“Brave New World” and “V for Vendetta”

In “Brave New World,” the social order was maintained by the government that controls the citizens. The citizens have been educated since they were born to be satisfied with environments and hierarchy they belong to. In addition, when they feel unsatisfied with environments and hierarchy, the governments provide them medicines soma to make them feel happy so that they can forget their angriness. Therefore, the society is preserved by the government that is capable of eliminating the citizens’ abilities to think and behave on their own thoughts. On contrast, in the society of 'V for Vendetta,' the social order is retained by the government that oppresses their citizens to the extent that they cannot democratically publicize their opinion against the government. Those two societies of “Brave New World” and “V for Vendetta” are similar in the face that both of their governments oppress their citizens to maintain the social order. However, two governments differ in how they repress their citizens. While one in “Brave New World” completely controls their citizens interiorly and exteriorly, one in “V for Vendetta” control their citizens only exteriorly, so it is up to citizens whether they follow orders of the government or not. Only being controlled on surface, someone like V could make the actions to change the society.

This is what democracy looks like

In my mind, the U.S. had been the country of freedom, where you can speak out whatever you have in your mind. However, what I saw in the movie “This is what democracy looks like” was totally different from what I thought the U.S. was. In the movie, people who were demonstrating against WTO suffered from brutal police force. Policemen used OC spray, violence and other many ways to stop them. Actually, I believe that there is a need for a country to stop the opposition when it is a threat to the country. People in the demonstration brought chaos to cities by breaking the public properties and making a lot of noise. Policemen, who are supposed to keep the peace and order in the country, therefore, needed to suppress riots. However, this gave me the question of “What is a democracy?”, “What is the difference between democratic countries and undemocratic countries when both of them do use the national forces to restrict the freedom of people?” and “Is it the degree of how much force do they use?”

American Anticomminist Propaganda

Watching films and comics, and listening to the radio of American Anticommunist, I found that it had great effects of brainwashing people. An announcement of “Civic Defense Policy” made on radio certainly made a sufficient role of making people believe that they were facing serious threats by communist. And, the cartoon “Make Mine Freedom” explained that capitalism could provide people freedom, prosperity and an equal society. However, I realized that they brainwashed people that communism was unjustified and risky through those propagandas, but none of them really explained why communism was a failure in a convincing way. Of course, there was the Cold War going on at the time, so the government needed to brainwash citizens in order to pursue the triumph of capitalism over communism. But, it seems for me that people used different ideologies as reasons to fight, without really analyzing which is better and worse. As matter of a fact, looking at any regime in present countries, we cannot really say that it is capitalism or socialism, because most of countries use both elements in their regimes. Two ideologies have mutually influenced each other, so that they could develop their ideas better. For example, the regime of a capitalistic country has elements of socialism, at the same time the regime of a socialistic country has elements of capitalism. It is important to remember that every regime is mixed of different ideologies which make the regime more productive.

Bourgeois & Proletarians

In the Chapter “Bourgeois and Proletarians” in Manifesto of the Communist Party, Engles and Marx talked about the relationship between Bourgeois and Proletarians. Bourgeois is a new class which replaced the guild and the manufacturing middle class. The difference is that Bourgeois took away “all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations” from them, therefore they exploit workers more directly without any political and religious reasons. Bourgeois also practiced the exploitation in the world market, where rural people are dependent on civilized people, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois and the East on the West. As we can see, it is them who spread the segregation of wealth and poverty to the world.

The victims are Proletarians who only had values when Bourgeois had them to work. As the result of industrial revolution, there were many industrial machines. So Proletarians are only required simple works which declined their values as workers and this also brought more wealth to Bourgeois. Therefore, Proletarians had to fight with Bourgeois. It is the dissatisfaction with Bourgeois which made them united, and with the modern proletarian their numbers increased rapidly. Bourgeois was not really able to control them because they were too many. There were much more Proletarians who only could a little amount of money than Bourgeois who possessed much wealthy, and it is also true that Bourgeois industrial way made the base of strong solidarity of Proletarians.

The march of the falg and Platform of the american anti-Imperialist League

These two readings, “The march of the flag” and “Platform of the American anti-Imperialist League” have totally different ideas of liberty from each other.

First of all, “The march of the flag” is based on the thought that America has to conquer the world under its political and economic power. As we could see from the reading, author emphasized that America needed to be “the commercial supremacy of the world”, “by broadening their reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind”. It is quite obvious that the author wanted America to be the center of the world by invading lands of other countries. He pointed out that the way to accomplish it was to spread the American way of economic system to the world, which is “A market economic”. He said that the trade is as free as between the states of the Union, because they are American territory when others have to pay the tariff, and more and more people have to join the union to make the economic work smoother. However, this thought totally ignored the custom, culture, living standard of people from other countries. Even though author said, “The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government.”, the idea is still based on the idea that America is better than the other and every country has to follow them, which means the author totally ignored others system and the progress in their system in the future. It seemed like America still has thought at present, as we can see in Iraq War. They forced them the democracy by using military force, even though they needed more steps before to be democratic like the change of the education, the development of the economy and so on.

The author of the reading, on the other hand, seemed to have totally different idea from the previous author. He thought that what important is rather liberty and the pursuit of happiness than forcing them into American system. He also spoke out the importance of the government deriving people’s power from the consent of the governed. His thought is based on the opposition to the racist, war and subjugation to any kind of people. Of course, if this is practiced in the present society, it is an ideal world. However, it is a little bit unrealistic for me, because the world is following more to the idea of “The march of the flag” both in politics and economics. For me, it was just like utopia.