| The Failure of Communism and Socialism | |
Author | Capitalist Terrorists | Economic Cannibalism | Capitalist Genocide | Cooperative Communities |
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The only viable option toterrorist, genocidal capitalism is a cooperative commonwealth community movement, aspreviously explicated. When communicating with people about such political-economic issues, we must take special care to use the correct terms and reference important historic events and personalities in precisely the manner to |
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Analogously, we must also make certain that we don't allow misconceptions pretending to be truths to be foisted on us by the demonic cabal that has seized control of the United States.
For example, in the current economic crisis, Obama's policies are being
misrepresented as socialist orMarxist because his cabal junta is said to be "nationalizing" financial institutions. Actually, Treasury and the Fed are looting American taxpayer money and giving it to financial institutions--nothing more. Capitalists revert to looting--which they con people into calling socialism--when their system collapses. The cabal isn't communistic or socialistic but fascistic. |
In this essay, we'll expose the failure of communism and socialism, exploring the features that render them unworkable systems.
It's first essential to distinguish clearly between a commonwealth movement and communism and socialism.
Essential Distinguishing Points | |||
| Commonwealth Communities | Communism | Socialism | |
| A new movement to create local and regional political systems founded in law by agreement of the members for the common good to replace plutocracy and state-corporate capitalism with small cooperative community groups | A theory of social organization in which real property and the means of production are held in common; in modern terms; Communism (written with a capital C) refers to the historical movement that aims to overthrow the capitalist order by violent revolutionary means and to establish a classless society in which real property and the means of production will be publicly owned | An economic/political system to replace the capitalist order through evolution rather than revolution to establish a classless society in which real property and the means of production will be publicly owned; Socialism has been combined with capitalism in all nations where it's been tried. | |
This chart makes it clear that a commonwealth movement is to be clearly dissociated from both communism and socialism. "Communism" is a term fraught with negative connotations--as in:
- "The revolutionary overthrow of capitalism through violent means"
- "The dictatorship of the proletariat" 1
- "The necessary liquidation of Chinese peasants" (Mao Zedong) 2
These illustrative dogmas of armed insurrection separate communism completely from a commonwealth movement's non-violent methods.
Socialism as a historic movement also contains a great deal of negative baggage, such as the fact that many early American and European socialists and communists continued to embrace Russian communism even after it had clearly been seen to have devolved into a murderous totalitarian dictatorship under Stalin.
Communism as a theory of sharing and living in common dates back to prehistoric times, even being mentioned in the Christian New Testament as a way in which some of the early Christian communities ordered their lives.
Around 1835 the word “socialism” made its first appearance in France. According to the historian G.D.H. Cole,
“the ‘socialists’ werethose who, in opposition to the prevailing stress on the claims of the individual, emphasized the social element in human relations and sought to bring the social question to the front in the great debate about the rights of man let loose by the French Revolution and by the accompanying revolution in the economic field.” 3
Critical examination of the predatory capitalist system by such thinkers as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky help us see its glaring defects.
Writing my Ph.D. dissertation at Yale University on Karl Marx's early thought, 4 I came to see that he and other socialist thinkers saw clearly how the ideology of capitalism reduces humans to "commodities" within a mechanistic system. Marx's theory of a communist society and Bellamy's fictional account of a socialist Boston--in which human welfare would be the primary value--offer interesting visions in contrast to vulture capitalism's horrors.
However, when it comes to the implementation of such a "new society," there the communists and socialists trail off into vague nostrums ("withering away of the state") or propound absolutistic dogmas ("inevitability of revolution") that have no real merit. Granted that neither communist nor socialist theory has ever been genuinely implemented--certainly not in the Soviet Union or any other European countries such as Britain, France, or Italy. But its doctrines as put into practice by its advocates have proven unworkable on any account. We must identify an economic system--or movement--primarily in reference to how it becomes manifested, not simply as it is advocated in "pure" theory.
The movement away from predatory capitalism to a new, humanistic economic system will not occur "automatically" as if the workers of the world were to magically unite, telling themselves they have nothing to lose but their chains.
Communism is defined by its bloody beginning under Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky. These criminal, homicidal propensities led inevitably to the corruption of Marxist communism into Stalin's murderous totalitarian dictatorship. 
Lenin and Stalin began as bank-robbers and killers. Lenin had been hardened by the execution of his elder brother after a botched conspiracy to kill the Czar. Stalin was essentially a brutal thug, engaging in protection rackets, ransom kidnappings, counterfeiting operations, assassinations, extortions, and robberies.
