Reality of American Marxism
To deny that the 10 planks (major premises) outlined in the Communist Manifesto are overwhelming the political philosophy today in the United States is to ignore the reality of the obvious. The concepts outlined by Marx and Engels have been embraced and today only the illusion of freedom of self remains. True economic capitalism has been abandoned; our Constitution has been shredded.
This is not to suggest that agreement on any single point indicates a communist through and through. There is room for debate on many issues. If you find your representative in congress or senate agreeing with nearly everything proposed by the German authors, maybe it is time to admit the truth: he is a Marxist, as are many of our United States Congressmen and Senators today.
Socialism and communism formerly were as close to a synonym for "traitor" as any other word in this country.
Make no mistake. Those holding the opinions above are Marxists, socialists and communists, fascists - even if they don't realize it themselves. The difference between them is minimal. Generally communists tend to defer to a world court, and will give up national sovereignty to it, and they want government owning all businesses. Socialists want the same general laws, but prefer the government not to actually own the businesses. Fascists objective to dictate policy and want complete control over private companies by centrally micro-managing them. They would rather control them with iron-fisted regulation and heavy taxation. Not much difference.
Do these beliefs make them bad people? Clearly it enslaves the citizenry to a far greater degree than capitalism does because they must now work longer for another person then for themselves.
Wealth Envy
There are those that claim capitalism enslaves. They believe that because their CEO earns 20 million dollars a year somehow that negatively impacts their own life. Life will never be equalized, someone will always have more. We shouldn’t be jealous of the successful, but it seems many are. Many today are more concerned that others experience financial pain, than that they themselves succeed. Somehow this perverted view of fairness has become the norm for the left.
What is this nastiness from the left that they seem to be more concerned that others lose even more so than that they win? Where is the logic? I suppose there is none, they operate on emotion.
It reminds me of a Russian fable brought back to life by Thomas Sowell that unfortunately describes a lot of Americans attitudes towards the wealthy today.
In the fable, there are two poor peasants, named Ivan and Boris. The two men are almost exactly alike – except that Boris has a goat and Ivan does not.
One day, Ivan finds a bottle and, when he cleans it off, a genie pops out. The genie tells Ivan she could grant him just one wish but it could be for anything in the world he wanted.
Ivan said, “I wish Boris’ goat would die.”
We all know people like this. They are everywhere today.
Does supporting a government whose policy is designed to seize the assets or earnings of others for redistribution make a person evil? It makes them like Ivan. We debate that all the time. Certainly there are some very well-intended naive souls who believe a huge government can actually be better for the people. They read the theories and believe that the Utopian society can be created. The problem is in order to believe it, one has to ignore or be willing to crush the reality of human nature.
Is it wrong to believe that the forced seizure of some one else's time and money for redistribution to others is beneficial to the whole? Is it wrong to believe the individual is relatively unimportant? We know we need some government, so the money has to come from somewhere. At what point does it become tyrannical?
If slavery is a horrible thing for a private individual to impose upon another, at what level does partial slavery become evil when it is government policy? Some would argue that legislating away an individual's money from him beyond a minimum amount is only a slightly different form of slavery than taking away his time or his life. It is viewed by some as the enslaving of the individual bit by bit for whatever "public good" is determined to be necessary by its socialist government.
Maybe we are delusional. We con ourselves into believing that our government is the servant of the people when it has clearly become the opposite. Congressman and senators are rulers; they are not public servants. We have genuinely nice people in power who completely and unconditionally have bought into most (if not all) of the principles of Marxism, but somehow, they are not taken to task on the matter. They are generally described as social democrats or believe it or not, republicans. Even Marx and Engels didn't agree on everything.
Our country operates as a slightly modified type of communism as outlined 160 years ago by two well meaning but misguided young, inexperienced foolish German idealists who were willing to execute uncooperative dissenters.
NEXT: Crony-Marxism, NOT Crony-Capitalism