Maybe

When I was a wee boy growing up in Glasgow I sort of thought that everyone lived like us and then this church group invited me to visit one of their leading members’ house. The house was in Bearsden and I discovered things like washing machines and gardens and stuff like that and while the experience didn’t manage to convert me to the ‘Jesus man’ it was productive in that I realised that not everyone lives in a pokey wee flat, with damp and a leaky roof and with a toilet shared between three families. That realisation did lead me even at that early stage to the belief that it wasn’t really fair that some people lived in big houses, while others lived in pokey wee flats and by the time I got round to reading Proudohn’s, ‘What is Property’, I was ready for it and the fact that some people inherit and some don’t became, well just unfair as later did the idea that someone could actually acquire value added on my graft.
Perhaps, I should have become a communist but I didn’t and there are very good reasons for my not doing so and now, I am; a cross between “Lumpenproletariat”, “Kleinbuerger” and “Bildungsburger”. However, I do still believe that resources are finite and that the demands of capitalism are unlimited and that the planet is heading for another catastrophe. Nevertheless, there is this “carpe diem” thing about me, let the devil take tomorrow attitude and football and beer are my “panem et circenses” and maybe, just maybe, that is the best way to be even when I still occasionally shed a tear when I think of Brecht’s, “Maybe far away, or maybe real nearby, Rich men are supping on hamhocks; poor men are waiting to die." However, maybe when that tear is being shed, it is the socialist who is shedding it.