The left-wing view of Obama

Despite what the media tells you, Obama is not a leftist. At best I would call him “center-left”. He’s by no means a socialist or a communist. He’s not a revolutionary. He was the best chance we had to defeat the ultra-right during the last Presidential election and a hell of a lot better than McCain would have been. But he’s not going to lead us into a global communist revolution or something like that.

Everyone, except Glenn Beck maybe, realizes this. That’s not the question. The question concerns those of us who ARE socialists, leftists, or communists, and it’s this: now that we’ve got him in office, how far do we go in supporting him and criticising him? Where do we draw that line?

The Clinton years were wonderful for me, as a teen just becoming politically aware in a very conservative rural town. For the only time in my life I could talk about how lousy the President was and people agreed with me. Then came 8 years of Bush. Those were not easy times. I became more withdrawn about politics, a little more careful about who I spoke to about it. Sure, I wore a Fidel Castro tee shirt on a regular basis, but I waited for people to ask me about it and then gave them a watered-down response.

Now it’s back to a Democrat in office and for the first time in a long time I could call my dad up and bitch and moan to him, and he would bitch and moan right with me. But I don’t want to. So far I have been very quiet about my reservations regarding the Obama Administration’s policies. Because he is NOT a socialist/communist/etc. and I am, there are obviously some things I disagree with him about. Quite a few of them.

But at the same time I’m not so sure it’s time to start publicly blasting him because I’m afraid if we drag him down too far, the Pig with Lipstick will be ready to turn our country into one big JesusLand in 2012. I guess I am not entirely confident in the political education of Joe Sixpack. I think most people don’t see out of the two-party box and if they don’t like the Democrat incumbent they’ll automatically vote for the Republican (or vice versa). I seriously can’t see a lot of people saying “well, the problem with Obama is that he is not left enough.” Which is exactly what I’d like them to say, because it’s true. But our political system has been trapped in this framework where John McCain is considered centrist and Obama is the farthest left we’ve had in decades, that I don’t see a lot of people thinking outside of that box.

Then again, if we — meaning the really left left –  just sit by silently, or even cheerlead Obama, don’t we stand to lose the few people who support us? If we appear too “centrist” don’t we risk alienating our support from the left and further fragmenting the movement that way?

So there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Where is it? I don’t know. That’s not a rhetorical question. I seriously want some input on how we approach the Obama adminsitration.

Here’s what I do know. Whatever policy we take, we need to be crystal clear on our intentions and present alternatives. We cannot criticise Obama only to throw fuel on the right-wing’s fire, and whenever we support him it has to be clearly stated that it is a tactical move, and why. That’s all I’ve got.

Morality and Class Struggle

The basic process that allows the whole capitalist system to function is surplus value. I’m not going to give you a whole lesson on it here, but in a nutshell, the ability of humans to use technology and produce more value in a day’s labor than is required to produce another day’s labor. The difference between the profit your boss makes off your work, and what you’re paid so that you can survive to come to work another day, is the surplus value. Of course, you have no say in how much of this surplus value he keeps and how the rest of it is spent, so in other words you are being exploited for your labor power because you don’t own capital, and that’s how the whole system functions.

Of course, when you use the word “exploited” it raises a big red flag. “My boss?” you might be asking yourself. “Never! He’s a saint!” Well, maybe not that enthusiastically. But a lot of people look up to and admire the people who own the companies they work for, and get offended when you suggest that they are exploiters.

People say, “Look at a guy like So-and-So. He gives all this money to charity, starts foundations to help people, gives back to the community. He’s a good guy. How can you hate him? How can you say he’s an evil man?” To which I would reply that I don’t hate him. I don’t think he’s an evil man. If the guy invited me over to his house I’d drink beer with him, or his fine wine, or whatever the hell a guy like that drinks. It’s nothing personal.

But the hard truth is that capitalists are exploiters, without exception. It doesn’t matter if they’re good people. In fact, in most cases they can’t help but exploit. It’s the only thing that allows them to continue their existence. It’s their job to do it and even if they would like to “exploit less”, they are driven to exploitation in order to stay competitive in their field.

