My attendance at grammar school coincided rather unappealingly with the height of the cold war. This resulted in my spending a portion of each day sitting cross-legged, head in lap, either alone under my desk or, more sociably, against the wall in the corridor. When not so occupied I could be found sitting in class reading avidly about the horrors of life under Communism. I was not a slow child, but I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey. This was a belief widely held among my classmates and it was reinforced daily by teachers and those parents who were of the Republican persuasion.
Among the many devices used to keep this belief alive was a detailed chart that appeared yearly in our social studies book. This chart pointed out the severe economic hardships of Communist life. The reading aloud of the chart was accompanied by a running commentary from the teacher and went something like this:
“This chart shows how long a man must work in Russia in order to purchase the following goods. We then compare this to the length of time it takes a man in the United States to earn enough money to purchase the same goods.”
All of this was duly noted by both myself and my classmates, and the vast majority of us were rather right-wing all through grammar school. Upon reaching adolescence, however, a number of us rebelled and I must admit to distinctly leftist leanings during my teen years. Little by little, though, I have been coming around to my former way of thinking and, while I am not all that enamored of our local form of government, I have reacquired a marked distaste for Theirs.
My political position is based largely on my aversion to large groups, and if there’s one thing I know about Communism it’s that large groups are definitely in the picture. I do not work well with others and I do not wish to learn to do so. I do not even dance well with others if there are too many of them, and I have no doubt but that Communist discothèques are hideously overcrowded. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is not a decision I care to leave to politicians, for I do not believe that an ability to remark humorously on the passing scene would carry much weight with one’s comrades or that one could convince them of the need for a really reliable answering service. The common good is not my cup of tea—it is the uncommon good in which I am interested, and I do not deceive myself that such statements are much admired by the members of farming collectives. Communists all seem to wear small caps, a look I consider better suited to tubes of toothpaste than to people. We number, of course, among us our own cap wearers, but I assure you they are easily avoided. It is my understanding that Communism requires of its adherents that they arise early and participate in a strenuous round of calisthenics. To someone who wishes that cigarettes came already lit the thought of such exertion at any hour when decent people are just nodding off is thoroughly abhorrent. I have been further advised that in the Communist world an aptitude for speaking or writing in an amusing fashion doesn’t count for spit. I therefore have every intention of doing my best to keep the Iron Curtain from being drawn across Fifty-seventh Street. It is to this end that I have prepared a little chart of my own for the edification of my fellow New Yorkers.
The following chart compares the amount of time it takes a Communist to earn enough to purchase the following goods against the amount of time it takes a New Yorker to do the same.