I went to a forest protection rally in Seattle a few years back. Being a big city, there were at least half a dozen different communist parties there, lurking around the fringes, selling newspapers and trying to recruit the treehuggers.

Problem is, I get bored at rallies. I've heard all the speeches before, and I could give most of them. So I took to wandering around talking to the communists.

I approached them all with a simple question: What makes *your* communist party different from the others?

Invariably, they gave the same answer. Only *they* truly represented the American working class. And how did they represent them? Well, they have this newspaper. Would I like to buy a copy?

Finally, running out of interest, I approached the guy from the Revolutionary Communist Party. How, I asked, is your party any different?

He looked me in the eye. "We're the only party that advocates an immediate armed revolution to overthrow the government of the United States."

Now we're getting somewhere, I thought. So I asked, how do they plan on doing this?

"Well, we've got this newspaper," he said. "Would you like to buy a copy?"