Divergent Paths - The Vision of Our Founding Fathers vs. the Plan of Marx

Marx believed that the bourgeoisie exploited the proletariat by keeping them in chains. He urged, “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” Classical socialists believed that socialism was an imperfect stage before communism, where the means of production were owned by the state and workers were paid hourly for their work.

Margaret Thatcher had once said, “The problem with socialism is that, at some point, you run out of other people’s money.” She was referring to the deliberate attempt by a centralized socialist government to confiscate by various means and redistribute wealth they viewed as unfairly earned at the expense of the masses.

Communism abolished classes and the workers were paid for their needs not for the work they performed – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This brings to mind the motto Romanian workers adopted under communism in order to survive: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”

There is no such thing as “equal” or “shared” (“communis” means “shared” in Latin) in communism. There is equal misery, equal suffering, equal mistreatment, and equal poverty. We shared constant shortages of food, rationing of necessities, water, energy, and heat.

Marx said, the proletariat does all the work. It is only fitting that they share the wealth. What wealth? The one that the Communist Party elites confiscated by force from its citizens after they were thrown in jail for being “bourgeois?”

Karl Marx, “the original hippie,” was negligent with his own family and “detested manual labor, preferring to dream up ideas about mooching from others and spreading their wealth around.” A report written in1852 by a Prussian police agent described a man who rarely washed, combed, or changed his linens, idle for days on end, an intellectual Bohemian. (Michael Savage, Trickle Up Poverty)

“There is not one clean and solid piece of furniture to be found in the whole apartment: everything is broken, tattered and torn…in one word everything is topsy turvy…. When you enter Marx’s room, smoke and tobacco fumes make your eyes water so badly, that you think for a moment that you are groping about in a cave…. Everything is dirty and covered with dust. It is positively dangerous to sit down. One chair has three legs. On another chair, which happens to be whole, the children are playing at cooking.” (Michael Savage, Trickle Up Poverty, 64, quoting Eugene Kamenka, The Portable Karl Marx, 41-42)

Marx cherished his philosophical ideas more than his responsibilities to his family because he relied on wealthy patrons such as Friedrich Engels, communist sponsors, and inheritances to care for his family. He died a pauper. (Michael Savage, Trickle Up Poverty, 65)

The failed socialist experiment at Jamestown, Virginia, taught us that, when people worked the land together, some were lazy and did much less work, while others, who worked harder, resented the slackers. The whole commune nearly starved to death. The following year, land was divided again to each family, and the settlement thrived and had extra food to trade for other needs.

Marxism does not work because greed and jealousy exist. Not everyone is so altruistic that he/she is willing to work extremely hard for the good of everyone.

Capitalism does work because of self-interest. One individual’s hard work to achieve self-interest enables Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (the price system) to push everyone else to greater economic achievement. Waiting on the dole and the spreading of wealth is the death of initiative, respect, dignity, honor in a good-day’s work, and the desire to improve one’s standing in society.

Self-interest also breeds charity. Communist elites were never charitable except to themselves. People living under communism were not charitable to strangers. They performed volunteer activities involuntarily under the forced directions of communist rulers.

The population in communism hoarded food, enabled black markets to thrive, and engaged in bartering stolen goods or raw materials from work in order to survive. They tended to steal even public items that were fastened or nailed down if they could be sold for recycling.

There was no private property in communism because it created unfair competition. However, if a citizen was part of the ruling regime elites, he/she could own as much private property as they wished or as fast as they could steal it from the hapless proletariat and from the common means of production.

In the socialist and communist “utopia” I experienced, the proletariat was given free health care, education, and transportation. In reality, we had to pay for transportation and anything else at subsidized prices. Health care so dismal and constant shortages due to rationing created a huge black market. Medical care was pathetically inadequate and life had no value. People were killed by malpractice with no accountability since everybody worked for the ruling communist regime for meager wages and the omnipotent government could not be sued. Doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers were told where to live, where to practice their trade, and how much they could earn.

Modern socialists in Europe advocate and run bankrupt welfare states with a nanny mentality of cradle to grave entitlements. Exceptionalism is punished, “global citizens” are shaped by socialist schools, and “groupthink” is rewarded. Most inventions of the modern world were the result of individual creativity and exceptional talent of one individual not of groups “brainstorming.”

Communist China did not start to make economic progress until the centralized bureaucracy lessened its stronghold on the population and allowed individual creativity and entrepreneurship to thrive. People were forced to do everything in society against their will.

Norman Matoon Thomas (Nov. 20,1884 – December 19, 1968), a leading American socialist and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, explained best the status of socialism in the U.S.:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” He continued, “I no longer need to run as a Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” It appears that they have reached that goal.

