<div><font color="#3333ff"><strong>On 4/20/06, Wojtek Sokolowski <<a href="mailto:sokol@jhu.edu" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">sokol@jhu.edu</a>> wrote:</strong></font></div> <div><font color="#3333ff"><strong>"the only economically viable entity that evokes the socialist ideal of no-distinction society is .... Disneyworld.  Yes, Disneyworld.  I realized that when I went there with the kids.  All "capitalist" transactions - reservations, tickets, special deals, credit cards etc.  are conducted outside Disney property by their  business agents.  Once you land on their Orlando property you encounter: - excellent and efficient public transit system (not available in real-life  US cities;)  - total equality: everyone (with a ticket, of course) is equal to everyone  else, everyone stands in line regardless of sex, age, gender or skin color,  no one is privileged;  - everything is open to everyone "free" of charge - no need to have money </strong>,"</font><br> </div> <div> </div> <div>If your idea of socialism is fascist modernism consciously planned and controlled by corporations to take control of your daily life then Disneyworld is "socialist".  But it is a socialism of fools, that was <strong>intended</strong> by its owners and creators to be racist and oppressive.  Now days it is no longer considered "friendly" to be racist, so the Disney people simply settle for controlling and oppressive.  One only has to read the history and study what the planners of Disneyworld said that they wanted to understand that they were in favor of corporate monopolies controlling every aspect of life.  In short Disneyworld is "Friendly Fascism" and was intended to be a form of money making corporate propaganda for such a political system by its original creators. The idea that Disneyland/Disneyworld is somehow a socialist ideal sold to us consumers as a commodity might be ironic and funny but it misses the point about the conscious corporate fascism of Disneyworld.  <br><br>Disneyworld was consciously "sold" as a Utopia.  When I was a child growing up in Florida, we were force fed Disney propaganda films in our school.  The films were about how the technocrats of corporations such as Disney, or AT&T, General Electric or General Motors could plan our lives better and take away all of our worries as long as we let them.  DisneyWorld, which was still being built at the time, was presented as the exemplar of this dream, a sort of corporate Potemkin village.  To buy into this piece of propaganda is to ignore "real existing" Disneyworld, where the daily lives of the workers are completely controlled and unions are busted.  In the old days employees who announced a disbelief in god were fired and blacks only worked behind the scenes so as not to upset southern sensibilities.  In Disneyland, up through the early seventies, men with beards, and men and women who looked "different", ( "hippies," for example) were stopped at the gate and not allowed inside. </div> <div> </div> <div>The internal documents, available to us, that discuss the planning of DisneyWorld show that what was <strong>intended</strong> by the planners and owners was what we on the left have called corporate fascism.  The planners of Disneyworld wanted to present to people the image of a corporate society that was rationally planned, highly undemocratic, and where technology triumphed, a society of monopoly corporations where people did not have to think or act at all to live their daily lives. <br><br>In other words what was consciously sold by the owners of the ratiocinated World of Disney, was the idea that a hypertechnological society, planned and run by big corporations, could solve the problems of a democratic society.  These problems would be solved first by excluding all dissent and diversity, second through a highly planned environment that would turn the urban world into a machine that could "assemble" people (Fordism with people instead of cars on the assembly-line), third an environment that would place all "exploitation" of the workforce behind a facade of costumes and smiles, excluding workers from the view of the privileged few.  Woj, is correct that Disneyworld is and was sold as a kind of Utopia (as all theme parks actually are) but the question is what kind of Utopia is it?  Consider that Disney himself was consciously a "corporate fascist."  He admired Mussolini but believed that  modern America capitalist corporations should run and plan society.  Disneyland and Disneyworld invented friendly fascism. </div> <div> </div> <div>So my question is:  How can anyone mistake this (intended) model for corporate fascism as a model that "evokes" socialism?  This can only happen if one's ideal of socialism is some combination of "Stalinism," "corporatism" and technological determinism that molds human individuals in a big mechanistic Skinner box.  </div> <div> </div> <div>Another point is that if one actually knows the history of Disneyworld and of the stated intentions of those who created it, and if one actually knows how oppressive the real-existing Disneyworld is to its workers, then one would never mistake the kind of Utopia that is being sold to its customers as anything other than corporate fascism.  Knowing history helps. Cultural significations come later. <br><br>Jerry<br> </div>