Page:Meet the Communists (Flynn).djvu/13

 good Sunday dinner, like nice clothes, enjoy a joke, play with the children—are normal human beings.

We talk about the same things everybody else talks about. But with us it isn't like Mark Twain's famous story of the weather—"Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it!" We talk about health, houses, jobs, Negro rights, unions, votes, newspapers, the price of butter, the atom bomb, but we don't finish a chat by shaking our heads forlornly and letting it go at that.

We know they all tie up together. We know something can be done. We don't drift mentally in a sea of unsolved problems. We act to lead the people in the fight to solve their problems.

Communists have no interests apart from the people, no narrow selfish "axe to grind." To be a Communist is not a career. Anyone who is found to be self-seeking or egocentric, who is not capable of collective thought and action or amendable to criticism is eventually eliminated from our ranks, no matter how important a place he may occupy. "The greatest good for the greatest number" is the ethical concept of the Communists. Communists practice an enlightened self-interest in a passionate willingness to work unselfishly so that by freeing the workers from wage slavery all humanity is freed from greed and tyranny.

How are Communists different? In their intense and ardent devotion to a purpose in life that directs and fills their days and nights with efforts in the interest of the people, to eliminate all exploitation and oppression. Communists struggle unremittingly for all the immediate necessary interests of the people. There is no contradiction between helping to better organize unions, to fight for an extension of full democratic rights to the Negro people, and other such general political activities, and the ultimate goal of Socialism which will come more quickly through the solidarity, class consciousness and understanding developed in just such day to day struggles of masses of people.

WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

Maybe you're asking at this point: "Just what do you Communists mean when you say—Socialism?" It's not 13