Communism for Kids by Jacob Blumenfeld & Sophie Lewis & Bini Adamczak

Author:Jacob Blumenfeld & Sophie Lewis & Bini Adamczak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2017-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

trial no. 5

The people are now lying around the fallen snacks, puddles of grape juice, and mounds of extra movie tickets. With great difficulty, they find their feet again. Struggling to stand up, they try to think hard. There’s a problem, though; they’re almost as dumb now as they were before, under capitalism. That’s why their first suggestions aren’t so good. “I got it,” somebody says. “When everyone receives the same amount of stuff, nobody has any incentive to work. That’s why we all got lazy. The solution is simple: everybody should get exactly as many things as they themselves make.”

And so they—wait, not so fast! The people are coming to their senses. They remember to speak out when something doesn’t feel right. “This is not a good idea,” somebody squeals. “Some people can’t work as hard as others. And some people don’t need as many things as others because their needs are different. Just because some people can work faster and harder than others doesn’t mean they should get more stuff. That’s unfair.”

“That’s right!” says another. “Besides, everything would still revolve around these stupid things; we’re obsessed with how many things each of us makes and each of us gets. Once again, we’re ignoring the main question: How do we want to live?” Just like that, the people become so enraged at the things scattered around them that they all grab hammers and smash everything to little pieces. It takes quite some time to do this, because there really are so many things around.

When they’re finally done, they’re completely exhausted and have to sit down again. This time, however, the people aren’t sitting on top of heaps of irons, roasted tofu pigeons, and movie tickets. This time, they’re sitting on the wreckage of broken irons, squashed pigeons, and crumpled movie tickets. It’s not much better. From afar, it looks as though everyone has become incredibly polite because they’re constantly bowing down before each other. But it’s just an illusion; if you look closer, you’ll see that everyone is bending down to gather weeds and berries growing in the wreckage. The truth is, without things, the people are suddenly poor. The only way to satisfy their hunger is to gather wild berries. So the people stand up once again and rub their aching backs. “That’s not how we imagined it,” the people say, shaking their heads. “No, no, no. This isn’t communism.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.