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SCI LIBRARY

Communism ... the Handmaiden of Privilege

Joseph Thompson



[Reprinted from an undated pamphlet, Simple Talks on Taxation, published by the author]



... Communism? Hell, there's no such thing!
… Isn't any Russia. Isn't any China. I s'pose you mean?
… Russia and China don't have Communism.
… They call themselves Communists, don't they?
… Sure. But there's a hell of a lot of difference between them and Communism.
… Like what?
… Well, if there's any one thing Communism's supposed to be it's the rule of the proletariat.
… Isn't that what they've got?
… You know darned well it isn't! They're all dictatorships, every last one of them.
… But they're workin' toward the rule of the proletariat, aren't they?
… They say they are, but you might as well wait for the day when the deck stewards will give orders to the captain of a ship.
… You think they'll never make it?
… Never.
… You think you know more than Trotsky, Lenin, the Chinamen. All those fellers?
… I know something Trotsky and Lenin didn't know.
… The hell you do! What is it?
… I know that it hasn't worked. They thought it would.
… Maybe it'll work sometime.
… Nope. They've got another delusion, says "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". That's been tried plenty of times and it's never worked. But they've certainly done big things for the privileged!
… Meaning who?
… Mostly what's called the Landed Gentry.
… You mean the Commies help the rich people that own all the land! How come?
… How come? Well, in all the countries where the people are most miserable, only a few people own all the land.
… Yeah. But the Commies are against that!
… That's the trouble. Consequence is, the minute anyone tries to correct the land situation, the howl goes up that he's a Communist, and we leap in to save the world from communism, and all we're doing is keep the privileged in power, and the people that we're going to "save", in slavery.
… Oh, but it's bigger than that. We're stopping the advance of Communism, and if we didn't, they'd take over the whole world!
… There's a whole lot of so-called Communists that don't want to be run by either Russia or China.
… What do they want, then?
… They want to throw off a small bunch that's oppressing them, but we go in and "save" them from doing what they want to do, set up the oppressor bunch stronger than ever, then we go 'way, leave a few hundred soldiers and a few thousand half-breed babies, dust our hands off, call it a day, and leave a population that hates our guts, so that when they rebel, we can go in there again and "put an end to Communism''!!!