We begin with the granddaddy of communist thought, Karl Marx.
In an odd way, it could be argued that Karl Marx was the original hippie.
Why do I say that? Like the hippies in the sixties, Marx was a counterculture-type who sought a cultural and political revolution in his native Russia. While he may never have worn flowers in his scruffy hair, Marx spent countless hours drinking and smoking his pipe in contemplation and the pursuit of enlightenment—and a benefactor who’d support him. He found one in Friedrich Engels, the son of a successful business owner in Prussia who, for the better part of twenty years, did what he could to subsidize Marx.
You see, although Marx was born into an educated family—his father, Heinrich Marx, was a lawyer—Karl Marx turned out to be a negligent bum of the lowest order. His was a hand-to-mouth existence. He detested manual labor, preferring to dream up ideas about mooching from others and spreading their wealth around.
Does that sound harsh?
How’s this for harsh: His own family was evicted from their apartment in London and faced extreme hunger from their impoverished state because Marx apparently cared more for his lofty ideas than his obligation as a father and husband to provide.2 One historian, whose name is unimportant, described the pitiful conditions of his home life:
… his family bore a burden of poverty far heavier and more unbearable than the one carried by the average proletarian family in those days. There were days in the Marx household when the stove was cold, the frost biting, the pantry empty and hunger upon the bill of fare; when the impatient landlord stormed and threatened, and the children’s starved faces and beseeching glances seemed to accusingly form themselves into a veritable indictment against their father.3
Marx was so driven in the pursuit of his fledgling communist theories, so consumed by his interaction with fellow intellectuals while collaborating with Engels on The Communist Manifesto, that he neglected the needs of his own family. He lost sight of the fact that his primary responsibility was to provide food and shelter for his children.
But there’s more.
His obsession led to a personal tragedy glossed over by the fawning professors of Marxism; namely, that with a diet primarily of bread and potatoes, three of his seven children died before age ten and one died in infancy before he had been named.4 In other words, they were malnourished and “literally starved to death.”5 Marx was so destitute he couldn’t afford medical care for his children when they fell sick and was unable to scrape together enough money to purchase a small coffin for one of his daughters.6 When his one-year-old son Guido died, Marx told his friend and financier, Friedrich Engels, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, that little Guido was “a sacrifice to bourgeois misery.”7
A sacrifice? I told you liberalism is a mental disorder.
What kind of father would place the pursuit of his fanciful musings over the welfare of his own flesh and blood? What kind of dad wouldn’t put his kids first? Why didn’t Marx get a job as a professor of philosophy and provide for his household as any man would do? After all, Marx obtained his Doctorate of Philosophy at Berlin University, which means at the very least he was qualified to teach gym class at the local elementary school.
In 1852, a police agent from Prussia was dispatched to spy on the Marx family who were, at the time, living in a cramped, two-room flat in one of the worst sections of London. Although Marx’s wife, Jenny von Westphalen, was the sister of the Prussian Minister, the agent wasn’t sent because he wanted to know how Jenny was doing. Rather, the background information was sought because Marx was “the moving and active spirit, the real soul of the [Communist] Party.”8 According to the report filed by this agent, the thirty-four-year-old Marx could have easily passed as a homeless bum:
In his private life he is a highly disorderly, cynical human being and a bad manager. He lives the life of a gypsy, of an intellectual Bohemian; washing, combing and changing his linen are things he does rarely, he likes to get drunk. He is often idle for days on end…. 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 only three legs. On another chair, which happens to be whole, the children are playing at cooking.9
Look, I’m not saying that just because Marx was eccentric, his political theories should be discounted. By all accounts, Albert Einstein was eccentric, too. At least Einstein’s theories actually worked when put into practice. The same cannot be said of the things Marx dreamed up at the expense of his family.
Not to be too cynical, his actions were consistent with his advocacy. As he wrote, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.” I’d say he did a pretty good job of that one with his own family. What’s more, history has shown that his ignoble theories impoverished millions of families around the world. I have no idea how anyone can call him the “creator of the most important political movement of the 20th Century.”10
Marx believed the reason poverty exists is because wealthy fat cats (the bourgeoisie) are giving the working class (the proletariat) a raw deal. We can only assume he was referring to the working class who actually held down a regular, full-time job, something he never did. The rich are the oppressors, while the poor are the victims of oppression. That’s number one. Then, in the interest of fairness, Marx believed the only solution to the problem was to redistribute the wealth (socialism).
It’s the classic “makers versus the takers” mind-set.
