The Communist Party of the USA

I came across a video of the Communist Party USA this morning which offended my sensibilities as well as my intelligence. Watch it below and read my comments if you will.

I hear more cries from the Unions and other people every day that we need to do away with Capitalism. They make statements such as: “Capitalism steals your money via politicians, taxes, products, services, shops, food, fuel, musicians, celebrities, films, sports, banking, TV, the internet, etc.” 

Under the Communist Manifesto, supposedly written by Karl Marx although Friedrich Engels has often been credited in composing the first drafts. There were ten statements as follows:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form and combination of education with industrial production.

The implementation of these policies would, as believed by Marx and Engels, be a precursor to the stateless and classless society. In a controversial passage they suggested that the "proletariat" might in competition with the bourgeoisie be compelled to organize as a class, form a revolution, make itself a ruling class, sweep away the old conditions of production, and in that step have abolished its own supremacy as a class. This account of the transition from socialism to communism was criticized particularly during and after the Soviet era.

All well and good but it didn’t work out quite that way. 

Then along came Vladmir Lennin.

Born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin gained an interest in revolutionary leftist politics following the execution of his brother Aleksandr in 1887. Expelled from Kazan State University for participating in anti-Tsarist protests, he devoted the following years to a law degree and to radical politics, becoming a Marxist. In 1893 he moved to St Petersburg, and became a senior figure in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, and fled to Western Europe, where he became known as a prominent party theorist. In 1903, he took a key role in the RSDLP schism, leading the Bolshevik faction against Julius Martov's Mensheviks. Briefly returning to Russia during the Revolution of 1905, he encouraged violent insurrection and later campaigned for the First World War to be transformed into a Europe-wide proletariat revolution. After the 1917 February Revolution ousted the Tsar, he returned to Russia. 

Lets just call this news clip an obituary:

Nicholas II abdicated his throne in 1917 as revolution swept Russia. He and his family were placed under house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, then evacuated to Tobolsk in the Urals in August that year. 

The Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917 and by March 1918 the family were forced to live on soldier's rations. 

The next month, the Red Army moved the Romanovs to Yekaterinburg. There were plans to put Nicholas on trial, but these were scuppered (I would have used the word scuttled here,) when the city became the target of the rival anti-communist White Army. 

The Bolsheviks decided to shoot the entire family on July 18 so they could not be rescued by the White Army.  

They woke them, told them to get dressed and pretended they were being moved from Yekaterinburg away from the oncoming battle. 

They were shot in a basement and their bodies buried in a pit near the city. Their remains were reburied in 1998 by the Russian government, who gave them a state funeral.

Lenin, along with Leon Trotsky, played a senior role in orchestrating the October Revolution in 1917, which led to the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Lenin was elected to the position of the head of government by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Under Lenin's leadership the new government nationalized the estates and crown lands. Homosexuality and abortion were legalized; Lenin's Russia was the first country in the world to establish both of these rights. Free access was being given to both abortion and birth control. No-fault divorce was also legalized, along with universal free healthcare and free education being established. Lenin supported world revolution and immediate peace with the Central Powers, agreeing to a punitive treaty that turned over a significant portion of the former Russian Empire to Germany. The treaty was voided after the Allies won the war. In 1921 Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a mixed economic system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. In 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in becoming the Soviet Union, with Lenin as its head of government. Only 13 months later, after being incapacitated by a series of strokes, Lenin died at his home in Gorki.

After his death, there was a struggle for power in the Soviet Union between two major factions, namely Stalin's and the Left Opposition (with Trotsky as de facto leader). Eventually, Stalin, whom Lenin distrusted and wanted removed, came to power and eliminated any opposition.

Lenin remains a controversial and highly divisive world figure. Historian J. Arch Getty has remarked that "Lenin deserves a lot of credit for the notion that the meek can inherit the earth, that there can be a political movement based on social justice and equality". Lenin had a significant influence on the international Communist movement and was one of the most influential and controversial figures of the 20th century. Admirers view him as a champion of working people's rights and welfare. However, others disagree: one of his biographers Robert Service, says he, "laid the foundations of dictatorship and lawlessness. Lenin had consolidated the principle of state penetration of the whole society, its economy and its culture. Lenin had practiced terror and advocated revolutionary unscrupulousness." Time magazine named Lenin one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, and one of their top 25 political icons of all time; remarking that "for decades, Marxist–Leninist rebellions shook the world while Lenin's embalmed corpse lay in repose in the Red Square". Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, reverence for Lenin declined among the post-Soviet generations, yet he remains an important historical figure for the Soviet-era generations.

The history of the atrocities committed by these men who thought they knew a better way than Capitalism has filled books, and I do not want to make a book of this blog, but by omitting a lot of known and documented facts about Socialism and or Communism (there’s very little difference between the two no matter what the intellectuals say).

I’ve been told that I’m too long winded as a writer but I hate to omit any thing factual to prove a point. But for the sake of shortening up this (I call it a diatribe where I rant my opinions), I will summarize with a few thoughts.

These Socialist Democrats who are pro worker and anti Capitalism, pro jobs and all the other things discussed in the video included with this blog leads me to question is if there is no Capitalists, then who is going to create the jobs, the government? Hell, we are already broke. The government of all other Socialists countries failed miserably. People in China work for slave wages. Russian citizens make far less money than any American who holds a job. Most Americans can afford to buy a home or rent an apartment. In Russia you are told where to work and where to live. You take what salary is offered and have no one to complain to. There are no food stamps, no welfare but yes there is Socialized medicine and if you are sick you can go to the doctor for free. You may have to stand in line a few days but it’s there for you. 

Just out of spite, I would love to see America become socialist for a few years just to show the idiot intellectuals what will happen to their labor party, their jobs and where they are going to have to call their home. But in truth, I love the Constitution and the freedoms it provides for us as Americans. I would really hate to see that go down the drain. I wonder if those socialist democrats have ever thought of losing their freedoms that I’m sure they think they will be able to keep. Or are they taking freedom for granted. Maybe they should get their heads out of their backsides and think about FREEDOM.