Who needs fresh air?

I've spent the morning reading selections from our good buddy Karl Marx, whose stunning portrait you see on the right. Look at that beard!

While much of it is, in a practical sense, outdated, the general flavor of his ideology still hits home. What would it be like to live in a world where your sense of self was not defined by your occupation, by your earning power? Where the work you performed benefitted you directly, rather than someone else? Where "stuff" didn't matter quite so much and there was more time for fresh air?

I know this all sounds fairly reductionist, and I don't really believe that a truly socialist state could exist in a healthy, civil manner considering our avarice and lust for product. Appetites have been whetted, consumerism has been the driving force for more than fifty years in this country, and powerful people really like being identified with their work (or, more accurately, with their ability to harness the work of others for profit...). But Marxist ideology is still valid and useful. The working class still resists, most often in a surreptitious, unsanctioned, unorganized manner. What they do is not considered political. But it is, deeply.