Communism, Star Trek, and the Venus Project

[Xtort]

Just wanted to share some thoughts I've had recently.  At work I decided to play to my sense of nostalgia and run the entire 7 seasons of Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine on my phone through netflix, to listen to while I work.  As a child I loved sci fi and I loved star trek, it was probably a huge influence on my leaning towards socialism for most of my life but at the time it just seemed awesome that there are these guys that live in this high tech utopia that don't even care about money anymore because it just doesn't matter.

 

Anyway watching/listening to the show again, I couldn't help but notice what an outrageous propaganda machine this was.  The only capitalists in the universe are the ferenghi (sp), aside from being hideously ugly they are completely untrustworthy and completely driven by (gasp) evil profits!  The federation is willing to tolerate their dimwitted and short sighted shenanigans with more than a little condescension. 

 

What struck me as interesting is that even in this utopian fantasy world where everyone works for everyone out of nothing more than brotherly love, they still could not overcome basic economic realities.  Sometimes things would need to be done, more than the staff could handle.  What to do?  Everything is done at the behest of the central command, when and how they say it must be done.  You're willing to pay more to have your work prioritized?  Too bad, they don't care about money, you just have to wait - indefinitely.  In one episode they need some complex part for the station, and they need it in two days, but starfleet command cannot get it to them in less than 3 weeks.  Luckily the ferenghi are there to teach them how to move up the ranks by schmoozing the quartermaster, bribing him for favors.  In fact every time there was a plot hole involving them needing something they didn't have, it was the dirty capitalists that were used to fill in the gaps.  An odious necessity, yet even in an imaginary world they could not come up with a means of exchange from within the federation to anyone outside of it since they had no concept of money or value.

 

This made me think of a debate I listened to a while back between a libertarian and a representative of the venus project.  TVP seems to have a typical MO, all they really want to talk about is all the amazing things that can be done with technology if freely implemented.  This will, apparently, solve the calculation problem according to them.  Listening to them talk about a world where you will wake up every day and do whatever it is you want to do and have all your needs provided for by some kind of super-abundance machine is a nice idea.  It reminds me of the star trek dream.  But it doesn't answer the question, how will you know who should get what, and how much?

 

Which brings me to socialism/communism.  I have been doing some reading on history and some research, and it made me realize something.  This is the exact same dream socialists have always peddled out.  The original socialists are called 'Utopian socialists' because they claimed socialism would turn the oceans to lemonade we could all drink, and food would simply fall from the sky onto the plates of anyone that wanted it.  They didn't really have any rational means of explaining how this is supposed to come to pass, it was almost literally a religion.  All Marx did was take this lunacy and put it into a scientific sounding format.  And the dream was achieved for a short time, in Russia, during a 4 year period called 'wartime communism'.  Trotsky brought in true socialism, the only example that I know of, and all forms of exchange between individuals were prohibited.  The result was not a beautiful utopia, the result was people forming into gangs roving the countryside in search of food because they were starving to death.

 

I don't really have a point here, I just wanted to share my thoughts.  I keep seeing debates with these neo communist types and it seems like those of us on the austrian side have gotten used to being the under dog.  Every debate I find aside from Stefan's with peter joseph, the austrians seem afraid to call them out on this BS.  The truth of the matter is, this is nothing new.  It's the same dream being used to sell the same lie and it will lead to the same result it always has.

[Daniel Unplugged]

I realized something interesting about Star Trek First Contact recently. On one hand, captain Picard spouts the virtues of the communist (not socialist) Federation. On the other, there is the socialist Borg, attempting to assimilate the entire world's population into their collective, removing all traces of individuality, and enslaving them for life. Maybe they were having a bet each way.

[Xtort]

That's a good point.  I guess you could view it as the true form of socialism according to socialists (the federation) fighting the common image of socialism (the borg). Or the way I would describe it, the socialist utopia fantasy fighting against reality.