Serving the people or serving the own pocket?

It is no secret that corruption is a big issue, not just in Africa but all over the world. This manifests in the mindset of only seeking to fill the own pocket instead of serving the people with the whole heart.

Every Christian knows these famous words by Jesus:

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”¹

No matter how religious many especially African leaders claim to be (in the West the majority of the people today are irreligious), most do not care about the actual commandments of the Bible. They just claim to be faithful Christians for populistic sentiments, to cloak their corruption. Aristotle already mentioned tyrants that claimed to be religious just that the people would believe that less injustice would come from their hands². They are not caring the slightest for their people but only for themselves: They often even sell out their country to imperialist powers just for personal benefits.

Lucian already called it a bad deal to sell his own freedom for a handful of money: “Though it seems but a scurvy bargain, a bargain for a slave; to sell one’s liberty for pleasures far less pleasant than liberty itself.”³ Lucian does not even make a moral accusation against them for seeking personal pleasures before everything else, he tries to argue mainly with facts only. But I would say: Seeking pleasures without thinking of others and the state of dependency you put yourself in is more animalistic than human. Some people without soul and character are fine with this status of selling the future of themselves and their people for some short-term hedonistic pleasures.

We as communists have to think for the long-term wellbeing of the working people. We are no monastic ascetics that have banned every notion of fun and joy from their lives. It is that we are seeing our own happiness tied to that of the whole working people. In ancient China there was the saying: When the people have enough for their livelihood, how could the emperor be lacking? When the working people have enough for the livelihood of them and their families, how could we communists as their vanguard be lacking anything? We could only “lack”, when we would strive for hedonistic pleasures corrupt politicians seek for: overpriced luxury cars, palace-like villas owned in private ownership and therelike. This is clearly against our goals and a big waste of the people’s wealth.

Mao Zedong said:

“Thrift should be the guiding principle in our government expenditure. It should be made clear to all government workers that corruption and waste are very great crimes.”⁴

The same can also be said when it comes to wasting party expenditures without results. Wasting the party’s funds or, even worse, eating them up yourself are equal to sabotage on the cause of the working people, the struggle for socialism and communism. In short: This is a form of treason.

It is impossible to claim that we could serve both the people and the own pocket for it is even impossible to serve God and the own pocket at the same time. Nobody else than Jesus himself said:

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”⁵

Everyone who refuses to recognize that fact will end up like most African leaders, as a corrupt liar who tries to trick the masses with some populist slogans that are in practice not worth the hot air they get blown in. Corruption grows out of abuse of power and trust.

We therefore need to combat corruption. For that we need honest cadres that are committed to the revolution with their whole mind and soul. But that quality demand is worth nothing without means of control. The best means are accountability for every decision that is made and transparency as well the right to recall deputies that are not acting according to the will of the people. In short: More control by the people.

These preventative measures are not always working. Even when we achieve to establish a relatively well functioning system of accountability, transparency and more direct control from below, there will still be some rotten elements. They can only be gotten rid of by punishments. In June 1947 the Soviet Union introduced a law that punished theft of state property with 10 to 20 years of Gulag⁶. What else is corruption than theft of public property? Demanding money for what you already got paid for is a form of theft, besides the very obvious abuse of power anyways. These Draconic punishments in the USSR under Stalin led to corruption being far less common under him than under his revisionist successors. This shows: Every leniency towards corruption makes it immensely harder to bring it under control.

Corruption is like mold: It grows in the dark and wet places we are rarely looking into. This topic has already been addressed in other articles, but due to its vital importance it cannot be stressed enough.