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)
