Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
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Man: I’d like – I’d like to know, what is causing the greatest uh – What is at the base of the division between people? What do you think is greater, the greater antagonism, is it uh, uh, uh, race, uh, is it uh, religion or is it class?
Jones: Distinctly it is class. Distinctly it’s money. There would be no uh, religions, only an outpicturing of the problem that separates people. (Angry) Now why don’t you wake up. This is the most important question of the evening. (Pause) (Normal tone) The thing that causes religion is a class war. If there were no rich, no poor, if everyone were equal, religion would be soon to disappear. People only develop religion when they’re unhappy with this world. But if this world were equal, if everything was equal, every opportunity, every l – all of the land facilities, all of the health facilities, all of the food, every beautiful thing of this earth was available to all, people would soon lose their religion. And there would be no racial differences if everyone was equal. There was no race, there was no rich or poor, there wasn’t a class system – that’s what you mean by class system – division between people based on their money. There would be no room for race. Race is developed because the rich want someone to do their slave work, servant work, and the black people just happened to be the slaves of this generation. In other ages, it was the Spanish, the Greek, the Italians, or the Indians, Chinese. Chinese were coolies and servants. It just so happens that the most recent slaves in America were black. But slaves are created because the rich need someone to do their dirty work. So racism is an outpicture – is a result – direct result, of separation between people based on the ownership of property. I do not believe in private ownership of property. I believe that all property should be held in common. Just like this church belongs to all of us. (Pause) Just like the lands out here, the fruit, everything is shared by all of us. Now it’s a small example. You can’t even realize how beautiful that is. In certain countries of the world, a factory for instance will be owned by all the people.
Now the factory downtown here, that’s a major factory here, is a Masonite factory, it makes twelve million dollars a year for its owner, who never comes here. He’s called an absentee landlord. He travels around on yachts, lives in luxury, he’s a racist bigot, and he takes all this money, these poor workers, many in our church who work there, breathe the dust, don’t have the advantages they need, and that money’s all drained out to the rich owners of the thing. They – They – They don’t put one ounce of labor – one ounce of work – into that factory. If that twelve million dollars – now, please listen – if that twelve million dollars was taken out of that factory by the people – it’s done in certain places in Europe, the people own the factory, so around the factory will be all kinds of beautiful apartments, swimming pools, hospitals, doctors’ free clinics, dental free clinics, schools, fine houses and lovely shrubs and lovely gardens, because the people get all the profits and around every factory is a beautiful, beautiful community. There’s enough money that comes out of that one factory to give everyone a home in this valley. So that’s what we mean: we do not believe that the rich should be entitled to own things that they do not use. No one should be able to get anything out of something, unless they put labor in it. Labor is the thing that makes the world go. It’s the laborers of the world that gives everyone everything they have here. Somebody had to sweat to give us lights tonight, somebody’s working somewhere, somebody’s slaving to gen – and generating plants to give us the energy that comes in this room to give us light. Labor should get the full result of his work. That isn’t to say that every person should get exactly the same wage. Maybe, for a while, there would have to be differentials, there would have to be slight differences to motivate people, someone get a little bit more, but in this factory for instance, the manager would get maybe 35, 50 thousand dollars a year. They still can do that, the foreman gets a little bit more, and someone – a job steward – gets a little bit more, and the broom pusher a little bit less. (Pause) But even after they do all that there, these job graduations and salary graduations, twelve million dollars goes out to absentee owners who never come to the place. That’s what we’re against. We’re not saying that everyone here should necessarily be paid exactly the same, although that would be ideal. I could be paid the same, even – if I had to do 15 hours of work, and someone else in here was crippled or weak and couldn’t do it, and they only do an hour’s work, I’d be glad to work 15 hours and have no more home, no more car, no more food than they did. I could gladly work in a society without being motivated by salary or special benefits.
