Dear Bloggers, throughout the book Marxism and Socialism play a big role in the way people interact with eachother. It was the cause for strife between Pappachi and Chacko, it added an extra edge to the strange car ride to the "Sound of Music" in the chapter Pappachi's Moth, and it is a large underlying factor in Indian economy during the time period. However, of the main characters in the book the only self-proclaimed Marxist is Chacko. But Chacko is extremely priveleged compared to the rest of India. He has a car, a factory, as well as an Oxford education. Communism would dictate that he give up his car, and his factory and since it cannot truly strip him of his education it would not take that away but it would cause him to take a profession that maybe he was overqualified for. But to a man who has never had to live in poverty and has never been without food and a clean bed and water, a life of equality in equal poverty seems like a perfectly plausible ideal. But what about people who have spent their whole live without the same resources that Chacko, and ourselves, have had? Do you really think that they would be content to live in the same sort of poverty, with the only comfort being, "well at least nobody else is doing better."? I personally doubt that. In my mind communism is an idealistic fantasy for the rich. Only the priveleged have the ability to give up their already meagre possessions, and I know that as someone with possessions to give up it is really easy to look at poverty and social discremination and be like, "wouldn't it be really great if everybody was equal. Wouldn't it be nice if everybody had money, by getting rid of money all together?" Well of course the obvious answer is yes it would be. But quite frankly I believe that if I were born at the opposite end of the economic spectrum, and I mean African tribe end or poor in India poor, that I would be saying something very different. And most likely what I would be saying is how the hell do I get myself to the top. And without going into a really long explanation one of the biggest issues with communism is that is truly difficult to climb the economic ladder in socialism, because there is no ladder to climb.