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The ideas of Karl Marx still thrive
Nando Times ^ | 4/25/02 | DEROY MURDOCK

Posted on 04/25/2002 12:36:20 PM PDT by Jean S

(April 25, 2002 2:44 p.m. EDT) - Each May Day, Marxists celebrate the collective ownership of the means of production. Before the Berlin Wall was chiseled into bric-a-brac, May 1 brought forth red flags, goose-stepping soldiers and ballistic missiles strapped to mobile launchers.

These days, thankfully, such pageantry is limited to Havana and Pyongyang. Yet Marx's disciples may have the last laugh. Karl Marx himself would be amazed to see how much his ideas thrive here.

In a study entitled, "Marxism, American Style," Mark Schmidt of the National Taxpayers Union observes that "most American adults, weaned on a steady diet of anti-communism, would be shocked to learn the magnitude of the role that Karl Marx's utopian vision plays in contemporary society." Schmidt compared the German philosopher's 1848 "Communist Manifesto" with the United States today. The parallels are ominous.

Marx demanded "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax." This remains his most unsinkable concept. Americans toil beneath a tax system that punishes success with ever-higher tax rates. Individual taxpayers who earn more than $307,050 must surrender 38.6 percent of their marginal incomes to Washington and even more to state and local governments. Ironically, Russia - where Marx's ideas reigned with deadly consequences - has swapped his progressive tax regime for a supply-side, 13 percent flat income tax.

Marx called for "confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels." Affluent Americans who renounce their citizenship and move to lower-tax countries remain subject to federal taxation on U.S. income for 10 years after they depart. They also may not return to America.

"It's like a Soviet-style exit tax that shakes you down one more time on the way out the door," says Dan Mitchell of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"Abolition of all right of inheritance" was another Marxist prescription. While Americans can inherit property, large estates suffer the 50 percent federal Death Tax. While it will phase out by 2010, it is scheduled to zoom back up to 55 percent in 2011. To reduce or avoid such confiscation, Americans spent $23 billion in 1998 coping with estate tax laws, economists Alicia Munnell and Henry Aaron estimate. This nearly equaled the $23.1 billion that the Death Tax generated that year.

"The Communist Manifesto" also counsels "centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly." Karl Marx, meet Alan Greenspan.

The Federal Reserve, worshipped as a cornerstone of capitalism, in fact is a spectacularly statist institution. It wields the power to create money and control interest rates and inflation. The 12-member Federal Open Market Committee is essentially a financial Politburo that secretly meets to fix the cost of capital.

Marx called for "abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes." While Marx likely would frown on America's widespread private ownership of homes and farms, he would be delighted by the vast acreage in federal hands. Uncle Sam owns 62 percent of the square footage west of the Rockies and a whopping 87.6 percent of Nevada. Despite this massive portfolio, much of it poorly maintained, Washington spent $540 million in fiscal year 2001 to acquire even more private land.

Marx also wanted "centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state." As Schmidt notes, "Literally every new development in the communications industry must receive Federal Communications Commission approval or die without reaching the marketplace." Even my home telephone has a label that says it conforms to FCC regulations.

As for transit, air traffic control remains in federal hands, as does passenger rail via Amtrak. The federal Department of Transportation cost taxpayers $54.8 billion in fiscal 2001.

Still, Schmidt adds, all this does not make America communist. "This is the best place in the world to live," he says, "but we have a strong current of collectivist ideology that runs just beneath the surface."

The U.S. has strayed far from the laissez-faire blueprint Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington and the other Founding Fathers drafted. America lacks the barbed wire and guard dogs that terrorized millions under scientific socialism until 1989. Far more subtly, though, Karl Marx's ghost haunts the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.


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1 posted on 04/25/2002 12:36:21 PM PDT by Jean S
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To: JeanS
Marx wanted one more thing: a completely disarmed peasentry to work as slaves for his "greater good." The old bastard should be dug up, drawn and quartered, and hung.
2 posted on 04/25/2002 12:44:07 PM PDT by 45Auto
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To: JeanS
bump
4 posted on 04/25/2002 12:46:35 PM PDT by bassmaner
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To: JeanS
Marx may have been the greatest mass-murderer ever born. His philosophy and those miserable, gullible idiots who favored it have led to the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th century. I guess the 21st century will be no different. The entire African Continent and most of Europe (if not the world) is sliding into this Marxian Madness.
5 posted on 04/25/2002 12:46:56 PM PDT by 45Auto
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To: JeanS
...and where does the collectivist ideology get impregnated into the sheeple--THRU THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. Who gave it a $8 BILLION boost above & beyond the incredulous amount it already receives? Why Mr conservative - GW Bush.
6 posted on 04/25/2002 12:47:54 PM PDT by Digger
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To: JeanS
The ideas of Marx will continue to thrive in the face of contrary evidence because their appeal is to those who are in need of simple concepts to explain complex phenomena, and convenient enemies to blame for outcomes contrary to theory. These are the hallmarks of intellectual adolescence; it is simply a pity that some intellectuals and would-be intellectuals never grow up.
7 posted on 04/25/2002 12:53:04 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: JeanS
Anyone who doesn't believe that "the ideas of Karl Marx still thrive" should check out this review from last Sunday's NYT Book Review: The Myth of Ownership: Challenging the Rhetoric of Tax Cutting
9 posted on 04/25/2002 12:59:59 PM PDT by Aurelius
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To: 45Auto
IMHO, the monumental mistake Marx made which overwhelms everthing else he is credited with was to ignore the VALUE OF INFORMATION. This of course underlies every economic transaction, and is the base ground of all enterprises and labor.

