May 1: Gov’ts Issue Postage Stamp With Large-Font List Of Successful Communist Regimes

It will be available at post offices the entire month of May, or until hoarders and black marketeers make them unobtainable by standard means.

London, May 1 – In honor of the international socialist workers’ holiday on this date, governments around the world have jointly issued a new postage stamp that features, in large typeface, a comprehensive listing of all the successful, prosperous, and liberal societies in history that have Communism to thank for that success.

Forty-five countries, among them the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Mexico, Japan, Australia, and Israel,  collaborated on the design and issue of the stamp, which covers the cost of standard-weight first-class international postage. Its unconventional format, in the shape of yellow numeral zero against a fire-engine-red background, will be made available at post offices for the entire month of May, or until hoarders and black marketeers make them unobtainable by standard means, as befitting what the stamp represents.

A spokesman for the committee that designed the stamp told reporters at a press conference today that the members had settled on the use of a postage stamp as the medium to pay tribute to Communism because they could think of no other institution still in existence that embodies the inefficiency, ineptitude, funny uniforms, and effectiveness-stifling bureaucracy of Communism better than the postal service.

“We had to consider existing candidates for a system that, despite charging for every service it offers, is so in over its head that it needs massive amounts of government cash just to stay operational,” explained USPS representative Mark Sist, a member of the design committee. “The Affordable Health Care Act was an early leader in the voting, but in the end the postal system won out by a large margin. Nothing in our society can really compete with it on those terms. In many ways it is a perfect representation of what happens with centralized government control of things that are better left in private hands. It was a natural for this salute to the movement.”

May 1 has served as International Workers Day since the late nineteenth century, originally commemorating a landmark demonstration in Chicago that turned violent and highlighted authorities’ suppression of the workers’ rights movement. Sist said that while it would be appropriate for mass killings to take place in an effort to impose use of the postage stamp, in keeping with what it represents, the committee had to finish its work in time for the festivities and did not have time to plan such a policy in a way that could later be credibly blamed on local thugs, general famine, or outside agitators.