The replicator is a vitally important piece in this whole scenario, because in many ways, it is the surrogate for the State. The replicator becomes the supplier of goods and services to the people, and has a democratizing effect. All at once, the working class proletariat has equal access to wealth as the Capitalist factory owner and exploiter of labor. The replicator functions in the role of government, as it equally distributes society's wealth, as countries like North Korea, the U.S.S.R, and Cuba never could. Those nations were invariably drawn back into a Capitalistic political hierarchy, which only ended up dividing the ruling class from the bottom-dwelling impoverished class. Goods and services were squandered and distributed according to wealth, power, support, favors, and family. These pre-Warp countries might have considered themselves Communist, but they were in name only. Their distribution of wealth and empowerment of the working class was nothing more than an ideal, and never practically realized. It might be said that there has never been a pure and successful implementation of Communism -- as laid out by Marx & Engels -- by any nation on earth. We simply had never seen it done right.
In this regard, we might come to the conclusion that Star Trek is in fact a proto-Communist society, embracing more of the ideals of Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto
No comments:
Post a Comment