Case in point: when I worked at Safeway here not long ago, we were undergoing contract negotiations and almost went out on strike. The company kept saying, “We have to compete with Wal Mart, and they pay their workers minimum wage and give them some Mickey Mouse benefits. That’s why we have to cut your wages and benefits to keep up.” Was there any truth to this? I don’t know. Safeway used to be a place where a working person could go make an honest living with good wages and benefits so maybe they do have a heart. But regardless of whether or not they’re sincere about treating their workers right, they can’t. It’s true that they can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage and keep up with the sweatshop down the road.

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for some of these people.  Maybe they really want to do the right thing but can’t. Especially people who run the Mom & Pop store. They might treat you OK and maybe they turn around and give all the profit you make for them to the bank, to pay off the loan which keeps the business afloat. But the point is, they are still exploiting you for your surplus value. Does that mean you should slash their tires or something? No (unless they’re assholes of course). But we have to continue to struggle for socialism regardless of whether or not we like our bosses. The fact that they’re nice people doesn’t change the cold, hard truth that capitalism is an unsustainable system built upon exploitation of labor.

Marx and God

One of the most quoted writings of Karl Marx, if not the single most well known of any sentence he ever wrote, was his line from Critique of Hegel which reads, “religion is the opiate of the masses”. This passage has been repeated time and time again, and used as ammunition to rile religious folk up and direct their rage toward Communist Parties and Marxists in general.

At a glance, Marx’s remark is indeed inflammatory. Religion is the opiate of the masses? So does that mean going to church is the same thing as shooting up? It’s obvious why conservative, anti-heroin church-going folk would be turned off by this statement.

What most people fail to mention is that it’s taken completely out of context.

Directly preceding this famous statement is a largely unknown line: “Religion is…the heart of a heartless world”. Can you imagine how the perception of Communists would be if that line were repeated as often as the “opiate” line is? And are these two statements contradictory?

I have had this discussion with my wife. I am a militant atheist, she is kind of “undecided”. She is not religious but she is not an atheist, nor is she as militantly anti-religion as I am. She can understand and relate to most of my views on the topic, but I believe once she posed an interesting question to me. Maybe I don’t need religion in my life, but what about someone who is addicted to heroin (trading one opiate for another?), or waiting on death row, or people in similar circumstances who need to “find Jesus” or “become one with the universe” or whatever kind of religious experience it takes for them to straighten their life out? Do I really want to take the one hope they have away from them?

This is what Marx means. As Communists are goal should not be to obliterate religion. Religion is the product of the fucked up world we live in. People need to have some sort of reason to live their life, especially people who have fallen on hard times, people who have fucked up their lives, or have gotten fucked by someone else. If religion is the thing that can motivate them to avoid putting a bullet in their brains, who am I to say they’re better off without it?

The idea is not to eliminate religion; religion is the cause of a lot of bad things in our world but dialectics teaches us that causes can be the effects of a previous cause. Religion, like an opiate, is the way people numb themselves to the shitty world they live in. Therefore, the key link in the chain is not to eliminate religion, but to eliminate the soulless conditions that give rise to it.

The Battle is Not Over.

Things have gone well. Obama won the White House with a massive electoral vote blowout and the Democratic Party has strengthened its lead in both houses of congress. Some races that were initially feared lost still have at least a glimmer of hope: in Alaska, Mark Begich is within 4,000 votes of ousting Republican Ted Stevens, the Senate’s longest serving member and it’s only convicted felon, with over 40,000 votes left to count. Al Franken’s bid to capture one of Minnesota’s Senate seats has fallen just 500-some votes short, well inside the margin for a recount. There is hope that they could pick up another seat or two. And, of course, we can take pride in knowing that — much to the chagrin of many out there — our country has elected its first African-American President. These are all good things.

For communists, though, our intention was never just to elect as many Democrats as possible. Our goal is to defeat the ultra-right. In this election, progressive and centrist forces have gained the upper hand against the ultra-right, however, the battle is far from over. We don’t want to turn the corner only to allow them to come back with a vengeance a couple years down the road.

No, the battle to defeat the ultra-right is not over. The battle is not just to relegate them to a large minority party; the battle is to utterly smash the right-wing movement as a political force and render it incapable of ever playing a major role in American politics again. This may seem like a radical thing to say. Well, I am a radical after all. But so are the ultra-rightist that have been dominating Washington. Make no mistake about it, there are plenty of very radical elements within the Republican Party, and if Americans want real qualitative change in their daily lives, we need to shift the framework of the political spectrum far enough that the Republican ideology in general is relegated to the position it belongs: the fringes. It is my hope that, in the future, voting for a Republican will sound as ridiculous as voting for a Communist sounds today.

