TY - JOUR
AU - Ryan, Michael
AB - Why I Am a Communist: Response to Hassan Michael Ryan It's getting harder and harder to be a communist, let alone a Marxist. First, the reactionaries trash you, and the Mc- Carthyites make sure you can't even refer to yourself as a com- munist. In our one nation under God, that is too ungodly. Then the liberals dump on you for having only one idea and for not letting the play of whimsical possibilities (hungry or not hungry, homeless or homish, poor or rich) play over your Emersonian soul. Finally, the Stalinist commissars come after you because for you communism means the idea of making a world where people, living in conditions of guaranteed material equality, govern themselves, reap the just rewards of their talents, and develop as they wish, without fear of policing—not obeying the commissars. That definition of communism is not new, but it seems new since the '60s, when it was revived in opposition to Stalinism. The semiotics of power is such that words themselves need to be struggled over because words, working either as manacles that hold thought fast to stone walls or as explosives that break down the jails, are instruments both of power 
TI - Why I Am a Communist: Response to Hassan
JF - American Literary History
DO - 10.1093/alh/1.1.143
DA - 1989-03-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/why-i-am-a-communist-response-to-hassan-MPhYTJy4z0
SP - 143
EP - 146
VL - 1
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -