06 December, 2007

The Ant: Hero of Socialism! Live like him!

The following modern fable is currently being widely circulated by reactionaries on blogs and through chain e-mails (Google gives 4,690 hits on this parable, virtually all of them from arch-conservative blogs):

Parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper

TRADITIONAL VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green." Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer! The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case. The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008.


I like this parable because it teaches two clear lessons:

1] The "Modern Version" shows clearly the failure of Bourgeois Liberalism. Half measures, programs targeted towards "victim groups," and government hand-outs are plainly failed policies.

2] The "Traditional Version" shows the failure of Free Enterprise Capitalism. The individualist Grasshopper, a libertarian living only for himself, is devastated by economic realities. While the socialistic Ant, living as he does in a cooperative nest where all workers contribute to the well-being of the whole, prospers and survives.

The moral is clear: Fight for Socialism!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So let me get this straight...you WANT to live in a world where the lazy, do-nothing leaches of society prosper by bullying and stealing from the hard-working, respectable members of society; and the hardworking ant gets stomped on for working hard? Don't you realize that after a while, the ant figures out it has nothing to gain by working hard, and the ants will stop working too. Then who will build the houses and raise the food for the whiny, lazy, do-nothing leaches of society to steal?

The idea of capitalism is that each member of society works hard and does their part because their success or failure depends on how hard they work. That means everybody in a capitalist society has an incentive to work hard. Ideally, those who are able to do so work hard and provide for themselves + pay a little in taxes to help those who can't help themselves. The result is that everybody who works hard propspers, and those who must depend on others are taken care of by the society.

Socialism, on the other hand, dictates that each individual member can never be more or less successful than the other members, no matter how hard he or she works. Therefore, the members have no incentive to work hard, and they only do what they must to get by. So those who are able to work hard, don't and potential is lost.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to live in a world with other ants like myself. Socialism breeds grasshoppers, not ants. Unfortunately, we live in a world where there are already way too many grasshoppers.

The Dutchman said...

So let me get this straight...you WANT to live in a world where the lazy, do-nothing leaches of society (like commodities traders, financial speculators, Enron executives, and rentiers) prosper by bullying and stealing from the working, respectable members of society; and the hardworking ant gets stomped on for working hard? Don't you realize that after a while, the ant figures out it has nothing to gain by working hard, and the ants will stop working too. Then who will build the houses and raise the food for the whiny, lazy, do-nothing leaches of society to steal?

The idea of socialism is that each member of society works hard and does their part because their success or failure depends on how hard they work, not how they can manipulate the system for financial advantage. That means everybody in a socialist society has an incentive to work hard. Ideally, those who are able to do so work hard and provide for themselves + pay a little in taxes to help those who can't help themselves. The result is that everybody who works hard and contributes to society prospers, while those who try to take advantage of others do not.

Capitalism, on the other hand, rewards those who can manipulate finances to avoid real work. Since there is no correlation between social usefulness and financial reward, actual workers have little incentive to work hard, and they only do what they must to get by. Of course, those who are clever mange to avoid useful work at all, don't and potential is lost.

I don't know about you, but I prefer to live in a world with other ants like myself. Ants are social insects, unlike the parasitical grasshoppers. Socialism breeds ants, not grasshoppers. Unfortunately, we live in a world where there are already way too many grasshoppers and most of them are running our government.

Yes, indeed, the Ant is a hero of socialism! Live like him!