“Communism….I think people are trying to erase it from Poland’s history. But there were some things that were good under communism. The cinema, the theater. And people are forgetting,” the young Polish man tells me.

“And capitalism,” he continues, wrinkling his nose now, “capitalism is about what you have. It’s to have instead of to be.”

He’s drunk and I think he wouldn’t be saying these things otherwise. These things about souls. Everyone else I have asked about communism talks in terms of stuff. How little of it there was. No food on the shelves, no clothes in the stores.

If they are young, the Polish people I have asked talk of stories they have heard. Then they change the subject quickly. And because of that, listening to him, I can’t help but think that this young man is half right. Maybe the Poles don’t want to forget completely. But they would rather focus on Poland’s bright European future then dwell on it’s iron Soviet past. The stuff of the future, instead of the lack of stuff in the past.

The older people, the ones who do really remember — they talk about how work didn’t mean as much back then. How you could work hard and work long to try and buy a car. When you had the money, you had to the Party for permission. Then you had to wait. Three, four years. Sometimes you had to pay more, pay twice because the records were lost and prices went up. Even then there was no guarantee. Cars were a luxury. No matter how hard you worked, there was no guarantee of any stuff.

This drunk young man is the first I’ve asked who talked about the cinema and not the stuff. The cinema under communism was about what you were. Under oppression, you have to be more creative, more artistic, in order to say what you are. With capitalism, it’s about what you have. Or so he is telling me, his sentences running into one another.

I wrinkle my brow at him, breathing a short burst of air out, trying to organize my thoughts.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” I finally say. He looks at me, a little startled that I’ve interrupted his discussion of Polish cinema. “I think in capitalism,” I continue, “it’s about to have in order to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, okay,” I say, “what’s a punk?”

“A what?”

“A punk.”

He looks at me blankly for a moment.

“A bald man?” he ventures.

“No,” I say, trying to figure out a different way to make my point, to explain better. “Like the music! The guys who like the music.” I tell him, miming a guitar solo.

“Ohhhh!” he says, catching on, “leather jackets!”

“And safety pins in the ear.”

“And mohawks!”

“Exactly!” I exclaim. “That’s my point. If you want to be a punk, you have to have certain things.”

“But I’m speaking about something beyond mohawks,” he assures me. We’re speaking of the bigger things, the things beyond mohawks. We move on to another topic, but I can’t help dwelling on it still. Is he speaking about a “to be” beyond the mohawk?

For most of human history, what you wore, what you literally looked like on a day to day basis — was determined by your class and your occupation. Nuns dressed one way, school teachers another. Brick layers had a look that differed from stock brokers. The grocer’s wife and the broker’s wife would never have been caught dead wearing anything even a little similar.

But now? That’s simply not true anymore. Sure, your class still affects the quality of the clothes you can afford. But only to a certain extent. Trendy, upper class girls head to Urban Outfitters to achieve the grungy look of heroin addicts in 1978. Middle class moms carefully shop at Walmart and H&M to copy Michelle Obama’s beautiful bare armed style. Goodwill is cool. Macklemore said so. Everything is on it’s head and no one is dressing by class anymore. They’re dressing for style.

Style is the art of consuming without letting it consume you. It’s the art of finding the self within the stuff. Are you a punk? In modern capitalism, I know that not because of how you talk, or how much money your parents make, or where you went to school. I know it because of the safety pin in your ear and the leather jacket on your back. But if you have style, there is a self within that stuff. There is something about you, something within you, something in your very soul, that is a punk. Maybe you had to get all the stuff in order to develop that part of your soul. But the self within the stuff can exist without it. Maybe you had to have in order to be. But now you just are.

Maybe oppression does force you to be creative to find your soul. And maybe the cinema and the theater did flourish in Poland under communism. But capitalism doesn’t bury your creativity. It doesn’t crush your soul. Capitalism doesn’t force us to consume the stuff like hoarders, with so much of it that it buries, it crushes the rest of us. We can have style. We can consume without letting it consume us. We can develop the soul within the stuff. We can have in order to be.