It is Labor Day, and (as every year) I had to go to work. So I shall pour forth my frustration on the Communists, whom I hold ultimately responsible for the holiday, and who have done me no good at all.

Grim at Grim’s Hall embedded this, the original recording of the South African song (“Mbube”) that became “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

He also links to Mark Steyn’s essay on the song’s history, including the inglorious involvement of professional proletarian Pete Seeger, who morally (if not in legal technicality) stole the song and millions in royalties from the author, who died penniless in a dirt-floored hut.

The child of wealthy New York radicals, Seeger has always been avowedly anti-capitalist. Yet his publisher had a deal with Gallo Music: they snaffled up the rights to “Mbube” cheap and in return sub-licensed to Gallo the South African and Rhodesian rights to “Wimoweh”. And Seeger knew all along that Solomon Linda was the composer. He says now that back in the Fifties he instructed his publishers to give his royalties from the song to Linda, and he was shocked, shocked to discover decades later that they hadn’t in fact been doing so. Evidently, it never occurred to him, as an unworldly anti-capitalist, to check his royalty statements. It was, on his part, supposedly a sin of omission. Whatever one thinks of that, his associates can’t plead the same accidental oversight. Having persuaded Linda to sign away his copyright, the relevant parties made sure to slide some forms in front of his illiterate widow in 1982 and his daughters some years later to make sure the appropriation paperwork was kept in order.

I think at this point in history we can all recognize that this sort of thing is the rule, not the exception, with Communists. I am sure there are many Communists who are nice people—kind friends, good neighbors. I’m also convinced that none of them are nice people because of their Communism. It’s something they had with them when they came in, not something they acquired on the premises.

Paul Johnson noted (I think it was in Modern Times) that Lenin hated the priests of the Orthodox church because they were corrupt, while Stalin hated them because they were not. Stalin saw that any person or institution that strives to make life better for the neighbor through private means is a threat to the statist project. The government must be both first and last resort for all human need. No competitors can be permitted.

Communists, when it comes down to it, are people whose dream is never to be bothered by their neighbor’s needs. Somebody else—somebody with a desk and a filing cabinet and access to state funds—ought to “take care of these things.”

I can already hear somebody saying, “Well, the Christian church is no different.”

No doubt that’s true in many cases. But it’s demonstrable that such thinking is wholly and entirely contrary to the clear teaching of Christ (this is not true of Marx). Again and again Christ pointed his disciples to the basic, universal moral rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Ceremonial and organizational concerns come second. He had no time for the Pharisees and Levites who crossed to the other side of the road as they passed the robbery victim on the road to Jericho. Admirable as their concern for ritual cleanliness may have been, important as their clerical business might have been, their neighbor in need ought to have come first. (Luke 10:30-37).

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:14-17)