The term “Marxism” has been used by the media and government as a baseless word to strike fear into the American population during times such as the Red Scare of the 1920s, contain mentin the ’50s and ’60s, all the way to the present day political climate of “Russiagate.”However, Marxist ideology favors the interests of working class people rather than the elite.Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism, was a German philosopher during the 19th century who wrote about the inequalities that capitalism created between the owners of the means of production such as landlords and bosses, and the average laborer.
“The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, for instance, a society based on slave-labor, and one based on wage-labor, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the laborer” Marx said in his book “Das Kapital.” Marx is saying that people produce “surplus labor” which is the actual value of a person’s work.The difference between a capitalist driven economy and a Marxist one is that in a capitalist system the boss receives the benefits created by the surplus labor and gives the workers as mall fraction as earnings.But in a Marxist system the workers fairly keep all of the money they produce from their labor. Marx’s theory holds true today. In the year 2016 the earnings ratio of a CEO to an average worker was 271 to 1 as reported by the Economic Policy Institute.Since the publications of “Das Kapital” and “The Communist Manifesto,” politicians, revolutionaries, and activists have adopted Marxist and socialist platforms.Martin Luther King Jr., America’s most recognizable and influential civil rights activist, fought not only for racial equality but also for economic equality. As a critic of capitalism he believed that to free people of color from poverty capitalism must be reformed.
“Capitalism has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes” King said in his book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”King’s words still echo since as of 2017 -— the average black family in America had a median net worth of $17,600 as reported by the Washington Post.Che Guevara, a Argentinian revolutionary, was a Marxist supporter who believed a society cannot be equal when the rich own so much more than the poor. In the 1950s he worked with Fidel Castro in dethroning the Batista dictatorship in Cuba.“Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy” Guevara said.
Like King, Guevara was not tolerant of a system that abused people of color.“Those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men -— how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?” Guevara said.Despite nearly 60 years of sanctions, Cuba now has a functioning government run free health care system and is best known for world class doctors who travel internationally to medically help developing nations.American author and political activist Helen Keller was a socialist who believed that neither economic or gender equality can be achieved when the average person owns so little.
“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all … The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, and for the exploiters of labor,” she said. “The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands — the ownership and control of their livelihoods — are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights.” Eugene Debs, a five time presidential candidate, union leader, and one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, was the head of the American Socialist Party. Debs was critical of free trade capitalistic economics during the late 19th and early 20th century which allowed heads of monopolies such as John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to control the entire oil and steel industry. These policies led to the stock market crash of 1929.“As long as he owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not” he said. “Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence,” Debs said.Debs believed it should be impossible for one person to be able to accumulate such wealth.“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence,” Debs said.
In 2017, the top 1 percent of the world’s population grabbed 82 percent of the total accumulated wealth as reported by CNN Money. Moreover, as of 2017, the eight richest people own more than half of the world’s total wealth, as reported by The Boston Globe.With capitalism as the dominant economic system, a world has been created where the CEO ofAmazon, Jeff Bezos, can have a net worth of over $100 billion but pay zero dollars in federal taxes as reported by Politifact. At the same time, 10 percent of Amazon Prime deliverers are on food stamps, earn close to the minimum wage and have such a high quota number that they cannot take bathroom breaks and are forced to use a water bottle while driving as reported by Business Insider.“Jeff Bezos was enough wealth to end world hunger for five years and fix Flint, Michigan’s poisoned water supply 12 times” said political commentator Lee Camp on his show “Redacted Tonight.”The capitalist system has been failing the American middle class since the deregulation and privatization period of the Reagan administration and has failed America’s poor population since the writings of the Constitution.
It’s time for the United States to throw away the capitalist model and try a new route. One that allows every individual to have healthcare, education and food on the table every night.Maybe not change from Marxism to capitalism overnight, but at the very least start to adopt basic socialist policies that will have an immediate direct impact on the ones who struggle. If America dips its toes into the waters of socialism like Cuba, Bolivia and all of the Nordic region of Europe, economic equity can become a reality in the country of Stars and Stripes.America is the richest country to ever exist, yet half of its population is considered poor. It’s time for the corporate class of the world to wake up and smell the roses. The red, the organized, and the working roses.
