Finally, thirty or so years too late, the Communists have come up with a slogan with makes Communism sound attractive:
Well, not quite. Actually this poster is a send-up of the attitude of the music industry, which is now engaged in suing the Russian-based online music website AllofMP3.com for $165 trillion.
This meme – downloading mp3 files for free is Communism! – is but the latest in a long line of similarly wrong-headed memes collusively created by stupid anti-Communists and not-so-stupid Communists, or not so stupid anti-anti-Communists (also scum in my opinion), which make Communism look and sound far better and far sexier than it ever really was or will be. Workers demanding the right to free association is Communism! Workers going on strike is Communism! Adolescents having sex is Communism! Rock and roll is Communism! Having fun is Communism!
Please note that I am not saying that downloading mp3 files for free (or for that matter going on strike or having sex) is necessarily right or wise, merely that it is very attractive, and in a way that Communism never was. I mean, for starters, how many people, under actually existing Communism, had the kit to download, legally or illegally, and then listen to mp3 files?
I tried copying the above poster from this website, but I couldn’t make that work. So, I googled it and found it from somewhere else. Does someone perhaps have something against people downloading picture files for free? (LATER: the downloading of that poster is not a problem, see comments, but just a problem for me and my photo-processing software. Apologies.)
The problem keeps coming back to what can and cannot be meaningfully owned. Shouting about communism does not really help much, although I absolutely love the poster!
The problem, as so often is the case, is when people confuse the interests of big business with free markets. The two are not always the same, and quite often in conflict with each other. Amazing how often this gets ignored.
Oh well, makes a change from thinking about David Cameron’s latest moronic attacks on supermarkets.
I got the image via a rightclick.
Brian, it is probably just a configuration issue on your machine because it copied just fine for me.
Oh, and you do realise that the poster is a piss-take of the shrill diatribes that the RIAA issues, don’t you?
Perry
Yes.
Echoing Mr. de Havilland, let me note that the poster was created to make fun of the RIAA by echoing 1950s style propaganda posters, and it appears that Mr. Micklethwait has missed the joke.
If you want to talk to the people who created the poster, that is easily arranged, and I assure you they are not communists or communist sympathizers. Mr. Micklethwait seems to have entirely missed the point.
As to the picture file copying thing, I now realise that my problem was not downloading it but processing it with my cheap photo-shop not-clone, which doesn’t do .gif. I have the file but couldn’t use it, that is to say, make it smaller.
Update in the original posting to clarify that.
No I did not miss the joke. I realise it is a send-up, but a send-up of something all too real, namely the tendency of right wing buffers and/or thoughtless business defenders to accuse anything they disapprove of of being communism.
I get the point, and I also appended my own distinct point, which is that by talking like this, right wing buffers play right into the hands of those they claim to oppose, as this poster rather nicely illustrates. Of course it was originally a mere send-up of the business lobbyists, but it doubles as a plug FOR Communism.
One of the things I noticed throughout the eighties was how superficially anti-Communist rhetoric often helped to spread pro-Communist memes.
All of which was far more important when Communism (of the orthodox Soviet sort as opposed to the undemocratically imposed semi-capitalism now practised in China) was a going concern.
At least credit the original creators of the poster.
http://modernhumorist.com/
Who also sell the poster via
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store.aspx?s=mhsuperstore.460
And it looks a lot better in the flesh.
You realise this is about 5 years old and blatant satire, right?
Top Tip:
Commenters, when you come across a blog posting try reading what the author actually wrote. That way, your comments won’t seem half as stupid.
Better use up the rest of my 25 bucks on AllOfMP3 then.
An American colleague was telling me recently that they no longer have access to this site from the USA. Is that correct?
Everything is communism. Libertarianism is communism!
I was at a land-use hearing some years back, where the topic was whether a certain patch of public land was to be leased for private cattle grazing, for a fee of about one-fourth of what it would cost to put the same amount of cattle on privately-owned land of the same quality. A total welfare subsidy. (Never mind that the responsible agency tended to allow about 150% of the animals to graze that would be allowed by a private landowner!)
The rancher who stood to benefit announced that to prevent him from running his cattle on public land “would be the final march of communism in the West!”
I notice that the Commie downloader in the poster is using a Mac. My worst fears are thus confirmed, that Mac users are both deluded and Reds!
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj274/DRAGOONDJ/firefox_day.jpg
if you download Firefox, you are downloading communism