[Originally published 23 Jul 2008 Townhall. Com]
Karl Marx’s maxims[1] are
assembled in the general notion that there was always an eternal battle between
those with property and wealth and the ‘poor’ and this defined his class
struggle politics and has prompted the search for ways to spread around the
wealth among the nations. There can be no dispute that there are rich and poor
and always have been at odds; only the remedy is in question. The efforts of
the Leninists, Marxists and other variants of the far left, as mirrored by the
Terror of the French Revolution, were not successful as most of ‘revolutions’
were spontaneously ignited in peasant environments while being summarily
crushed in the indicated industrialized countries. This initial outcome argued
against the basic Marxian precept that the proletariat can conquer capitalism
and run industries while returning the excess [profits] to the workers and
other peoples. That concept has not been demonstrated as yet. While Russia seemed
to respond to the surge, modulated by World War I, Germany and Italy and
later Spainhalted the wild rush forward to grab property and industrial
production and give them ‘to the people.’ Dedicated revolutionaries like Rosa
Luxemburg[2],[3] and her
political allies attempted to grab as much as they could before they were
murdered.[4] Counter
revolutionaries from the socialist wings of Italy, Germany and Spain [erroneously
labeled as right wing] wrestled control from the Bolsheviks in the streets and
restricted Marxism to the peasant world. There, the corpse of revolutionary
Marxism lies today.
But, since the ‘problem’ of equal outcomes has not been
materialized by any mechanism, we are faced with the ongoing search for
solutions. Progressive taxation and confiscation of most private property[5] and
inheritances remain about the only ways to level the wealth in most
industrialized countries to date. Marxism morphed into ‘socialism’ at the
behest of many like Bernard Shaw, but even the peaceful Fabians could not
‘talk’ the wealthy into voluntarily sharing their profits and loot with the
masses.
The theories of anti-capitalism are snarled by history, disputes
over the extent of private property that would be allowed, the role of
collectivization of agriculture and later redactions.[6] The
net result was the Russian Revolution and the rise of the ‘right’ to
counterbalance the errors of the left. Today, this theatre is played upon the stage
of modern communication with pleas for assistance for the poor and such.
The results of Marxian revolutions, however, are clearly recorded
by history with unparalleled murder, corruption and failure. We can clearly
inspect the results of the last 200-300 Marxist dictatorships in Africa and
note that they have resorted to tribalism in nearly all cases in order to grab
wealth while ignoring even the most remote precepts of socialism. This
mentality, mirrored in New Orleans, Baltimore and Detroit,
is the current expectation when unbridled left-liberalism is allowed to infect
any society. The murder rate soars as the tolerance of drug addiction increases
by the left. Let us all feel good—no matter the cost. The low-class phenomenon
is currently exemplified by Jesse Jackson[7] and Kamau
Kambon [“…exterminate white people off the face of the planet [8] Racism
is the most important aspect of leftist politics.
The history of the far left is ugly and defenseless, but the
notion that they had the ‘correct view’ of how wealth should be distributed has
remained firm in their thoughts. The desired outcome in many cities and
countries is not that the outcome of the confiscation of wealth should result
in a viable economic society—rather the physical act of confiscating property
and political power by any means is justified by the desirable outcome. The
leftists still hold that view. They feel good about wrecking economies.
It is proper in the warped logic of the far left that if the capitalists crash
along with the rest of society that is okay as long as their money and
wealth are destroyed. Revolution and confiscation of property didn’t work yet,
but we can still keep trying until we get to the solution. We can see all this
in the outcomes of the Great Society, War on Poverty, revolutions in Cuba,
etc: failure.
From the Manifesto:
“The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition
of property
generally, but the abolition of
bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois
private property is the final and most complete expression of the
system of
producing and appropriating products that is based on class
antagonisms, on
the exploitation of the many by the few.”[9]
The difficulties with the unsophisticated and political property
divisions among the peoples resemble the problem of Ockham’s razor[10] where
we know that the masses cannot generate sufficient goods and services to form a
decent society so there must be controls on how the profits are used. They
don’t have the skills. This is not a simple issue and given the pyramid system
[e.g. Bell Curve[11]] of the
distribution of cognitive skills and talents in the world, the ‘average’
person, and certainly those on the bottom of the intelligence ladder, cannot
accomplish the tasks. They will fail. If we rely on the notions of
egalitarianism where leftist leaders have professed ‘concern’ for the masses
then we need to ask the left to explain the Khmer Rouge, The Great Leap
Forward, numerous African Marxist Dictatorships, Islamo-Fascism and others.
