Living Under Neocommunism
The beauties of the differentiated waste collection experience
By Arpad Szakolczai
These days, a system of differentiated waste collection has been implemented in most countries of Europe, and probably in many parts of the world. And we should be most happy about this, as it helps to reduce damage to the environment, thus saving the planet, even contributing to make our lives better and happier, right?! Well, in a certain way, perhaps, yes. But certainly not the way it is implemented now. So, let’s review some of the details, which can also help us in realising how, three and a half decades after the collapse of communism in Europe, we are threatened with a new kind of communist regime, or the imposition of sovietisation.
Let’s list, one by one, some of the main features of this “differentiated waste collection” regime. Some of the details which follow may be particular to the Italian case, but the general features are similar in differentiated waste disposals everywhere they have been implemented.
Differentiating outside means differentiating inside
The first, and seemingly trivial point is that in order to put the waste into the proper collection bins, we need to differentiate the garbage at home. This might sound a triviality, but it is not so, as with urbanisation, globalisation, and the similar keywords of the “modernisation experience” almost all of us are increasingly forced to live in large global cities, in which living space is increasingly reduced, and where every square inch or centimetre in our homes count. So, to replace one garbage bin with three, four or even five is no small matter, as it literally eats into our lives, which are already increasingly subject to ever more pressures. The cost of such pressures are systematically ignored by our rulers, who continue pushing for ever more “competition”, or pressure and anxiety.
And the issue is not simply space, as garbage is not just any item, but is certainly ugly, hurts the eyes and reduces one’s comfort, and is often smelly. One might say that this makes no difference, as one can take the garbage outside to the collection bins as often as before. This point, however, is not completely true, as it is not so simple to carry four or five separate garbage bags with us, so it is “natural”, in some way, to accumulate them at home.
Even more importantly, for many if not most people here comes the second, special beauty of differentiated waste collection: door-to-door collecting.
Door-to-door waste collection
This again, on the face of it, sounds like a great improvement, prepared just for you by your caring local government: you don’t even need to take the garbage to the bins outside, we come and collect it for you! The reality, however, is quite different, as this basically means to effectively transform our homes into garbage collection units, or waste heaps. As what it really means is that there is nowhere to carry your rubbish, usually for a week; every day the “authorities” collect a different kind of rubbish, so all other rubbish must wait for its turn. Not forgetting that, of course, our devoted local authorities, and their agents, need their repose, so there won’t be collection at the weekends – just when you certainly cook at home for your family; so, you must smell your fish or chicken refuse, remains of a Friday dinner or Saturday lunch, for a good few days. But this is your problem! Especially if, in spite of “our” better advice, you still eat meat, instead of just munching on cereals, or even better, insects – not forgetting about the top of it, Soylent, which is very “environment friendly”; and if it does not have any taste, well, all progress has its price.
One might say that this should not be a problem, as, if garbage is accumulating at home, one can take it to the nearest outside garbage bins. However, our local authority big brothers have been careful to prevent such cheating – you must bear with the garbage at your home until we can come and collect it!: as such outside garbage bins are now in many if not most cases closed by keys.
Closed bins
Here we have arrived at one of the heights of the absurdities connected to the new garbage disposal regime. Residents in many places are now given keys or similar devices with which they need to open the bins to dispose of the garbage. This first of all meant that all existing local council garbage bins were thrown away – which, obviously, generated an enormous amount of rubbish as the first step in reducing waste! A fantastic idea! But this is not all, as the new garbage bins had to be bought, and for this produced, which on the one hand meant huge new expenses, safely transmitted to local residents, who now have to pay significantly increased local refuse taxes (just check your refuse tax bill!); and on the other huge, lucrative contracts to the pals of local council officials. So, in case you see many new, enormous SUV-s in your neighbourhood, where new garbage bins were introduced – and which really pollute the air! – you can bet that quite a few of these were bought by your money with which the local authorities financed the substitution of all previously existing and fully functional local garbage bins. Yet, I bet, nobody is looking into the character of such contracts, as differentiated garbage disposal helps to “save the planet”, so the people involved should be thanked and promoted and not investigated concerning the trivialities of related contracts.