There is bound to be plenty of celebration on the Left today after last night’s election results, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In order to accomplish our goals, we need to keep the pressure on. This election could be a turning point. Or it could be the point where we fall asleep at the wheel. The choice is yours.

Is Obama a Socialist?

Republicans and other conservatives in the media and around the nation have been labelling Presidential candidate Barack Obama as a “socialist” mainly because he wants to reverse the portion of the Bush tax cuts that let the super-rich run away with loads of cash. Is this all it takes to make someone a socialist? Could Barack Obama really be trying to lead our country down the path to a glorious proletarian revolution?

To answer this question, who would be better to ask than a member of the Communist Party? Actually, who would be better to ask than former CPUSA National Chair Gus Hall? The late Comrade Hall wrote an piece called “Socialism USA” which is an explanation of the main vision of the Communist Party as far as what socialism would look like in the United States. In order to determine whether or not Obama is a socialist, let’s see how America under Obama would compare to America under socialism.

I’m going to pull a series of quotes from the text of Socialism USA, which can be found in its entirety here. You’re more than welcome to check out the whole document. First lets see what Hall has to say about economics (emphasis added by yours truly):

Political power would be in the hands of working people. Socialism starts with nationalization of the main means of production – the plants, factories, agri-business farms and everything necessary to produce what society needs. The large monopoly corporations and banks come under public ownership, that is, under the collective ownership of the entire working class and people, who have the leading role in building socialism.

Socialism also means public ownership of the energy industry and all the natural resources. It eliminates forever the power of the capitalist class to exploit and oppress the majority.

Does Barack Obama advocate the nationalization of America’s main industries, particularly energy industries and all natural resources? If he does, it’s news to me. As far as I can tell he’s pretty un-socialist in that department. So far on his “socialism scorecard” he’s got a big goose egg. Let’s move on:

A socialist government draws up plans covering the entire economy. They are drawn up with maximum participation of the people, from the shop level on up. Such plans are achieved because they harmonize the interests of all, because there are no conflicts arising from exploitation of workers and no dog-eat-dog competition.

Production increases much faster than under capitalism, with a planned economy, advancement of science and technology, and the protection and preservation of our environment and natural resources.

Obama seems to fail the socialism test by these criteria also. I’ve never heard him advocate a national economic plan drawn up with the input of workers. However, I think that the government may invest more resources into science and technology research with Obama as President, and do significantly better than McCain and Sarah “Drill, Baby, Drill” Palin in the realm of environmental protection. So let’s give Obama a 1.5 on these three questions. That brings his socialism score up to 1.5 out of 4. On to the next issue…

Full employment will be quickly achieved as production is expanded to satisfy the needs of people. Automation at the service of the working people will lead to both reduced hours of work and higher living standards, with no layoffs.

Has Obama proposed any ways to ensure full employment and eliminate layoffs? Not that I know of. These are key goals of socialism and he hasn’t suggested any way to reach them. More zeroes.

Poverty will be ended quickly with the recovery of the vast resources now wasted in war production, corporate profits and the extravagent lifestyles of the filthy rich.

I’ll give Obama a point here. He has talked about ending the Iraq war and investing the resources elsewhere, and increasing the tax burden on the rich to “spread the wealth around.” So by may calculation, he’s up to a 2.5 out of 6. That’s less than a 50%, which is failing in any gradebook I’ve ever seen. But let’s see if old Barack can pull his act together:

All education will be tuition-free. Every person will have access to unlimited medical and health care without charge. These rights will be realized as rapidly as facilities can be built and the personnel trained.

I’ve never heard Obama say anything about eliminating tuition. Zero there. As far as unlimited health care without charge, I’ll give him half a point. His health care plan would extend coverage for those people who don’t have benefits available through their jobs; but those who stay covered through work would have to pay premiums and co-pays, and by “unlimited” I think Hall means vision and dental, which aren’t mentioned in his policies. That brings Obama’s socialism score up to a 3 out of 8. Not so hot!

The children will reap all the benefits of socialist child care, free nurseries and schools with the very best facilities and teachers.

