The aim of communism is to set man on an equal social and economic footing. The distinction between bourgeois and proletariat is one which communist philosophy and society, from Karl Marx onward, has always sought to eradicate.

Yet experience consistently shows that, no matter what efforts are taken by the state, social strata remain a part of human life.

The latest of these experiences is that which is presently being felt in China. Hot on the heels of “spiritual pollution” (see Urdu AI-Risala, February 1984; English AI-Risala, April 84). The servant problem has now captured the attention of Communist China leaders. According to a recent statement on the “socialization of housework” by Yang Zhengyan, deputy general secretary of Peking City Council, thirty thousand maids are working in the capital and there is a demand for more. Two-thirds of Peking’s maids work for senior officials and top intellectuals of the communist party. Any Yang’s statement reveals a growth in their employment by “ordinary workers.”

This employment of servants is in blatant flagrance of communist principles. But even communists have been forced to admit that such discrepancy is inevitable in society. As Yang himself says: “They are an inevitable phenomenon of today’s social life and cannot be abolished.”

The “equality of man” is a common and noble human ideal. Yet efforts to make this ideal a reality of human life are a consistent failure. This is because man seeks to base equality on a foundation in which there can be no equality. It is inevitable that there should be social and economic differences among men, just as there are differences of race and colour. Without these differences, the normal functions of life cannot be performed. This is a truth that has been expressed in the Quran in the following words:

God has caused some of you to excel others in worldly possessions. Those who have been favoured do not give their wealth to those whom their right hands possess so as to be equal in that respect. Would they deny God’s goodness? (Quran, 16:71)

The only realistic and practical from that equality in the world of man can take, then, is through realization that all men and women are equal before God; all are His creatures and will return to Him after death. If they are equal in God’s sight, despite all their differences, then they should be equal in man’s sight also; not in worldly terms, but in eternal terms. This equality will take on real form in the next world; it is present in abstract form in this world. □