Robin Hood - Was he a communist?
@complexvanilla (653)
India
May 13, 2007 1:26am CST
A discussion on Robin Hood by my friend Darkwing got me thinking about him, and also about his ideals. Darkwing, in her discussion points out that Robin Hood stole from the rich to feed the poor. Now, isn't that what communism all about? But the debate doesn't end there. Ayn Rand, in her book Atlas Shrugged, talks about the people who are responsible for making life miserable for hardworking businessmen and entrepreneurs. She goes on to name Robin Hood and his legend as the first instance of hardworking people being sacrificed for the betterment of lazy people. Ayn Rand says that the ideals of Robin Hood have been twisted out of context to serve dubious purposes. While the original ideal was to safeguard the interests of the talented, hardworking poor people, she claims that it was later used to protect the interests of the weak and lazy people against the hardworking and thus rich people. How do you feel about this? Special thanks to Darkwing for causing me to think about all this!
1 person likes this
2 responses
@andersmusician (1)
• Nigeria
4 Sep 09
complexvanilla reasoning would be absolutely correct if some humans, in some places of the world wouldn't discriminate people coming from lower economical clases because of _social_constructs_ such as race or culture. This behavior makes _social_mobility_ harder and makes more people to embrace socialism shamelesly. The truth is that these behaviors are inherited from generation to generation and strenghted by mass media. These behaviors apply to all economical classes, in the places were it happens (Third world and the American continent)
@vega83 (6342)
• Bahrain
13 May 07
hmm.. I never thought I'd hear this connection. I don't know that much about communism or the like, so I won't go into much detail about that. But I do believe that everyone should be paid according to the work that they do, and not the time that they put in. Robin hood, well, he was a thief, of course, but as we've been told he had good intentions at heart, but does it justify stealing? I don't really know. I do also believe in economic freedom and luckily I haven't been brought up in a place where different classes matter that much. I'm sure they do matter, maybe I just don't seem to notice it.
I do agree with the author you mentioned to some extent. Most rich people of today, are not rich by inheritance, people like Oprah, for example, she started out from the bottom, and we all know, that no one has to steal from her to help the poor. And she's done it all by her hard work. But to call one class of people lazy over the other would be to wrongfully generalize all of them, don't you think? I mean, I've seen poor lazy people, and poor hardworking people, but at the same time, I've seen rich lazy people and rich hardworking people, too.
I think that the story of Robin Hood was set in a time and place which was filled with poor hardworking people and rich lazy people, so in that case, it would be okay to think of him as the good hero. But if they showed good hardworking rich people in there, we wouldn't think of Robin Hood as the same.
It is weird though, that people who have lots of money, tend to get free stuff from other people, when they don't actually need free stuff, I mean, they can definitely pay for that stuff, right?? But I guess that would start a whole new discussion...
