Hate is the Essence of Socialism

When will socialist Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) be held accountable by the media for his own revolutionary and hateful rhetoric?

“Not Donald Trump, not anyone else will be successful in dividing us based on race or our country of origin,” says Sanders. Meredith Warren, a Republican political analyst and consultant, counters: “But Sanders should take a long look in the mirror. Both he and many of his Democratic cohort, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are fiercely pushing a campaign message specifically intended to divide America along different lines—economic ones.”

Warren, a graduate of Boston University’s College of Communication, where she majored in broadcast journalism, should be congratulated for drawing attention to the media’s double standard.

On one occasion, during an appearance on Iowa public television, Sanders was asked about promoting class warfare. He turned the question around and insisted that class warfare was being waged by the rich against the middle class and the poor.

The problem for Sanders is that his political philosophy is ultimately based on the notion of the elimination of the bourgeoisie—the middle-class owners of property—as set forth in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. “This person must indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible,” it says. This is the theory of class warfare.

In his book, Why Communism Kills: The Legacy of Karl Marx, Dr. Fred Schwarz argued that “The liquidation of the bourgeoisie is an essential step of the path to Communism. This is why Communism must kill.”

In his famous “Time for Choosing” speech in 1964, Ronald Reagan captured the essence and attraction of Marxism, saying, “We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.”

American economist Henry Hazlitt said it a different way: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others.”

That is the essence of the Sanders campaign strategy.

In his book, Socialism in America, John L. Bowman writes about envy being one of the driving forces behind socialism: “…the simple desire to want what another has.” He added, “After all the moralizing about justice, freedom from oppression, disparity of wealth, and obligation to help others according to their needs, the truth may be that socialists are just plain envious of those with money.”

Bowman says one reason for socialist envy is that “socialists often lack the ability to make money.” A good example was Marx, the father of communism, who is usually described in glowing terms as a philosopher, journalist, historian, and economist. But “he never earned a living wage and was largely supported by Engels,” notes the entry at biography.com. Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals, notes Bowman, said that Marx was “unwilling to work at a job, borrowed money to live, and was incompetent with personal finances, all of which led to lifelong money problems and his subsequent hatred of money, money lenders, usury, and capitalists.” Bowman adds, “During the last part of his life, Marx and his family lived in a two-room apartment on Dean Street, near Soho in London in dire poverty.”

Sanders has escaped such a fate because he has been a career politician. We’ve noted that James O’Brien, a political consultant and former publisher of Campaigns & Elections magazine, calculates that Sanders, who has been a mayor, member of Congress and a U.S. senator, has achieved the financial status of a millionaire. He concludes that Sanders and his wife have a net worth in the range of $1.2 to $1.5 million, not the $700,000 or less that is usually reported by the media.

Sanders apparently once performed manual labor on an Israeli commune or kibbutz dedicated to Joseph Stalin. The Times of Israel reported, “Leaving the cabin he shared with a few other American college student volunteers, Sanders would have a quick bite of bread before heading out to the orchard. After 2 1/2 hours of work, he and the other 20 or so volunteers would sit down for a traditional 30-minute Israeli breakfast of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, butter and hard-boiled eggs…The kibbutz belonged to the Israeli political party Mapam, which in the 1950s had been a communist, Soviet-affiliated faction. Kibbutz members had admired Joseph Stalin until his death, and they would celebrate May Day with red flags. They spoke of controlling the means of production, taking from each according to his abilities and giving to each according to his needs.”

Is this where and how Sanders first became a socialist? Sanders won’t talk about it. The media have asked for details, but he and his campaign won’t respond. AP reports, “Sanders won’t identify the Israeli kibbutz where he briefly volunteered in the 1960s. When reporters found the kibbutz, Sha’ar Ha’amakim in northern Israel, he wouldn’t comment.”

The conclusion is inescapable: Sanders is a hard-core Marxist who preaches class warfare. He calls himself a democratic socialist, but he wants to avoid any mention of communism.

Donald J. Trump has called him a communist, a charge Sanders denies. “He calls me a communist. That’s a lie,” Sanders thunders.

Yet, as we noted in our coverage of one of the Democratic debates, Sanders did not disavow his previous comments in support of the communist dictatorship in Cuba.

Hatred is “the heart of Marxism,” Henry Hazlett said. “This is its animating force. You can throw away the dialectical materialism, the Hegelian framework, the technical jargon, the ‘scientific’ analysis, and millions of pretentious words, and you still have the core: the implacable hatred and envy that are the raison d’être for all the rest.”

Meantime, Communist China has more billionaires than the United States, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2016. It finds that there are 568 Chinese billionaires, compared to 535 in the U.S.  Beijing has replaced New York as the billionaire capital of the world.

Still, the Constitution of the Communist Party of China declares, “The Communist Party of China is the vanguard both of the Chinese working class and of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. It is the core of leadership for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics and represents the development trend of China’s advanced productive forces, the orientation of China’s advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. The realization of communism is the highest ideal and ultimate goal of the Party.”

Of course, as we’ve argued, the communists use capitalism to create the wealth they couldn’t create through socialism. Such a development is why many conservatives still love the old song by The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” with the lyrics: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” Except that the new communist boss is actually worse than the old boss.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

Photo by origamidon

Photo by origamidon

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