Free child care? Uhm, haven’t heard anything like that. Zero there. That’s the last point of conention I have to bring to the table, and when we total it all up, Obama has scored three “points” out of a possible 9. That makes him about 33% socialist. I’d think that even John McCain could find a couple things in Hall’s document that he could agree with. Obviously there’s more to the text, so go ahead and read it for yourself and let me know what you think.

This is kind of a bummer for me. I would love it for Barack Obama to be a socialist. I think that would be pretty awesome actually. But, looking at things objectively, I think the Republicans are giving him a little too much credit.

Am I accusing the Republicans of hyperbole? How dare I? Well, Obama naturally agrees with me:

By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Granted, I could be mistaken in some of my judgements and I would be more than happy if I was. That would only make me want to vote for the guy even more, so go ahead and point out any ways in which I understate his socialist-ness. However, Obama has a long way to go before he can turn that F into a passing grade in Socialism 101. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d be happy to say I am. But I doubt it.

Marx was Right

It was only yesterday that “free market” ideologues were dancing on Karl Marx’s grave with scornful shouts that “greed is good” and “TINA” — “there is no alternative” to capitalism. These fat men guffawed contemptuously at Marx’s warning that capitalism is built on wage exploitation, that workers never earn enough to buy back what they produce, creating “overproduction” and periodic crises — some deep and long — that can only be solved by socialism.

These ideologues cling to delusions that capitalism is the “best of all possible worlds,” blindness expressed as recently as two weeks ago by John McCain when he asserted that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

But just the other day, economist David Macke surveyed the financial collapse spreading like a thermonuclear chain reaction. Asked what was needed to stop the destruction he replied, “At the end of the day, if you socialize enough of the financial system, it has to work.” Suddenly “socialism” is needed to stave off catastrophe! And who is Macke? An economist for JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s biggest transnational banks.

But Macke’s “socialism” bears no resemblance to Marx’s version, in which working people own the means of production, including banks, and operate them in working people’s interests. Macke would “socialize” bad debt, forcing working people to bear the burden of rescuing Wall Street. Profits would continue to flow into the coffers of the rich. Left behind would be millions who have lost their homes, their jobs and health care as well as their 401(k) retirement accounts.

We should demand that any bailout work for us.

A coalition led by leaders of major unions has laid out just that approach in “A Call for Common Sense.” Use the federal government’s bank equity, paid for with our tax dollars, to force Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, etc., to agree to a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Require the banks to invest in a “green” jobs program to jumpstart the economy and retool our nation’s factories, farms and infrastructure to sharply reduce greenhouse gases. Make the banks invest in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, especially New Orleans. Such a program is not socialism, but it is a step toward socialism’s democratic principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”

Reprinted from the People’s Weekly World Newspaper.

Revolt with a Vote

One reason that many on the left don’t vote is that they believe it “accomplishes nothing”. The truth is that there is much to be accomplished “within the system”. One good example: the Employee Free Choice Act. Without the Republicans blocking it, it would be law today, and it would greatly increase the ability of workers to form unions. If Barack Obama is elected President, and them Democrats pick up a few more seats in Congress, it will almost certainly become law. Is organized labor not an important part of the class struggle? Or are unions just part of “the system” too?

Maybe we don’t have much to gain, but we certainly have a lot to lose. The ultra-right has been at the forefront of an intense attack on the American worker since the 1980’s. Barack Obama is no Vladimir Lenin,  but it is vitally important that we defeat the ultra-right and that we do it now.

I disagree that it is impossible to bring socialism via the ballot box. Look at Venezuela! Hugo Chavez came to power through the ballot box. Of course, I realize that we’re a long way from an American Chavez. But so what? You can’t be bothered to take five minutes out of your busy life of posting pictures of Stalin or Trotsky on internet forums to go to your polling place and fill in a couple bubbles on a Scantron card because there isn’t a place on the ballot to vote for “proletarian revolution”? That doesn’t mean you’re a revolutionary, it just means you’re lazy.