But this is still not the end of the madness and absurdity, going hand in hand with institutionalised corruption, around differentiated garbage disposal. The next point concerns the absurdity of the very idea of closing, thus rendering publicly inaccessible, garbage bins. For a long time, the easy availability of garbage bins was a sign of civility: if you needed to throw something away – a Kleenex, a receipt, the cover of a candy or an ice-cream, whatever – you always had a garbage bin nearby. Well, not anymore, as all such garbage bins were systematically eliminated – thrown into the garbage again! magically transforming rubbish bins into rubbish itself! heaping paradox upon paradox and absurdity upon absurdity! – as supposedly being replaced by the differentiated bins: but then, these bins are now closed! Unavailable! So, if you happen to walk somewhere, outside the narrow limits of your residence, or – God forbid – happen to walk a dog, you can take your refuse home with you, and in the meanwhile smell the pooh of your dog. Well, anyway, it is your problem that you have a dog! And, especially, that you walk! We have told you that it is best if you stay at home, looking at your huge TV screens, and listening to the news and updates we bring to your homes! Just as in the good old Covid days, when everybody stayed home, glued to the various screens, and did not wonder aimlessly outside, on the streets. This is why Covid was so much liked by all neo-Communist governments in our Brave New World.
The closing of the rubbish bins, this ludicrous absurdity, however, offers further possibilities for our new rulers, whoever they are. As I don’t know who they are, though I have some guesses, and certainly suspect that they have good contacts and even bases in Brussels and Davos. At any rate, in this way, in the future, but perhaps already in the present, they can effectively control us – their favourite occupation! – by measuring which neighbourhoods best follow the guidelines, least confusing the various rubbish containers, and even allocate budgets according to such data or measures. We can thus “compete” with each other – another one of their absolute favourite tricks, replacing any sense of community with meaningless games of competition, by which we can try to defeat each other, gaining the illusion of winning – while in fact they win all the time, in the sense of increasing their control.
Local budgets
The point concerning budgets, as related to differentiated garbage disposal, needs some more attention, as this is both a central aspect of the policies and a good way to reveal further their neo-communist character, though on first appearance it does not seem so. Communist authorities were little concerned with budgets, they had various other ways to keep people under control. In our current neo-communist regimes, however, this is done by budgets. Let’s see how.
The central issue is that in a normal European community, in the past, local services were provided for the local citizens, as and when they needed them. Garbage had to be disposed of, so there were places, and ways, by which people could dispose of it. It was assumed that they were reasonable and relatively moral adults, so they knew how to do this. This, however, is no longer the case, as on the one hand it is assumed that we are irresponsible; we produce too much garbage; thus, they must find better ways to educate and punish us, for our intransigence, so we better tolerate whatever inconvenience this might cause. Such a perspective of course ignores that garbage is produced by technologies and companies who in this way “make more money”, so this or they should be addressed first of all. But this is out of the question – they want to discipline us, not diminish corporate profits. On the other hand – and this is just as important – the new garbage disposal regime is not directed by our needs and exigencies, but those of the local authorities: what and when something is convenient for them. So, if before the dog was wagging its tail, now it is the tail which is wagging the dog – or, the “dog” and the “tail” were redefined. And such reversals were very typical of the Soviet communist experience. The word “Soviet” has special significance here, as the original meaning of the Russian word was exactly “local council”. So, calling all this “sovietisation” is even technically correct.
Let me give a concrete example. In the old, or the classical European way, garbage bins were placed where we, Europeans needed them. Now, they are placed where – and when – the local authorities can collect them with the smallest possible budget expenditure. This is the real reason for door-to-door garbage collection.
Control by garbage collectors
A further and by no means sociologically negligible aspect of the differentiated garbage disposal regime is that it transforms garbage collectors from persons filling one of the lowest prestige jobs into wielders of real power – a turn quite different from the one envisioned in a classic short story by Ray Bradbury. Now they have the duty to check whether the right garbage has been disposed in the assigned day, and with it the duty, and the power, to warn or punish those who fail to follow properly the rules.
