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Animal Farm 1.13 Communists Care… a la Shmoop.

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Communists Care. Seriously. They want nothing but the best… for themselves, anyway. [Communists walk into room]

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They didn’t care at all about the people they overthrew.

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But that’s another story.

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Remember the ideals of communism?

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We’re sure you do…, but here’s a refresher, just in case.

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A stateless society. There shouldn’t be powerful people with authority over the populace. [Powerful people hit with a gavel]

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Instead, everybody works for the common good,

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everybody is treated with respect, and everybody shares the fruits of their collective labor.

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Egalitarianism. That’s a fancy word meaning everybody is equal. There isn’t supposed

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to be rich or poor. And nope, no middle class, either. [Communists standing together]

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Everybody is supposed to be equal. Without private property, nobody has more than anybody else.

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Classless. Equality doesn’t just refer to money and bling and stuff. [Communists holding pile of money]

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A classless society doesn’t have kings and queens, czars and supreme leaders.

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It has comrades.

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We’re all in this together….a la High School Musical. [Communists on stage and curtain closes]

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Freedom from Oppression. If you don’t agree with someone, you don’t have to be afraid

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of freezing to death in a Siberian slave camp or disappearing in the Great Purge. [Communists freezing in the cold]

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Collectivism. Everyone sits around the campfire,

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hashes out the issues, and decides how to handle them. S’mores optional, but appreciated. [Guys round a campfire eating s'mores]

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So, communists really do care about creating a new society, even if they have to kill off

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all the rich and powerful to do it.

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It’s the regimes like totalitarianism and fascism that don’t care – the kinds of

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government that take over when communist ideals are subverted by corruption.

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Let’s see. Do any of the communist countries live up to our list of ideals? [Map of the Earth]

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Well, Russia isn’t even on the list.

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Is China a “Communists Care” country? Nope. It’s got leaders, rich people, poor

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people, private property, knock-offs, and tons of tchotchkes.

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Cuba. Hey, they’ve got a president, vice president, and a whole bunch of ministers. [President and Vice-President of Cuba appear]

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And don't forget the cigars so famous that John F. Kennedy hoarded a bunch before he

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slapped a trade embargo on the country. Laos. Um, they’ve got a secretary general,

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a president, and a prime minister. That doesn’t sound very stateless to us.

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Besides, people own property. [A private property]

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That’s red flag number one right there. Or should we say not-red flag?

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North Korea. If there were a parallel today to Stalin’s Russia, this would be it.

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With the whole laundry list of propaganda, rule by terror, oppression, their very own version [list of propaganda for North Korea]

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of “Spontaneous Demonstrations,” and the people’s adoration of their hot-looking leader, this

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place is like a Stalin-era clone. Vietnam is similar to Laos. It has a president, [President and Prime Minister of Vietnam appear by a river]

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a prime minister, and a market economy where people own things, unlike a collective economy

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where the state owns things. It’s much more pink than red.

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So what the heck is going on here? We call all these countries communist, but according

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to our “Communists Care” meter, they aren’t. [Communist care meter moves to a low reading]

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What’s up with that? Well, they all have one political party…and

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that makes it easy for the party to stay in control and rule without opposition.

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And what about them is like Animal Farm? They all morphed into regimes that have authoritarian [Windmill spinning]

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rule, rely heavily on propaganda, and practice various degrees of oppression, despite potentially

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good intentions at the start. So, communists started out caring about their

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ideals. They just got lost on the road to “how do we do this?” and were left eating [Communists left in a desert and car rides off]

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the dust of the power grabbers.

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