There was no Russian revolution as the communists claim--only the seizing of power by one criminal gang murdering other gangs. The German Army, with its invincible might, had slowly purged Russia of its military and economic strength. The so-called "Russian revolution" was not an epic contest of vast forces but skirmishes between weak factions operating in a power vacuum, with the Bolshevik gang of thugs, thanks to Lenin and Trotsky, the most adept at filling that vacuum. The Bolsheviks were the only left wing group to organize their own military force. The power vacuum had become so complete that it took them only five days to seize power. "It had all been 'as easy as picking up a feather,'" Lenin commented later. "Lenin took power in a coup, not a popular uprising." 5
According to one commentator, Lenin "[seized] power not in a land 'ripe for socialism' but in a land ripe for the seizing of power." Communism and socialism were ideological "covers" that Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky used as propaganda for despotism. The "Russian masses leading its revolution" was pure fantasy. Lenin and his gang never allowed the "masses" any voice whatsoever; when the Bolsheviks could gain only a small minority in the elected Constituent Assembly, Lenin simply disbanded it and appointed himself Dictator.
Lenin's "dictatorship of the proletariat" revealed itself as dictatorship over the proletariat and over other party members. Lenin entrusted the prevention of "factionalism" within the party to Stalin, since he had proved quite adept at murdering anyone who stood in their way. This included burning villages in order to intimidate the peasantry into submission and discourage food bandit raids. In May 1919, in order to stem mass desertions in the "glorious revolution," Stalin had deserters and renegades publicly executed as traitors.
Murderous insurrection as a necessary means of seizing power was an integral doctrine within the Marxist ideology. Marx and Engels believed that an extensive period of violence, civil conflict, and international conflict was inevitable and essential to ultimate communist victory.
Lenin's manifestation of Marxism in blood-thirsty revolutionary practices provided a model for a rogues gallery of deranged thugs such as Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-shek.
The only reason Stalinist and Maoist brands of communism were allowed to persist beyond the second world war, was that capitalism needed fantasy enemies against which to fight the new "cold war," in keeping with the cabal's primary strategy of controlling the masses through the terror of war.
Finally, in 1991 when the pretence of Soviet communism's viability could no longer be propped up by CIA lies, the failed "command economy" was allowed to collapse--so capitalists of all stripes could rush in to plunder Soviet wealth.
Chinese style communism has been allowed to persist because "China is the cheap-labor foundation upon which the survival of world capitalism presently depends. Subtract China from the equations of modern world economy and what would be the present position of American capitalism?" 6
| “The United States will be the first to usher in a socialist republic.” |
The meteoric rise of American socialism can best be described by conditions within the American Socialist Party in 1912:
- Its candidates were elected to municipal offices across the country
- Its leader, Eugene V. Debs, running for the presidency, received fully 6 percent of the national vote
- The American Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs was serving a prison term for agitation against World War I
- The party's ties to the trade-union movement and the electorate were sundered
At the same time, we must remember that Debs ran for US president from his prison cell in 1920 and won nearly one million votes, the largest vote total ever received by a socialist candidate in the United States.
Upton Sinclair, a well-known novelist, ran in the 1934 California gubernatorial election as a Democrat. He received 879,000 votes, his most successful run for office, though he was overwhelmingly defeated. Sinclair's platform, known as the End Poverty in California movement (EPIC), failed to gain any widespread support after 1934.
At the end of World War II, conditions in European countries were so volatile--the myth of the Russian revolution still fresh in the minds of workers worldwide--the capitalist cabal determined that a modicum of "democratic socialism" would be instituted in Europe.
The pretence that "democratic socialism" might be a viable political-economic strategy was the seeming success of the American and European governments to organize wartime economic resources through modified "command economies." Under the direction of the capitalist cabal, all nations that instituted "democratic socialism" did so as part of a "mixed economy:" socialism and capitalism combined. It was inevitable that such a mongrel admixture of contradictory ingredients would prove unworkable.
The Swedish welfare state was founded in 1933. It was initially successful because of its small homogeneous population and its commodity exports of lumber and iron ores. During World War II, Sweden was ideally placed as a neutral exporting nation needed for German rearmament.
The Labor Party in England won a sweeping electoral victory in 1944. Clement Atlee pretended to put "democratic socialism" into practice in the birthplace of capitalism. It began with nationalization of "the main factors in the economic system:" the Bank of England, coal mines, civil aviation, cable and wireless communications, railroads and trucking, and electricity and gas.
