Xi Loves You, Yah, Yah, Yah

Xi shows his hand, the one that will now be on the levers of power and the books of wisdom

     The problem with nineteenth century economic superstitions like socialism and communism was that they were supposed to bring “happiness”, but never seemed quite able to manage it over the long haul. Perhaps that is why everyone but Xi is looking so glum in the picture above. Everyone but the Вожд has to pretend to read waffle of the sort that is quoted in the passage below.
     It was written by a Russian academic in Soviet times, and published in the journal Canadian Slavic Studies (1971, p. 347). The fact that the writer was a dissident of sorts makes no difference. The spiritual poison affects anyone who takes an interest, whether positive or negative, in the socialist way of thinking. Remember that Tony Benn, Britain's only world-standard lefty, ended up drinking so much tea that he started hallucinating and had to be forced by his doctors to go around in slippers.
     If any reader can tell me what the paragraph below means, they will win an invite to the first Chinese whisky tasting ELERussians organises in the Year of the Haggis:

“The moral pathos of socialism is focused on the idea of distributive justice and is exhausted by it. This morality too has its roots in the mechanistic, rationalistic theory of happiness, in the conviction that on the whole there is no need to create the conditions of happiness, since they can simply be seized or grabbed from those who illicitly usurped them for their own benefit. The socialist faith is not the source of this exaggerated idolatry of the principle of distribution. On the contrary, it is supported by it like a sociological fruit borne by the metaphysical tree of mechanistic ethics.”

     Have you just lost the will to live? I have, or at least to live without a wee dram. Pass me the Glenfiddich, if you don't mind, and remember that the first rule of good writing is to have something interesting to say.