Communism in America Alive and Kicking!

When considering taxation, there are three choices:

The few plunder the many. Everybody plunders everybody. Nobody plunders anybody.

Frdric Bastiat

The Communist Manifesto was created by a man named Moses Mordecai Levi under the alias Karl Marx. There are ten planks to the Communist party platform, each covering distinct areas of government and society and providing for a self-perpetuating, mindless system whereby no other possible alternatives are considered or tolerated.

In this essay, I intend to show that though the cold war is indeed over, and with the United States of America still expending trillions of dollars a year to maintain its military industrial complex, Communism is still alive and well in the United States and is indeed thriving in the gradual implementation of the Ten Planks of Communism through Federal and State governments' social and industrial programs disguised as necessary or essential checks, balances and “fixes” on our “capitalist” society.

From the first steps toward the abolition of land ownership to the assumption of the parental responsibility of educating our children, this manifesto is being implemented before our very eyes, and the State educated populace, through no fault of their own, is blind to these changes and in many cases, unwittingly accepts their political leaders' assurances as being righteous and necessary. Let's consider each plank of this manifesto and consider how the designs of Communism are being achieved in the United States today.

First plank: “Abolition of all property and land ownership and the application of all rents for public purposes”.

Property tax. The property owner has an equity position in real property (land) but is required to pay “rent” to the State or be forcibly deprived of the property in question by invocation of the fourth plank described later. Under this system, a person never really owns the property as he is required to pay the State to allow him to keep possession of it every year, thus implying that the State owns the property and allows the real owner to retain its utility upon payment of a yearly fee. This fee is then added to the general treasury funds and redistributed by government fiat to pay for other social, government and welfare* programs that the hapless property owner never sees and has no need or want of, including (this is not a misprint) the collection and enforcement of property taxes.

*Note that the word welfare, as used in this document, does not just refer to recipients of government welfare checks, but includes government funding of corporate welfare projects and enforcement of monopoly privilege or industry-specific restrictions (usually designed to eliminate open competition) used to repay political supporters, including the multi-trillion dollar military industrial complex.Second plank: “Heavy progressive income tax”.

Internal Revenue Service. The federal government and many States require each adult to fill out a personal income tax form and remit a considerable portion of their earnings each year, based on their success in profiting from their efforts. Failure to do so will invoke sanctions under the fourth plank described later. Approximately 40% of the Federal Treasury income is derived from direct income taxation. These funds are then added to the general treasury and redistributed by government fiat to pay for Federal government enforcement ranging from social and welfare programs to maintaining an overseas empire, that the hapless taxpayer never sees and has no need or want of, including the collection and enforcement of direct income taxes (am I being redundant?). Interestingly enough, if the entire direct income system of taxation were abolished, Federal government receipts would still equal 1995 levels.

In the first two planks, we see that each property owning, working individual is required to pay taxes in order to retain ownership of personal property, asin the case of property taxes and maintain his personal liberty, asin the case of income taxes. Under this system, it is obvious that the State or Federal governments assume ownership of persons and their property, albeit on a partial basis. The average taxpayer works for approximately 6 months of the year in order to pay all of the required taxes and tariffs imposed by all branches of government, local and Federal. In other words, government assumes ownership of all that a person produces or owns and allows him to retain a government-designated portion of his property by fiat. Under a generous definition, we may call this theft; it is more properly described as slavery.

Third plank: “Abolition of all rights of inheritance”.

Under the probate court system, the State assumes ownership of the estate, not the rightful heirs. A person who dies intestate (leaving no will or trust) effectively leaves his worldly possessions to be disposed by the State, which happily liquidates the assets and absorbs this income. The rightful heirs are then required to sue the State for possession of their rightful property, paying all fees and charges that in many cases are more than the value of the estate in question. If a person does leave a will, the State taxes the heirs based on the value of the estate before allowing transfer of assets. Once again, the State assumes ownership and allows transfer of a portion of rightfully owned property by fiat. In many cases, the heir is forced to sell off portions of the estate to pay the taxes.

Fourth plank: “Confiscation of property of all immigrants and rebels”.

Tax rebels are routinely and methodically stripped of all rightful assets and deprived of their constitutional rights and personal liberty through the prison system. Those who challenge this system of taxation and imprisonment are subjected to lengthy and invasive inquiries and costly legal proceedings whereby they are given the impossible task of proving a negative, ie, that they are guilty until proven otherwise. The proceeds are then added to the general treasury and used to fund, amongst many other things, (you guessed it) IRS actions against tax rebels.

Fifth plank: “Centralization of credit by the creation of a national bank”.

The Federal Reserve System. Since the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, debts of all descriptions are not paid in specie (gold or silver). The only legal tender is a fiat currency issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. Under this system, monetary policy is set by a cartel of central banking monopolists and implemented by government fiat. Money as we know it is simply created out of thin air by the use of the printing press or electronic transfer and the supply is then further inflated by a cartel of fractional reserve banks who create multiple simultaneous loans of the same funds and charge interest on money that they do not own and do not even have in their possession! In this way, a single dollar created by the Federal Reserve is used to pyramid loans to the tune of ten thousand dollars in the marketplace (once again, not a misprint). Besides having a destabilizing effect on the market through mal-investments (entrepreneurs borrow based on artificially low interest rates) thus causing needless bankruptcies, monetary inflation causes a chronic rise in the general pricing structure (more money chasing the same amount of goods causes prices to rise over time). Rising prices cause consumers to spend their earnings more quickly before the prices rise again, suppressing savings and artificially raising demand. In this way, through the central banking cartel, government controls and manipulates markets to its own ends and those of its political contributors, often to the detriment of the consumer, who is left with static wages and spiraling prices.

Sixth plank: “Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State”.

