Saturday, March 02, 2019

A Message for Our American Visitors


Our comrades in the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) certainly have their work cut out in trying to explain what is meant by socialism. After decades of deliberate and purposeful distortion, American politicians continue to maliciously misinterpret what socialism is.

At a right-wing convention, a headline speaker warned that the socialists are intent upon taking not only peoples’ houses and pick-up trucks but even their hamburgers.

"This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved," Sebastian Gorka declared. "You are on the frontlines on the war against communism."

While an Anti-vaxxer politician from Arizona, Republican State Rep. Kelly Townsend, a five-term state representative, exclaimed,

“I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to. The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist.”

Not to be outdone the American vice-president Pence added his two-bits on the matter and warned Trump supporters that:

“Under the guise of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past century. That system is socialism,” he said. “Remarkably, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is an avowed socialist. But it’s not just him. Bernie [Sanders] has been joined by a chorus of candidates and newly elected officials who have papered over the failed policies of socialism with bumper-sticker slogans and slick social-media campaigns.” Those ideas, he said, more taxes, spending and government, and less freedom. “It was freedom, not socialism, that gave us the most prosperous economy in the history of the world,” he said. “It was freedom, not socialism, that ended slavery, won two world wars, and stands today as the beacon of hope for all the world. It was freedom, not socialism, that’s moving us beyond the prejudices of the past to create a more perfect union and extend the blessings of liberty to every American regardless of race or creed or color. It was freedom. t was freedom, not socialism, that’s moving us beyond the prejudices of the past to create a more perfect union and extend the blessings of liberty to every American regardless of race or creed or color. It was freedom. We want to make poverty more rare; they want to make poverty more comfortable. And that’s the choice we face today, men and women, between freedom and socialism, between personal responsibility and government dependence. Where freedom encourages investment, socialism stifles growth. Where freedom welcomes diversity, socialism demands conformity.” He said those who promote socialism should look at Venezuela. “Venezuela was once one of the richest and most vibrant democracies in the Western Hemisphere, but under  Maduro’s socialist rule, it’s become one of the poorest and most despotic,” he said. “Today, more than 9 out of 10 people live in poverty in that once-rich country. More than 3 million Venezuelans have abandoned their homes and fled the brutality of the Maduro regime.

Speaker after speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference railed against what they thought socialism was, starving people eating dog food and mothers committing infanticide after taking babies home from the hospital.

The only truth was stated by North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows when he said “They're trying to get rid of all the capitalists.” 
That, we are.

But for the record, members of the WSPUS do not intend to nationalize personal possessions and turn people into regimented clones of one another. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia formally designate themselves in their state constitutions as “commonwealths”, a traditional term for a community founded for the common good. This is the aim of the WSPUS, to create the cooperative commonwealth. Socialism comes not as a remedy for the evils of existing society, but as a program of principles for a new society, in which all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person willingly and freely, taking part in the way he feels he or she can do best, all goods and services will be produced for use only , and having been produced, will be distributed, free, directly to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied and where the land and fields, factories and machines, mines and mills, roads and railways, planes and ships, and all those things which mankind needs to carry on producing the means of life, will belong to the whole people.

We stand opposed to the wage system, under which labor has been reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold as the employment market wills. The socialist movement is founded for the abolition of wage slavery, the final emancipation, the real freedom, economic democracy.



"The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.


The law demands that we atone

When we take things we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who takes things that are yours and mine."

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