Hockey and Music/ was Eating and Working

Eric Franz Leher fr102anz at netvigator.com
Wed Jan 23 04:21:43 PST 2002



> Kevin Robert Dean wrote:
>
> >So just kinda curious what will happen to the
> >"entertainers" of the world in a "post-capitalist"
> >society?
> >
> >Athletes for example get exploited for their labor by
> >the owners, but will the players still be making
> >millions of dollars?
> >
> >I know, dumb question. But my friend wants to become
> >a famous musician and he's always asking what will
> >happen to entertainment under socialism....
>
> Oh, we won't need professional entertainers - that's so hierarchical
> & alienating. We can all entertain ourselves, sitting around the
> campfire, strumming our homemade instruments, noshing on the
> delicious wild berries we've just gathered, singing nonviolent
> folksongs. Paradise, eh?
>
> Doug
>

Under socialism people will have bugger-all work to do (and if anyone with other ideas is organizing the revolution, count me out). Given enough free time and a secure livelihood for once, people who are great musos will perform publicly for nothing, because performance is an expression of their nature. To think that we actually have to pay talented people to do what they enjoy shows the extent to which we've bought into the current dominant degraded view of human nature and capacity.

Consider it this way - you've all seen great bands playing down at the pub on a Saturday night. A lot of these people are essentially amateurs with other day jobs. They play because they love it. And on Monday it's back to driving the laundry van.

Of course we would have to do without high-quality musical satire a la the Dead Kennedys, simply because targets would be lacking. No landlords to lynch, no poor to kill, and no holidays in Cambodia.

On the plus side, no Backstreet Boys and so forth.

Eric Leher



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