This is going to have to be short…so tired….

Something that’s got me irked late in the Presidential campaign is the constant bandying about “socialist” this and “Marxist” that. One person I follow on Twitter remarked of Obama after the election, “…too bad he’s a socialist,” and he was rooting for him. Now this:

• Paul Broun calls Obama a “Marxist”

Georgian Representative Broun took Obama’s comment to encourage and build up a civil service agenda (civil workers and Peace Corps, etc.) as tatamount to Marxism, like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. I am so sick of people throwing “Marxist” around to mean anything non-American–and being utterly wrong.

Hitler was a national socialist at best–fascist in reality. Stalin was a fascist dictator. Neither of which in the least bit Marxist. Stalin started as a Marxist, back in the days of the Revolution with Trotsky and Lenin, then quickly abandoned the spirit and the letter of Marxism in order to become a religiously worship dictator, counter to Marxist concepts.

Marxism is indeed a criticism of capitalism–a very pointed criticism, indeed. But what Marx and Engles recommended or believed in was NOT socialism controlled by a dictator or even a ruling “party.” They believed in society owned by the proletariat, the workers, the people–not fascist rulers giving lip service to such ideals but in fact ruled the people with iron fist and continued to control the means of production and distribution. Marx would have been appalled by what Stalin did and disgusted by Hitler.

Obama is a liberal, but very much a liberal capitalist. And when it comes to actual (or nearest thing to) socialism: when you look at the high average level of lifestyle, lack of poverty, lack of health care induced bankruptcy, high level of social health, low infant mortality rates, high education rates of socialist countries like Canada, Sweden, Netherlands…. I have to wonder, what’s wrong with that?

An amazing article by David Rushkoff that briefly explains exactly how the capitalist system we work under was a contrived system to serve the royals and proto-capitalists (and is not a “natural” development as the hegemony would have you, the proletariat and the petite bourgeois, believe), and how what we are witnessing may be the beginning of the end of it:

• Print Your Own Money

. . . Unlike local currencies, centralized currencies were biased towards retaining their value over time. Capitalism (in addition to being a lot of other things) is the way people get rich simply for being rich. Capital becomes the most important component in the capital/labor/resources equation. Since the purpose of the Renaissance innovations was to keep the currently wealthy wealthy, the currency was biased to favor those who had it - and could mete it out at high interest rates to those who needed it for their transactions.

What we witnessed over the past decades has been the necessary endgame of the scenario.

. . .

The collapse of centrally controlled commerce and currency simply creates an opportunity for local commerce and currency to revive. For people to learn to work and live together on a human, local scale - as the original free market advocate, Adam Smith, actually suggested. Admittedly, this would be a painful transition for many - but it’s better than maintaining dependence on a fiscal system designed from the start to turn people and communities into extractable corporate assets. (Think about that the next time you’re called up to “human resources.”) . . .

This reminds me of the post I wrote not too long ago in which I discuss, ad nauseum, the failures of conservativism and the corruption of capitalism, and the ideals of anarcho-socialism:

• The failure of conservatism.

And to a lesser although probably more readable degree:

• Viva la hypocrisy!