I understand that a lot of people who abstain from voting think they’re sending some sort of message; that the act of not voting is a political act in itself. Just today I received a MySpace bulletin that someone sent me, reposting an article by Linda Averill from the Freedom Socialist Party: “100 million nonvoters send a stinging message of disenchantment”. Yeah, right. The only message nonvoting sends is nothing. Do you really think that John McCain or any of the other ultra-right candidates would win an election and say, “You know what guys, I just don’t think our victory is legitimate because if everyone had voted we probably would have lost. I guess I’d better just resign!” That’ll be the day!

The powers that be have traditionally tried to keep the voters in this country to a minimum. The original intent of the “founding fathers” was to keep the vote limited to only white land-owning men, and keep democracy out of the hands of workers, women, and people of color. It took nearly two centuries of struggle to make sure that every adult citizen of the United States had the right to vote unmolested.

If the ruling class really cared whether or not their rule was legitimized by a truly popular vote, why would they have resisted universal suffrage so hard for so long? And why would they continue to launch voter suppression campaigns, like they recently tried to do right here in Montana? If they wanted you to vote, why would they try so hard to keep you away from the ballot box? If you’re not going to vote for them, the ultra-right would rather you just stay home, which is exactly what many youth on the Left are doing. The last thing they want is a bunch of rebellious youth exercising their right to vote!

Still yet, many on the left are afraid that by voting they will be seen as endorsing “the system”, and that it will undermine the argument for radical change. I, myself, am not conceited enough to think that the masses look up to me as a role model and will be confused by my apparently contradictions. But for many people that doesn’t matter, because they would have to deal with their own inner contradictions. To me, that is even more foolish. A true revolutionary would use every means available to them to further the cause. The ballot box is one arena of the class struggle; a “communist” who avoids the vote simply to take some sort of moral high ground is no communist at all. If you get more satisfaction out of patting yourself on the back than you do from actually engaging in the class struggle, then go right ahead. Just don’t call me your comrade.

The choice is yours: you can take five minutes to do your duty and go vote, or you can stay home and feel like you’re the coolest because you’re clean and pure of “the system”. Only one of those options has the potential to accomplish anything.

Marx and the Credit Crisis

Home foreclosures, credit card debt spiraling out of control, all this driving the American economy to the brink of recession. Could anyone have seen this coming? I don’t know who did, but I know that someone should have. Looking back on everything that has happened in recent economic history through the lens of Marx, everything comes into clear focus. There is a very obvious reason for why we are in the mess we’re in now.

If you go back to the very beginning of Capital, Marx defines “value” for his purposes as an embodiment of the amount of labor that went into it’s production. A diamond is more valuable than quartz because, if you go out and dig around in the dirt, you will find that diamonds are rare and it takes you a lot more work to find a diamond. A car is more valuable than a bicycle because it takes more labor to build a car, not just in its assembly but in the components that go into it (it takes more steel, which has a value representative of the labor of iron workers, miners, etc.)

There is only one commodity on this planet that can increase its own value, and that is human labor. Marx theorized that the value of a day of human labor is equivalent to the amount of work required for a worker to live to come to work the next day. Fortunately for us, we’ve had agricultural and industrial revolutions, which means that we can use technology to produce more for ourselves than what’s required for bare subsistence. A man can harvest a bushel of corn in a day, and only needs to eat a couple ears to live for another day’s work. The output is greater than the input, and Marx has a name for this. The value created by labor that is in excess of its original value is called “surplus value”.

Are you still with me? Good. So obviously the capitalist has to pay his workers enough to survive the night and work again the next day, and usually, depending on different factors, he will pay them a little bit more. But he makes his profits by taking away most of the surplus value that the labor of a worker creates.

This creates a problem: if workers are only paid little more than enough to survive, how are they going to buy the goods that they create? The sum of all goods created in the world is far greater than the sum of the wages of all workers. And each capitalist probably doesn’t want, say, 18 toaster ovens, so you can’t assume that people are going to consume goods at a rate proportional to their income. This creates a crisis of overproduction where goods are sitting in warehouses, houses aren’t selling, etc. despite the fact that there are people out there who would buy them…except they can’t afford them. So how do we get things circulating again?

This brings us up to the current day, where the answer to that question has been easy credit. If you can’t give people real money, give them a loan. Give them a credit card with a high limit so they can go buy all kinds of knick knacks and junk. Give them a home loan so they can buy a house that they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. Only one catch: they have to pay it back, with interest.

