The Committed (The Sympathizer #2)

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Maoist PhD shook his head sadly over the picture. I saw that this morning, he said. Yes, of course, revolutions make mistakes and sometimes on the scale of the deaths of millions. Tragic? Yes. Wrong? Yes. But if you stop there, you’ve simply stepped into the trap of the capitalists. Ha! they’ll say. Got you! Now your only choice is capitalism and its pseudo-democracy, its trickery of false choices. For if communism is bad, then capitalism must be good, yes? No! Capitalists love to point out how tens of millions have died under Stalin and Mao, all while conveniently forgetting how hundreds of millions have died under capitalism. What were colonialism and slavery but forms of capitalism? What was the genocide of the natives of the Americas but capitalism? But let’s forget about those nasty contradictions of capitalism and focus on what the communists have done!