Frank Salvato, Managing Editor

Do Americans Understand What Socialism Is?
October 24, 2008

Barack Obama’s short but illuminating conversation with Samuel "Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher has ushered the subject of Socialism to center stage. By stating that he champions an economic policy that would "spread the wealth around,” Senator Obama alarmed many Americans who recognize the parallels between his statement and one espoused by French Socialist Louis Blanc in 1840:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

In defense of his statement, Obama, his campaign and his massive army of Obamabot surrogates have come out hard against those who are making the correlation between the Obama economic agenda and the Marxist economic model.

During a campaign stop in Richmond, Virginia, Obama scoffed at the charge that his economic policies were born of Socialist ideology and the Marxist influence predominant among the adults who surrounded him in his youth, calling the use of such "implausible" arguments an, "indication they have run out of ideas."

A barrage of callers to conservatives talk radio programs – not surprisingly the overwhelming majority of them Black, took an indignant tone calling any and all criticism of Barack Obama’s economic policies – and for that matter any criticism of Barack Obama at all – as an emanation of the underlying racism that exists in each and every Caucasian heart in the United States...not among other races, not among the Black population, just the Caucasian race.

One Kansas City Star editorialist, Lewis Diuguid, concurred with the talk radio program callers in declaring, albeit in that publication’s blog and at great homage to the art of "spin,” that those noting the similarities between "spreading the wealth around” and wealth redistribution are "racist.” We are, of course, well within our purview in declaring that the mainstream media has become increasingly irrelevant in matters of fact and honesty, especially where the 2008 election is concerned.

The "instant-on” protestation of Obama, his campaign and his Obamabots indicate one of three things:

1) They are angry that someone has finally had the nerve to call them out on the inequitable practice of wealth redistribution; rewarding the non-productive among us with other people’s hard earned wages.

2) They are arrogantly over-exposing their penchant for playing the race card whenever someone doesn’t immediately roll-over and give them exactly what they want, degrading the hardships, sacrifices and accomplishments of generations past.

3) They have absolutely no clue as to what Socialism is.

Socialism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is defined as:

"Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods; A system of society or group living in which there is no private property; A stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.”

So, what does this mean?

Socialism promotes increased government control over the private sector, both socially and in business. It is achieved by instituting a system that redistributes wealth in an effort to artificially equalize wealth in society, regardless of productivity. When a politician says – in no uncertain terms – that he believes it is a good thing to excessively taxing the productive only to redistribute those extracted taxes to the non-productive, exclusively for the sake of altering the social status of individuals, he possesses a Socialist ideology.

The belief that government has the authority to take a citizen’s earnings, no matter what the amount, to bestow it upon another citizen in a quest to socially engineer a more equitable society is squarely rooted in Socialist dogma. This belief is championed and possessed by Barack Obama and is proven beyond doubt in his statement to Samuel Wurzelbacher:

"It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” (Emphasis mine).

The complete text of Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program statement is as follows:

"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

Some say that Barack Obama is a great orator. Other say he reads the teleprompter pretty well. And still others think that he is simply a political con-artist specializing in bovine feces. But after comparing Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program statement and Obama’s "Joe the Plumber” statement I think it is safe to say that Barack Obama is, simply put, a well-marketed Democratic Socialist peddling a pathetic and failed ideology under the guise of "hope” and "change,” just like Fidel Castro circa 1959.

And there’s nothing "racist” about that.