"PARASITE OBSESSED" ENDNOTES
[1]. Cissie Dore Hill, "Remembering Joseph Brodsky," Hoover Institution, October 30, 2000, https://www.hoover.org/research/remembering-joseph-brodsky. See also Russel E. Burford Jr., "Getting the Bugs out of Socialist Legality: The Case of Joseph Brodsky and a Decade of Soviet Anti-Parasite Legislation," The American Journal of Comparative Law 22, no. 3 (1974): 465–508.
[2]. While we don't have complete figures for how many citizens of the USSR were convicted under Soviet anti-parasite laws, it's still possible to get a sense of the numbers involved. The USSR was composed of fifteen separate states, one of which was the Russian Republic, which included the capital of the USSR, Moscow. Figures for one year (1961) in this one out of fifteen republics indicate that approximately 20,000 were convicted under anti-parasite laws and sent into internal exile (forcibly moved to a remote part of the USSR). The total figure of parasite convictions across all republics and all years was unquestionably far higher. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Social Parasites: How Tramps, Idle Youth, and Busy Entrepreneurs Impeded the Soviet March to Communism," Cahiers du Monde russe 47, no. 1/2 (2006), 396.
[3]. Over the course of socialist history, thousands of socialists have attacked "parasites" and all things "parasitic." Besides the dozens of examples in the body of the text, you will find a list of 101 socialist thinkers who have used these terms at the end of this paper. A separate Red Flags Press resource, titled "101 Damnations: 101 Socialist Thinkers Attacking 'Parasites' and 'Parasitism,'" provides a specific example from each of these thinkers.
[4]. Jean Massart and Emile Vandervelde, Parasitism, Organic and Social, trans. William MacDonald (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895). Regarding Emile Vandervelde's status as a democratic socialist, see Janet Polasky, The Democratic Socialism of Emile Vandervelde: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited, 1995); Vandervelde was the chairperson of the Second International (a worldwide organization of socialist parties). For details, see The Democratic Socialism of Emile Vandervelde, pp. 86–90.
Another work specifically on parasites is John Keracher's Producers and Parasites (The Proletarian Party, 1935), available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1935/producers-parasites.htm.
[5]. "Une économie sociale fondée sur l'égalité et la justice ne saurait admettre de parasites." Constantin Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d'économie sociale et politique, ou Études sur l'organisation des sociétés (Capelle: Libraire-Éditeur, 1842), 512.
[6]. Anton Cu Unjieng, "What will socialism look like?," November 7, 2014, Socialist.ca www.socialist.ca/node/3906
[7]. "Le commerce entier est basé sur un système de mensonge…. C'est un corps purement parasite." Théodore Dézamy, La code de la communauté (Paris: Rouannet, 1842), 82.
[8]. Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (New York: Brentano's Publishers, 1928), 278.
[9]. Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation, 3rd ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1944), 437. Emphasis in original.
[10]. Socialism rejects the lack of duty in liberal society. Socialist superstar Charles Fourier makes explicit socialism's foundation on the call that we "return to duty" and "return to productive work"—work that those running society approve as a good use of what they see as society's time, even though the time in question exists in our lives: "It [socialism] will return to duty and return to productive work those legions of parasites, called merchants, which create a domain of piracy within each empire" ("Elle [socialisme] fera rentrer dans le devoir et retourner au travail productif ces légions de parasites appelés marchands, qui se créent un domaine de piraterie au sein de chaque empire"). Charles Fourier, Crime du commerce (Paris: Aux Bureaux de la Phalange, 1845), 19, emphasis added.
[11]. "Everybody already is learning to see the loafer as the worst enemy, the parasite as the worst enemy." Fidel Castro, "Castro Calls for Efforts in Agriculture [June 21, 1963]," Castro Speech Database, accessed December 12, 2020, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1963/19630721.html, emphasis added.
[12]. "All that Socialism and a Socialist system of distribution can claim to do is to destroy social parasites." MacDonald, Socialism and Society, 204, emphasis added.