There is no regard for the very poor in any of these cases. The left will
not apologize for the 100,000,000 dead in the last century due to Marxism. They
seem to have no history. The poor starved in those times or were crushed by
military machines, as they do today, under these systems as they do today in North
Korea and the Sudan today. Tribalism remains the strongest societal
force in Africa and the Middle East today and given the
opportunity, most of the tribal types would massacre their fraternal enemies
because they know that their counterparts would do the same if the power fell
to them. The cognitively mediocre cannot perform even the basic tasks of
society beyond the hunter-gatherer level. They can grunt and grab but not set
up a vibrant business. History shows this clearly.
So, the quest for wealth grinds forward by the left as they cannot
form a decent society by themselves. Every time they make an attempt, they fail
or create some showcase state with major defects [Sweden, in the dirty gun
business for 200 years while telling the world they were ‘neutral’ or the
case of Switzerland, in the dirty money business, where they shelter the loot
of dictators and despots.] and the phony Soviet Showcase of Cuba.
Of the many schemes to spread around the wealth, one of the most
recent is the strange notion of private home ownership by the lower classes of
our society. Somewhere, the criterion of home ownership, the fulcrum of the
American Dream, have been diluted or ignored so that ‘everybody’ is entitled to
have a house. This must be some new ‘right.’ This notion is so foolish as to be
refuted by the simple observation that many people cannot even get past high
school, mandatory since 1960. A full 15% of our society are felons, drug
addicts, in jail, on welfare or suffer from a myriad of mental disorders, but,
we learn, these people deserve to own their own homes. Now, ignoring credit
ratings and earnings potential, refuted and made obsolete by political
organizations like Greenling Institute[12] here,
the usual criteria for property owners in terms of loans was trashed for
political reasons.
The Bell Curve findings clearly refute the notion that everybody
is ‘equal’ or even deserve ‘equal outcomes’ and this fraud was forced upon
banks and lending institutions to the point where anybody could get a loan,
particularly if they were minorities. Bad credit ratings, drug addiction, jail
histories and worse were hidden from banks and such and the inevitable
occurred: many people could not afford their own homes or could not even
approximate the average citizen who could afford one. We saw drug addicts, felons,
welfare recipients, illegal aliens and others given homes with very low
interest mortgages and they defaulted. We are surprised?
But, where is the American Dream and who should pay for it? The
answer is that those who defaulted on their loans for any reason must be
rescued by the taxpayers. Thus we have the expected:
You deserve a home and the ‘rich’ will pay for one for you. It is
your ‘right.’ Vote for us.
Today, the New York Times—aka the Walter
Duranty Papers[13]--cobbles
up a solution to the problem of redistribution of wealth veiled in sorrow,
repressed hate and more in this article:
“Mortgage rates are rising because of the troubles at the loan
finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, threatening to deal another blow to
the faltering housing market.” [14]Woes
Afflicting Mortgage Giants Raise Loan Rates By Vikas Bajaj Published: July
23, 2008
Really? Who would have thought?
“Loan rates are rising because of concern in the financial
markets about the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee
nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. The federal
government has proposed a rescue, and has urged Congress to approve it quickly.”
This FM and FM organizations were a stupid idea from the New Deal
FDR Era and was used as a dumping ground for bad loans. Banks could dump
questionable mortgages on the government because they were allowed to and this
sorry situation was created by the government in the first place. This is the
expected political solution and looks like Social Security: They are going
broke.
No matter, the leftist concern is how to make the taxpayer pay for
this mess and allow the low class to keep their homes at all cost. That makes
political sense so damn the economics.
“For borrowers with a $400,000 loan, such a jump could send
their monthly payments to $2,338 from $1,417, estimates Louis S. Barnes, a
mortgage broker at Boulder West Financial in Boulder, Colo.”
