Sunday, 15 January 2012

What the Schmoo?

I'm going to start with a story which was told by the American cartoonist Al Capp. The story is about a creature called the Schmoo. The Schmoo was 10 inches high and something like a pear in shape and a beautiful creamy white in colour, it had no arms, tiny feet and big whiskers under it's nose. The Schmoo had only one desire, to serve the needs of human beings and it was well-equipped to do so. Its skin could be made into any kind of fabric. Its flesh was edible. Its dead body could go brick-hard and be used for building. And its whiskers, well its whiskers had more uses than you can imagine. If you looked at a Schmoo with real hunger in your eye it dropped dead in rapture because you wanted it, after first cooking itself into your favourite flavour.
Well, since they multiplied rapidly there were plenty of Schmoos for everybody and they even looked good in the environment. Almost everyone approved of the Schmoos. But some people weren't keen on them. The rich capitalists hated the Schmoos. Since Schmoos provided everything people needed nobody had to work for capitalists anymore because nobody needed to make the wages to buy the things capitalists sold. So as the Schmoos spread across the face of America the capitalists began to lose their position and their power. And this made them take drastic action. They got the government to tell the people that the Schmoo was un-American, the Schmoo was causing chaos undermining the social order, people weren't turning up for work and they weren't going to the department stores to buy anything.
Well the government propaganda convinced the people and the President ordered the FBI to gather the Schmoos and gun them down.
          GA Cohen, Against Capitalism

No comments: