"Freedom is nothing but a vain phantom when one class of men can starve another with impunity. Equality is nothing but a vain phantom when the rich, through monopoly, exercise the right of life or death over their like. The republic is nothing but a vain phantom when the counter-revolution can operate every day through the price of commodities, which three quarters of all citizens cannot afford without shedding tears."
This comes not out of the Favelas of Rio. This is not a call to arms in the shanty towns of Kibera. It was not spray painted on the mud walls of slums in Istanbul or Mumbai. You will certainly not find it in Communist China, that place makes a farce out of the brotherhood of labor.
You would have to travel through time to come across it, yet how much truth would the hungry of our day find in it still? How meaningful would it be to the mother who can not feed her children in Manila? Where is my Red Priest today? A few billion people are looking for you. The Haitians of the 21st century would follow your fiery oratory as their ancestors appreciated their freedom from the French yoke. As long as bread accompanies your words of steel you shall reign over the Republic yet.
Jacques Roux, where are you?
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