Socialism

From the bucket of cleaning supplies, Asako grasped a toilet brush and held it in the air. Its steel bristles twinkled in the afternoon light.

“As I explained,” she said, “this illness has laid an egg inside of you, and we have to penetrate deep enough to permanently obliterate it. The Red Scare will otherwise hatch and devour its host, reducing you to a chronically misinformed bigot. Is that what you want for yourself, comrade? And do you think this toilet brush might fit down your throat?”

“Uhm.”

“Or do I need something longer? You’re fairly tall… Oh, Yachi, are you done with that mop?”

“I’m not tall at all,” I said quickly, “and I don’t want anything down my throat.”

She took a step toward me. “Say ‘ahh.’”

“Please don’t.”

“It’ll be just fine. Think of me as your friendly communist dentist. Forfeit your bodily autonomy and all will be well.”

I backed away, preparing to bolt for the door. “I’d rather keep my ‘autonomy’ to myself.”

“Hmm? Would you now?”

“Surely taking it without my permission is… a kind of capitalist thing to do?”

With that, Asako burst out laughing. She dropped the brush to the floor. “Good point! It certainly is, and I’m no capitalist. And I was joking, for the record.”

“...Were you?” I allowed myself to relinquish my guard, but only for a second.

“Well, it’s true you need a good scrubbing. But the best way to scrub someone’s insides is to target their mind. That means I will have to explain the reality of communism. Verbally.”

“I’m telling you, I just don’t agree with it. Every time it has existed—”

“Communism has never existed.”

“Eh?”

“Not on any large scale… Hmph. It seems I am going to have to…” The girl paused, raising a hand to her chin. She tugged briefly on the mask. “Ah, well, there’s no way around it. I will have to, at last, define our terms.”

“You sure waited a while to do that.”

“Well, I couldn’t bear it if this story became a bore.” She paused again, seemingly discontent. “Do you think this mini-lecture will be entertaining enough on its own, or will I have to deepthroat you after all?”

“Funny joke.”

“Oh, I was never joking.”

“Huh?”

“Fine, alright, I won’t.” With a cackle, she marched over to the blackboard and pinched a piece of chalk. “Pull up a chair and listen! Yachi, you come too. As our second-newest member, you could benefit from a refresher.”

We collected chairs and sat in front of the blackboard. Yachi was more motivated than I was—she clutched a worn notebook, presumably to take notes. I just sat down and breathed, relieved that nothing was going down my throat.

Asako had written COMMUNISM on the blackboard.

“Let us begin,” she said. “Communism is a classless, stateless, moneyless society where all systems of exploitation have been dismantled. It is driven by this principle: from each according to their ability, to each—”

I piped up. “According to his needs, right?”

“Yes! Good boy! With that fundamental principle, there will be shared material wealth. We will no longer exist as slaves to the system, but instead take the system into our own hands. There will still be a form of governance, of course, but not a corrupt state. This will exist, ideally, in a peaceful global community. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Sure it does.” I crossed my arms, thinking about what she was saying. To my left, Yachi was jotting down notes. “Well, that’s basically what the Wikipedia definition was. It sounds nice, but isn’t it a bit…” I recalled Hitomi’s accusation. “Utopian?”

“It will not be a simple process,” Asako admitted. “That is why we have a transitionary system. Socialism is the word for this: a state of the proletariat which occurs immediately after a revolution. The working class controls the means of production, prevents a bourgeois resurgence, and creates the material basis required for true communism. Now, this is something we have seen in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam and so forth. They all had socialist experiments, and though these weren’t perfect, they all saw great success. Hold on, let me write that down!”

“Great success?” I raised an eyebrow, watching her scribble away on the board. “That’s not what I heard.”

“Then you have been lied to. Let’s go back to the Russia of the 1910s. A mess, really. The average person was a poor worker tucked under a conservative monarchy. Just a few years earlier, they had lost a costly war to…” She looked over her shoulder. “Do you know?”

“Uh. I don’t.”

“What about you, Yachi?”

Yachi spoke in her usual soft voice. “It was, if I remember correctly…” She pointed at her own chest.

Asako nodded. “Correct! It was our very own warmongering shitstain: Japan! A tad bit more rabid than we are these days, sitting politely as America’s dog. Back then, we’d messed poor Russia up big time, and they were suffering. Illiterate, impoverished farmers exploited by imperial powers. Do you know what happened next, though? Do you? Come on, Shinzo, you can answer this.”

“Was it the Russian Revolution?”

“Indeed! The Russian Revolution, which led to the Soviet Union. Fast-forward time. We compare 1910s Russia to 1960s Russia, and the difference is night and day. Completely literate, no homelessness, fully educated, industrialised, leaders in science, knitted together via trailblazing railway lines—their very own red strings of fate. Life expectancy nearly doubled. Fastest economic growth of the twentieth century, second only to us over here. Hell, they even crushed the Nazi menace, saving the world!”

“...And you’re saying socialism is the reason?”

“Yes! Obviously! It’s not rocket science, comrade. Well, actually, it was—please remember they were the first nation to put a man in space, too. Capitalism could only dream of that kind of rapid improvement from such poor circumstances. Let’s not act like this was a one-off, either! We can turn to China and see a very similar process.”

“Hold on. Didn’t you just criticise China?”

“What is now was not always. Old China was a stunted country that sold women as property. Socialism unified Chinese people against their American-backed Nationalist foes and brought about a progressive revolution. It multiplied Chinese living standards manifold, industrialised the country, fought and permanently abolished famine there, implemented much-needed land reform, and, ultimately, transformed China into a technocratic global superpower capable of reckoning with the imperial core. Oh, thank you, Comrade Mao!”

“Okay, but wasn’t he a total dictator—”

“I could go on!” Asako declared, flinging her piece of chalk with palpable ecstasy. It ricocheted off the ceiling, then the floor, and then very nearly collided with Yachi’s head (she didn’t realise, so enamoured in her notes). “I could talk about how socialism transformed the decrepit island nation of Cuba into global medical leaders. I could talk about how it was the socialists that invented the first LED, the first programmable computer, or even the first satellite. I could talk about how the socialists wrote the greatest literature of the twentieth century. The point, however, is as follows. And I want you to pay attention, Shinzo, and note it down like your comrade sitting not-coincidentally to your left.” 

After a dramatic pause, she cleared her breath. Instead of speaking, Asako picked up another chalk and hacked at the blackboard, leaving three striking words:

SOCIALISM ALWAYS WORKS.