The founder died
And the worthless heirs took over
They have a new plan
Everyone would work
According to his ability
But be paid according to his need
Anyone opposed is a child killer at heart
Hadn't we heard it all our lives?
From every newspaper, movie, and public speech
Every school teacher raising your children

They gave everyone a vote
So we voted for the plan
And we got what we had coming

We created four years of hell
Plain, naked, smirking evil
We are damned
and we'll never be forgiven

The more you work the more is demanded of you
For your neighbor’s supper
For his nephew’s schooling
For anyone anywhere around you
It’s theirs to receive and yours to work
Dawn to dusk, month after month, year after year
For the whole of your life
Without rest, without hope, without end

From each according to his ability
To each according to his need
The moral ideal we pretend to believe
ENVY!
The true motive behind our actions
We want what our betters have
ENVY!
Do not talk about it
We promise you
It’s for the love of the common good

You say we’re all in this together
Then take this acetylene torch
For twelve hours a day, together
Whose ability and whose need comes first?
You can’t let any man decide his own needs
If you did, he might claim he needs a yacht.
If his feelings are all you have to go by,
He might just prove it too

So we voted on it
No-one may judge his own need or ability
It took just one meeting to discover
We had all become sniveling, whining beggars
The lousiest, noisiest moochers list all their miseries
The strong men kept quiet and continued on
Can you guess who took the jackpot?

Production collapsed in half a year
Somebody hadn’t delivered according to his ability
(We decide your ability)
So we voted on which men were most able
They were sentenced to work overtime every day
Overtime without pay, after all it doesn’t affect your need

Then we turned into creatures
The skilled work overtime to correct the mistakes
Of every sloppy incompetent stinker
So we all began to hide our ability
Never work faster than the next fellow
You think competition for profit is vicious?
See what it’s like when men compete to be the worst
We did our best to be no good at all

There’s no surer way to destroy a man
So drink is what we all turned to
When all decent pleasures are forbidden
There’s always ways to get at the rotten ones

Any man who tried to play it straight had to refuse himself everything
He couldn’t marry or bring children into the world
He could plan, promise, and count on nothing
But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of it
They dragged in scum from all over the country
They found endless ways of getting in need

Within a year there wasn’t an honest man left among us
That hell-horror evil preachers used to scare you with had come alive
It turned decent people into bastards
And it was called a moral ideal

What was it we were supposed to want to work for?
For the bums, the loafers, the moochers?
For the love of our brothers?
That’s when we learned to hate our brothers
For every meal they swallowed
Every new shirt and new hat
Paid for by our privations,
our hunger, our sweat and suffering

An old lady fell down the cellar stairs
We all used to like her
But the doctor said treatments would take a long long time
Well guess what
That night she died in her room
The cause of death was never to be known
But she was oh so very old

We began to spy on one another
Meddle in each other’s lives
Break up engagements
No babies born
No more dependents to feed

All this was no mistake
Mistakes of this size are never made out of innocence
We didn’t do it because we believed
in their phony moral ideal

That drippy guff let us pass off as virtue something we’d be ashamed to admit
ENVY!
No man voting for it didn’t think he’d muscle in on the profits of better men
No man rich and smart didn’t think there was someone richer and smarter
ENVY!
The ugliest human thought
So we howled louder
about the love of the common good

We got what we asked for
When we realized what it was, it was too late
We're trapped with no place to go
The best men left the first week
A man of self-respect doesn’t turn into a milch cow for anyone

Soon we had nothing left but men of need
And none of the men of ability
Those of us who stayed had been there far too long
We refused to believe it was already gone
Thanks to the common good
The moral ideal

This was the moral law that professors and leaders want to establish
All over the earth
If this is what it did to a small town
Imagine what it would do on a global scale
To work to offset all the disasters and malingering of the world
To work with no chance to rise
With your meals, your clothes, and your pleasure,
Depending on any swindle, famine, or pestilence anywhere on earth
To work until the Cambodians are fed
Until the Venezuelans are sent through college
To work on a blank check held by every creature born

Is this the moral law?
Is this is a moral ideal?

If you ever see a leader profess this ideal
Stand up and say no
Spit in their face
They must be destroyed