US Department of Transportation and State equivalents. Haulage trucks are routinely forced to drive in and out of DOT scales to provide proof that they are not carrying more goods than the government allows and that they are carrying goods approved of by the government. Failure to stop at a designated weigh station and submit to search results in sanctions under the fourth plank above (rebellious behavior will not be tolerated). Sanctions are brought against any trucker or trucking company found to be in violation of any of the literally thousands of DOT laws and arbitrary standards. The added expense to ensure DOT compliance for industry is incalculable but runs into the billions or trillions of dollars every year. This added cost is passed to the consumer in the form of higher prices in the marketplace. Private vehicles are tagged with unique identifiers bearing the yearly rental fee sticker (car tax). A vehicle owner who refuses to pay the fee is deprived of his property (vehicle is towed) and disallowed from using the transportation system by having his license suspended until the tax is paid and all accompanying fees are satisfied, such as the towing and storage fee and license reinstatement fee. These taxes and fees are purportedly used for road maintenance and improvements, in practice, they are applied to the general treasury to await government fiat. Once again, honest people are burdened with a system of taxation that is to their detriment.

Seventh plank: “Government control of factories and the instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan”.

The Bureau of Land Management, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, their individual State equivalents and many other government bureaus, agencies and authorities are all part of the ideology that government is responsible for approving the placement of factories, operation of mines, quantity and quality of production from agriculture, declaration and operation of National Parks, etc, etc, etc. The list of examples of government interference in private enterprise under this plank is practically endless. For instance, the Department of Agriculture routinely pays farmers NOT to plant certain crops or even to leave the fields fallow in order to manipulate the commodities markets. More recently is the refusal of the United States Congress to allow oil exploration in the ANWAR region of Alaska because such activity may disturb a few moose! By interfering in the sovereign right of individuals to dispose of their possessions (including land) as they see fit, government distorts the marketplace and damages the interests of both producers and consumers.

Eighth plank: “Equal obligation of all to work, establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture”.

By implementing the first two planks of the Communist Manifesto, government takes great strides to ensuring that this eighth plank is implemented. The requirement that taxes be paid on income, automobiles and real property each year has the effect of forcing many to work (if even part-time) simply to keep what they already own. Under the fifth plank, steady inflation of the money supply causes the (now familiar and almost un-remarked) chronic rise in prices, forcing yet more to work simply to maintain their present standard of living as the value of their fixed income is systematically eroded. Since this plank was written, agricultural technology has improved to the extent that a single operator is capable of achieving the work of many hundreds of manual workers of the nineteenth century. However, with the implementation of agricultural mechanization, we have seen the gradual decline of the family run farm so typical of the American way of life in favor of huge corporate farming interests with enormous presence in the Congressional lobby. Through farming subsidies in the amount of billions of dollars and protective tariffs, these industrial farming interests manipulate markets to their own advantage and to the detriment of consumers.

Ninth plank: “A combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of population over the country”.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency assumes the risk associated with living in less desirable, or more dangerous, regions of the country. Those parts of the country prone to natural disasters such as wind, flood, earthquake, landslide, or other natural or man-made disaster; would be prohibitive to live in economically except that the federal government, through FEMA, assumes the risk for these natural occurrences, a function traditionally carried out by private insurance. The existence of FEMA gives previously untenable, disaster-prone land the illusion of viability, thus redistributing the population more evenly over the entire country. Under these conditions, natural phenomena such as hurricane Katrina, that a hundred years ago would have only impacted the lives of several thousand people and caused limited collateral damage, today has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands and cost billions of dollars in collateral damage. It boggles the mind that after such an experience, the Federal government would not only provide financial and material support for those affected (a function much better left to private charity organizations), but encourages residents to rebuild on a hurricane-prone river delta that is slowly sinking further below sea level each year.

Tenth plank: “Free education for all children in public schools, abolition of children's factory labor in its present form and conform education to industrial productions”.

On average, 75% of property taxes in any given State go to support the public school system. Parents are forced by law to tithe their children to the State education system or risk having them forcibly removed from the home by the State and placed in State-run foster homes, possibly never to be seen by their parents again! Children who are home-schooled are required to take State designated tests at given intervals and those who fail to meet the State-specified standard are forced into the public school system, once again, against the parents' wishes. This system forces homeowners (who may or may not even have any school-aged children) to subsidize the State educational requirements of their neighbors, and even that of people they have never even met and likely don't know exist! More and more, State education provides more emphasis on industry-driven content and less on the practical ability to solve issues of a moral or discerning nature. Ask any 5-year-old if it is wrong to steal and the majority will respond in the affirmative. Follow up and ask “why” and the waters get a little murkier. Some may say because Mommy or Daddy doesn't like it; some because the deprived party will get mad about it; some because the policeman will come and take you away; rarely will you hear that it is morally wrong to deprive someone of their rightful ownership and utility (natural law of property ownership). Some may blame the parent for this lapse: Bear in mind that the school-aged child spends half of his waking life in the public school system, where the moral responsibilities of natural law are not on the curriculum.

Thus we see that the ten planks of the communist Manifesto are alive and doing well in the United States of America. The latest round of Congressional hand-wringing over whether the Federal government should provide in excess (and believe me, it will be well in excess) of one trillion dollars to bail out a financial system that, driven by pure greed, made trillions of dollars in bad loans (and a fat profit along the way) is a testament to the further growth and entrenchment of Communism in our political and economic system. Under the supreme laws of our constitutional republic, each elected representative has sworn an oath to do nothing to help these greedy fools in any way. The founders who, in their benevolent wisdom, drafted, fought for and handed down our constitution are likely spinning in their graves to know that our elected representatives have even considered such a course.

NOTE: No Communists were killed or maimed in the production of this essay, though many in government are probably very pissed off now that their cover is blown