@ Squeers:

There are some great strengths in Marx’s concept of alienation, and much I’d agree with. The idea of 'living intensely' is growing in greenie circles. The goal of life is ‘experience’ and relationships rather than collecting ‘things’. Sure. Many would agree.

But there are also some great weaknesses.

In an increasingly interdependent world there will be factory workers that will be bored by their work. Not everyone is born with the same talents, and not everyone can do the most prestigious and enjoyable work. So even if we lived in a communally owned, democratically controlled production system, someone still has to do the boring work! They might get to vote on what colour the walls are or which shift they work. Yet how much control can each individual really have when they have to fit in with the needs of the majority of workers in the factory? Factories and production lines are military machines with precision timing and everyone needing to pull their weight, in the same direction, at the same time.

What changed society so much was the FACTORY and mass production of cheaper goods. It’s not *just* who owns it that matters (and to me it does matters — I can still dream), but what IT IS that is important. It’s a factory. Deal with it.

As to alienation from the modern world at large? Nope. I like the modern world. I just don’t like the shape of it. We’re being sold a lie that is called suburbia, which truly splits communities and alienates us from each other. The physical forms of our cities prevent relationships naturally springing up as a routine part of our day.

Finally, given that the communism you believe in has never existed on earth, and given that you don’t know me, how can you prescribe a non-existent ‘cure’ for an ‘illness’ I dispute having in the first place! According to Marx, running one's own design studio and being creative means we are 'fully human' and doing fine. (2nd last paragraph at link below).
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Marx.htm

Eclipse Now,

You say you like the modern world but don't like its shape.
The modern world and its shape are one and the same.
Concentration of factory production within larger urban conglomerations was part of the development of the industrial system - suburbia, in prosperous western nations, is an integral component of such a system.
It is not just about "boring" work, It's about the creative relevance of that work to the human that is undertaking it. If there is no intrinsic connection between a person and his labours then his experience as a contributory soul within his community and environment is impoverished.
If your daily toil affords you some creative relationship between yourself and the things you produce, then you are one of the lucky ones. The great majority of "workers" in the post-industrial world do not experience a sense of relatedness to the things they produce nor to the products they consume.

Dear Tristan Ewins,
I agree that a transition to communism is all-but impossible in the context of our global capitalism run to seed, but that doesn't alter the fact that the present system is indefensible and untenable. I can only see Frank Brennan's stance, and the compassion-industry's in general, as ingenuously shoring-up our dystopia, indeed revelling in it as their "mission", their "validation", and their "proof" of God's wrath. A perfect instance of alienated logic and rationalisation.

Dear Eclipse Now,
Paradoxically, one of the effects of alienation is atomisation, that is a delusion of individualism, devoid of anything "essential," merely an agglomeration of experience that reinforces the initially posited (interpellated) but false ego. If we think deeply about our "self", can we identify anything actually there? Even the narcissist is only obsessed with an illusion that he has manically reified.
I haven't "prescribed" a "cure", just a course of reality. Even the "talking cure" doesn't offer a cure, only the truth, disillusionment.

<running one's own design studio and being creative means we are 'fully human' and doing fine>
this delusion highlights what was missing in the link you provided: the "nature" of the commodity and commodity fetishism. Your product is derivative, predicated, and flawed, rather than "creative". You are a link in a chain, like any factory worker; you merely flatter yourself that you're being creative or "fully human" lol. And because it's lucrative, both materially and in terms of popular kudos, you would have a hard time not buying into the kind of self-aggrandising "success-story" our culture loves to celebrate.
Btw, having worked long hours in factories between the ages of 14 and 40, I can assure you I do "deal with it".

Dear Poirot,
glad I'm not alone here :-)

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Dear Ron in Bennelong,

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Re: Your comment on page 10 of this thread:

I am sorry I have not been able to get back to you earlier. I have been off line for a couple of days.

I do not think you are the slightest bit irresponsible for wanting to save money. Quite the contrary. I think it is a very reponsible attitutude for you to save whatever money you can, if you happen to have more than you need to live on.

