The message is not “wealth is bad” because it is wealth that is used to build the new communist society. Now, we could argue ad infinitum about whom the gold actually belonged to (yawn; I’m not gonna convince you and you’re not gonna convince me so let’s just skip ahead to “let’s agree to disagree”) in the first place.

The ethics of what people would do in a life-or-death situation like this aside (hint: you don’t know what you’ll actually do until you have to, no matter how much you’d like to think of yourself as virtuous), what’s really interesting about this parable is how clearly it announces the intentions of communism—only when the bad people are dead will the downtrodden be able to build paradise.

So don’t say that you’ve not been warned, especially if the 100 million deaths in the 20th century alone are just not proof enough for you. “It’ll be different this time. We (the ones we’ve been waiting for, the right people) will be in charge.” Sure, sure.

(via Laughing Wolf)