Mommy, what's an intellectual?

[Dennis]

> I read the "hunt in the morning" passage as a claim that under communism,
> people will do, as Marx says, "just as [they] please"; that is to say,
apart
> from whatever necessary labor has to be assigned and enforced, people who
> care to do diverse physical and mental activities will do so, and them as
> don't, won't. If someone wants to spend her days toiling away in the
library
> redacting Manilius, the associated producers will not haul her out for
nude
> swimming and geodwesic dome building that she'd rather not do. In
technical
> terms, Marx is claiming that communism will involve maximal negative
freedom
> from coercion or compulsion.
>
> --jks

Sounds more like anarcho-living to me (though the vegan wing would take
issue with the morning hunts, I'm sure).

Just saw the Chinese film "To Live," and if its depiction of the Cultural
Revolution period is even half-true, then Maoism was much, much worse than I
thought. Every other word had to be in praise of Mao. Every wall had to have
that lunatic's fat face plastered to it. Utter religious madness. I loved
the ending (which took place sometime in the 70s) when the once-bright
murals had faded to gray and the people went about their business as if the
previous hysteria never took place. A visual and political hangover,
followed by colorless, bureaucratic tyranny. Not what Marx had in mind, I
think.

DP