This is astonishing. We learn, from the Times, that interest rate
changes might affect mortgage payments! Economics has been advanced by this. We
are so proud.
Look at this:
“While mortgage rates approached these levels earlier this year
and in 2007 during times of stress in the financial markets, the latest move
adds urgency to the government’s efforts to restore confidence in Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac. Lawmakers are expected to vote this week on a measure that
would give the Treasury Department authority to lend more money to the
companies and buy shares in them if they falter.”
So, the US Treasury might have to buy up shares in a mismanaged
quasi-government corporation and stick the taxpayers with the bill. That
subsidizes failure, as the left always advises.
The main idea here is that the victims of the left need more taxes
and, since only the top half pay any taxes at all, we can just tax them and
give the proceeds to the ‘poor’ for their votes and all will be
well. Fannie Mae is just another leftist tax-whoring cluster that was
headed by incompetents or just incompetents and money-hungry bureaucrats like
Franklin D. Raines.[15]
Having the Treasury pick up devalued shares in these phony
agencies points to a potential debt liability of some 5 trillion dollars. We
know who pays taxes and who does not. It should be clear that if people default
on their loans and are drug addicts, incompetents, or for any reason that they can do
it again!
Such is the ongoing grunting and grabbing of wealth by the left.
Our economy is very close to collapse and the left-liberals are
waiting like vultures to tax what is left and institute more phony social
programs like Fannie Mae and Social Security, Socialized Medicine and worse.
And, somehow these parasites stay in power. Vote accordingly.
rycK
Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com
[1] Manifesto
of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848.
[4] http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/lobby/2379/rosa.htm
Krugman of the NYT Knocks Private Property: Home Ownership Should
Not be a National Policy.
[6]“ In pre-revolutionary Russia the
Bolsheviks had shared with Rosa Luxemburg the Marxist position that the land
must be nationalized as a prerequisite for the organization of large-scale
agricultural production in conformity with the socialization of industry. In order
to gain the support of the peasants, Lenin abandoned the Marxist agricultural
program in favor of that of the Social-Revolutionaries--the heirs of the old
Populist movement. Although Rosa Luxemburg recognized this turnabout as an
'excellent tactic,' for her it had nothing to do with the quest for socialism.
Property rights must be turned over to the nation, or the state, for only then
is it possible to organize agricultural production on a socialistic base. The
Bolshevik slogan "immediate seizure and distribution of the land by the
peasants" was not a socialist measure, but one which, by creating a new
form of private property, cut off the way to such measures. "The Leninist
agrarian reform," she wrote, "has created a now and powerful layer of
popular enemies of socialism in the countryside, enemies whose resistance will
be much more dangerous and stubborn than that of the noble large
landowners."
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/lobby/2379/rosa.htm
[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24ONaYCIzY
[8]http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/2822385p-9271047c.html. http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@378.YFEia0Fw7g0.7@.773b558f/368.
“a former instructor at N.C.StateUniversity, who said blacks must
"exterminate white people off the face of the planet."
Kamau Kambon, an author who taught in NCSU's Africana Studies
program as recently as last spring, made the comments Oct. 14 during a
conference at HowardUniversity in Washington. The conference was
televised nationally by C-SPAN, and bloggers picked up on the comments
immediately.”
[9] Manifesto
of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848.
[10]rule of
philosophical simplicity: the philosophical and scientific rule that
simple explanations should be preferred to more complicated ones, and that the
explanation of a new phenomenon should be based on what is already known:
Ock·ham's ra·zor [ ók?mz ràyz?r ] or Occ·am's ra·zor [ ók?mz ràyz?r ] http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861684439/Ockham%E2%80%99s_razor.html
[11] The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (ISBN:
0029146739)
by Herrnstein, Richard J. and Murray, Charles Free Press
of Glencoe , Inc, Old Tappan, New Jersey, U.S.A., 1994.
[13] In
honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for the NYT. The color RED is
used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a
saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.
[14] Woes
Afflicting Mortgage Giants Raise Loan Rates By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: July 23, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/business/23rates.html?hp
[15] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14462-2005Mar30.html