EDITORIAL
Cooking Scrooge's goose
Come the end of the year, it is the earnest wish of vast
multitudes of people that the struggle to survive could take a
holiday--even if for just a few days. If only the burden of
daily life, with all its anxieties and humiliations, could be
lightened long enough for everyone to relax and experience joy
and fellowship with the whole world!
Stories about Grinches and Scrooges, Santa Claus and Jesus
Christ are told and retold, sung and resung. We are exhorted to
believe that miracles CAN happen, those who hoard the wealth
CAN be converted into kind and loving characters, all people
can come together and celebrate life with good cheer.
Somehow.
Alas. After a couple of days when people work very hard at
having fun, and some succeed, it's back to the real world.
Credit card bills have to be paid, kids go back to underfunded
schools, executions are resumed, more jobs are downsized, the
death toll in the world's "trouble spots" rises, and the boss
who laughed and joked at the Christmas party is cold and
haughty once again.
Grumbling and unhappiness are heard in the land. The
respectable and established people then lecture the rest of us
for not having the right values, for failing to believe in the
hallowed institutions of this society, which have served them
so well--institutions that they say are guided by the vision
and wisdom of a higher power. Yes, it says it right there on
every dollar and above many a judge's bench--"In God we
trust."
Communists are often accused of cruelly attacking the
cherished myths and traditions of the people. But insofar as
many of these myths reflect a deep yearning for social justice,
the truth is that communists seek not to destroy the myth but
to make it a reality. Only in that sense is the myth
destroyed--because it will no longer be a myth.
Lenin once wrote in a very concise outline on the "three
sources and three component parts of Marxism" that the movement
for socialism began not long after the bourgeois revolutions
had vanquished feudalism in Europe. Millions of peasants and
artisans had joined the fight for "liberty, fraternity and
equality," as the French Revolution promised, but then
discovered that capitalist rule brought a ferocious new form of
exploitation, this time of wage labor.
In response, many well-meaning people became utopian
socialists--they wanted a society of equals, without class
privilege and without oppression. They went about setting up
model communities, some of them relatively successful, in which
the wealth and property were shared. Their hope was that the
improved conditions in these communities would win over the
rich and powerful to their viewpoint. The bad Scrooges would
become jolly benefactors and learn how rewarding it is to be
kind and generous. In many ways, Dickens' "A Christmas Carol, "
which ends with boss Scrooge bringing a fat goose to the
starving Cratchit family, was in the spirit of those times.
What these early socialists didn't understand was that
people usually act in their own class interests. Big property
owners scheme and struggle to own even more property, which
means squeezing more value out of the workers they employ. If
they don't, they are pushed aside by others in the scramble for
the top. It is not a question of their personalities, whether
they are good people or bad people. Some may not have the heart
to throw workers out after years of service, or to cut wages
and benefits--so they hire others to do it for them. But it
gets done, because that's how the system works.
Workers, too, act in their own class interests when the
bosses force them to struggle. The workers' struggle leads in
the direction of solidarity and unity against the bosses. The
real season of good cheer will begin when the underfed and
exploited workers of this world unite and find a way to cook
Scrooge's goose.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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