I’m so purely socialistic and some of my family is so purely socialistic, some of the members of this glorious Temple are so purely socialistic, that you’d be glad to work to see that everyone had the same kind of house, the same kind of cars. Well, if you wanted your car painted differently, that’d be all right. You know, we’re not talking about the same color, and exactly the same pieces of furniture. But say that everyone – and people are so afraid of socialism. Oh, they’re so terrified. They say, what’ll it do to us. Why you poor people, the people, the average man in the street, even the small grocery owner, the small businessman, if the money of this country were sh – actually shared, there would be approximately one hundred and ten thousand dollars income for every person in America. Because one – one rich man that today – they shown him in the picture – his picture of his grandson came out, his ears are gone. It’s on the TV. J. Paul Getty. He’s got 11 grandchildren, or 22 grandchildren, and he’s worth billions of dollars. It wouldn’t be – It’d be like him giving a penny if he had to give ransom to every one of his chil – his grandchildren. He’s refusing – please listen – he’s refusing to give any ransom to that grandchild, and they’ve cut both ears off now. They showed the – They showed the head, he said, I won’t give a ce – dime. That’s what the love of money does. That’s called capitalism. The love of money is the root of all evil. Your Bible tells you that. The love of money is capitalism. To want to possess things, to want to have more than someone else, that is the antichrist system, that is the worst lie that’s ever been put on humankind. We call it the antichrist, capitalism. Well, now, J.P. Getty makes $14,900,000 a day interest on his stocks and bonds and the money in his bank. And he will not give two hundred thousand dollars to this – this grandchild, his kidnappers. And they’ve cut off two ears now. And he says they can cut off his fingers one by one, he’ll not do anything to help him. (Pause) That’s what rich does. That’s why I hate those who have riches. I don’t hate them because of their be – being a human being, it’s because of their – what they stand for. (Pause) They’re killing the world. They’re choking the air. They’re choking the streets. The love of money. These cars companies that won’t – well, they won’t make a good carburetor. You can get – you can get a carburetor – it was patented in the 1920s – that will give you seventy miles to the gallon. But the oil industries, the great big oil industries and the motor industries, didn’t want to go along with it. So that patent was bought off by rich people. Now our airs are choked. We’re killing ourselves. Our streams, our land is polluted. Everything is being destroyed by the love of money, capitalism. That’s why we say we’re socialist and our enemy, the devil, is capitalism. (Pause) And the love of money is the things that’s inundating this world with pain. That’s what causes violence. That’s why youngsters are robbing people on the streets, because everyone thinks of themselves as alone against the world. Everyone thinks, I’ve got to make my own. No one teaches that we help or bear one another’s burdens, so every child feels like he’s got to steal his way through. So everybody’s turned against each other. That’s why black are against black, because we’re taught to be against each other. The rich wants us to fight among themselves, so the rich can stand off and laugh, and drain us dry, and use us to be their work slaves.
Applause.
Jones: (Voices rises into ministerial cry) It’s a dreadful kind of situation. So indeed, if we did share, and – what was your question? (Laughs) (Pause while listens to question) What is – separates, yes, class? What is the most important thing you said, that separates us, race, religion or class. And the – all separation comes from class. If you’ve got money equalized, and there was no real rich, and no real poor, you’d have no racism. You’d have no religion. Because people only make heavens, because this is so much a hell, they can’t stand to look at this place. So they project a heaven out there that they got to go to, because they can’t stand the earth, because the earth is in the hands of the robber-baron rich. It’s in the hands on the capitalists, and they’re poor, so they create a religious song. There was no heaven, like they sung about. The poor black people in the fields, they had to sing, you got shoes, I got shoes, because they were going barefooted, and the terrible uh, rocks and the thorns were penetrating their feet, and they had to develop something that would give them hope. They knew they’d never get any shoes off of the white master, the rich owner, they’d never get it, so they developed a religion, that said by and by, you got shoes, I got shoes, all God’s children got shoes. It’s a pitiful song. It comes out of the people that are poor, down to the di – the very bottoms of the earth. And that’s why they developed religion. Religion would never be developed, be – but because the rich have made life so miserable by the – for the poor. Rich people don’t develop religion. Rich people will foster religion, but you won’t see Rockefeller in no church. You don’t see Carnegie in any church. He gives money to preachers, but he don’t go to church. (Pause) No, religion is that which is man – the way the rich have to manipulate the poor. (Pause) You understand what I’m saying?
Congregation: Yes.
Jones: Heaven was created by poor people that were working cotton fields and working in mines and living in hell, so they had to create a – a golden city somewhere. (Pause) They had to dream, because they knew they’d never get anything out of this earth. So religion is a gr – dark creation of those who are oppressed, those who are in bondage. Now that was the most important message of tonight, and a lot of you didn’t get it. Thank you, brother.
Applause.
Side two is blank.
Tape originally posted October 2000