We have had experiments with systems like Marxism in the United States. Both Oneida, NY, and Amana, Iowa, began as collective societies based on communal sharing of labor and equal distribution of what was created. Both failed; Oneida in cutlery manufacturing and Amana in appliances because the social system was primitive while the economic system was advanced.
So why did we go through decades of freedom-destroying anti-communism hysteria?
When capitalism failed in the Great Depression beginning in 1929 many people wondered if there was an economic system that would not be subject to the repeated depressions ~ as in the 1840s, 1870s, 1890s and the biggie of the 1930s ~ so they looked at Marxism. They were not Marxists, not Bolsheviks, they weren't collectivists or advocates of the police state, but their curiosity got them branded for life by the likes of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and other right-wing hysteria mongers.
The political right was always in a snit over anything Marxist, fearing that if Americans heard anything relating to Marxism they would automatically become communists, rather than anti-communists, thereby conservatives were giving a backhanded admission ~ at least in their minds ~ of communism's superiority over their own philosophies. Of all the things Marx said in his lifetime, the one the right never acknowledges is, "I am not a Marxist," said because revolutionaries had hijacked and distorted his philosophy just as American neo-cons have hijacked and distorted Barry Goldwater's philosophy.
Things denounced as communistic by the political right:
1 Unions and collective bargaining
2 Minimum wages
3 Safe working conditions
4 Unemployment insurance and workers' comp
5 Civil rights struggle
6 Equal rights
7 Women's rights
8 Fluoride in drinking water
9 Public education
10 Secular government
11 Social Security
12 Medicare and Medicaid
13 Universal health coverage
14 Environmental protection
15 Taxation, especially income tax
16 Gun control
17 Unbiased, honest journalism
18 Civil protest of government misdeeds
19 Any government program that benefits the lower classes
20 Free speech (if liberal)
21 Liberalism or progressivism, in short, anything not far-right reactionary fascism.
Implementing many of these programs enabled the West to correct the evils Marx railed against in the 19th-century without violence or establishing the police state the Bolsheviks felt necessary in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Today we are becoming anti-democracy instead of anti-terrorism because the right once again cannot tell the difference.
When the New England Patriots won a Super Bowl without any "stars," their reliance on teamwork was denounced by Rush Limbaugh as communistic because it was "collective."
George Bush's America has an important facet in common with the Bolsheviks' Soviet Union, as well as Hitler's Third Reich and Saddam Hussein's Irag, and that is to hold any position in government a person must belong to a favored group and be intensely loyal to the leader. That is reflected in the recent firings of US attorneys who enforced the laws, rather than Bush policies, and the purging of intelligence agencies of analysts who tried to tell Bush what he needed to hear rather than what he wanted to hear. And meaningful positions outside of government are also often available only to supporters of the regime. The Bolsheviks tried to make everyone in society ~ except themselves ~ the same; Bush tries to have everyone think the same.
There were news reports several years ago about a serial killer in the Ukraine capital Kiev, who murdered 53 children before being caught. During his killing spree, Kiev parents did nothing to protect their children because they knew nothing of the killings: Bolshevik leaders suppressed the facts because they refused to let anyone see that their society wasn't perfect. Bush is using the same tactic regarding deaths in Iraq, global warming, the economy, energy policy and myriad other facets of American life.
It should be obvious by now that the political right hated Marxism because it was designed as a salvation of the working class, but our right isn't radically different from Bolshevik positions on use of government power. Reactionaries seem not to be anti-Bolshevik because they are taking this nation in that direction; the major difference being that under Bolsheviks the economic means of a nation were controlled by the state and under American neo-cons the state is controlled by economic forces.
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