This is particularly tricky, as door-to-door garbage collection is usually practiced in suburbs or areas where houses have gardens, thus are “upper class”, and where garbage collectors are not simply “lower class”, but often migrants. So, the new practice animates a nice class war, through resentment, which is of course a very standard Communist trick.
If the collectors deem that the incorrect type of garbage was left out, or not in the right way – for example, if the lid was not properly closed (and according to regulations only properly closed lids must be collected!), or some other infringement occurred, such as the expiry date of the sticker being missing from the top of the bin, or the date being actually expired – then they are entitled to exert their power and not collect that particular refuse. Of course, refuse taxes must be paid, stickers exposed, etc. etc., but in life all kind of things can happen – to mention a trivial example, when one has just moved in it might happen that for some weeks the “proper” identification is missing. In the past – and I tend to say, under normal conditions – this is no problem, as there are the garbage bins that everybody can use, and the new in-movers can safely throw it there. But not so under the new regime, which is not prepared for such special occasions – just as it is obviously not prepared for holidays, or any other “liminal” conditions, as of course garbage collectors also go for holidays, and don’t collect, but when again of course households are most busy with cooking and other activities that in our world produce vast and also quite smelly garbage, and which we can again enjoy in our own homes, for long days.
And so, at any rate, what happens with the refuse that was refused to be collected? Well, it is simple: it remains there, at the doors, until stray cats, various birds, and the winds dispose of it, in their own way: dispersing it on the streets and squares.
Waste on streets
Thus, the result of the new regime is in front of the eyes of everyone, or at least very many people: streets flooded with waste. Of course, it happened even before that waste ended up dispersed in public streets. However, there are at least two reasons why this new development is particularly problematic, even positively perverse. First, because those people who should collect the refuse are now entitled, even encouraged, not to collect it, under certain conditions; and second, because this waste now inundates the streets at the nicest parts of towns, in areas where otherwise many people prefer to walk, and where now they have to enjoy, apart from the beauties of the surrounding landscapes, the scenery of garbage spread over the area.
The “Norm”
A further, crucial problem – and I have to finish here, as all this must be ended, one cannot talk infinitely about garbage – is the normative mentality the regime implies, now in the strict statistical sense of the word: we not only must dispose of the right kind of garbage on the right day, but also fitting all the garbage in the right box, without for example being unable to securely close the lid, whether food, paper, or undifferentiated waste – especially the latter case. The problem is again trivial, and this is that on a “normal” day or week this might even be fine, but there are all kind of reasons for having not normal, rather “liminal” days – for e.g., when there is a birthday, or another family event; or when one travels or goes on a holiday, or returns from it, and so has extra garbage to dispose of. But no, this cannot be done, the “policy” only applies for and so “requires” normal days or weeks. Or, as my sons expressed it, differentiated garbage disposal was invented for pensioners, who are always at home, don’t have work, and so can take down every day the garbage as required. But if somebody is a student, for example, or has specific work shifts, or must regularly travel on certain days of the week, and so on and so on, then a day or two is lost, waste accumulates, and your home is steadily transformed into a garbage heap.
No way out?!
However, and in spite of everything, nothing can be done, not a single voice can be raised in protest, as differentiated garbage disposal is the number one public interest! We must save the planet! Who would and could oppose this?!
Yet, it is exactly here that the heart of the problem lies.
Missionary zeal
The tight analogy between communism and the differentiated garbage disposal regime is best visible in the missionary zeal by which the policies are presented and defended. There can be no question of any reasonable discussion of the whats and hows, as any dissenter from the policies is immediately labelled as not simply an enemy of the people but outright the enemy of mankind; in fact, there can be no question of any dissent whatsoever. The situation is similar not simply with Communism but with all the so-called “New Social Movements”, and their various “politically correct” and now “woke” follow-ups, whose demands are always presented in the name of the victims and/ or the universal interests of mankind.
