socialism, communism, and marxism.
This is Part Six. Part One is here.
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Socialism and Communism.
Holy shit. If I hear someone say they are worried about us becoming a communist or socialist nation one more time, I might just keel over. (We will get to Marxism and Black Lives Matter eventually.)
Okay, let’s just start here: I’m a Democrat and I didn’t want Biden. He’s not liberal enough for me. He’s not liberal enough for most Democrats. The dude is as centrist as it gets so, knowing that, the Republicans had to target Kamala - she’s the real villain here - and start in on her being a socialist, communist, marxist, that will turn us into the wretched hell hole of Denmark. (Please I beg you to look up “happiness and Denmark.)
No wait, she will not turn us into Denmark because that would be amazing - she will turn us into China! Or the Soviet Union. Or Venezuela!
Okay, let’s dive in.
Do you know what socialism is? Just sit on that for a moment. What is socialism?
I’ve heard it’s “giving my money to lazy people”. Because it’s always about money right? But, also that is not what socialism is. We could go that route but if we do then capitalism is “giving my money to greedy people” and I’d rather give my money to lazy people than greedy people so… hopefully we can have some better definitions than that.
Socialism is an economic theory that basically says that production, distribution, and exchange should be regulated (Yes, you can look this up on Wikipedia.) In other words, things are generally shared more, or better not allowed to get out of hand because of regulation. You can’t really get rich.
Can you give me an example of a socialist country? Take a second.
Vietnam, yes that’s the one? Vietnam. Okay it’s more socialist oriented so it’s not really 100% socialist because no country is 100% socialist including the Scandinavian countries. They are democratic socialist countries at best - which means they do everything we do here except they spread the pot a little more - with higher tax rates - especially on the wealthy - kinda like the U.S. did in the 50’s back when we were actually economically great. Seriously look up tax rates on the wealthy from the 50’s. They were sky high. (Side note: there are more billionaires per capita in Sweden than the U.S. so you can even get rich there but it’s much harder to be rich. And much harder to be poor. And almost impossible to not have healthcare and basic needs met.)
No one, Kamala included, is proposing the U.S. become the first 100% socialist country in the world. It’s laughable.
Could we spread the pot a little more? Since we already do spread the pot - this is how any country pays for military, fire, police, parks, medicare, food stamps, etc… they take our money and spread the pot - we’re just talking about how much to spread the wealth.
Which, by the way, unless you make roughly $400,000 a year you’re not really going to be affected by this change. Do you know the billionaires in America just increased their wealth by 845 billion during the pandemic? That’s a third of their wealth?
Honestly, that seem cool to you? Maybe it does and that’s fine but instead of arguing socialism you should say you just think people should have so much money they literally can’t spend it all while other people sleep in tents after fighting for our country in Vietnam (okay that’s a very slanted way of seeing it but that is also true.)
We’ll try again. Instead of saying you’re afraid of a socialist country you might want to say you’re afraid of spreading out your wealth a little more to people who you don’t think deserve it as much as you do.
One of the reasons we just turbo charged through the debt records (that we were already blowing through) is because we just gave away trillions of dollars to American citizens to save the economy. Did you support that? That’s a very socialist idea in a very capitalist economy that most people approved because it was… helpful for the country as a whole. That number was on par with “socialist” Denmark percentage-wise so we’re already pretty socialist in many ways.
Trump's farm bailouts have cost taxpayers more than $28 billion already, and he just announced another $14 billion in payments as part of his reelection pitch to farm-heavy states. This is spreading the wealth too.
Communism is NOT socialism. It’s Communism and it’s kinda next level and ever since the word was invented Republicans have been scaring people into being afraid of it. From the Great Depression through the McCarthy era to today. Honestly, I don’t get how Trump supporters “get over” COVID and not somehow “over” Communism. COVID is way way more real.
Anyway I just read The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx (of Marxism) because I was so tired of people telling me what communism was. I highly recommend it. It’s short.
