I recently read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It contained some
passages that help us understand the political frustration that progressives
feel today. I merely quote these passages for your appreciation.
One of the passages was spoken by Jake
Blount the communist. His feelings reflect the frustration of millions of
low-wage workers today who dare not speak out against their oppression:
‘And look what has happened to our
freedom. The men who fought the American Revolution were no more like these D.
A. R. dames than I’m a pot-bellied, perfumed Pekingese dog. They meant what
they said about freedom. They fought a real revolution. They fought so that
this could be a country where every man could be free and equal. Huh! And that
meant every man was equal in the sight of Nature—with an equal chance. That
didn’t mean that twenty per cent of the people were free to rob the other
eighty per cent of the means to live. This didn’t mean for one rich man to
sweat the piss out of ten thousand poor men so that he can get richer. This
didn’t mean the tyrants were free to get this country in such a fix that
millions of people are ready to do anything—cheat, lie, or whack off their
right arm—just to work for three squares and a flop. They have made the word
freedom a blasphemy. You hear me? They have made the word freedom stink like a
skunk to all who know.’
Another passage was spoken by the black
doctor Benedict Copeland, who was giving a sermon to poor blacks gathered at
his house for a funeral:
‘Land, clay, timber—those things are
called natural resources. Man does not make these natural resources—man only
develops them and uses them for work. Therefore should any one person or group
of persons own these things? Can a man own ground and space and sunlight and
rain for crops? How can a man say “this is mine” about those things and refuse to
let others share them? Therefore Marx says that these natural resources should
belong to everyone, not divided into little pieces but used by all the people
according to their ability to work…Say a man died and left his mule to his four
sons. The sons would not wish to cut up the mule into four parts and each take
his share. They would own and work the mule together. This is the way Marx says
all of the natural resources should be owned—not by one group of rich people
but by all the workers in the world as a whole.
‘We in this room have no private
properties…All that we own is our bodies. And we sell our bodies every day we
live. We sell them when we go out in the morning to our jobs and when we labor
all the day. We are forced to sell at any price, at any time, for any purpose.
We are forced to sell our bodies so that we can eat and live. And the price
which is given us for this is only enough so that we will have the strength to
labor longer for the profits of others. Today we are not put up on the platforms
and sold at the courthouse square, but we are forced to sell our strength, our
time, our souls during almost every hour that we live. We have been freed from
one kind of slavery only to be delivered into another. Is this freedom? Are we
yet free men?...
‘And we are not alone in this slavery.
There are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and
creeds. This we must remember. There are many of our people who hate the poor
of the white race, and they hate us. The people in this town living by the
river who work in the mills. People who are almost as much in need as we are
ourselves. This hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it. We
must remember the words of Karl Marx and see the truth according to his
teachings. The injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate
us. We must remember that we all make the things on this earth of value because
of our labor.’
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