, the success of capitalism (for the upper levels of capitalist society) has created a concentration of wealth and power in a small core group of multinational corporations. This is based on research that came out of a Swiss Economic Research Organization in late 2010 (I have several links to articles about this but I will have to find them). This is not just the US, this is global.

This core group is knitted together by cross-shareholdings, and formed because---well, if you were Chief Investment Officer of your large multinational company, and didn't want to put your job in jeopardy, you too would choose to invest in the best and biggest companies out there. The study tracked ownership and revenue streams. This does not mean that there is collusion between all the members of this group or that there is a concerted super corporate conspiracy. But the group does directly and indirectly control 80% of the global revenues.

Few people realize this but this is a serious threat to capitalism. It is a centralized structure that adds the potential of implosion or collapse in a way that we have never had to deal with before. It means that----there is no longer a problem of whether some companies are too big to fail---the answer is yes and it is too big for one government to decide. It also adds a more global significance to whether or not the US can solve its deficit problems (not that it wasn't a global problem to begin with, but now there is an added question of how would this global multinational structure survive a collapse of the US government (an awful lot of corporate money is both parked and invested in US Treasuries)).

Regardless of your political leanings, a collapse of capitalism is not a good thing. You think losing a home, health care benefits, being able to eat is important---with the sudden collapse of capitalism, you would probably have only one thing on your mind: securing the next meal. (Anyone up for some roasted rat?).

The OWS Movement was right on the threat of the big corporation. It needs to be protested. Solving the problem is a whole nother issue...