[13]. Socialists frequently talk about recovering labor power that capitalism allegedly wastes by permitting the existence of so many parasitic professions. Socialism would eliminate these professions, thereby creating a pool of labor to be employed for purposes approved by those running socialist society. Specific examples appear below, but we've already seen noted British social democrat J. Ramsay MacDonald say, "All that Socialism and a Socialist system of distribution can claim to do is to destroy social parasites" (MacDonald, Socialism and Society, 204). MacDonald means that socialism accomplishes the reconstruction of society along socialist lines by forcing "parasites" to perform other work—work that socialists approve of.
[14]. The Latin American Network Information Center maintains a Castro Speech Database (http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro.html), which houses translations of many of Fidel Castro's speeches from the years 1959 to 1996. A search of the database (which does not include the twenty years of speeches given after 1996) returns 140 instances in which Castro refers to "parasites." In a handful of these instances, he's discussing actual biological parasites. But in the vast majority of cases, he's attacking humans as "parasites" and in particular citizens of Cuba's socialist society whom Castro did not feel were properly performing their compulsory duty to socialist society.
[15]. Untold hundreds of thousands have been executed for being "parasites." In the USSR, all those deemed "kulaks" (better-off peasants) were considered to be one type of "parasite" and were the subject of a state-sponsored "liquidation" campaign initiated by Vladimir Lenin and accelerated by Joseph Stalin. Millions died as a result of a human-made famine, and hundreds of thousands were executed by more direct means. Lenin made it clear that, in the USSR, the "kulak" was one of the many subspecies of "parasite": "The way to escape the disadvantages of small-scale farming lies in communes, cartels or peasant associations. That is the way to improve agriculture, economise forces and combat the kulaks, parasites and exploiters. …There must be no place for kulaks and parasites in the proletarian Poor Peasants' Committees" (Vladimir Lenin, "Speech at a Meeting of Delegates from the Poor Peasants' Committees of Central Gubernias [November 8, 1918]," accessed January 5, 2021, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/nov/08.htm, emphasis added). For additional background on the famine, see Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin's War on the Ukraine, (New York: Doubleday, 2017).
In one infamous telegram, Lenin called for the public hanging of a hundred kulak "bloodsuckers" to make an example of them and motivate additional violence against kulaks: "1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers. 2. Publish their names. 3. Take away all of their grain. 4. Execute the hostages—in accordance with yesterday's telegram. This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks" (Vladimir Lenin, "Hanging Order," November 1, 1918, US Library of Congress Archives, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ad2kulak.html).
Hundreds of thousands of those who perished at the hand of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were considered "parasites." The Khmer Rouge (or "Red Khmer"; the Khmer are the dominant ethnic group in Cambodia) took over Cambodia on April 17, 1975, and founded Democratic Kampuchea. Their very first act was to strip all city residents of their rights and to force them to leave their urban homes to work in the countryside, taking only the clothes on their backs. These former city residents were labeled "April 17 people." The Khmer Rouge had a slogan: "The April 17 people are parasitic plants" (see Henri Locard, Pol Pot's Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar [Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2004], 185). Buddhist monks and the educated were also slaughtered wholesale in Cambodia's notorious Killing Fields. In an interview, a former Khmer militiaman explained, "Buddhist monks and educated people were seen as 'parasites' who just lived off other people's work without contributing themselves" (Timothy Williams and Rhiannon Neilsen, "'They will rot the society, rot the party, and rot the army': Toxification as an Ideology and Motivation for Perpetrating Violence in the Khmer Rouge Genocide?" Terrorism and Political Violence 31, no. 3 [2019], 505). In his study of over 20,000 mass graves of Khmer Rouge victims, Craig Etcheson reports that not only were millions murdered during the brief history of Democratic Kampuchea for being "class enemies," but often their entire families were as well. Even street noodle vendors and taxi drivers were labeled that worst type of parasite, the "capitalist," and liquidated (Craig Etcheson, "'The Number': Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity in Cambodia," Documentation Center of Cambodia, accessed August 4, 2020, www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm).
