Trojan Donkey

Several years ago I came across a hole in my education at a yard sale. No, I should say it was filling for a hole in my education. It was just a little pamphlet, about 5 by 7 inches and less than a quarter inch thick. I brought it home and it sat around collecting dust for a long time while I ignored my ignorance. Every now and then I’d put it in a yard sale pile. From a yard sale it came and to a yard sale it will return. It wouldn’t take me long to stuff this little filling into my knowledge cavity, but I just didn’t seem to have time. I had other priorities. What difference would it make anyway? Just let it go. And then, I would change my mind.

When yard sale day rolled around, I removed the little book from the “to go” pile, and put it aside for reading some time in the future - again. I vacillated on possessing, dispossessing and repossessing this famous little work until finally, in July of 2009, I picked up “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and began to read.

So here I am, lying in bed improving myself: eyelids drooping, mouth slackened, hands regripping the Manifesto as sleep repeatedly tries to end the chapter. The cat purrs by my side as I plod through the rhetoric wondering why these two guys weren’t immediately dismissed as a crank and a crack pot who suffered from the same neurotic compulsion to hear the sound of their own voice utter the word boozshwazee in contempt over and over again, repeatedly, many times. Bumper sticker: Boozshwazee Bad.

And then I came to it. The ten goals of communism succinctly put, sans ranting and raving…”openly, in the face of the whole world.”

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of child factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial productions, etc.

And now I’m awake, eyes wide, mouth agape. A few items on the checklist look familiar. A whirlwind of new government ownership of banks and auto manufacturers; threatened ownership of pharmacy, insurance, and medical businesses as well as threatened control of broadcast businesses, all in less than a year, appears to be creating a storm, a tipping point where the manifesto’s number one goal could be achieved. Don’t whine you greedy boozshwa capitalists – if the government takes what is yours it’s only for your own good,”for the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” As Mr. Emmanuel tells us, an adolescent is more important to treat medically than an infant, who has very little invested in him, or an older adult who has already had his chance to be an adolescent. It’s all fair and good. Get out of the way and stop your greedy clinging to life. How else are we to save social security and medicare.

Let the proletarian rule. Let him be his brother’s wallet’s keeper. “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property,….by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, …but which are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.”

We frogs have been soaking in the simmering pot for a while. The last shall come first: government near monopoly of education. The first coercive school attendance law was passed in 1850 and required 6 weeks attendance with generous exemptions for farm chores. The Manifesto was published in German in 1848, a document of a then secret society. Next, a heavy or progressive income tax. The US Constitution had to be amended to allow that to happen in the 1930’s. Then, abolition of all rights of inheritance. The death tax is still in a tug of war from administration to administration. Feel the roiling, boiling bubbles. Thank you, Karl and Fred for sharing.