Calling all Commies: We Need You!
Email This Post
- 
Print This Post
- I knew this was going to happen. It crossed my mind twenty years ago, on that glorious day when the wall came down and communism collapsed.
I cheered along with the world, as the iron curtain burst from within and a million voices celebrated a new era of freedom, but one voice in the back of my head struck a sour note.
“Uh oh,” it said. “The bastards have absolutely nothing to fear now! What will keep their greed in check, now that communism is gone?”
Twenty years later I can give the answer. Nothing. Capitalist greed and market fundamentalism went on a two-decade bender, the rich got filthy rich and the poor got dirt poor and the marginalized of the world came up with even worse ideas than communism to deal with the pain. Like Jihadism, narco-states, and anarchy.
For all its sins, and they are legion, communism and its kid brother, socialism played a vital role in keeping capitalist societies healthy.
Communism and socialism are very potent medicines. A little bit will cure what ails you, too much will kill you.
Take a few drams of communism and you get Social Security, Medicare, the FDIC, antitrust laws and even civil rights. The far left in America was ridden with Soviet operatives in the thirties, but they were also the vanguard of the drive for racial equality.
Don’t take enough and you get the kind of coal-smoke choked, child labor-abusing, Dickensian industrial nightmare that brought forth Marx and Engels in the first place.
Overdose and you die by the hand of Stalin in the Gulag or starve by the polluted banks of the Yangtze, so brainwashed you expire with the words of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book on your shriveled lips. You don’t want to take too much communism, ever. At best you wind up like Cuba under Castro, at worst, Cambodia under Pol Pot.
We could use a few vials of communism in our political medicine chest today. If only to remind the establishment what real trouble looks like. They’ve gotten so complacent a moderately liberal president, pushing a mildly reformist agenda, is enough to trigger their fight-or-flight reflex. And the conservatives grab their Winchesters and head straight for the barricades.
It’s an astonishing spectacle of delusion. Right now, the hysterical right wingers are scared shitless of absolutely nothing. You’ve got wackos from Texas threatening to secede (if only) and bulging-eyed, bulging waistline, dimwits who make you wonder how the White race ever supremacized anyone, baying at the moon, screaming for our president’s scalp. A president who is so moderate he’s driving the left almost as buggy as the right.
Almost nothing of substance has changed in American governance in the past seven months; the economy’s still in the shitter but no deeper than last November and Goldman is posting record profits again. The gun freaks still have their guns, abortionists still live in fear for their lives, we’ve got enough wars to keep the Pentagon and the prosthetic limb industry happy, the homosexual agenda still hasn’t seized control of America’s preschools and Aetna’s execs can still send out their “sorry, it was a pre-existing condition, you’re not covered” letters without worrying about getting two in the chest and one in the head.
There is literally nothing happening, but the lunatic right is screaming “apocalypse!” and middle America is starting to believe them.
I say let’s give them something to be scared about. It’s time, comrades.
Let’s all get together and sing the Internationale and wave the red banner of revolution. Get enough people to do that and believe me, we’ll get universal health care in a Stalingrad minute. Who knows, we might get lucky and the minimum wage will go up a few cents. If you want the power elite to throw you a bone you’ve got to show ‘em some canines.
We need to put the fear of godless communism in the capitalist class—and I don’t mean the guy who owns the local Kinkos franchise who thinks he’s a red hot entrepreneur so he votes Republican—I mean the nine corporations left standing after we bailed them out of their latest collapse who now have all the money. Scare them straight, make them pretend to play fair, lighten their purses enough to fund some humane social programs, health care for everyone for starters, and then go home.
Because if there’s one thing worse than a world without communists, it’s a world where they win.
Comment by joker on 3 September 2009:
I know you hate it when I keep bringing up Ted, but you did mention your joy when the wall came down. If either Ted or Jimmy had won in 1980, the Berlin wall would not only still be there, it’d probably have grown across several more European countries. There’d be Kopeks and Rubles instead of the Euro, and France would love Americans once again when the missile silos become visible in the distance.
Most of what you’ve said here is truer than I’d like to admit, because disagreeing with you is much more fun. There really isn’t a whole lot of anything going on right now, but even so I’m all set on the red flag waving. Russia may not be “communist” anymore, but they are still a potential pain in our ass, especially with that fruitcake Putin beating the drum for a more aggressive foreign policy towards the West. You made no mention of North Korea or China either, and I think with those two alone we’ve accepted enough communism in the world for this fiscal quarter.
I’ve gone from being a naïve young man who was absolutely horrified by The Jungle, to a hard-edged grown man who has seen the corruption of labor unions first-hand. We’ve gone from workers falling into the rendering vats to “no-show” foremen on the payroll who spend the lion’s share of their shifts in the barroom. It’s gone from sweat shop extreme abuse and neglect to blatant nepotism, cronyism, and outright thievery. Simple fairness still eludes many of America’s workers today unless they have the right relatives, low friends in high places, or simply excel in the art of butt-swabbing.
You man the red flag and I’ll man the water cannon, but afterwards things will still not have changed. Do not loathe the man with the Winchester, because it was he who gave you this land in which you may now speak freely against him. I’m all for less corporate excess, but get scared by the mention of “humane social programs.” Yes to getting rid of the dreaded “pre-existing condition.” No to using other people’s money to pay for health care for those who take from the system and contribute nothing.
We need less government, not more. We need people to earn things, not simply be given them. We need to foster merit, not “entitlement,” and I use that as a pejorative. The minimum wage is fine right where it is - just how much do young kids need to make in their first job at KFC? That’s what the MW is supposed to be for you know - entry level jobs. You don’t raise it to help out grown adults who have no business in such positions. You offer them a Size 10 in the fanny instead, and point them in a new direction. If you’re 50 and working as a $hithead behind the counter in a sub shop, I don’t want to hear your sob story, and I shouldn’t have to help pay your bills.
Being a loser in America is a matter of personal choice. We don’t need red flag wavers to instill fear, and we don’t need the government to hold our hands. Survival of the fittest is the most basic law of nature. Literacy, social order and modern conveniences may mask it, but cannot change it. If you catch a fish that’s too small, you throw it back in the water and keep fishing. You don’t wave a red flag, hand your small catch to the government, and cry to them that they have to make it bigger for you because it’s not fair you got stuck with a small fish.
We don’t need Karl Marx, but a little Lao Tzu wouldn’t hurt.
Sic transit gloria mundi.