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Let me define my terms. A Communist is a person who believes that the value of humanity will always trump the competing value of property.

Humanity Trumps Property.

A Communist is someone who believes that human rights are intrinsic. But our understanding of what constitutes human rights is far more expansive a list than that which is currently recognized by those in power. Most of us are in violent agreement that every child born on this planet is entitled to the human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but also to the most sophisticated medical care, the finest education, the safest shelter, the purest water and and the most nutritious food.

At heart, Communists define civilization as the joined effort to see how far we as a people united can extend our compassion. We are a people who will accept no limits to our civic imagination. We believe we can and must go beyond than what the present fuckery seems to allow possible.

Communists believe that governments working to protect the hoarded privilege of the few are depriving the many of their rightful means for existence. We believe that a government loses its democratic legitimacy to rule when it safeguards unjustifiable levels of inequality and allows its citizenry to suffer.

When kids fight over toys on the playground, you often hear some snot-faced brat snap, “Property is nine-tenths of the law!” And he’s right, you know. The law is preoccupied with protecting property. But a lot of those laws entail the government regulation of property so that people with all the property can’t use it to be assholes to everyone else.

You likely do not believe in the inalienability of the right to property. If it was cheaper for farmers to fertilize their fields with literal poison, would you not in that instance think the government right to interfere with the farmer’s right to property through land use regulation? Or do you believe, as some absurdists do, that the government has no moral obligation to interfere with private property and that the farmer has every right to poison everyone downstream from his farm since if that’s the cheapest thing for him to do.

If you have to think about this for even a second, you are an asshole.

There are numerous circumstances in everyday social life where it is morally necessary for the state to at least pretend as though humanity trumps property. Communists just think it should all the time.

Communists start from the basic premise that the Earth is a shared asset, one of which we all inherit a stake and that its resources for this reason must be held in common. We believe no person born is more or less entitled to a bigger stake than anyone else. We believe no nationality is more entitled than any other to profit from its resources. Because it is our moral obligation as what is perhaps its final generation to derail climate collapse before we all die, each of us will be called upon to give up far more than is fair to anyone if we are to survive.

If you believe that saving the planet is the responsibility of the collective, then you must also believe that the irresponsible monopolization of Earth’s resources by the few is a tyranny that we must end.

Humanity must trump property or property will trump the planet.

And if you agree with that premise, you’re more communist than you think you are, comrade.