A Dark Day When America Transforms into Marx’s Vision

Karl Heinrich Marx, a notoriously lazy German who existed with his family as a welfare case of his rich friends, might be surprised that his academic thoughts and ideas shook the 20^th century to its core and enslaved millions of people across the world, creating monstrous regimes that killed 100 million of their own citizens for their dissension and unwillingness to accept a proletarian society that dispossessed humans of their own property, land, and freedoms, and turned them into serfs to the omnipotent socialist state imposed and run by the Communist Party.

Marx might be even more surprised that such a failed societal and economic model would be resurrected in the 21^st century in the least likely society to accept Marx’s ideas, the United States, the beacon of freedom for the rest of the world.

Marx’s 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, has been resuscitated today by brainwashed American generations who want socialism but have no understanding of what it entails. They hear the word “free” everything and that is enough for them to support such an oppressive form of society and disastrous economic model.

Marx’s pamphlet was written as a critique against capitalism even though he and his family shamelessly lived off his benefactors’ capitalist income. His outrage against the exploitation of capitalism as he saw it, is reminiscent of the youth of today who protest capitalism in the streets and want it replaced with socialism, while holding electronic products and living a lifestyle produced by an abundant capitalist economy.

Marx divided society into the ruling class and the working class, describing the proletariat as an exploited and oppressed segment of society by the ruling class. The working class is forced to sell their labor to exist and survive. It would be hard for the proletariat to find rich supporters like Marx had. He did not work a productive day in his life but lived off the generosity of his friends, instead of honestly providing for his wife and numerous children.

Marx talked about “eternal truths such as Freedom and Justice,” hence the cries of today’s youth for Social Justice, concepts they barely understand or can explain. 

Marx wrote that communism would abolish these eternal truths found in all states of society, “it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.” (p. 92, The Communist Manifesto)

The evil “bourgeoisie” that owned the capital will be dispossessed by its “political supremacy” in order that all instruments of production will be centralized in the hands of the state and the proletariat will be organized as the ruling class. At that time, the total productive forces will be increased as quickly as possible.  (p. 93, The Communist Manifesto)

As the old social order is being destroyed and class distinctions disappeared, old conditions of production replaced with new ones, and utopian “association” will emerge with “free development” of all.

What were the ten tenets of Marx’s Communist Manifesto?

1.       “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.”

When the Bolsheviks marched in with the Soviet Army into Romania, the society at large strongly opposed their idea of giving up land and private property to the state for the “public good.” Romania had a thriving economy under the monarchy and people were making an honest living on their own farms, small factories, small businesses. Using coercion, torture, and murder, the Bolsheviks wrested farms, houses, factories, hotels, private buildings, and stores from their rightful owners and turned everything over to the state which was now run by the Communist Party made up of a small group of revolutionaries. As they gained more power, they used this newly acquired state property as their fiefdom and awarded and rewarded their apparatchiks with other people’s homes and wealth. In typical fashion, socialists steal by decrees until they run out of other people’s wealth, money, and property.

2.       “A heavy progressive and graduated income tax.”

The masses are taxed until there is nothing left to tax and people have a bare minimum to exist on.

3.       “Abolition of all right of inheritance.”

Nothing is yours; it belongs to the state. My grandparents lost everything to the first round of Communist Party confiscation: land, the farm, farm implements, gold coins, family jewelry, savings, and any cash on hand or personal possessions in the home, including a mantel clock. When they died, the home they had lived in became the property of the state, the six children could not dispose of it as they wished.

4.       “Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.”

When I emigrated legally to the U.S., everything I owned was confiscated and I was only allowed to leave with two suitcases of clothes and memorabilia.

When my father (a staunch anti-communist) died, all his savings and possessions, including my books, were confiscated by the state. When my mom defected to the U.S., all her savings and possessions were confiscated by the socialist state as well. To add insult to injury, my parents, who worked since they were 18 years old, 43 years for my dad and 30 years for my mom, never received their pensions, it was also confiscated by the state. To this day, the state has made no effort to redress the situation to my mom. And it was not for lack of trying. I have even asked the prime minister in person.

5.       “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

People living in socialist societies had to save their money to purchase anything of value. Credit was seldom given by the only bank and the interest rates were confiscatory, as much as 50% in some cases to discourage borrowing. People would borrow from family members and return the money over time with an agreed upon but much lower interest rate.

6.       “Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.”

State’s priorities involved the improvement of the lives of those in control, the communist oligarchs, who had amassed vast wealth confiscated from the population. Communication was state owned and controlled and so was transportation. We could travel by rickety busses or trains; few people owned cars as they were prohibitively expensive and the driving test quite difficult to pass.

Few owned telephones, it took 14 years to install a phone line from the time a petition was filed, and phones were tapped all the time. Letters were always opened and read by the state. There were few newspapers and a couple of magazines, all content controlled by the state. Rural residents used the party newspaper for toilet paper as it was always difficult to find, even though the country had vast forests. Nothing was published without the approval of the Communist Party and its censors. In America today we have censorship by a handful of tech giants, something nobody had envisioned in the country where freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Constitution. But then we had a Constitution under the socialist regime too, but the overlords thumbed their noses at it and kept changing it to suit their rhetoric.

7.       “Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.”

The infamous Five-Year Plans issued by the Communist Party was seldom fulfilled because it was irrational and unreasonable, not based on sound economics. The Party concentrated on developing the country through heavy industrial investments and projects at the expense of the proletariat’s living standards who were pathetic when compared to other countries.

8.       “Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.”

Every able-bodied adult had a job with minimum pay established by the state, nobody was idle and on welfare unless they were sick or giving birth. People of all ages, including school children, were forced to do volunteer labor in agriculture, planting or harvesting crops, cleaning streets, and planting grass and flowers.

9.       “Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.”

Farmers, whose land had been confiscated, had to commute to nearby cities to find employment in factories, and their wives and children tended to a small garden by their homes to eat. Some young but mostly old men and women were left behind to farm the state’s co-operatives.

Farmers were crowded in homes next to each other in their tightly packed villages or were forcefully moved into concrete bloc apartments in the city so that state-owned co-operative farms could be established with their joined lands.

10.   “Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.”

When I emigrated to the U.S., I had to reimburse the omnipotent state for the education I had received up to that point even though we were supposed to receive a free education, including college. But nothing was free unless it benefited the mighty state.

As children we had to labor in the state’s fields to dig up potatoes, onions, pick grapes, pears, apples, and plums. It was volunteer work, and we were taken out of school two weeks in the fall and a few weeks in the spring.

The retread Socialist Democrats of America today claim that they “own the future.” The question remains, how dark is this future going to be and how long are the other Americans going to accept this evil darkness?