What did the Khmer Rouge claim to be accomplishing in Cambodia? Their documents state that they were engaged in "the revolutionary struggle for democracy, the revolutionary struggle for socialist revolution and the struggle to build socialism." They were creating democratic socialism! ["The Party's Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields" as quoted in David P. Chandler et al, "Pol Pot Plans the Future. Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976-1977 (New Haven: Yale University South East Asian Studies, 1988), 114.]
[16]. "Retour Des Improductifs aux travail … nous avons en fonctionnaires nul ou négatif les DEUX TIERS de la population … Les Parasites domestique … Les Parasites sociaux … Les Parasites accessoires." Charles Fourier, Traité de l'association domestique agricole, vol. 1 (Paris: Bossange, 1822), 468–70. Emphasis in original.
[17]. Mat Callahan, "Imagining Art after Capitalism," in Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, ed. Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, and Michael Steven Smith (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), 175, Kindle.
[18]. George Burns, "Working for Cool Capitalists," International Socialists, September 12, 2016, http://www.socialist.ca/node/3173.
[19]. Paul D'Amato, The Meaning of Marxism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 200, Kindle.
[20]. Deirdre Griswold, "Capitalism, Socialism and Personal Property," Worker's World, October, 31 2008, www.workers.org/2008/us/socialism_1106/.
[21]. W. B. Gallie, "Liberal Morality vs. Socialist Morality," Philosophy 24, no. 91 (1949): 327.
[22]. French Socialist Louis Blanc is typically credited with developing the expression "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" in the 1840s (though another French socialist, Étienne Cabet, also started using it at roughly the same time).Here's one example of Blanc's using this expression in 1848: "Chacun produise selon son aptitude et ses forces, que chacun consomme selon ses besoins." [Louis Blanc, Nouveau discours de M. Louis Blanc sur l'organisation du travail devant l'assemblée générale des délègues des travailleurs (Paris: Commission du Gouvernement Pour Travailleurs, 1848), 10.]
[23]. Webb and Webb, Soviet Communism, 437. Emphasis in original.
[24]. "Le plus grand génie de la terre, dont les travaux n'auraient pas pour but l'intérêt général, serait regardé comme un parasite complètement inférieur au moins intelligent des fonctionnaires, concourant à l'œuvre commune selon ses capacités." Étienne Cabet, Système de fraternité (Paris: Au Bureau du Populaire, 1849), 105.
[25]. E. Sylvia Pankhurst, "What Is Behind the Label? A Plea for Clearness," in A Sylvia Pankhurst Reader, ed., Kathryn Dodd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993; orig. 1923), 132.
[26]. "It [socialism] will return to duty and return to productive work those legions of parasites, called merchants, which create a domain of piracy within each empire" ("Elle [le socialisme] fera rentrer dans le devoir et retourner au travail productif ces légions de parasites appelés marchands, qui se créent un domaine de piraterie au sein de chaque empire"). Fourier, Crime du commerce, 19.
[27]. Socialism is "inexorably" based on compulsory duty for four reasons: (1) Socialist philosophy begins with the belief that mandatory duty is morally correct. (2) Socialism explicitly rejects the lack of compulsory duty in liberal society and points to the lack of duty in liberal society as the root of the many problems socialism blames on capitalism. (3) Socialism requires compulsory duty to create and operate a socialist society. Without this duty and the power it gives the state to override individual rights, the transition from capitalism to socialism and the maintenance of socialism would be impossible. (4) Karl Marx and other early socialist philosophers believed that socialism would quickly yield a world of superabundance, a world in which ever good and service the world's population needed was available for free forever. They believed that this world of what noted socialist thinker G. A. Cohen described as "limitless conflicts-dissolving abundance" (Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality [Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995], 131) would result in a society of such bliss that it would literally mean the end of government, thereby ending the threat of compulsion that arises from socialism's foundation on duty. We now know this expectation is a pipe dream.