Some 58 third world states established somewhat-socialistic governing structures in the years of post Word War II decolonization and Cold War. Many political-economic leaders in the developing nations had been indoctrinated in socialist concepts in Western universities--especially in the London School of Economics established by Sidney and Beatrice Webb to spread socialist dogma.
In Britain, the unworkable combination of "democratic socialism" and capitalism soon forced an end to further nationalizations and even a retrenchment in social welfare: reductions in subsidies for food and imposition of a modest charge for medical prescriptions.
By 1951, the Conservatives under Churchill were back in power. Wage controls and limitations on the right to strike had undermined worker support for the Labor Party. The Conservatives reversed only the nationalization of iron and steel, so the bulk of the socialist experiment remained in place in the British economy until the 1980s.
For three decades, neither Labor nor Conservatives could make England's socialist-capitalist system work--and voters kept expressing their displeasure at the ballot box until the Conservatives found a straight-out capitalist hireling--Margaret Thatcher--who would make a clean break from socialism and rejuvenate predatory capitalism. Her mirror image in the United States was Ronnie Reagan, controlled by George H. W. Bush (the defacto President after the failed assassination attempt on Reagan's life).
Retrenchment from "democratic socialism-capitalism" to full-out vulture capitalism was instituted in France under François Mitterand. In the face of stagnant output, trade balance collapse and soaring inflation, Mitterand ordered "an abrupt about-face" from earlier socialist-capitalist policies. "The private sector is recognized as the creator of social wealth," proclaimed Mitterand.
The cabal began as early as the 1970s to obliterate gains for American workers realized under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. Union elites were bribed into becoming capitalist 
running-dogs, leaving the workers--as in the current auto industry debacle--without benefits or jobs. Structural gains such as the Glass-Stegal Act prohibiting a bank holding company from owning other financial companies was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The American Democratic Party played essentially the same role as European social democratic parties.
"The Democratic Party has been the principal instrument employed by the American capitalists for more than a century to block the development of an independent working class party, preserve the hegemony of the capitalist two-party system, and maintain the capitalist class' monopoly of political power." 7
Over the past half century, European "democratic socialism" parties have increasingly compromised with predatory capitalism or, in certain cases have completely capitulated to capitalist demands. Certain "socialist" features such as nationalized healthcare and welfare have made these nations more supportive of workers than a totally capitalistic system as in the United States. However, these "socialist" elements are being rapidly debased or, in some instances, outright destroyed. Socialism's congenital defect of compromising with capitalism inevitably leads to its ultimate demise.
The decline of social democratic parties throughout Europe is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the June 2009 elections debacle. Across Europe, social democratic parties received only 22 percent of the vote, six percent less than in the 2004 European election. Only 43 percent of the voters turned out, so this means that less than one person in ten voted for socialist party candidates.
- Great Britain (the Labour Party has been in power for the past twelve years): Support for Labour dropped to a record low of 16 percent--less than the vote received by the extreme right-wing UK Independence Party
- Spain: the ruling Socialist Party lost five percentage points and now has less support than the right-wing People's Party
- Germany: the Social Democratic Party (in power for eleven years), received a new low of 21 percent of the total vote
- Portugal: ruling Socialist Party support fell from 45 to 27 percent
- France: the Socialist Party (in opposition to the leading party for the past seven years) received just 17 percent--a decline of 12 percentage points compared to five years ago
- Italy: Democratic Party (successor organization to the Italian Communist Party and other “left” parties) support dropped from 31 percent to 26 percent
- Denmark: the opposition Social Democrats received 21 percent, losing 12 percentage points from the last election
- Dutch Labour Party support fell to 12 percent, half what it had been
- Austria: the socialist party support decreased from 33 to 24 percent
| "This decline is all the more remarkable when one bears in mind that the election took place in the midst of the most severe world economic crisis since the 1930s. Although unemployment is rising rapidly and the living conditions of broad layers of the population have worsened considerably, voters are deserting the social democrats in droves." |
Historically, Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes have been nothing more than totalitarian dictatorships. They've used Marxist and communist rhetoric as a cover for sheer despotism: criminal gangs seizing power through armed insurrection. Marxist and communist theory has been used as a propaganda tool to hoodwink and brainwash the masses.
"Democratic socialism" has predominantly gained power through peaceful means rather than armed revolution, but its failure 
has been inevitable nonetheless. Its primary practical defect has been in compromising with capitalism in almost every regard, even to the point of renouncing solidarity with workers in other countries when war has broken out (as in World Wars I and II).