What I was trying to say is that it would be irresponsible not to change our Constitution during this period of social calm and stability and relative economic prosperity that we are currently enjoying, rather than waiting for the problems to arise and then having to rush into it under the pressure of severe political conflict and social unrest.

There is no extra charge for a new Constitution, Ron. Government spending is the same. Taxes remain unaltered.

Constitutional experts and civil servants still get paid and we do not have to give them a raise just for working on a new Constitution.

If you do manage to put a few dollars and cents under the mattress every now and then, I admire you. That really is great.

There is no way a new Constitution is going to stop you doing that. You just carry on, Ron.

For goodness sake, let me know if anything else is bothering you and let's talk about it.

Have a great day, Ron,

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Poirot,
Suburbia is absolutely NOT integral component of such a system. Indeed, we lived for 10 thousand years in walkable cities and suburbia is only 70 years old. Suburbia grew from a gut-instinct to live in the ‘country’ because the industrial cities were so hideous. But now with a sustainable, low-impact, green Industrialisation 2.0 rolling out (in either capitalist or communist incarnations, I’m talking about technology not ownership here), with a little Rezoning we can move suburbia back to about 10% of the space and restore local agriculture. These are the principals I’m talking about — only 3 minutes of video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI

Here is James Howard Kunstler with the complete history of Industrialisation, Suburbia, and how to get to New Urbanism. (Language warning: he gets a little passionate. But he is also hilarious, and this is 20 minutes you will NOT regret!)

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/121

Here is E2 on Portland, America, which chose to reverse the American sprawl and yet not give up either the ‘free-market’, private property, or industrialisation.

http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/311_portland_a_sense_of_place_trailer.html

The documentary is well worth watching if you can buy it or find it online, but if not, just go to the Portland wiki which explains it is the 2nd greenest city on earth!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon

Right there in America, the home of the car! These things are possible.

And here’s Ellen Dunham Jones talking about how to bring Atlanta, surely one of the worst examples of suburban sprawl in the WORLD, back towards New Urbanist principles, with some details about the challenges along the way.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/898

So suburbia is most emphatically NOT a necessary component of industrialisation. It uses 10 times the land, destroys 10 times the ecosystems, uses triple the energy and creates fat people living in individualistic boxes with little community.

Much of today’s ‘alienation’ could be dealt with just by reverting back to our 10 thousand year old pattern of walkable cities.

No Squeers, that will not do.

The rest of your last post was, again, just so much Bulverism. I’ll return the favour by way of illustration.
&#8232;Eclipse: “This Communist fixation of yours comes back to the fact that you are in denial about your Oedipal complex”.

Squeers “That’s outrageous! I have no such complex!”

Eclipse: “Ahh, but that just confirms how deep your denial goes…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism

Your last 3 posts have basically been full of ivory-tower self-congratulatory judgements on me based on the *assumption* of your belief system without *proving* your belief system. It’s a lazy and cheap logical fallacy.

Indulging in further Bulverism at this point will only damage your credibility and confirm that this is a waste of time. I mean honestly, the way you became so personally insulting about our design firm! I guess if our computers were State owned, and we had a 1000 village idiots over to ‘vote’ on where to put stuff and what type-face to use, THEN we’d truly be ‘free’ to be creative? Wow, that would be GREAT graphic design. ;-)

Unless you can get off your high horse and define what a Marxist graphic designer would look like and how it would operate, I suggest that you’re cringing behind your keyboard, desperately looking for some way to attack our creative process, ducking and weaving away from logical argument into further assumptions, and hiding behind the cleverest Marx-o-babble you can create to hide the fact that YOU CAN’T escape our freedom. We have an independent creative process working within the demands of an interdependent society.

And if there’s something you hate about meeting the needs of others in a society and also relying on the provision of goods from others in that interdependent society, you’re not a Marxist but a deluded “subsistence-ist.” The only way to be ‘free’ in your world is peasant living. Good luck with selling that! Want to feel alienated? Be an African subsistence farmer when the next famine hits. If that’s freedom, you’re welcome to it!