john titor
Captain
Hey, I'm looking for examples of the kind of gloomy Russian cartoons the simpsons parodied once where they said, "what the hell is happening in this?!" Anyone know what these types of cartoons were called?
Grim serious abstract Russian cartoons
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And contained in the same link... And has links to other Russian cartoons.
The Simpsons joke reminded me a great deal of one of those "television from around the world" specials in which I saw a clip of the "Soviet Muppets." The Russian hand puppets were very crude and the scene exuded a special kind of depression. The narrator said that these puppets only want peace and understanding which conjured any number of images in my head of totalitarian television telling Russian children that American death from above was around the corner at any given moment. Which is fine because growing up American capitalist decadent television did pretty much the same thing.
In addition to pointing out the low budget and less polished nature of the cartoon, the parody also begins with the defined character of proletariat and his state named enemy who lives off of "the people." The cartoon then ends with the characters becoming equalized in a realm of abstraction, playing off the American prejudice that Soviet children were far more schooled and intellectual. In case you can't tell, that Simpson's clip had me rolling on the floor when it first aired. I loved it.
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john titor
Captain
Thanks guys, that was lmao. I wish I lived in the Soviet Union, it was a more honest way of life.
I was born and lived there for the first ~15 years of my life (well, last 2 were in independent Ukraine, but it was even worse). Life there sucked.
john titor
Captain
It was great as you only had one type of beer, one type of apples, not all this choice, it was predictable, routine and safe. People lived as citizens, not as consumers where solidarity is non existent. Granted though communism as in worker owning the means of production was never truly implemented in the USSR as you had a managerial class step in but regardless we should try communism again, this time without an oppressive state hierarchy.
Why have one type of beer when you can have 20? I like to have several choices and not being forced to choose something I don't want.
The world should never try communism again. It cannot be implemented without the oppression because people will always look at their neighbors and ask themselves why the neighbors have the freedoms that people living in communism have not. Oppression and gulags are the only thing that can keep the communist society together. Communism doesn't even work in theory.
john titor
Captain
Socialist cooperatives work in reality. Communism was ahead of its time, we're just not technologically or socially advanced enough to implement it yet, but when the time comes we should. I prefer one type of beer, even I don't like it I will develop a grudging attachment to it.
^No. I don't think so.
Isn't that mixing politics with economics? Wheren't/aren't "Communist" countries not actually communist? Aren't they more authoritarian, dare I say fascist run governments with command economies? What kind of economies did the fascists we think of when we say fascist (Nazi's) have? Or the Imperial Japanese? I'm amazed I'm a grown man with strong political and economic beliefs yet know so little really about the politics and economics of the bad guys. I have no doubt they were/are bad - their political/social actions speak for themselves, but what makes their economies, specifics, inferior? Or superior: what can we adopt?
I personally think the democratic republic we (US/Europe) have with regulated capitalist economies are the best perhaps in history, certainly better than anything Communist ever, but it would be nice to have something like a politically free economically socialist country to compare with if only to add more facts and fewer preconceptions to this debate.
john titor
Captain
There should be a social safety net for the less fortunate, but within reason, ie so that people aren't incentivized to become dependent on welfare. There also needs to be an equalization of classes, rather than the incredibly rich and the terribly poor. University students shouldn't be burdened with insane debt, rents should go down etc. The anglo american school of friedmanomics should be abandoned. Why? Because life isn't about maximizing GDPs and shareholder confidence, you have to make a social investment too, otherwise you perpetuate the existence of a thoroughly pissed underclass for whom opportunities have been denied to them. A happier society is a more productive one. I am a citizen first and foremost and I lament the day I ever become a consumer.
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