The United States has claimed to remain a stalwart defender of individual liberty and the antithesis of authoritarianism. If Marx were to rise from the dead today though, how impressed would he be with the current state of American government and society? You be the judge.
Let’s look at the ten planks of Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
Plank #1: Abolish private property.
Through eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, property taxes, and a myriad of bureaucratic regulations, Marx would be proud of how much closer the United States has come to his utopia without private property.
Plank #2: A heavy progressive income tax.
Just over a half a century after Marx published his Communist Manifesto the United States ratified the 16th Amendment to achieve plank number 2. We’ve only had an income tax since 1913, but we’ve already reached the heavy tax burden of which Marx dreamed.
(Marx might also wonder why we took his advice since we were getting by just fine without an income tax before the twentieth century.)
Plank #3: Abolish all rights of inheritance.
Marx would be impressed by how estate taxes subvert inheritance rights, even if the state still formally recognizes that individuals have the right to determine how their estate is distributed after death.
Plank #4: Confiscate the property of emigrants and rebels.
The United States has a long history of caving into Marxism here. Even our forefathers seized the property of British sympathizers during the Revolutionary War. Today drugs, crime, and terrorism have provided a justification for government to continue to confiscate the property of innocent citizens without due process.
Plank #5: Centralization of credit in the hands of the state.
Three words. Federal Reserve Act.
Today the Federal Reserve has an exclusive monopoly over legal counterfeiting and politically manipulates interest rates, bringing us one step closer to Marxism.
Plank #6: Centralization of the means of communication and transportation.
In a nation that stands up for freedom of speech and movement, we certainly let the state control a lot of our communication and transport. Outright government-owned corporations like AMTRAK and CONRAIL, the federal postal monopoly, and the FCC have created a framework for the state to limit how we can talk and move, just like Marx would want.
Plank #7: Extension of state-controlled labor.
About 17% of our population works for federal, state, or local governments and that proportion keeps growing. Marx might say that’s a good start but that we had 83% to go.
Plank #8: Equal obligation of work.
Marx might have thought that the United States had a long way to go to establish “industrial armies,” but already we have set a precedent for the equal obligation of work with the draft.
Plank #9: Abolish differences between country and city populations.
Between the natural cultural shifts caused by mass communication and government intervention to protect corporate farming, Marx would be impressed on this front.
Plank #10: Government control of education.
Complete. Even privately-funded options are often required to comply with state-issued curriculums and standardized tests which effectively gives government a monopoly on information.
Marx’s ideas, which have crept into American society with noble intentions, have proven to not comprise a philosophy of worker empowerment, but instead are just a front to hand power from individuals over to the state and special interests.
There’s only one political party in the United States that is standing up for the individual autonomy and fighting this assault on liberty. Help stop modern Marxism with us and sign up at lpin.org.
