AN OPEN LETTER TO LIBERTARIAN ACTIVISTS

This current crisis facing America, and the world, is not just about corrupt individuals or a few corrupt corporations, or industries such as the oil industry; it is about a crumbling capitalist system of benefit chiefly to plutocrats and their military hegemony, the whole thing protected by an elaborate edifice of laws, customs and fierce indoctrination.

The capitalist system cannot be reformed or fixed without going to the systemic roots, extirpating them, and abolishing social private property (not personal property, which comprises items that meet personal needs). So you need not worry about the Big Bad Government under, say, a socialist system, declaring eminent domain and repossessing your bath towels, tooth brush, and garage door opener.

Having a strong public sector with universal healthcare built into society, such as France, or Denmark have, would begin to demonstrate to the American public that deregulation and privatization is for the birds. It is no mystery that the capitalist countries with the best living conditions have the longest and most successful history of workers’ struggles, strongest union presence, student advocacy, and semi-robust welfare states built into them as a buffer against private market tyranny. With the vast wealth available in this country we could easily begin a redistributive policy, which would thereby create jobs and help to drastically diminish crime rates, stimulate the economy, provide every citizen with healthcare, and reallocate our bloated and misguided defense budget to prevent and solve any fabricated crisis that Alan Greenspan and his profiteering ilk prophesize, while the rest of their kind go on denying global warming. Does Ron Paul have plans such as this? (I think it’s time you visited Dennis Kucinich’s web site.)

In order for this difficult politico-economic transformation to take place, in a country as complex as the United States, you need to support every progressive advance, especially when total disaster seems to be on the horizon. Even if you despise the politicians that want to win your affection by instituting universal healthcare, or “Medicare for All”, which would guarantee yourselves, children, and grandchildren full coverage, it is necessary that you focus your attention off of the mystical wonders of the market, which, as stated above, prove inadequate in nearly every tested category of social crisis. Plus, it’s my belief that once universal coverage is in place it will not be easily rolled back. Over the years, efforts by Republicans and some Democrats to turn back the clock on the New Deal have failed (as did similar maneuvers by Thatcher, whose dismantlement plan for Britain’s national health system quickly ran into a wall of public outrage). Why? Not because socialized medicine is perfect. But because, with all its flaws, many of them derived from having to breathe the toxic air of surrounding capitalist institutions, it is still immeasurably better and more humane a system than the capitalist brand.

And one more thing. You cannot continue to blindly shoot at everything you see. Your anger, however justified, is not nuanced, and that’s reflected in your statement about Ron Paul being the best of the bunch, which clearly demonstrates you don’t understand the political economy of capitalism – nobody who does would make such an outrageous statement. At best you could have a good dinner discussion with Bill Maher. In this regard, do you really think the American people, without years of active organizing, without a media capable of transmitting truth and not lies and confusion, stand a chance [of] overthrowing this vastly militarized de facto police state with simply a militant solution alone, or “by pulling the guns off the racks”????…I don’t happen to think the .22 in your closet, or your hunting rifle will get the job done.This United States in the year 2007 is not Russia in 1917, China in ‘49, or Cuba in ‘59…we can’t go hide in the mountains and conduct guerilla operations, much as some would dream of doing. Even if you were to attempt such a daring act, and let’s say you were successful, what do you then plan on replacing the system with, so the exact same power relations don’t reemerge once the “bad apples” and “Boogiemen” are gone? Do you think the grasping, constantly self-aggrandizing entrepreneur will suddenly vanish instead of reasserting itself as an integral part of the markets’ dynamic? I think not, but rather Barbarism will rise from the ashes of this hypothetical civil war, which in fact would not amount to a real new American revolution because the social relations that constrain the means of production today would remain firmly in place in the morrow.

The answer to this complex question of what should be the goal of a true revolution is plain: Socialism, American style, but true socialism, no more welfare capitalisms, or phony Democratic DLC/Blairite/Clintonite “Third Ways.”

Socialism, having been viciously slandered for more than a century in this nation would and does entail a long road of understanding and political organizing. A road that will require deprogramming your mind away from the imbecilic and self-serving (to the plutocracy) indoctrination you have all received. There are no shortcuts to this kind of work. But once you join this monumental effort, you’ll find yourself in truly distinguished company. Yes, friends, socialism, not libertarianism, is the answer.

Let none other than Albert Einstein tell you why in Why Socialism?