The concept I explore in my paper and in the accompanied film is equality. As outlined by Herbert Marcuse, the accompanied film tracks the history of labour conditions and the social implications that arise because of them. In the first instance, we see the craftsman as the embodiment of the principle of individualism. The second portion depicts Charlie Chaplin’s factory escapade as a symbol of the process of mechanized commodity production which, through the domination of the large enterprises of machine industry, abolished the free economic subject. The third segment captures the principle of competitive efficiency which favors enterprises with the most highly mechanized equipment—in this case being the computer. The final half of the film envisions a world whereby advanced technology and the free economic subject are reconciled. The Venus Project, founded by futurist Jacques Fresco, is an organization which aims to restructure society through global sustainability and the instillation of a resource-based economy—a seemingly utopian vision, but one that nevertheless functions to critique a current arrangement that allows for grocery stores to be full of food but for starvation to run rampant among the streets just outside.
