Sunday, September 05, 2004
 
Dammit Jim I'm A Doctor, Not A Radical Leftist 19th Century Social Philosopher
Happy Labor Day weekend, my loyal readership. I very nearly gave the entire staff here at the Bucket the entire weekend off, but seeing as they a) are none of them American b) unfamiliar with local custom/state labor laws and c) speak only the language native to the country from whence they were purchased, I didn't really feel compelled. In fact, I chose to honor the native traditions of... wherever it is they're from by shackling them to their desks in a room with no windows and inadequate ventilation. It all lines up with my new policy of Compassionate Conservatismâ„¢.

Speaking only for myself then...

Ah, the long weekend. Just what ole Pops' body needed as it readjusts to a schedule that involves waking up at a given time thanks very much to state mandated compulsory education.

But as I relax this Sunday with no fear of the Monday to follow, on this weekend that celebrates toil, stress and endless, meaningless vexation with a single extra day of rest I can't help thinking: where the fuck is the inevitable historical realization of dialectical materialism?

Come on, I know you're all thinking the same thing.

Seriously, I was promised a worker's paradise over 150 years ago. I mean, if "Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable", then come on. We should really get more than one lousy goddamn day by now. It's 2004 for Christ's sake!

I took all those classes in philosophy and history to learn all about this junk and for what? So I could have hot dogs and potato salad in one waning summer afternoon and I should be happy about that? I mean, not only do I not control the means of production, but I'm, like, totally alienated from myself, from my fellow man...

And if I had a paying job, I'm almost certain I would be alienated from the fruits of my labor. I can just feel it.

We totally got gypped on this deal and I'll tell you why: Karl Marx didn't watch nearly enough Star Trek.

Everyone who has ever seen any Star Trek knows that just about every other episode (and every other movie as well, for consistency's sake) involves time travel. And everyone who falls into the above category will also know that if you know the future, the one and only thing you must not do is share.

Keep it to yourself. Temporal paradoxes are bad and spoiling a perfectly good timeline is worse. No, you stay as segregated as possible from the time-natives, keep to yourself and try not to interact lest you become your own great-great-grandfather by nailing the nubile young version of your own great-great-grandmother and thus annulling your own existence.

And if Karl Marx had just watched, say, The City on the Edge of Forever from the Original Series he would know that even though Kirk loved her, Edith Keeler (ably portrayed by a young Joan Collins) had to die for the sake of the whole future.

But no, Marx goes and spills all the beans at once. I don't know what kind of fancy absinthe-fueled visions Karl was experiencing, but he lays out his knowledge of the future--class warfare in which the proletariat, a necessity created by the bourgeoisie after they themselves had overthrown the ancient nobility, would rise up to fulfill the heretofore false promise of egalitarianism and freedom minus the fetters of superstitious idealogy thus comprehensively destroying all of capitalist society--in lots of very boring books where just anyone can read them, including the people who were supposed to be annihilated by the historically inevitable actualization of dialectical materialism.

I mean God, Karl. Kirk would have never made that mistake.

So capitalist society, clumisily tipped off, starts offering all these piddly concessions to workers like the right to organize unions, collective bargaining, the forty-hour work week, abolishing child labor, the enfranchisement of women, etc.

And now, instead of a Dickensian dystopia of smokestacks, tuberculosis and really pissed off (if malnourished) class of oppressed people ready to bring it, Apocalypse-style, we get Labor Day. One day.

At least in Europe they get all of August off.

The only comfort I take is knowing that when we achieve the future so exactingly and lovingly laid out in the various Star Trek series, we will have achieved Marx's model. Everyone will be happy, freed from the burdens of money, agriculture and unwashed masses, free to spend all your time "bettering yourself" which I'm pretty sure doesn't only mean masturbation.

Of course then we'll have to figure out what to do with the Klingons. But one thing at a time.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.1

This post on the Dorkfest Scale: 9.95


Pops

Comments:
I once asked my mother if gypsies were real people, and she said that she never knew any personally, but they had a theater in Moscow and frequently stole things. That's how I learned where the word "gypped" comes from. And that's my etymology lesson for the day, because Star Trek is cultural eons beyond my feeble intellect.
 
I have an even sadder story. I learned the meaning of "gypped" from an episode of a sitcom starring Norm MacDonald. See, in it, he was trying to get his boss to do something racially offensive (I forget why) and at one point the boss used the word "gypped" which Norm seized on and pretended to be offended on behalf of his fake "proud Gypsy heritage". Hilarity did not ensue and the show was canceled shortly thereafter. "Why?" is a question, I believe, we need not ask.
 
Oh, I'm so glad I found your blog. As a huge ST fan, I was LOL at your post. Time travel and fathering your own grandson, etc.

Reminds me a bit too of Terminator. Kyle travels back in time and falls for Sarah, thus conceiving John Connor, Kyle's leader/idol in the future world. Weird, but then the terminator that befriends a young John Connor is used to kill him in the future and his widow sends that terminator back to save him. But then the whole thing ends with nuclear war, because, though they spent three movies trying to avoid the war, it was unavoidable all along. What a let down.

I've been an unemployed housewife (female) for most of my adult life. And also got a pretty much meaningless degree, mine's in cultural anthropology. I did what I wanted in college, thinking that my passion would hurl me into a great job....alas, that was not the case.

Great blog.
 
Rory,

People who come here and say nice things about me and my little slice of heaven are always most welcome.

And as for degrees, your cultural anthro tops my history any day. And actually my passion for it DID drive me onto a career path, but the realities/politics of academics drove me off screaming in the end. I weep for me and my crushed dreams.
 
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