Abe's reflections

Ben reflects on the end of alienation Part 4

Loneliness was impossible; but privacy was always respected. That's the way I remember it the first years of communism.

You see, back in the days of prehistory, we often got very lonesome or so, the literature of the time tells us. Richard Yates was always on about it. Of course, there were others, many, many others. Whether they knew it or not, they were describing something which sprung from the roots of loneliness.

It was in the painting as well. Edward Hopper's work is a great introduction. And the psychological imbalances it caused. My, my. Loneliness was the silent killer of the era.

In the years after we established common ownership of the wealth we produced. We began to breathe more freely than ever. We also left loneliness behind. We opened up public space by de-privatising what had been commodified. Truly, the end of commodification meant the end of bourgeois notions of freedom. No longer were we tied to the mast of the ship of fools, we were able to go out at any time of day or night and enjoy ourselves at public gathering places. Nobody was afraid of losing their job or losing the respect of their peers by being themselves. If one person didn't like another, they just associated with someone else. Ah, the chimes of freedom were not only flashing, they were positively blazing.

And yet, we could always retire to whatever level of privacy we needed. For the first time in history, we all had homes. As all the human race was being well housed in those first years, the cities, as they had been, began to disappear. We discovered the need for them had been embedded with the needs of class dominated civilisation. We had no need for 'financial centres' nor had we a landlord class anymore with their petty needs to jack up rents and property prices for their own enrichment over non-property holders.