What current Candidate for President or major political party is calling for these changes?

Thoughts to ponder by Steve Zipsie:

What current Candidate for President or major political party is calling for these changes?

• developing a classless society.
• eliminating private ownership of the means of production.
• having an economy governed not by profit but by rational planning.
• ensuring a fair distribution of goods and services.
• eliminating the coercive apparatus of police, courts, and the army–which the society uses to oppress the people. They simply won’t be needed in the classless, society.
• defeating the power of multi-national corporation  (industrialists, manufacturers, merchants).

Answer Today?  ______________                                       Answer in 1864?  see below

Taken from one of my current class lecture notes:

In 1864 Marx and Engels founded the International Workingmen’s Association in London to replace the Communist League. They organized various congresses of the International in numerous European cities.

What were they trying to do? They sought to provide a critical analysis of capitalist society and a theoretical and political foundation for a communist society, which they saw as a true democracy in which “the freedom of each is the condition for the free development of all.” This meant

• developing a classless society.
• eliminating private ownership of the means of production.
• having an economy governed not by profit but by rational planning.
• ensuring the equal distribution of goods and services.
• eliminating the coercive apparatus of police, courts, and the army–which the capitalist society uses to oppress the proletariat. They simply won’t be needed in the classless, communist society.
• defeating the capitalist bourgeoisie (industrialists, manufacturers, merchants).

The most important problem that he tried to correct was that of the exploitation of workers. Indeed, it must be said that the conditions of life of common folk in nineteenth century England (and elsewhere) were terrible. Individuals (women as well as men) worked twelve or thirteen hours a day, six days a week. Children began working six and a half hours a day at age nine, increasing to twelve hours a day at age thirteen. Education was minimal, and most could not read or write. Crowded slums existed throughout industrial England. Air quality was terrible. Poverty was rampant. Life spans were short, and death from starvation was common. Marx and Engels thus found capitalism to be corrupt and dehumanizing.

It is from this perspective that one must understand these words from the 1848 Communist Manifesto: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite!”

(I changed a couple words but not the goals or the main idea.)

 

Folks,

 

I was just sitting here studying for a test thinking back to the Obama World Tour in the summer where he had rallies in Germany and England calling for citizens of the world to unite in a new global community. In case you were wondering, the class is Introduction to Religion (101) not Sociology (Socialist 101). We live in a pivotal time in history!

 

Steve

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