Socialism part 1

If you think you are a socialist, then that means something is wrong with you. You must have read lots of nonsense made up by ideologists detached from reality; you must have listened to too many passionate speeches by Marxists such as Corbyn; you filled your head with ideas of equality, fraternity and equal opportunities. You got indoctrinated and fully rejected the fact that socialism did not work in any of the countries it was introduced to.

Do you think you know what socialism is? You are wrong. You are wrong, because you did not live in a socialist country. I did, and in my series of articles titled ‘Socialism’ I will present my personal memories of what it was like to live in that horrible system.

Socialists know that their ideas do not work in the real world, so for a while now they have been using new words to describe their ideas for a ‘more just, better society’. We already had Marxists, Trotskyists, Maoists, national socialists, Bolsheviks, Khmers, social democrats and others. The socialism I will tell you about was the one that existed in Poland and was called something different than all other socialist systems in the world – Polish ideology creators called the Polish version of socialism… (drum roll)… real socialism. This is why Poles sometimes jokingly say: real socialism failed. It’s about time someone tried unreal socialism…

My first memory of socialism? I was 6 or perhaps 7 and lived in a socialist regime. Yes, a regime. Socialism hates democracy and freedom of speech. Authorities in countries swaying towards socialism sooner or later have to make their people accept their ideas by force and use terror and censorship to silence the ones who try to resist. The working class people are to work for the elites and any criticism ends up with problems or jail or death. This is why people always and all over the world try to escape from socialism. Nobody has ever tried to shift away from capitalism to socialism…

During “real socialism” the working class lived in extreme poverty and buying anything legally was often short of a miracle. From time to time however the Party elites allowed for luxury items to make their way to the shops – those luxury items included oranges, which I adored. Yes – in real socialism an orange was a luxury item – it was the so-called equality in poverty – specialism of each type of socialism.

When I heard from someone that our local shop got a delivery of oranges, I begged my mum to buy me some. She however stated that she did not have time to queue for four hours to buy a kilogram of oranges – you need to know that socialism meticulously prescribes the permitted dose of ‘luxury’. My mum suggested that I join the queue instead. As queues in socialism tended to be gigantic, I waited in line for 4 hours – only the Party elites had unlimited access to any items without the necessity to stand in a queue.

When after four hours I finally reached the front of the queue, it turned out that the oranges were sold out and the only thing available was… toilet paper. I was young and naive, so I thought to myself: ‘Why would I want toilet paper? I want oranges’. I went home with a long face and told my mum what had happened. To this day I remember how annoyed she got when she found out I did not buy the cursed toilet paper. She just kept asking why I did not buy the toilet paper if it was in stock at the shop – after all toilet paper was hardly ever available! It was a luxury item! She was very angry for a short while and I remember that she was explaining everything to me (in a raised voice) and I still was not getting what it was all about.

Obviously, after a short while, my mum calmed down and explained to me that in socialism you need to buy whatever is in stock because you never know when it will be available in the shops again. She taught me the notion of barter: you buy whatever is available and later you look for people who need that item at the time and you exchange it with them for something you need.

Today this memory seems funny to me, but it best illustrates what socialism leads to. I have many more stories like the one above and will try to publish them on a regular basis if they prove popular.

Sylwester Zwierzynski

Lead photo: en.wikipedia., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=141055