NationStates Jolt Archive

For those of you who have read this Vonnegut short-story, you know it's basically a dystopian socialist world of "equality"

It's anti-socialist message aside for a moment, did anybody find this absurdly funny when they 1st read it? I read it in 7th grade (now in 10th), and as I remember it, I remember laughing so hard at how crazy this story sounded.

It's a rather poor strawman attack on socialism. To my knowledge, no socialist has claimed to want everyone to have equal attributes and abilities. When we socialists (which includes anarchists, Marxists, social democrats, etc.), we mean that we want equal opportunity, so no one will starve or be denied an opportunity to succeed simply because they are not part of a certain social class. The goal is for social classes to be abolished, not for everyone to be the same.

-snip-
Yeah I know that is true, however didn't you just find this so-called equality to be almost absurdly funny? (then again I was sorta immature when I first read it)

I just read it and can't believe Vonnegut would write something so simplistic.

Yeah I know that is true, however didn't you just find this so-called equality to be almost absurdly funny? (then again I was sorta immature when I first read it)

I agree, it was absurd.

I just read it and can't believe Vonnegut would write something so simplistic.

I know, couldn't he have tried to represent the socialist position a little more fairly?

It's called satire folks, the current situation is distorted into a crazy dystopia, that even though not realistic, is frightening and brings out a point.

I was happy when they shot the kid, no one deserves that kind of power individually, even if the alternative is being governed by a secret elite government. I see the story as a message against the genetic engineering of superhumans rather than a critique of socialism. Everyone knows there will never be equality between the ruling class and the common man, but now you all know what happens when someone gets drunk with power; they get owned. Besides, if you're happy living under a weird government like that, there isn't a problem, its only when there's a system like the one we have now where the rich flaunt their power in the faces of the poor that there's a problem.