Unfortunately, this is like applying a band-aid to a bullet hole, because if they can’t afford to buy the goods with cash, how are the borrowers going to afford to pay back their loans? This is exactly what we are seeing today: banks giving credit to people for things they can’t afford, and then acting shocked when they have to repo their car or foreclose on their house.

That’s why we have what economists refer to as the “business cycle” in capitalism. Sometimes we’re up, and sometimes we’re down. The problem is that the further we go in the “up” direction, the worse the down is going to be. The credit scheme has bought us a lot of time on this general upward trend.

Does that mean we’re in store for a big crash?

Nitpicking on the State

Hey all, I’ve been out of the loop for some time. As you know, I ventured to the land of the midnight sun for the holidays and have just returned. I’ve been back in the old MT for about a week now but I’m still getting adjusted to my class schedule, etc. Honestly I’m trying to stay on top of my homework this semester instead of just blowing everything off like my last campaign in which I was able to pull off, by some miracle, a 1.7 semester GPA. I guess I’ve been having too much vodka with my comrades. So anyway, I’m just sifting through the whopping two comments that have stacked up since my absence and I thought I would single one of them out for commentary.

Now, I’m not trying to pick on anyone. I just want to make it clear that by singling this comment out I’m not getting all pissy. It’s just that it led to a flurry of ideas about the nature of the state and class and this that and the other that I had to write them out. So, David from Greaterfalls.com, if you’re reading this, it’s all love on this side of the table. Here’s what he had to say:

Environmentalism IS the new “communism” — both require man’s subservience to the State – one in the name of “the public good” and the other in the name of “mother earth.”

David, I really think you’re missing the whole point here. First of all, if you want to get down to the semantic nuts and bolts, communism is the only political system that does not require subservience to a state. True communism is a stateless, classless society. But Communists and Libertarians are so far apart because we reds are of the opinion that classlessness is a prerequisite for statelessness. In other words, you can only have a stateless society after a long period of acute class struggle, in which the proletariat decisively defeats the bourgeoisie and proceeds to build communism. This period is known as “socialism”.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to split hairs here, and I’m definitely not trying to build a straw man. I know what David was trying to say. I’m using the Leninist definitions here and I’m sure he was using a different version of the word “communism” — something along the lines of “a society run by communists”. But believe me, I’m going somewhere with this argument. I’ll come back to this point later.

Subservience is the nature of the state. The state is, after all, nothing more than a tool used by one class to coerce other, less powerful classes. Just like a carpenter would use a hammer to demand subservience from a nail. Therefor we see that the state is inherently linked to class struggle. There can not be a state without some sort of demand for subservience; that’s the whole reason it exists. The use of the bourgeois state is no different than that of the socialist state; they only differ in the fact that under socialism the workers hold state power.

Of course there are libertarian folks who wish to establish a stateless bourgeois society. The only way this is possible is if the workers are so stricken with false consciousness that they automatically conform to the interests of the bourgeoisie, like cattle being led to the slaughter.  I suppose we’re almost to that point in the good ol’ US of A, which is the only reason why there are no midnight knocks at the door here. But if you think for a second it’s always been that way, you need to study some history. How can any educated person ignore the fact that, right here in America, the police and military have routinely been used to break strikes, or forget about how the leaders of our movement were jailed under the Smith Act, or how even today being a Communist is reason enough, according to the letter of the law, to be denied a job?

Obviously capitalism demands subservience to the state just like any other “ism”. Socialism and environmentalism do too. So what? What kind of demand are environmentalists making…the demand that we don’t destroy our planet and our species in the process? Oh how dare they! It’s not like we’re the only ones doing the demanding, either. Creationism demands subservience to the state. Heterosexism demands subservience to the state. The left certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on demanding subservience to the state. That’s just the way politics work. However, as we talked about in the first couple paragraphs, Communists have the only feasible way of creating a stateless society, or at least one that doesn’t involve the working people enthusiastically surrendering themselves to the type of lives that Upton Sinclair wrote about in The Jungle. Obviously I’m a little biased here, but I think that we Communists are the only ones who can rightfully talk about the evils of the state since we’re the only ones with a plan to get us all out from under its heel.

What it all boils down to is this: you can’t live clean and pure of “the system”. As long as there is class struggle, there will be a state. One class will be oppressed and another will dole out the oppression. The only question is which side you want to be on.