All this, to be sure, is a secularised modality of Christian mobilisation, best visible there in the Crusades, one of the most questionable episodes in the history of Christianity. But such mass mobilisations, and the shameless use of technology, are still characteristic even of the Catholic Church. In one of our pilgrimages, where we arrived, after a particularly taxing day, tarting at 5am, at our station, which was also a contemporary sanctuary, around 6pm, we had to wait at least an hour, while the local officials set up loudspeakers for an outside evening mass, patently making it understood that we had all the time to wait, and in any case were quite annoying to give so much trouble to the local potentates while performing their delicate mission. This, to our great astonishment, was to transmit the mass technologically, which we considered, to say the least, highly absurd and counterproductive. But it helped us understand the real source of the unlimited modern obsession with technology: once one becomes literally fixated on an overriding goal, whether religious or secular – and, in fact, even more when purely secular, as inside religions there can be internal moderating or limiting currents to technological obsession – no questions can be raised about the means used to reach the goal; and technological solution are, from the perspective, only considered as merely means.
Such campaigns were matters of daily life under Communism. At first, under Stalinism, these were campaigns against the bourgeoisie, of course, including all intellectuals, beyond the “capitalists”, and then against the “kulaks”, or the richer peasants, thus singling out for attack anybody who had a degree of independent existence and mind. But then, once these targets were eliminated or at least subdued, the campaigns had to continue, inventing always new targets, like helping Vietnam, Ethiopia, the Third World in general, always more remote but presumably overriding causes – anything which was at a safe distance from the pressing shortcomings of daily existence under communist regimes. Thus, such campaigns were precisely not about matters of real daily life, but fakes, ways to justify that life was stolen from everybody. Campaigns became permanent in order to hide away the real, troubling issues of everyday existence. And the situation is exactly the same now, here, while seemingly and presumably the opposite: youthful energies are incited, but only to be channelled in ways deemed safe by our rulers, and which help to deviate attention from the real troubles of daily existence, just as from the real culprits responsible for the deteriorating condition of Nature, or the environment.
An epilogue
Through the current garbage/ waste/ rubbish/ refuse situation, a 1972 song by the Hungarian rock group Illés, “Szemétdomb” (refuse dump or garbage heap), gains a strange actuality. Illés was the most popular rock group in Hungary in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Golden Age of rock music, the Hungarian equivalent of the Beatles (the Rolling Stones also had an exact Hungarian equivalent, in Omega; and even the Bee Gees, in Metró). Illés was also the most politically exposed and committed rock group, in the sense of anti-Soviet anti-Communist overtones, for which the group was the most proscribed in those times, and even its 1973 dismantling can be at least partly attributed to increased pressures from the authorities who at that moment took a more hard-line turn. This song certainly contributed to this turn, as was used in a 1972 film (Add a kezed, “Give me your hand”), so gained immediately a particularly wide circulation.
The song was playing with the manifold Hungarian slang use of the word for garbage or rubbish (szemét), applying it in a hardly veiled manner on the Communists. It played, first of all, with the old and very common Hungarian metaphor “like the cock on the top of the garbage heap”, the Hungarian equivalent of “like the cock of the walk”, with the Communists clearly identified with the cock, and the country the garbage heap into which they transformed it. Furthermore, szemétláda or ‘rubbish bin’ was a term applied to particularly nasty persons, and those called this way in the song show characteristics unmistakeably applying to the Communists, though in an ironic key, like leading a sheltered life, having a specific “work method”, talking about the “public need for dirt production”, and using the slogan “word of the enemy”. The song played with the limits of tolerability, also characteristic of other songs in the film, and evidently even went beyond them.
As the song also reveals, in its second line, in 1972, Hungarians thought that “we” – meaning now all of “us” in the West – lived at the dawn of a new age, the glorious age of full modernity – it is only “us”, Hungarians, forced by the Soviets to live under a Communist regime, who lived in a garbage heap. By today, the terms have changed, and it seems that all of us in the modern global world are inundated by garbage. As a way to deal with this “problem”, Brussels, or Davos, or at least “some bodies”, discovered a solution that in absurdity goes beyond even the madness of the communists of the old times. Illés only finished their song by stating that the garbage heap is home of the rubbish. Now, courtesy of Brussels & Co., it is our own homes that are transformed into heaps of garbage – a development anyway pioneered by technology.