I completely agree, I just find it a bit uneasy when the line of questioning starts to veer into the gray area of what could be considered “valid employment”. For example, the arts or intellectual pursuits; is being a musician a valid form of employment? What about a freelance artist? Or a writer? Do they provide a necessary service to their country and deserve to be respected and treated the same as a teacher, doctor, or postman? Or are they hedonistic leeches that do nothing all day while pursuing their “hobby” and feeding off of the work of their fellow countryman?
Its these gray areas where the question of “leeches” become tenuous and subjective, and is very easily influenced by reactionary, anti-intellectual, and capitalist mindsets and institutional frameworks. We must strive to avoid these pitfalls with a materialist worldview.
Fair enough. We should remember, though, that most actually existing socialist countries have promoted artists and intellectuals in a big way; the USSR in particular was a cultural titan. I think that in many ways, the cult of “productivity” one sees in capitalist society is a form of propaganda and overcompensation, a way in which we convince ourselves that our basically inefficient and unproductive mode of social organization is in fact on the cutting edge of economic progress.
I completely agree, I just find it a bit uneasy when the line of questioning starts to veer into the gray area of what could be considered “valid employment”. For example, the arts or intellectual pursuits; is being a musician a valid form of employment? What about a freelance artist? Or a writer? Do they provide a necessary service to their country and deserve to be respected and treated the same as a teacher, doctor, or postman? Or are they hedonistic leeches that do nothing all day while pursuing their “hobby” and feeding off of the work of their fellow countryman?
Its these gray areas where the question of “leeches” become tenuous and subjective, and is very easily influenced by reactionary, anti-intellectual, and capitalist mindsets and institutional frameworks. We must strive to avoid these pitfalls with a materialist worldview.
Fair enough. We should remember, though, that most actually existing socialist countries have promoted artists and intellectuals in a big way; the USSR in particular was a cultural titan. I think that in many ways, the cult of “productivity” one sees in capitalist society is a form of propaganda and overcompensation, a way in which we convince ourselves that our basically inefficient and unproductive mode of social organization is in fact on the cutting edge of economic progress.