Mazdak

Mazdak the Younger was a Zoroastrian priest, prophet and activist who preached an early version of socialism. He was executed by the Persian state in 524.
== Life ==
Little is known about Mazdak's life besides his ideas and death.
== Ideas ==
Mazdak advocated for some of the following ideas:
* Kindness to all people
* Pacifism
* Vegetarianism
* Revolution
* Communism
* Free Love
According to Wikipedia, Mazdak believed:
God had originally placed the means of subsistence on earth so that people should divide them among themselves equally, but the strong had coerced the weak, seeking domination and causing the contemporary inequality. This in turn empowered the "Five Demons" that turned men from Righteousness—these were Envy, Wrath, Vengeance, Need and Greed. To prevail over these evils, justice had to be restored and everybody should share excess possessions with his fellow men. Mazdak allegedly planned to achieve this by making all wealth common or by re-distributing the excess.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdak#Ethical_and_social_principles
== Death ==
The popularity of Mazdak's ideas among the lower classes of Persia spread fear throughout the upper classes. Most of the key activists in Mazdak's movement were massacred (with 3000 people being buried alive), and Mazdak himself was allegedly tortured before being hung upside and shot with arrows.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdak#Opposition_to_and_purge_of_Mazdak's_adherents
== References ==