The rich have something the poor want—primarily money and possessions. Rather than work harder to realize his dreams, as my grandfather did, Marx’s behavior demonstrates he preferred to look for a handout. Not surprising, he believed it’s the government’s job to redistribute the wealth and end the inequality between the classes—which, in a nutshell, is Marxist thinking at the core. In the end, Karl Marx died a pauper. If only his dangerous ideas had died with him.
If they had, the people in the Marxist-Leninist country of Cuba wouldn’t be in such misery. Due to Cuba’s “disastrous state-run agriculture industry,” 11 widespread shortages of food and food rationing abound forcing Cuba to import 80 percent of its food.12 What’s more, inadequate housing and deteriorating living conditions are the norm,13 and Cubans are not permitted to switch jobs unless the government grants them permission.14
Other failures of Marxism-Leninism were the formation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which dissolved as a socialist state after less than fifty years in 1992; the People’s Republic of Poland, a centrally planned socialist state with a failed economy, widespread impoverishment, food rationing, and martial law; and the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania, which collapsed in less than fifty years when, in 1992, the communists were booted from power in a national election.
Are you starting to get the picture?
There are twenty-seven examples where a nation was built specifically upon the principles of Marxism-Leninism, yet ended up on the ash heap of history. Of the five countries still operating with an allegiance to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, namely, China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and the aforementioned Cuba, personal freedoms are restricted, poverty abounds as the typical worker makes less than a dollar a day, and access to modern consumer goods is outside of the reach of the majority of the citizenry.
Only Hollywood idiots such as actor Sean Penn dream of living there.
A Better Marxist Mousetrap?
The teachings of Karl Marx, known as Marxism, formed the basis of communism and socialism. Marx, however, was more of an armchair quarterback, waxing eloquent about how the system should be changed yet never doing any of the heavy lifting. He never held a political office or position of leadership from which
to implement his notions. By contrast, Russian revolutionary and avowed atheist, Vladimir Lenin, was a hands-on kind of guy.
True, Lenin loved to theorize about Marx’s ideas with the other thinkers of his day, but he was far more pragmatic. Lenin quickly moved from the theoretical to the practical. And, he was quite a persuasive orator.
Given his ability to talk a good game and persuade others about his socialist ideas, Lenin was elected Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars. In that capacity, Lenin wasn’t above the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the press to sell his new Marxist-Leninist communist program, saying, “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”15
To sell his ideas to the peasants, Lenin modified Marx’s order of economics over politics, enabling him to usher in his concept of a socialist economic system while solidifying the Soviet Union. In other words, he leveraged the lofty ideals of socialism—”From each, according to his abilities; to each, according to his needs”—to promote communism that, in theory, delivered a classless society through force, centralized planning, and control by an authoritarian government.
Lenin wasn’t above twisting a few arms or breaking a few necks along the way, having signed execution lists to weed out at least twenty-five czars. I’m not suggesting that he was paranoid; he just backed his rhetoric with a rifle. As Lenin has said, “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” In 1918, Lenin authorized the execution of the Russian Royal Family and the deaths of another 765 insurrectionists.16 No wonder there were two assassination attempts on his life. Regarding the application of socialism, in spite of his best efforts, Lenin only scratched the surface.
Which brings us to Joseph Stalin, the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalin was heavily influenced by the writings of both Marx and Lenin. No doubt he was familiar with Lenin’s opinion that “The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries.”17 So, what’s one of the first things Stalin did when he came to power? He thought it would be a great idea to topple the capitalists in various industries and replace them with a more efficient and fair state-controlled ownership.
Did his idea work?
Let’s consider what happened to the farm industry in Russia.
Prior to Stalin’s tinkering with the system, the farms in the Soviet Union were individually owned and operated by small family farmers, much as you might have in parts of this country today. These farmers, known as kulaks or individual landowners, were the backbone of the agriculture industry for the Soviets, having worked the soil for generations. Before Stalin intervened, the kulaks were quite productive and the people were eating fairly well.
That wasn’t good enough for Stalin. Why? Because he had embraced Marx and Lenin’s view that evil capitalists were the antithesis of socialism. For socialism to work, the capitalists had to be weeded out. And, as Marx had taught, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Since the farmers were landowners who sometimes employed a handful of others, that made them a threat to communism and, as such, Stalin said they had to go.
At the barrel of a gun if necessary.
What’s more, Stalin was of the opinion that the government, with the help of a centralized game plan, could run the farms better than the farmers. He figured he’d eliminate the profit motive of these greedy individual farmers and, by nationalizing the agriculture business, make it more efficient, increase productivity, and expand farmland output. Or so the man thought.
In that respect, Stalin’s behavior is no different from Barack Obama’s imposition of a socialist revolution here in America. From the moment Obama came to power, he leveraged the power of the government to nationalize major portions of the economy and private industries. Few sectors of American life haven’t been impacted by the far-reaching arm of this president.