He didn't even mention anything resembling INFORMATION or more mundanely, the ENGINEERING, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, or even the MARKET RESEARCH which makes a concern successful. Now in his day, some of this information was folded in with the idea of the skilled laborer, or artisan.

But Marx blew it when he tried to equate a common laborer with someone who designs a factory or a process, or even more abstractly the person who risks his capital to try making something which hasn't existed before.

It may be that human beings are obligated by good morals and values to make sure people don't starve, but they sure as hell are not obligated to pay subservience to the state...

10 posted on 04/25/2002 1:13:35 PM PDT by chilepepper
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To: JeanS
One thing I noticed a long time ago was that higher taxation equals a slide towards communism.

Think about it: Capitalism is when you get to keep the fruits of your labors and get to choose how/where to spend it yourself.

Communism is when the government takes the fruits of your labors, and then *it* decides how/where to spend it (and how much you may or may not ever get back).

That's communism, but it's also exactly the situation you'd have in a "capitalistic" system if tax rates reached 100%. 100% taxation = something indistinguishable from communism.

So what is it when the government confiscates, say, 50% of the fruits of your labor (income) via taxes (directly and/or indirectly)?

It's not capitalism, and it's not communism -- it's a mix of half of each. And as the tax rates rise, the mix becomes more and more communism and less and less capitalism.

11 posted on 04/25/2002 1:21:57 PM PDT by Dan Day
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To: chilepepper
In theorhetical physics, cause and effect is interchangeable-reversible...

what changes is observation and communism--evolution is running backwards...

the effect interpreting the causes...

falsely---manmade 'science'---Quackery.

12 posted on 04/25/2002 1:27:39 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: Dan Day
It's not capitalism, and it's not communism -- it's a mix of half of each. And as the tax rates rise, the mix becomes more and more communism and less and less capitalism.

You're right about that, but I'm not sure a mixture of the two is a bad thing. While we know that pure socialism is not workable, I'd say that pure capitalism is just as flawed. Marx wasn't totally wrong when he predicted massive uprisings against the capitalist robber barons that existed in his time. We almost saw a socialist revolution in this country in the early part of the last century. It was only because the gov't stepped in on the side of labor by legitimizing unions and setting up anti-trust legislation that we didn't end up with a revolution here. Now we're mostly capitalist with some concessions to social activism and gov't oversight of business. Since our economy is doing so well, I'd say we have a decent balance although continued tweaking is always a good thing.
13 posted on 04/25/2002 2:05:28 PM PDT by moderation_is_not_a_bad_thing
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To: 45Auto
I saw pictures of his grave (in London, IIRC. At least the UK).

Quite extravagant for someone who's ideas caused so much death and destruction.

Probably not on the order of Lenin, or Mao, though.

14 posted on 04/25/2002 2:22:44 PM PDT by Calvin Locke
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bttt
15 posted on 04/25/2002 2:52:08 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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Comment #16 Removed by Moderator

To: 45Auto
You're joking about the dsarmamanent part,right? If you are,I apologize for not picking up.because Marx advocated violent,bloody overthrow of the State by the worker.
17 posted on 04/25/2002 4:25:01 PM PDT by stimulate
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To: stimulate
Well, here's a little something I found from the essay of an idiot from Loyola Univeristy:

Marx and the Psychological Control of Firearms

"Karl Marx said, in his essay, "Estranged Labor," that if man spends enough time working with machines on a production line, he too would become a machine on a production line. This idea, one that is truthful in some respects, can be interpreted to have an effect on the firearm technology. If you give a man a gun, which is a killing machine, then will that man also become a killing machine? To a person with a gun, the world is an existence not of things, but if targets. So, perhaps firearms have some kind of hypnotic effect on those who use them."

So I figure that pure Marxists all would want to disarm the very people who helped to overthrow an established Republic, for example. In practise, that's how every Marxist-inspired tyranny has reacted.

18 posted on 04/25/2002 4:39:23 PM PDT by 45Auto
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To: stimulate
If you give a man a gun, which is a killing machine, then will that man also become a killing machine? To a person with a gun, the world is an existence not of things, but if targets. So, perhaps firearms have some kind of hypnotic effect on those who use them."

This is the essence of the leftist's view of firearms and explains their insane, never-ending quest to remove arms from everyone's (except govenrment's) hands. They really, really DO believe that the mere ownership of a gun will drive the owner to murder and mayhem. Now do you see what patriots are up against? Now do you see that any compromise with these devils is a step to the total confiscation of arms, which is the GOAL?

19 posted on 04/25/2002 4:46:25 PM PDT by 45Auto
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