READY, FIRE, AIM: Straight Out of the Communist Manifesto

I always enjoy reading the letters to the editor, in the Pagosa Springs SUN — the weekly newspaper that’s been serving the Pagosa community since December 3, 1909.

So many curious submissions! It boggles my mind to think of how many thoughtful letters have been submitted to the SUN editor since 1909… mostly complaining about the potholes, I imagine.

But do we find the letters are… sometimes short on humor?

We tend to take ourselves seriously, as a community. Maybe that comes from living in the middle of nowhere and having an uncomfortable feeling that we probably don’t matter, in the broader scheme of things. That’s certainly a feeling I can identify with.  As much as I hate to admit it… being myself a serious person.

I’m thinking about a letter shared yesterday, from a frustrated local resident who has an issue with our water district’s “workforce housing” surcharge.

He wrote:

These liberal interlopers on the PAWSD board, will defend this funding scheme as a fee, not a tax. It is an added cost to everyone’s water bill that has nothing to do with providing water. I was never asked if I wanted to fund workforce housing. Workforce housing is a term straight out of the Communist manifesto.

I don’t know how I could be approaching my 61st birthday and still be blissfully unaware that our water district is run by Communists.  Not only Communists, but also interlopers.

Is there anything worse than a Communist interloper?

But let’s not rush to conclusions. The journey to conclusions ought to be a pleasant walk in the woods, preferably smelling the roses along the way.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party came off the presses at the German Workers’ Educational Society print shop in London, in February 1848. It was mainly the work of economist Karl Marx, with some input from sociologist Friedrich Engels and several other interlopers, and appeared as a 23-page pamphlet, enhanced by various typographical errors. A second edition appeared in April 1848, with some of the typos corrected.

I’m not sure which edition our SUN letter writer has been reading?

Perhaps the same version that President Ronald Reagan had been reading when he stated:

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

A person can read Marx and Lenin, without understanding them. Speaking from personal experience.

Actually, President Reagan never said that he’d read Marx and Lenin. He merely implied that he understood them. You can understand a Communist interloper without ever reading what they wrote. You can just ask your wife to read them, and give you the Cliff Notes.

I pose the question, about which version served as the inspiration for our SUN letter writer, because the version I’ve been reading was published by the Marxists Internet Archive in 2010, as a PDF file.

To be clear: I’m not a Marxist. It’s totally innocent research based on my interest in “workforce housing” and the fact that, reportedly, “workforce housing is a term straight out of the Communist manifesto.”

Running a search of the PDF file, the term “workforce housing” does not appear. In fact, the word “housing” does not appear. Karl Marx had a lot of big ideas about society and culture and Capitalist Oppression, but he was seemingly uninterested in housing.

My conclusion being, that some people talk about the Communist Manifesto without ever actually reading it.

Meanwhile, my research into Karl Marx led me to an interesting image on the Orinoco Tribune.

I had not realized how much Karl Marx looks like Santa Claus. Or vice versa, how much Santa Claus looks like Karl Marx.

And the red suit?

Was Santa’s bag of toys really marked with the Hammer and Sickle? I wouldn’t doubt it. There’s nobody who embodies the complete opposite of American Capitalism quite as well as Santa Claus. Giving gifts to poor children? And not expecting any profit in return?

(I’m hoping Santa has stopped giving lumps of coal to naughty children, what with climate change and all. Nasty stuff, coal.)

If Karl Marx had taken a lesson from Santa, and spent his life handing out toys for free, he probably would have accomplished more than he did with that silly Manifesto.