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Sunday 30 September 2007, by DurangoKid : Try reading "On Capital" (Das Capital), which is Marx from Marx’s mouth. You’ll see that Firefly leaves out most of how commodities are produced in the ’verse, except for some strong hints here and there. One might infer that the war between the Browncoats and the Alliance was a struggle for the control of production, ergo, the Alliance succeeded in gaining control of labor, markets, and resources. The core planets live off the surplus labor of the outer planets. In one episode a trader brags about selling slaves for terriforming. Let’s not forget the Mudders, either. One might argue that Mal does the same in his "salvage" operations. Or you could argue that what he recovers has no market value until he and his crew add their labor to bring these commodities to market. If this stuff was so valuable to the Alliance, why don’t they salvage it? So, the class struggle is alive and well in the ’verse and it’s about the same old thing: who benefits from whose labor. On a slightly deeper level, the idea of billions of humans traveling tens of lightyears to a new planetary system is way far fetched. There isn’t enough value in the Earth’s economies to devote to such a huge undertaking, not to mention where the energy is supposed to come from. 100 years in the future there will be no economically viable supplies of coal, oil, fissile isotopes, and gas. Fusion is the only thing left and it suffers from major problems of scale and containment. Solar and the resultant biomass are too diffuse to continue the large scale working of metal that would be required for an interstellar exodus from Terra Familiarus. Earth is likely the only planet humans will ever live on in any great numbers. 500 years from now there will be Mals roving the countryside scavenging bits of metal and other materials. Imagine Jayne breaking up concrete to get at the rebar to sell to smiths who make horse shoes. It’s also likely that the Earth’s population will be about 1 billion. If the 1700’s are any clue, firewood will be in short supply and the average person will have to struggle to get enough calories every day. The Mals and their crews will have a meager existance at best. These comments are an anwser to this article : A Marxist reading of Firefly |
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