I was at the DollarTree the other night and purchased some old cartoons on DVD for a buck per DVD. (How can you go wrong for a dollar??) One Felix the cat cartoon got me thinking.
The cartoon opened with Felix in possession of a goose that lay golden eggs. Felix would take the golden eggs and process them into gold coins and freely doled out the coins to all of his neighbors. Apparently anyone could get the dole but the line of recipients seemed to be mostly elderly, widows, orphans, etc. The villian, some evil pirate captain, peered into Felix’s windows to see where all the money was coming from. Long story short: Captain steals the goose; Felix rescues the goose from the pirate ship; and on the journey home, Felix starts firing cannon loads of coins at his port city. All the town’s people are running around in the streets collecting the coins as they fall from heaven.
So what’s the underlying political message? (Yes, I do realize that it was just a cartoon.) It seems to me to hold a bit of the communistic ideal.
Another question, can anyone mint coins? I was under the impression that only the Federal Reserve Bank could issue legal tender. Is it OK for anyone to issue coins as long as they make no claim that the coins are legal tender? Would it matter if people valued the coins MORE than those issued by the Federal Reserve? If someone started issuing gold coins stamped with the weight of the coin only and not a monetary value, I could concieve of the population valuing those “coins” more than anything pot-metal coins issued by the Federal Reserve.
Communists were not the only ones who thought that the poor deserved help, and that the rich should use a portion of their money to benefit those less fortunate. The Catholic Church, for instance, taught that charity for the poor was a good thing.
And the entire concept was quite popular with all people from the Depression onward, and has not really been refuted, other than by name calling.
Felix was only reflecting the majority opinion of the time.
Congress may designate whomever it wishes to coin money, which is made at the mints, not at the Federal Reserve Bank. There is nothing stopping anyone else from making round metal things as long as they aren’t trying to pass them off as legal tender. See for example the various ads for “commemorative coins” which seem to run around the clock on some stations.
But damn, I’m getting my ass to the Dollar Tree tonight to see if I can find me some of them there $1 cartoon DVDs.
Otto, they’re not very high quality DVDs —lots of artifacts, high contrast—but I am enjoying them. For clarification, the DVDs play fine, the original images are poor.
Your desciption made me think of Robin Hood and robbing from the rich to give to the poor, rather than communist. Particularly because the people you describe are often those who fall into, or at least traditionally fell into the “poor” category.
Maybe I made a long story too short ( or rather a short story way way short).
My first reactiion to the cartoon was that it was just a goodwill thing—you know “from a distance” a la Bette Midler sort of thing. But upon reflection, clearly the coins that Felix minted had value as legal tender ( as opposed to as a commodity or bullion).
Certainly if Felix wanted to share his resources, that’s not communism or anything political. There’s nothing wrong with philanthropy. The grey area to me is when he coins his own money. Dorking with the money, while not explicitly communism, certainly implies redistributing wealth. Like I said, my initial reaction was to write it off to “a longing for everyone to have their needs met” of the cartoon’s creators. But then I got to thinking of the imagery, the first of the dole line where each needy person waits for a few coins and the last image in the cartoon of money raining from the skies. It just seems like it could be political. I’ll see if I can dig up some info for myself on Felix.
I wouldn’t think money falling from heaven would be the communistic ideal at all. Isn’t money (or wealth) the root of evil that communists are opposed to? Maybe if the people were all ignoring the falling coins because the State already provides them with all they need…
Milton Friedman would love that cartoon, becasue if gold became as plentiful as it is described here, who would take it in exchange for goods and services?
Well, Felix was a communist during the Thirties, but had a change of heart and actually named names before HUAC in the Fifties. Neither Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny ever spoke to him again.
The way I understand the argument, labor produces the wealth and the capitalist doesn’t. The capitalist has to exploit the labor, in essence stealing their production, in order to profit from their work. So a moneyless society would not be a communist ideal.
FTR, there are a lot of groups out there printing their own money. Whether anybody will accept it is another question all together. But it is legal.
My stepfather promotes this kind of charity, which he (and I) believe is Biblical, on Christian message boards all the time, and is consistently called a communist by the other posters.
I don’t know how to draw those pretty little boxes around quotes.
rjung, I assume that you are refering to me when you say “Am I the only person slightly disturbed that being charitable is being seen as communist?”
If I failed to make it clear, I certainly don’t think that charity=communism. It appears to me that printing money might be considered a redistribution of someone else’s wealth.
I’ve got no problems with Felix sharing his golden eggs. I really don’t have a problem with Felix printing money (after all it is a cartoon).
Here’s an excellent book on the creation and history of Felix. I read it several years ago and I don’t recall if it went into any great detail about the political philosophy of Felix creator Otto Messmer.
Huh. Part of a former screen name of mine on AOL was “Felix,” inspired partially by the cat. And now I go by “Otto.” Not AFAIK inspied on a conscious level by Otto Messmer, but still…
You put “[ Q U O T E ]” and “[ / Q U O T E ]” (no spaces) around the stuff you want to mark off.
Not for you specifically, no. I just find it weird that people would even associate the two at all (as in Phase42’s example); to me, it’s like comparing apples and skyscrapers.
