Thursday, July 31, 2008

Communism is not the future, but the past.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. (try not paying "property tax")

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (check)

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (partial)

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (not yet, but "civil forfeiture" is getting there)

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. (check)

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (check, if you consider, as any anarchist must, any regulated cartel to be a part of the state)

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (check)

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (this is what they mean by "national service")

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. (check)

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. (check)

So basically, once the next president institutes their "national service plan" and with a bit more of police running amok stealing shit, we'll be very very close to fulfilling all the planks of the communist manifesto here in the USSA. They'll never raise the inheritance tax because the kind of communism we have here is more Animal Farm-ish in which "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". In other words, a group of elite proletarians (We could call them the "High Bureaucracy" or simply The Managerial Class) have split off into a new oppressive class(while merging with remnants of the old elite), something Ol' Onkel Karl didn't exactly foresee. (which he probably should have because that was a big part of the story of how the "Bourgeoisie" formed)

However this leads to a new revolutionary situation in which the "sub-proletariat" can break the back of State Property and State Power, establishing all property as fluid, personal, and possession based. Our major inroad of opportunity comes along plank 6, in that communication technology is rapidly escaping from the hands of the state, and along plank 5, through the degradation of state-based currencies due to the inevitable crisis that comes from central banking (read FSK on the Compound Interest Paradox). Planks 2 and 9 will collapse not long after.