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Tuesday, March 27, 2018

LYNN BERGMAN: DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST - THE REALITY

A recent study of college faculty voter registration found that progressive professors vastly outnumber conservative professors by a 33.5 to 1 ratio. Manifesto of the Communist Party (published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) ranks among the top three most frequently assigned texts at American universities; and Marx is the most assigned economist at those same American universities.

 

“Independent” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' early 2015 run for president as a Democrat brought a national spotlight to his claim of being a Democratic Socialist. Preferring to be listed on the Vermont ballot as an Independent tended to help garner votes of independents in senatorial elections. Identifying himself as a Democratic Socialist and freely advocating “revolution” in his rhetoric directed towards progressives at Democrat sponsored events endeared him to the far left of the Democrat Party.

 

Chapters of Young Democratic Socialists of America rose from 12 at the end of 2016 to nearly 100 by the end of 2017. On many college campuses, students can earn academic credit for promoting socialist causes at school. History is worth reviewing to determine what the term Democratic Socialist means.

 

Principles of Communism

 

Frederick Engels wrote Principles of Communism in October, 1847 and it was incorporated into the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848.  The term Democratic Socialist is one of three categories of socialists defined under Question 24 (How do Communists differ from socialists?) of Principles of Communism.  The other two categories are Reactionary Socialists and Bourgeois Socialists.

 

Reactionary Socialists are the adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society seeking to establish the rule of aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and priests; so Reactionary Socialists are to be energetically opposed by the communists.

 

Bourgeois Socialists wish to maintain the current society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it; so communists must unremittingly struggle against Bourgeois Socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

 

The third category, Democratic Socialists, consists of those who favor some of the same measures the communists advocate in Question 18 (What will be the course of this revolution?) as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery and evils of present day society. In “moments of action” the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these democratic socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists.

 

Summarizing, according to the Principles of Communism, Democratic Socialists are the ONLY defined category of socialist that communists will “come to an understanding with” during “moments of action”. The other two categories will be opposed and/or struggled against. Of the three categories of socialist defined by Marx, the Democratic Socialist is without a doubt the most likely to survive the final phase of transformation from capitalism to socialism and ultimately, to communism.

 

Question 18 of Principles of Communism - What will be the course of this revolution?

 

Question 18 sees Democracy as a means for putting through measures directed against private property. including:

(i)

            Progressive taxation.

            Heavy inheritance taxes.

            Abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.).

(ii)

            Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, through             competition with state owned industries or through direct payment in the form of bonds of the      state.

(iii)

            Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

(iv)

            Organization of labor or employment of proletarians (laborers) on publicly owned land, in             factories and work shops.

            Competition among the workers being abolished.

            Factory owners being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

(v)

            All members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely    abolished.

            Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

(vi)

            Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state and suppression of all private banks.

(vii)

            National factories, workshops, railroads, ships, and bringing new lands under cultivation.

(viii)

            Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother's care, in national             establishments at national cost. Education and production together.

(ix)

            Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings.

(x)

            Destruction of all unhealthy dwellings in urban districts.

(xi)

            Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.

(xii)

            Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the state.

 

As seen from the highlighted elements of Question 18, portions of many of these measures have been implemented in America since Principles of Communism and Manifesto of the Communist Party were published in 1848.

 

In 1852, Massachusetts was the first state to enact a compulsory public education law.

 

In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allowed Congress to impose the income tax in 1913, which was progressive with rates ranging from 1% for income from $20,000 to $50,000 to 6% for income over $500,000.

 

In 1913, the Federal Reserve Act established a central banking system of the United States.

 

In 1930, the Veterans Administration and its 54 veterans hospitals rose out of the Veterans Bureau.

 

In 1934, Public Works Administration head Harold Ickes directed the first construction of public housing that was later codified in the 1937 Wagner-Steagall Housing Act.

 

In 1938, congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act establishing the minimum wage and other government interference in labor markets.

 

In 1949 the Housing Act of 1949 allowed the first urban renewal funding and regulations.

 

In 1976 the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act provided government funded healthcare to American Indians and Alaskan Natives.

 

In 2010, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act represented the first steps toward nationalized health care. Healthcare currently represents about 18% of the United States economy.

 

Definition of Socialism

 

Socialism – a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

 

In Marxist theory – a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

 

The Black Book of Communism

 

This history of communism, published in 1999, is a must read for anyone who has read Engels and Marx. This book proves several analytical points, as follows:

 

1)         Communist regimes do not just commit criminal acts (all states do so on occasion); they are             essentially criminal enterprises that rule lawlessly by violence without regard for human life.

2)         There has never been a benign initial phase of communism before some mythical “wrong turn”             threw it off track. From the start, communism's recourse to “permanent civil war” rests on             Marx's belief in “class struggle” as the “violent midwife of history”.

3)         Communism's common theme of violence against the population is a deliberate policy of the        new revolutionary order and the scope and inhumanity of such violence far exceed anything in            the national past of each population it infects.

4)         Ideology, not social process, fuels each communist movement's meteoric rise as well as its             precipitate fall.

5)         Any realistic accounting of communist crime effectively shuts the door on the false promise of    an end to “inequality”; and its 100 million deaths far exceed the 25 million NAZI deaths.

 

Communist Confiscation of Firearms 

 

The Soviet Union initially confiscated all privately owned firearms but concentrated their efforts in population centers, allowing rural peasants to keep rifles for subsistence hunting.

 

The Peoples Republic of China generally does not allow private citizens to own firearms.

 

When the communists took over Bulgaria on September 9, 1944, they immediately confiscated every weapon in private possession.

 

In East Germany, private gun ownership was outlawed, although citizens were allowed to rent hunting guns for one-day periods.

 

Immediately after WWII, Hungary was governed by a coalition of democrats and communists. Preparing the way for a total communist takeover, Laszio Rajk, the communist minister of the interior, ordered the dissolution of all pistol and hunting clubs, as well as other organizations which might prove a threat to government power. Rajk claimed he acted “in order to more efficiently protect the democratic system of the state”.

 

Poland initially allowed limited ownership of registered target guns with a license from the “Citizen's Militia”. In December, 1981, Poland's communist dictator, General Jaruzelski declared martial law, arrested all the pro-democracy leaders he could find, and ordered all firearms and ammunition be turned over to the government.

 

Romanian communist dictator Niclai Ceausescu used registration lists to confiscate all firearms in private hands.

 

When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, he disarmed and destroyed any and all opposition.

 

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, on June 1, 2012, banned all private gun ownership after previously disarming all civilians voluntarily. Cuban mercenaries provide security to government officials.

 

Definition of Capitalism

 

Capitalism – an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

 

Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets for goods and services. Encouragement of entrepreneurship and reasonable access to public and private natural resources are also essential to its success.

 

Commentary

 

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' rhetoric identifying his candidacy as a “revolution” and his fixation on “class warfare” reveal his passion for a Utopian “equality for all”. His proposals for free higher education, guaranteed annual income, fixed-payer (government directed) healthcare, and other “equal outcomes” further reveal his support for cradle-to-grave government control of society and almost guaranteed, if not intended, human dependence.

 

Conservatives understand that it is our continual societal quest for “equality of opportunity” that has made the United States of America the most successful governmental experiment in world history and caused others to emulate our constitution and capitalist economical model. Conservatives have both a right and a duty to teach those around us, especially our children, about the threat to our way of life that socialism (the equality that is poverty itself) and its successor, self-immolating communism, represent.

 

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