
The philosophy of my obscure political party, The Socialist Leisure Party, is being proven right again. It’s been proven righter and righter with each passing day. The Socialist Leisure Party must become the dominant political party in the world, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to get off my ass to do anything to make that happen.
You might ask, “What is The Socialist Leisure Party’s philosophy?” Jesus Christ, really? Can’t you just figure it out? Do I really have to – ?
Oh, all right. The SLP’s philosophy of history is that history’s real winners are the ones who achieved the least. The ones who got the most sleep. The ones who somehow worked it out to secure the most time to do nothing but stare off into space or make brownies with the kids. The ones who stopped to listen while the grasshopper fiddled. The goldbrickers down at the poolhall.
“But what about the SLP’s platform of universal luxury communism?” you might ask. “How can luxury be produced or maintained if no one’s willing to work? And how is the abundance in the economy of abundance visualized by the Socialist Leisure Party supposed to come about if no one’s going to work to grow and accumulate the surplus for the public?”
These are great questions, but I’m tired. The easy answer – and the SLP is all about easy answers – is that to create luxury requires time, which is itself a luxury. A luxurious building made for the public to enjoy displays the time required to create every part of it. It is not created under the whip of the efficiency supervisor screaming “time is money, you lazy drones.” It’s created by artists and craftspeople who eat healthy, good food. They live comfortable, dignified lives. When they look in the mirror they can respect themselves.
We currently grow and process more food than we eat because of our emphasis on getting the most material out of every action we take. The über-wealthy pay a little extra for higher quality goods but even they waste about half of their over-sized portion of global food wealth.
It’s not a secret that unequal distribution of everything – whether necessities or luxuries – is the lingering issue creating most of the intra-species problems among human beings. Our inability to divide our living and agricultural spaces fairly or wisely... read more