If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all that, either killing with his own hands or, by buying extravagantly, procuring people of the lower classes to kill such eccentricities as appear.
...
Eccentricity, in fact, is immorality — think over it again if you do not think so now — just as eccentricity in one's way of thinking is madness (I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of either); and if a species is rare it follows that it is not Fitted to Survive. The collector is after all merely like the foot soldier in the days of heavy armour-he leaves the combatants alone and cuts the throats of those who are overthrown. So one may go through England from end to end in the summer time and see only eight or ten commonplace wild flowers, and the commoner butterflies, and a dozen or so common birds, and never be offended by any breach of the monotony.

We Marxist communists are profoundly opposed to the anarchist doctrine. This doctrine is erroneous

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.

The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty.

Communists have no principle or belief except the seizure of power by their party.

I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don't think that that's what's primarily the matter with them. What's primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god. That's much more dangerous than when people don't believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they're not dangerous. The fanatic is dangerous. The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory; that's why they're fanatic.

What is a communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings:
Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.

I know what I am to him. A butterfly he has always wanted to catch. I remember (the very first time I met him) G.P. saying that collectors were the worst animals of all. He meant art collectors, of course. I didn’t really understand, I thought he was just trying to shock Caroline — and me. But of course, he is right. They’re anti-life, anti-art, anti-everything.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

If communists are in power, they enforce laws designed to protect their system, their way of life. To them, the horror of horrors is the speculator, that man of magic who has mastered the art of getting something with nothing and who in America would be a member in good standing of his local Chamber of Commerce. "The people, " however are nowhere consulted, although everywhere everything is done always in their name ostensibly for their betterment, while their real-life problems go unsolved. "The people" are a rubber stamp for the crafty and sly. And no problem can be solved without taking the police department and the armed forces into account. Both kings and bookies understand this, as do first ladies and common prostitutes.

No one can understand Communism who does not believe in the devil. The Communists believe in the devil. The Communists organized a so-called "patriotic" church. A few brain washed were to be in charge of the churches because they were loyal to the anti-God regime. One of the first orders given by the Communists to them was that the prayer to Prayer to Saint Michael be no longer said because it invoked the protection of St. Michael against "the wickedness and snares of the devil." As one Communist judge said: "We are those devils." It is hard for many in the free world to believe that there are not only bad men, but evil men. Bad men steal, rape, ravage and plunder. Evil men may not always do these things, but they seek to destroy goodness, virtue, morality, decency, truth and honor. Bad men who steal admit honesty; evil men who do not steal, call dishonesty "honesty," totalitarianism "democracy," slavery "freedom." Evil men can be nice at table, polite with women, courteous in Washington, refined in London and calm in Geneva. But the principle which guides their every move is the maxim of Lenin: every lie, trickery, knavery and deceit must be used to.

The trouble with Communism is that it has neither a theology nor a Christology; therefore it emerges with a mixed-up anthropology. Confused about God, it is also confused about man. In spite of its glowing talk about the welfare of the masses, Communism's methods and philosophy strip man of his dignity and worth, leaving him as little more than a depersonalized cog in the ever-turning wheel of the state.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

Apart from whether collectivism, the “communist vermin,” is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, “bread for the poor,” was something which he understood and, more importantly, filled him with hope.