The foregoing reasons mean socialism will be forever based on a dangerous form of duty, a duty that means every future socialist experiment will be an authoritarian accident waiting to happen. See the Red Flags Press paper "Doubling Down on Duty."
[28]. "Ces inutiles ne sont pas seulement les oisifs comme vous pourriez le croire. Ce sont surtout des gens qui travaillent, même parfois qui travaillent beaucoup, mais dont le travail produit rien et qui doivent par conséquent vivre sur le travail d'autrui. Or, ces inutiles, le socialisme les supprimera ; il en fera des au lieu d'être des parasites ils deviendront des producteurs." Lucien Deslinières, Entretiens Socialistes (Paris: Choisy Le Roi, 1901), 35–36.
[29]. Eugene V. Debs, "The Socialist Party's Appeal," The Independent (New York), October 15, 1908, https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1908/appeal.htm.
[30]. William Morris, "An Unpublished Lecture of William Morris," ed. Paul Meier, International Review of Social History 16, no. 2 (1971): 23.
[31]. Leo Huberman and Sybil H. May, The ABCs of Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1953), 18.
[32]. Karl Kautsky, "Revolutions Past and Present," in Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship and Other Works by Karl Kautsky (Boston: Pine Flag Books, 2013; orig. 1906). Kindle.
[33]. Keracher, Producers and Parasites.
[34]. "Tout ce que mangent un riche et les domestiques et autres gens qui le servent et satisfont ses goûts et ses besoins, est consommé en pure perte ; … Le capital étant inutile doit être supprimé pour diminuer les frais de la production sociale. La révolution sociale est chargée d'accomplir cette œuvre d'économie. Elle ne détruira pas la propriété́, comme le demandent inconsidérément les anarchistes, elle la s débarrassera de ses parasites." Paul Lafargue, "Le Lendemain de la Révolution 3," Le Socialiste, January 7, 1888.
[35]. Callahan, "Imagining Art after Capitalism," 175.
[36]. "Mais pour un Goethe, un Tolstoi, un Puvis, combien de fainéants qui essaient de déguiser leur parasitisme en prenant la livrée des travailler intellectuel!" Émile Vandervelde, Essais socialistes: l'alcoolisme, la religion, l'art (Paris: Felix Alcon, 1906),207.
Socialist great Nikolai Bukharin also calls artists parasites: "By its labour, the working class does not merely pay its own wages, but it creates in addition the income of the upper classes, creates surplus value. Through a thousand runnels, this surplus value flows into the pockets of the master class. Part goes to the capitalist himself, in the form of entrepreneur's profit; part goes to the landowner; in the form of taxes, part enters the coffers of the capitalist State; other portions accrue to merchants, traders, and shopkeepers, are spent upon churches and in brothels, support actors, artists, bourgeois scribblers, and so on. Upon surplus value live al1 the parasites who are bred by the capitalist system." [Nikolai Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, (London: The Communist Party of Great Britain, 1921), 36.]
[37]. Money, "Work in the Great State," 105.
[38]. "Surely it must be said that if the coming change in the basis of society [from capitalism to socialism] were to make an end of all this sham and half-sham art without any hope of new art arising from it the loss would not be great." William Morris, "Individualism at the Royal Academy," Justice, April 24, 1884.
[39]. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956; orig. 1847), 63.
[40]. "Il faut assez de cultivateurs, il ne faut pas trop d'écrivains." Richard Lahautière, Petit catéchisme de la réforme sociale (Paris: Hachette, 1839), 10.
[41]. Hill, "Remembering Joseph Brodsky."
[42]. Ben Quinn, "Jewish Labour Movement passes no-confidence motion on Corbyn," The Guardian, April 7, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/07/labour-defends-antisemitism-response-after-documents-leak.
[43]. Benjamin Mueller, "Labour Party Suspends Jeremy Corbyn Over Anti-Semitism Response," The New York Times, October 29, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/world/europe/jeremy-corbyn-labour-anti-semitism.html.
[44]. Quinn, "Jewish Labour Movement."