Why would French or Greek citizens work hard if the government cannot fire them? Those who lack a work ethic and are lazy should be fired. Why would welfare Americans find work when they are encouraged to stay home and receive undeserved checks from the taxes of hard-working Americans? Socialism is forced on America by an ever-increasing federal bureaucracy.

Marxism, named after Karl Marx (1818-1883), is a mixture of philosophy, social history, economics, and “social justice” propaganda: Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism, and Marxist Economics.

For Marx, philosopher Georg Hegel’s dialectic – the contradiction between subject and object - was a “reflection of the actual contradiction between workers and employers under capitalism.” Modern man is alienated from his true nature because he has no tie to the product of his labor for which he earns a wage, Marx said.

Based on the history of class struggle, Marx believes that competition for resources divides society into “mutually antagonistic classes.” Poor workers “could be inflamed to believe that the capitalist system would always be disadvantageous to them.”

Das Kapital (Capital) promoted the idea that the “bourgeoisie” made profits by exploiting the “proletariat.” Workers were “exploited” when the value of goods produced exceeded the wages paid, thus creating “surplus value.”

Agitating class envy, Marx claimed that bourgeois competition forced them to exploit workers more. When they refused to exploit more, the capitalist would be forced into bankruptcy or bought out by someone who would continue the exploitation. Low wages would persist, the proletariat would rebel and would replace capitalism with socialism/communism. Marx imagined a “complete mechanization of production, so that any man could do any job.”

Marx acknowledges, “Capitalism is the most powerful mode of production available.” Yet abolition of private property is the crux of the theory of communism.

Marx and Engels introduced the “dictatorship of the proletariat” which was used by Lenin and Stalin to defend their totalitarian rule.

Marx believed that abolishing private ownership of the means of production by force and dictates, the proletariat would crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie. Lenin envisioned a dictatorship by a minority party, not by a democratically chosen majority.

Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto ,“exploitation and class warfare will destroy the national barriers between members of the proletariat, and the proletariat has a duty to overthrow the ruling classes in each nation.”

When the proletariat ruled, the following would happen:

-          No private property

-          Progressive tax

-          No right of inheritance

-          One centralized bank

-          Centralized credit

-          Centralized communication

-          Centralized transportation

-          Means of production owned by state

-          Equitable distribution of population density across the country

-          Free education (in the communist society I experienced, free education was rationed)

-          Combine education with production and agriculture

-          Industrial armies

-          Agricultural armies

-          Equal wages

As I sat in my high school class during Scientific Socialism lessons, with eyes glazed over by sheer boredom, I wondered how anyone could make such a deceptive ideology into a science. I could never say it, lest I went to a Gulag.

Stepping outside into our real world, there was no egalitarian society in communism, there were chronic shortages of food while the communist elite ate well and stuffed themselves.

We certainly had two distinct classes: the workers and the communist apparatchiks/the “intellectual proletarians”/the “cultivated proletarian artists.” Some had a fifth grade education, like the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a cobbler, and his equally uneducated wife who presented papers at international forums, stolen from seasoned Ph.D.s who did not dare cross the “Mother of the Country” or challenge her faux credentials.

The common denominator of the communist rulers was that they were agitators and street organizers who had learned “how to be good commies” at brief seminars. For their servitude and help in oppressing the masses, helpful idiots and underlings received extra food, better housing, and comfortable professional jobs in spite of their lack of qualifications.

“Workers of the world” did not unite to overthrow capitalism as Marx wished, on the contrary, in 1989, the workers united and threw out communism in Eastern Europe as a failed ideology, economic, and societal system.

Our founding fathers believed in and respected private property as the cornerstone of our Constitutional republic. Belief in God and family were the keystones.

A majority of Americans today subscribe to the ideas that:

-          Character is the single most important attribute in a leader

-          Respect and honor are laudable traits

-          Entrepreneurs are our economic lifeblood and deserve what they make

-          The rich and entrepreneurs help enrich us all

-          American ingenuity promotes wealth

-          American generosity saves many nations in times of peril/need

-          Families are the building blocks of society

-          Guns prevent evil from taking over

-          Stoked class envy and hatred is un-American

-          Hyphenated labels are divisive and destructive

-          Illegal and unchecked immigration are dangerous to this country

-          Multilingualism is a divider

-          Global warming scare is junk science

-          Liberalism is a failed ideology

-          Military strength deters aggression (“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war, said the Romans.

-          National security is the first responsibility of the federal government

-          “Political correctness is the liberal version of fascism”

-          Quotas should not exist

-          Tax rates should be flat and everybody should pay taxes

-          Unions have outlived their usefulness

-          “Vigilance is the price of freedom”

-          “Welfare robs people of their dignity and is the poison of capitalism”

-          We are responsible for our own destiny, not government or society

-          Government is not the solution, out-of-control government is the problem

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shall not covet’ and ‘Thou shall not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable percepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.” (John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787)