The fourth email that I received from a contact in Hell.
{Start of email}
I certainly was not expecting
him to address me in English, but this is Hell, so why not. He looked like what
I expected: He looked like Charleton Heston dressed up as Moses. So when I saw
him, I exclaimed without thinking, “Moses!”
“Yes,
what do you want?”
“Sorry,
man,” I said. “You just look a lot like Moses in the movie.”
“Well, I
am Moses, as a matter of fact.” He stopped hobbling along with his rod (the
one, I assume, that he threw down in front of Yul Brynner I mean Pharaoh and
which became a snake) and looked at he.
“Wait a
minute,” I said. “Moses, in Hell?”
“I wasn’t
expecting it either,” he said.
“But…”
“Everybody
asks me. Here’s how it happened. You see, it appears that I am a communist.”
“A what?”
“That’s
what I said,” answered Moses. “There
was no such thing when I was on the Earth. But it seems that millennia after I
died a certain philosophical and political movement called communism started,
led largely by a man named Karl Marx.”
At that
moment who should come along but Karl Marx. His face is unmistakable.
“Greetings,
Comrade Moses!” said Marx. “Good to see you! I’m happy that you are down here
in Hell with me. Not Heaven. Heaven! An exclusive club! I wouldn’t want to join
any club that would have me as a member.”
“Wrong
Marx,” I said.
“I don’t
want to talk to you,” Moses said to Marx.
“What
makes you a communist?” I asked Moses.
Marx
decided to answer. “A little review,” he said. “Capitalism is all about the
unlimited and intergenerational accumulation of land and wealth. It leads
inevitably to a wealthy upper class, generation after generation, who have
outlandish political power, as well as economic power. This was the whole idea
behind aristocracy, monarchy, and capitalism. I thought that everyone pretty
much believed in this system until I came along. But boy, was I wrong!
“Moses,
here,” continued Marx, “commanded the people of Israel to observe a celebration
every fiftieth year, which he called the Jubilee. For forty-nine years, people
could buy and sell, and make capitalistic profit from, land. But—now get this—every
fiftieth year the land would revert to the original owner’s family! It’s right
there, in the
Law of God, in Leviticus 25!
A built-in pressure-escape valve to prevent excessive capitalism! And get this:
every Jubilee year, the slaves would be freed! Can you imagine what a
catastrophe this law would be for the modern world economy? It would force
everybody to care about each other and… Say, Moses, how did it work out,
anyway?”
Moses
cleared his throat and said weakly, “Actually, we never put it into practice.
Nobody ever has. Just like the Sabbath of the Fields.”
“Ah,” I
said. “I know what that is. It is another law…now, let’s see, where was it…”
“Leviticus
25, the same place as the Jubilee law,” said Marx.
“Right,”
I said. “All farmland could be cultivated for six years but had to lie fallow
the seventh. This would give the land a chance to recover from ecological
damage.”
“It was
mainly intended to put the brakes on unlimited wealth,” said Moses.
“And so
that means that Moses was a communist, which the Conservatives in Heaven equate
with all kinds of idiocy and evil. Say, Moses, how about grabbing some lunch?”
Marx smiled.
“But I
don’t like you, you godless Communist, I mean…”
“Get
used to it, my friend. We are going to be down here together for a long time.”
Marx put his arm around Moses’ robed shoulder and they walked away.
{End of email}