From the auto industry, the banks, and various financial institutions, to Obama’s plan to snatch expansive tracts of land depriving the middle class of mining, farming, and cattle-raising opportunities, and commandeering the energy industry through his green socialism scheme of cap-and-trade, Obama is hell-bent on crippling capitalism through massive taxes and his bureaucratic state. His unswerving commitment to nationalize health care is nothing short of a power grab in which he hopes to co-opt and destroy one-sixth of the economy by any means possible, legal or otherwise.
This should come as no surprise given the fact that Barack Obama is a dedicated disciple of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago Marxist and community organizer of choice for leftist revolutionaries. Alinsky was an ultra-liberal and “communist/Marxist fellow-traveler,” one writer, a former communist, asserts. This writer further explains that Alinsky “helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.”18
Alinsky codified his America-hating strategies of confrontation and infiltration in his book, Rules for Radicals, which he dedicated to Lucifer.19 You might say that gives new meaning to the idea that the devil is in the details. What’s more, Alinsky’s model for an anti-American revolution is built upon “the strategy of working within the system until you can accumulate enough power to destroy, it was what sixties radicals called ‘boring from within.’ … Like termites, they set about to eat away at the foundations of the building in expectation that one day they could cause it to collapse.”20
These Alinsky-inspired tactics and actions by President Obama and his czars are guaranteed to cause trickle up poverty for the American middle class, which is the same thing Stalin caused, as you’ll see, when he nationalized the agriculture business in Soviet Russia.
Let’s not dwell on the fact that Stalin never planted a turnip and had no idea what was involved in running a farm. For whatever reason, Stalin placed his faith in the brilliant government bureaucrats in Moscow, believing they could do a better job than the kulaks who actually had dirt under their fingernails. Almost overnight, Stalin’s regime swung into action, enforcing the collectivization of agriculture.
It was the way of “The Man of Steel” (Stalin), or the feel of his crushing heel.
In the early 1930s, Stalin proceeded to steal the land from the people—ordinary men and women like you and me—arresting those who refused to go along with the program. Millions of kulaks were exiled to distant corners of Russia.21 Many landed in Stalin’s Gulag labor camps, and more than twenty thousand who resisted were executed. Yes, there was widespread resistance because, in simple terms, as musician Frank Zappa once quipped, “Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.”22 What was the fruit of Stalin’s takeover of the farming industry?
Russia experienced widespread famine of biblical proportions.
An estimated ten million Russians died from starvation because Stalin’s promise of government efficiency and increased output turned out to be nothing more than fiction, a product of Stalin’s fertile yet warped thinking. In fact, “the people who grew the grain were dying at a rate of 25,000 a day.”23
Prior to 1917, Russia had always been a significant exporter of grain. In fact, Russia was the “most important grain exporting country” 24 in the world. After Stalin’s communist takeover and the practice of a state-controlled agricultural industry, Russia’s grain export business ground to a halt. In fact, in order to meet its own needs, years later Russia was forced to import upwards of six million tons of grain annually. This embarrassing situation continued until 1994 when Russian farmers were finally able to begin modest exports of grain.25
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that this loss of productivity and massive, unnecessary loss of life occurred because Stalin put socialism into practice, bringing it out of the theoretical realm in ways that neither Lenin nor Marx himself had ever tried on such a large scale. What’s more, this dictator and disciple of Marxism
-Leninism became one of the worst mass-murderers in history.
This isn’t an isolated example of the failure of nationalization. History continues to repeat itself.
We see this happening just about anywhere the government takes over a private industry in any country down through the ages. If you look at government-run industries around the world, very few of them are profitable. Take Airbus. It’s run by a joint consortium—France and Germany and several other European countries—and it’s still dependent on government aid. These governments must keep pumping more money into the company to keep it airborne. One report pegs total government subsidies at more than $200 billion over the last four decades.26
Airbus, by the way, competes with our Boeing company, which has no such benefits as government subsidies. Boeing just produces a better airplane for a lower price, which, of course, customers want to buy. Because Boeing is profitable, the employees have jobs, the economy grows, and the country benefits. That’s the fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism.
The More Power They Have, The Less You Have
When it comes to government control, I don’t care which topic we’re talking about—be it nationalizing private business, introducing socialized health care, crippling the military through sensitivity training, or redefining marriage in the name of tolerance—every time the government seizes control of your rights and starts meddling with your choices, a part of your freedom dies. Let me put it to you this way: the more power they have, the less you have. It’s a simple principle of life and yet so many sheeple don’t seem to know this.
Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama’s Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security Page 9