[45]. Quinn, "Jewish Labour Movement"; PoGabriel Pogrund and Richard Kerbaj, "Labour's hate files expose Jeremy Corbyn's anti‑semite army," The Times, April 7, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-s-hate-files-expose-corbyn-s-anti-semite-army-9zzl0gxpv.
[46]. Mueller, "Labour Party Suspends Jeremy Corbyn.".
[47]. Jennifer Scott, "What does the Labour anti-Semitism report say?," BBC News, October 20, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54731222.
[48]. On the anti-Semitic thinking of Blanqui, Chirac, Dézamy, Fourier, Leroux, Malon, Proudhon, Rouanet, Toussenel, and Tridon, see George Lichtheim, "Socialism and the Jews," Dissent, Summer 1968, 314–42. The anti-Semitism of Hyndman and Hobson is detailed in Claire Hirshfield, "British Left and the 'Jewish Conspiracy': A Case of Modern Anti-Semitism," Jewish Social Studies 43, no. 2 (1981): 95–112.
Lucien Deslinières writes: "The Jew in collectivist society will no longer be harmful. Being no longer able to live as a parasite of commerce, speculation, and monopolization, being no longer able to attract the saving of the workers to him, he will be reduced to work or leave. He will work. As little as possible, but he will work" ("Le Juif, dans la société collectiviste, ne sera plus malfaisant. Ne pouvant plus vivre en parasite de commerce, de spéculalion, d'accaparement, ne pouvant plus attirer à lui l'épargne des travailleurs, il sera réduit à travailler ou il s'en aller. Il travaillera. Le moins possible, mais il travaillera"). Lucien Deslinières, L'Application de la systeme collectif (Paris: Librairie de la Revue Socialiste, 1899), 503.
Auguste Chirac wrote about "the seductions of Jewish parasitism" ("les séductions du parasitisme juif") in La Prochaine Révolution, code socialiste (Paris: P. Arnould, 1886), 51.
[49]. Victor M. Glasberg, "Intent and Consequences: The 'Jewish Question' in the French Socialist Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century," Jewish Social Studies 36, no. 1 (1974): 61–71.
[50]. Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed.Robert Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978; orig. 1843), 26–46.
[51]. Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, trans. M. Epstein (London: T. Fischer Unwin, 1913), 205.
[52]. Alphonse Toussenel, Les Juifs, rois de l'époque: histoire de la féodalité́ financière, 3rd ed. (Paris: C. Marpon, 1886).
[53]. "In Toussenel's Les Juifs, rois de l'époque: histoire de la féodalité́ financière came the charge, soon to be echoed by an antisemitic chorus, that 'the Jew rules and governs in France.'" Glasberg, "Intent and Consequences," 61.
[54]. "Le nom du parasite maudit depuis des siècles par tous les travailleurs, c'est celui du juif." Alphonse Toussenel, Travail et fainéantise: programme démocratique (Paris: Au bureau du travail affranchi, 1849), 14.
[55]. "Et notez bien que pas un juif n'a fait œuvre utile de ses mains, depuis le commencement du monde." Toussenel, Les Juifs, 123.
[56]. "Tout gouvernement qui tient aux bonnes mœurs devrait y astreindre les Juifs, les obliger au travail productif, ne les admettre qu'en proportion d'un centième pour le vice ; une famille marchande pour cent familles agricoles et manufacturières ; mais notre siècle philosophe admet inconsidérément des légions de Juifs, parasites, marchands, usuriers, etc." Charles Fourier, Le Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire, ou Invention du procédé d'industrie (Paris : Bossange Père, 1829), 32.
[57]. George Lichtheim, "Socialism and the Jews," Dissent,Summer1968, 317.
[58]. Deslinières, Entretiens Socialistes, 35–36.
[59]. "Ce sera précisément l'une des premières tâches du socialisme, quand sonnera son heure, de faire le départ, en vue des déclassements et des reclassements nécessaires, entre les tâches parasitaires et celles d'intérêt collectif." Paul Louis, "Le budget sous la troisième République," Revue Socaliste 26 (1897): 708.