Marx had a big issue with what he saw in Capitalism which I’m going to boil way too far down to this: he didn’t like rich people getting so rich while workers (who actually made the shit) suffered more and more so the rich could get richer and richer.
So he sought out to create a system that was less class based and gave more power to the workers and also did some weird shit like take away all private property and weird stuff with religion, etc… but there were actually pretty good reasons and philosophies for that even if you read his book.
But, and this is important: the Soviet Union was NOT a communist nation. It didn’t follow the Communist Manifesto at all. Lenin really loved power too much for that.
Also if you want to get really crazy, which I do, read Erich Fromm’s Marx’s Concept of Man (Fromm lived through Hitler Germany and was a psychologist) in which he argues that we don’t understand Marx at all and most of the things we rip him for we actually live in the West. Read that book and tell me you don’t love Marx because you probably will.Okay this stuff is really really complicated and that is the point. I’m no economics expert but I did read Angrynomics which I think is a great book and points to how angry the workers are in America from people “taking their jobs” which I think has a lot to do with Trump support too but that’s more caste and race than economic but we’ll get there.
All of this to say a) the idea of Kamala turning us communist is a joke and b) there are good things in all of these “isms” including capitalism but very few countries are 100% them.
You may not be for them as much as me but for the love of all that is good in the world please we have to stop saying we don’t want America to turn socialist because someone heard Sean Hannity say that. If someone is scared of “socialism” we’ve got to say what we mean about American taking on socialist principles we don’t like and then say how Trump is not doing that. Or is. Or whatever, while utterly racking up that debt for us all.
Marxism.
While we’re on the big evil ‘isms” (and not addressing God’s favorite economic system of capitalism), let’s talk about Marxism which suddenly has become almost more associated with Black Lives Matter than with economic and philosophical structures but since we’re on Black Lives Matter, let’s go there.
Again, I’ll give you a second. What is Marxism? Define it.
This stuff is really hard. Marx kinda invented Communism which is past socialism so they all do get confused but let’s just say this: there’s never been a Marxist country either. Marx was trying to solve problems he found in the world and that he thought had been in the world from the begging of civilization which was this class struggle issue that he thought capitalism exacerbated (because it kinda does) and he wanted to solve it by abolishing class and not letting people own stuff (sometimes too far) but you can see his heart.
Why would Black Lives Matter study Marxism? For very good reasons.
Quick history lesson from Ryan as understood by Ryan and should be fact checked. Also, some opinions from Ryan.
Do you know why there was slavery? Here is a hint. Capitalism is all about making as much money as possible. Yes it’s about owing property and starting business and yada yada but it’s about making that paper. If there are no regulations with capitalism you can really go crazy. (We have regulations to prevent us from going too crazy - but honestly that’s what much of this argument is about: the amount of regulations.)
If you can get cheap labor to make stuff, you have more profits (like 12 year olds in factories in Vietnam - wait so we’re using a Socialist country’s work force as cheap labor so that we can get cheap sneakers and charge a ton for them and make more money? Yes, that’s capitalism - isn’t it great?)
If you can get free labor to make stuff (or pick cotton) you can make even more money. So when a bunch of Europeans looked at all the work to do to make money around the world, they thought, hey rather than us do the work or have to pay people to do it, let’s bring slaves over and have them do it.
(And it’s us, the ancestors of these bastards who call people lazy. Good lord.)
Anyway, they started a country with slave labor. With very distinct classes and caste systems and a hierarchy of who is important, who works, who makes money, who doesn’t matter, and who is treated like shit. If your skin was black you were generally at the bottom.
Marx also believed that humans are not naturally incentivized to make their lives center around money - that was a product of capitalism - that he didn’t like. Because we’re better than that and once our lives center around making money - well we do things like slavery.
And people wonder why Black Lives Matter studies Marx? Of course they do! They should. Our country is exactly what Marx was talking about and he had some ideas on ways to fix it. It’s not that weird or scary, in fact, it’s not weird or scary at all - it makes perfect sense.
I think that covers money.
Now on to the next thing I hear - and which has nothing to do with Christianity either.