I had a brief but potentially interesting discussion with a fellow Super Bowl partier last night, a guy who is more than a little bit of a leftist.HIM: "The Colts, man, they're really good but have no personality. They're like the Borg."
ME: "Are the Borg the best bad guys in science fiction ever?"
HIM: "Oh, yeah. They're the ultimate capitalists."
ME: "Funny you should say that. On the other side, they can hate the Borg because they're the ultimate socialists."
HIM: "Well, they think that, but they don't understand what socialism and capitalism really are."
I think I have a pretty good idea of what capitalism and socialism are. And I've got to think my friend was wrong. Perhaps he was thinking about the Borg as competing against the Federation and the Klingon Empire and such, and heartlessly assimilating the best they had to offer so as to expand and make everything like themselves. But I was thinking about the unsentimental destruction of the individual, ruthlessly taking everything each individual member has to offer and forcefully adding it to the collective.
I don't think socialism and communism are quite the same thing. I think the Borg are definitely more communist than socialist.
ReplyDeleteSocialism recognizes personal property, communism doesn't. Socialism uses taxes to pay for stuff, communism just owns everything outright.
Correct me if I'm misinterpreting.