[60]. "Las medidas drásticas de eliminar al parasito, ya sea al que esconde en su actitud une enemistad profunda la sociedad socialista o al que esta irremediablemente reñido con el trabajo." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, "Contra El Burocratismo [February 1963]," in Obra revolucionaria (Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1971), 548.
[61]. For decision making by debate and vote in a hypothetical democratic socialist society, see Danny Katch's discussion of the community voting on such issues as whether convenience stores are to be permitted to stay open 24/7. Danny Katch, Socialism … Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015), 77; See also Ernest Mandel, Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy (New York: Verso, 1992), 208.
[62]. This topic will be covered in greater detail in a forthcoming paper from Red Flags Press: "'Socially Useful': A Misleading Concept at the Heart of Socialism."
[63]. MacDonald, Socialism and Society, 204.
[64]. "Mettez au travail ces millions de parasites insatiables et vous doublerez votre production agricole et industrielle." Désiré Descamps, "Le Problème de l'Amour," Revue Socaliste 26 (1897): 36.
[65]. Laurence Gronlund, The Cooperative Commonwealth: An Exposition of Modern Socialism (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1884), 115.
[66]. Shaw, Intelligent Woman's Guide, 25.
[67]. Fidel Castro, "Castro Speaks at Uvero Battle Commemoration [May 28 1965]," Castro Speech Database, accessed October 20, 2020, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1965/19650528.html.
[68]. "Les parasites et les inutiles seront rentrés dans les rangs de l'armée laborieuse." Georges Renard, Le régime socialiste: principes de son organisation économique et politique, 6th ed. (Paris: Felix Alcon, 1907), 48.
[69]. Attacking sales and marketing as unethical is another aspect of socialist thought that remains the same as it ever was. For example, early socialist superstar Charles Fourier, who believed that two-thirds of the population of France (and 100 percent of Jews) was made up of parasites, attacked all selling incessantly. He accused merchants of being purveyors of "the lie and nothing but the lie":
"When a science [i.e., liberal economics] adopts in principle to admit only the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, it is surprising that its doctors are passionate about the merchants, the stock-dealers, and the Jews, in whom, far from finding the truth and nothing but the truth, one was so sure to encounter the lie and nothing but the lie" ("Lorsqu'une science adopte en principe de n'admettre que la vérité, toute la vérité, rien que la vérité, il est surprenant que ses docteurs se passionnent pour les marchands, les agioteurs et les Juifs, chez qui, loin de trouver la vérité et rien que la vérité, on était si assuré de rencontrerle mensonge et rien que le mensonge." Charles Fourier, Théorie de l'unité́ universelle, 2nd ed., vol. 2, in Œuvres complètes de Charles Fourier,vol. 3(Paris: Éditions Antropos, 1966; orig. 1841), 196–97.
[70]. Daniel De Leon was an American socialist leader. He translated August Bebel's Woman under Socialism into English. De Leon included a note to Bebel's discussion of how socialism would "reconstruct" society by suppressing supposedly "useless" work. De Leon lists "611,139 salesmen and women" from the 1900 census as an example of "useless labor, parasitism, in the United States" (August Bebel, Woman Under Socialism, trans. Daniel De Leon [New York: Schocken Books, 1971], 298n).
A second example of socialists attacking advertising, marketing and direct selling comes from Floyd J. Melvin: "It is in the process of marketing the product that the cost of competition reaches its acme of socially useless expenditure. The prodigal extravagance of competitive advertising needs but to be mentioned, for it is as conspicuous as the advertising itself. And this stupendous social loss is further augmented by the cost of armies of high paid salesmen under conditions requiring the most lavish expenditure for purposes of demonstration and display." Floyd J. Melvin, Socialism as the Sociological Ideal: A Broader Basis for Socialism (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1915), 164–65.
[71]. Friedrich Engels, "Speeches in Elberfeld," in Marx Engels Collected Works, vol 4 (Chadwell Heath: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 248.
[72]. Engels, "Speeches in Elberfeld," 248.
