Page:Plunder (Perlman).djvu/21

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15

Capital means power over men, and over things. Mastery! Leisure! Personality!
Capital is a way of life! It is freedom!
With power over men and things, what need for work?
Who would choose drudgery then?
Except this dreg in India.
You want to pity him because of his seeming ignorance.
You believed him when he claimed not to know a commodity.
Would you prosecute on the basis of seeming?
Take as grounds a criminal's claims?
I repeat, claims, and seeming!
Assuming Moksa's ignorance before this encounter
--which we can certainly doubt--
Did he not turn down Harilal's generous offer?
Reject this most acceptable path to wealth and power,
Freedom, Recognition, Personality?
Poor deluded dreg! He would even deny the role in which you saw him,
Would laugh at you, Masters--
Laugh at roles, at functions, personalities, by claiming to transcend them!

SCENE: SOUTH AFRICA

(Moksa's home in Durban: the home is one room. Africans and some Indians at table, sitting on chairs. Chuana Moksa serves coffee. Indio, twelve years old, sits silently on bed.)

Ineffectual mystic! See him now,
The exalted Philosopher twenty years older,
No longer even artisan, he's now a South African miner,
Married, has a daughter who despises his position,
His airs of transcending his condition;
With a son who, even so young, despises Moksa's inability to cope with his situation.
See Moksa now, Masters, still trying to defy the freedom you offer.