That day has come.

The 'compulsion for stealing' has survived the era of hired agricultural hands. Socialism has not only sustained it, but extended it to the entire society. It became a built-in part of the whole system. Stealing (and I use this term in its broadest sense) in all its ritual, symbolic and other implications, has become an engrained element of peasant culture today, as much a part of it as, say, Maypoles or Easter eggs. Stealing these days is not done by just some people but by almost everyone. The chief accountant steals just the same as the animal-feeder who hides groats in his trousers or in her bra, or the watchman who knows full well what goods workers smuggle home, or the swine-tender who deliberately breaks the animal's leg on the trough so that members of the cooperative may buy it cheaply. ('You want a suckling? You shall have it tonight ... ') Everyone is familiar with the system. What a cooperative member finds demoralizing is not the fact that the whole system is based on stealing, but that he cannot steal enough (Sozan, 1985: 95-6, this author's translation).