[73]. Bebel, Woman under Socialism, 298, emphasis added. Two additional examples in n. 74.
[74]. J. Morrison Davidson, The Old Order and the New: From Individualism to Collectivism (London: William Reeves, 1902), 161, emphasis added. Here are two more examples: "There will be no lawyers, or hardly any, because there will be nothing for them to do, and the amount of ability thus set free for useful work will be more than sufficient to conduct all the administrative business of the communitty" (Frank Fairman, The Principles of Socialism Made Plain [London: William Reeves, 1888], 134, emphasis added); "Thousands of men would be set free from work upon waste to do the economic work for lack of which we remain poor" (Money, "Work in the Great State," 117, emphasis added).
[75]. Benito Mussolini, "Socialist Da La Lima," in Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, vol. 1 (Florence: La Fenice, 1951; orig. 1908), 134.
[76]. Mario Palmieri, The Philosophy of Fascism (Chicago: Dante Alighieri Society, 1936), ix, 40, 81, passim.
[77]. Spencer M. Di Scala and Emilio Gentile, eds., Mussolini 1883–1915: Triumph and Transformation of a Revolutionary Socialist (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016), preface, Kindle.
[78]. Di Scala and Gentile, Mussolini 1883–1915, preface.
[79]. Pierluigi Allotti, "The Style of a Revolutionary Journalist" in Di Scala and Gentile, Mussolini 1883–1915; Stefano Biguzzi, "A Revolutionary in Trentino" in Di Scala and Gentile, Mussolini 1883–1915.
[80]. Biguzzi, "A Revolutionary in Trentino." See also Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, vols. 1–7 (Florence: La Fenice, 1951). These seven volumes, more than two thousand pages altogether, represent a substantial portion of Mussolini's writings as a socialist.
[81]. Renzo De Felice, preface to Benito Mussolini, Utopia: Rivista Quindicinale del Socialismo Rivoluzionario (repr., Milano: Feltrinelli Reprint, 1970), 5.
[82]. "Noi siamo la generazione dei costruttori che col lavoro e colla disciplina, col braccio e con l'intelletto, vogliono raggiungere il punto estremo, la mèta agognata della grandezza della nazione di domani, la quale sarà la nazione di tutti i produttori e non parassiti." Benito Mussolini, "Speech to the workers of the Automobile Transport Company [Rome, January 18, 1923]," in Mussolini Autori Vari,ed. David De Angelis (self-pub., 2017), Kindle.
[83]. "La patria che noi sogniamo è quella dove tutti lavorano e dove i parassiti non esistono più." Benito Mussolini, "Speech to the people of Ferrara [September 22, 1924]," in De Angelis, Mussolini Autori Vari.
[84]. "We will have such an abundance of everything…. We can have it with our work, with the effort of our working people, with a country of workers without parasites of any type." Fidel Castro, "Castro Speaks at Uvero Battle Commemoration."
[85]. "This [Cuba] must be more and more a country of workers and less and less a country of parasites." Fidel Castro, "Castro Addresses July 26 Celebration [July 26, 1963]," Castro Speech Database, accessed January 5, 2021, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1963/19630726.html.
[86]. Examples of present-day socialists attacking alleged parasites and parasitism appear above (see, for example, end notes 17-20), but numerous additional examples can also be found in the Red Flags Press companion paper "101 Damnations."
[87]. "Parasitism, it's the enemy!" ("Le Parasitisme, c'est l'ennemi!") (Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, "To the Workers of France," Le Socialiste 77 [1892]: 1); Castro called parasites the "worst enemy" (Fidel Castro, "Castro Calls for Efforts in Agriculture [June 21, 1963]," Castro Speech Database, accessed December 12, 2020, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1963/19630721.html).
[88]. Mao Tse-tung, "Combat Liberalism," in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 2 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 31–34. See Marxists.org, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm
[89]. There are numerous ways to prove "democratic socialism" is a misleading marketing slogan and not a new version of socialism. For details, visit our sibling website ketofriendlysocialism.org.