The nineteenth century exposé of the actual workings of capitalism by Marx and Engels was brilliant in its daring to cut through the euphemisms, delusions, and subterfuges that theorists such as Adam Smith and Hobbes used to mask capitalist corruption and depravity. For the first time in human history, we were able to see beneath the veil of propriety that capitalists kept over their transactions: how profit derived, for example, from the surplus labor value implanted into commodities by workers and looted by capitalists.
However, within the theories of Marx and Engels--and those of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and later communist thinkers--there are inherent defects that lead to their unworkability and failure. The downfall of communism and socialism could be predicted from the fundamental flaws in their theoretical foundations. Disciples and advocates of these conceptual systems also become complicit "carriers" of these ideational and practical flaws.
We'll examine three such innate, congenital defects:These defects in thought and practice--as examined in a few illustrative cases within true-disciples of Marxism and socialism--will provide a glimpse into the more extensive inherent defects in Marxist and socialist theory and implementation. |
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At times, however, these discerning Marxist-socialist scholars evince in their thinking and writing all three of the defects we've outlined above. In his 2005 essay, "Marxism, history and the science of perspective," David North, chief analyst for the World Socialist Web Site, waxes ecstatic on the transcendental brilliance of Marx's and Engels' Communist Manifesto:
"There is no more powerful refutation of the denial of the possibility of historical prediction than the text of the Communist Manifesto, the first truly scientific and still unsurpassed work of historical, socio-economic and political perspective. In a few pages, Marx and Engels identified in the class struggle an essential driving force of history, outlined the economic and political processes out of which the modern, bourgeois, world emerged, and explained the world-historical revolutionary implications of the development of capitalist industry and finance."
Anyone who seriously studies the Communist Manifesto recognizes it as an important original and innovative exposé of capitalist theory and practice, but describing it as "the first truly scientific and still unsurpassed work of historical, socio-economic and political perspective," is nothing more than ideological zealotry similar to that of Lenin in the quotation below.
| "The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true." |
Within the Communist Manifesto, there appeared the defect of presuming that with the proper Marxist theory one could unerringly predict the course of history.
"The weapons with which the capitalist class [bourgeoisie] felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the capitalist class itself.
"But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons--the modern working class--the proletarians."This presumption of prophetic infallibility has proven false: the capitalist class has seized almost absolute power over the working class throughout the world--to the point that capitalists are now perpetrating genocide on workers as a class. Instead of proving to be the "weapon" that destroys the capitalist class, the working class has proven to be submissive victims.
Taking their lead from Marx and Engels, contemporary disciples presume that they alone can explicate the hidden meanings of current events.
"How are these seemingly opposite phenomena [of 1991 to 2001] to be explained? I think it is fair to say that outside of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the World Socialist Web Site, nobody has been able to provide a cogent answer." 9
Bary Grey is correct that few other thinkers at the present time have the demonstrated capability of explicating complex events in a manner that reveals their hidden implications and meanings. But, there is a small number of non-Marxists and non-socialists who are able to discern the covert significance of contemporary events. I would suggest that a serious study of the essays on the site where this essay appears would prove this to be the case.
True believer disciples become so enamored of and dedicated to Marxist-socialist theories and analyses that they distort historical facts. In this example, a socialist scholar proves to be such a biased defender of his master, Leon Trotsky, that he misinterprets historical events.
"Certainly after the Russian Revolution, the role of Stalinism was decisive in aborting the development of the world socialist revolution. Trotsky was obliged to expose the mistakes, and later the crimes, of the Stalin clique, trace them to their political and ultimately their social roots, and elaborate a perspective and a strategic and tactical orientation for the working class to overcome the obstacles thrown in its path by both capitalism and capitalism's bureaucratic agencies within the labor movement." 10
As we saw above, there was no "Russian revolution;" only a criminal gang led by Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky murdering other criminal gangs. The "world socialist revolution," similarly, is a figment of Grey's and other socialists' imagination. Trotsky felt "obliged" to expose the crimes of the Stalinist clique only after they had him expelled from the party and then exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Until that time he had felt obliged to say that the murders, rapes, kidnappings, and extortions Stalin committed were perfectly acceptable as necessary for the glorious "Russian revolution."
