Are We There Yet? Let’s Check Marx and Engels’ List…

Reading the news has been exciting lately. Hardly a day passes without the announcement of some new government initiative to save the world. Bail out the mortgage lenders; bail out the big insurance company; bail out the banks; bail out the money-market funds; bail out the commercial-paper sellers; bail out the depositors in belly-up banks; bail out the automobile companies; bail out the deadbeats who didn’t make their mortgage payments when they came due. When the Treasury bumps up against its borrowing limits, and interest rates begin to rise on its bonds, bail it out, too, by having the Fed flood the world’s credit markets with new reserves created by nothing more than a snap of its electronic finger. Who knows what industry, special-interest group, or noisy whiners bloc will be bailed out next? With the Fed standing reading to inflate without limit, the festivities need never end.

Of course, our rulers assure us that they will defend the taxpayers’ interest like pit bulls. Why, just recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in which they declared, “We must safeguard the interest of American taxpayers [and also, they continued] protect the hundreds of thousands of automobile workers and retirees, stop the erosion of our manufacturing base, and bolster our economy.” Whew! These dedicated public servants clearly do not intend to rest until they’ve pretty much cured all the world’s visible ills, including bad breath and flat feet. If they fail, in any event, it won’t be because they were too timid about throwing the taxpayers’ money at the problems.

All of which raises the eternal question, have we become a communist country yet? Yes, I know you probably think this question is silly, but I intend to treat it with the seriousness it deserves in the light of past, present, and likely future government actions. To ensure that I do not adopt an irrelevant or tendentious set of criteria in my inquiry, I will consider the question with reference to the list of ten measures that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels presented in the Manifesto of the Communist Party as “pretty generally applicable” for the establishment of communism “in the most advanced countries.” In the following text, I reproduce each of Marx and Engels’s points verbatim in bold font (from the 1955 edition of Samuel H. Beer), followed by my own evaluation or commentary.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

Of course, in this country we pretend to have private property in land, except for the huge amounts of land owned outright by governments, especially the enormous federal holdings in the western states and Alaska. But land taxation, land-use controls, and other regulations that trench on the rights of ostensibly private owners have already cut a big slice out of thoroughgoing private property rights in land. As environmentalism marches boldly onward, private property rights in land are likely to be chipped away further and further. Land rents, of course, are taxed along with other property income.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

In place. Worse to come.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

Some right of inheritance remains, but estate (“death”) taxes have demolished much of its substance. Under the next administration, we might well see renewed attempts to “tax the rich” more heavily by means of increases in estate-tax rates or changes in bracket levels.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Well, the rebels here are simply shot dead (see encyclopedia entry for “American Civil War”), even if their rebellion takes a muted and inconspicuous form (see entry for “Ruby Ridge”). As for the emigrants, if the federal government believes that it can squeeze a dime out of them after their departure, they will be hounded to the ends of the earth for purposes of legalized robbery (aka taxation). I am not a lawyer, but I notice that the law in this regard appears to be extremely complicated. I recommend that you consult your tax attorney before renouncing your citizenship or even moving abroad without renouncing it. Remember the government’s motto: you’ve got money, and we want it.

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

We call it the Federal Reserve System. As if it were not enough, the government is now in the process of taking an ownership position in hundreds, perhaps ultimately thousands, of “private” commercial banks by means of preferred corporate shares gained in exchange for its bailout doles.

– list continues at the link below