John Singleton with Bob HowardRip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 39-40, under the heading “Communism”.

Communism is a drag — it’s like one big telephone company.
Capitalism gives you a choice baby, and that’s where it’s at.
LENNY BRUCE

Communism has two forms — totalitarian and voluntary. Where it has been tried on a large scale — for example, in Soviet Russia, China and Cuba — communism is totalitarian.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has graphically illustrated how Soviet Russia is a brutal police state. Communist China is currently enjoying great popularity with many naive, wide-eyed romantics around the world, who point seriously to its “great progress” since 1949. They conveniently forget the many millions killed by Chairman Mao and his army in the struggle, and the fact that no matter how it is dressed up, the State in China is absolutely supreme. This is the price they have paid for their tiny progress. A nation of 800 million producing only 50 per cent more than 13 million lazy Europeans on strike in Australia is hardly great progress.

But it can and should be asked whether or not China would have made a lot more progress as a totally free society. Even semi-free countries such as Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong all have higher standards of living than China, and while that may not be an important criterion of progress to comfortable middle-class culture trendies in Balmain and Carlton, it is probably of pretty reasonable importance to the Chinese people themselves. When considered in this light we believe that China has only moved a little forward, and that at great cost.

Totalitarianism can never be morally justified, and so on that ground alone communism is to be condemned and rejected. However, such opposition to communism should not be used as the excuse for interfering with the affairs of people in other countries, such as Vietnam. How people in other countries solve their internal affairs is their business — it’s certainly not the business of busybody governments such as those of the U.S.A. and Australia. To claim that it’s better to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam than in Sydney is like walking over and beating your neighbour up because you think he might one day try to steal your Victa.

The central theme of all arguments in this book is the concept of voluntarism. People have a right to be left alone to choose how they will live their lives, and this obviously includes the right to choose a communal or socialist lifestyle. But we should also have a right to choose a voluntary free trade, individualist lifestyle — or any other we can devise.

However, while communal living (voluntary communism) is moral, it is never practical on anything but a small scale. It is no accident that most communes either fail or at least have high member turnovers. Nor that the more successful a commune is, the closer it is to being an individualistic, free trade community. Human beings are not equal in any way with regard to abilities, interests, desires, needs, or any other qualities. Because of this individual diversity, communal living on a large scale is totally impractical.

However, this is supposed to be a free country, so if some people want to live in communes, why shouldn’t they? After all, communes aren’t as crazy as the Flat Earth Society, or the Associated Chamber of Manufacturers, or the Australian Mining Industry Council, and we tolerate them!