One of the main disservices that Marxist and socialist scholars do to American workers is to give them the impression that something like the illusory "Russian revolution" could and should occur in the United States.
| "In the epoch of capitalist decline and socialist revolution, the objectively revolutionary role of the working class can be realized only if and when that class, or at least its most advanced layers, becomes conscious of its revolutionary role and the historical necessity embodied in that role." 11 |
If an armed insurrection were to occur in America, it would be the workers who would suffer, not the Marxist-socialist theorists. But, in fact, no such "revolution," can or will occur in the United States; the criminal cabal is too thoroughly ensconced in power for such an event to 
occur, holding in its tentacles all the instruments and agencies of violence (police, military, propaganda, "intelligence").
Workers need to understand just what conditions are in America and throughout the world, so they can plan intelligently to respond to the capitalist pandemic of terror and tyranny. The situation in the United States at present is nothing like that in Russia in 1917. Yes, there has been a total collapse of the capitalist economic system, but there are no "countervailing powers" to oppose the cabal. The old capitalist system of a supply and demand market has been scrapped and a new totally fascistic structure put in its place: looting taxpayer money to give to financial institutions, with fat-cats receiving obscene multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses accompanied by a systematic genocide of workers.
Among others, Cannibalistic capitalism is currently employing these tactics:
- The Reichstag Fire Syndrome: The Reichstag Fire Syndrome occurs whenever a ruling junta attempts to destroy the working class by contriving a terrorist crisis and offering as a "solution" the abdication of civil liberties and states' rights to a powerful but unaccountable central dictator. The men of wealth who put the tyrant into power are then able to reap obscene war profits.
- False flag stratagems: operations in which a nation attacks itself but makes it appear that an enemy has committed the attacks, provoking peace-loving people into fighting against the demonized “enemy” and refusing to question its leaders during critical times.
- Agents provocateur: 12 Police and military forces are increasingly using hidden agent-thugs to provoke protestors and demonstrators to escalate to violence so they can then be arrested. It also appears likely that some of the recent so-called "terrorist operations" have involved agents whom the security forces conned into carrying out acts of violence so the masses can continue to be frightened into submission.
| "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments . . ." |
In light of these cabal tactics, workers are ill-advised by socialist propaganda that they must at some point begin their "revolution." Cabal "security forces" (read goon squads and agents provocateur) like nothing better than ignorant protestors escalating into violence, armed or unarmed. The arrest of hundreds of peaceful protestors--including professional persons such as physicians and nurses--at recent rallies indicates that cabal "security forces" don't hesitate to react with whatever level of violence they see fit.
Socialist indoctrination also does the disservice to workers of convincing them that change can occur only if the entire capitalist economic system is replaced with a socialist system. It will be impossible to change America's total system from capitalist private ownership to public ownership of the means of production in one fell swoop.
Change can only come about if we begin in small communities where experimentation can determine the best methods and then as these cooperative communities increase in numbers they can leaven the larger society.As conditions rapidly deteriorate in America and worldwide, the necessity of joining in cooperative communities becomesimperative. |
Notes:
2 When I attended Yale University Divinity School in the late 1950s, I pastored a small church in New Haven, Connecticut (where Yale is located). One of my parishioners had been an informant for the F.B.I. in the Connecticut state communist party. I attended a public meeting of the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy where a retired U.S. Army general was speaking about our China foreign policy. He claimed that when Mao reported that he had "liquidated" Chinese peasants, Mao meant only that he had "relocated" them. I was the only person in the audience who stood up to challenge the retired general' remarks, stating that the evidence was available that the Chinese communists had murdered ("liquidated") thousands of Chinese peasants; that even Mao had admitted this.
The general merely asserted that he was right, that neither Mao nor any other "friendly" Chinese ally had ever murdered Chinese peasants.
The next day my parishioner came by to inform me that I had been invisibly filmed by the F.B.I. when I challenged the retired U.S. Army general's claims. The retired general was known to the F.B.I. as a notorious defender of China and its communistic policies and operations. Both my parishioner and I had a good laugh over this at the time.
3 A History of Socialist Thought: Volume I: The Forerunners 1789-1850, 1953
4 My 1962 doctoral dissertation at Yale University was titled The Principle of Activity in Marx's Philosophy--with an English translation of Marx's doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was later published as a book in 1968 by Martinus Nijhoff.
5 Joshua Muravchik, Heaven On Earth, The Rise and Fall of Socialism
6 David North, The Crisis of American Democracy
8 One thinks of such groups as the World Socialist Web Site and selected writers for the Monthly Review journal
9 Barry Grey, "The world historical implications of the political crisis in the United States," 6 February 2001, world socialist website, wsws.org
12 Agents provocateur were caught red handed in Canada in August, 2007, when they tried to keep peaceful protestors from demonstrating and attempted to provoke violence.
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