What's a socialist like me doing in a liberal place like this?
In my old age, I have returned to the Marxism of my youth. If Marx seemed irrelevant twenty years ago in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, today he looks prescient. I see before my eyes the consolidation of big money Marx predicted a hundred fifty years ago, and the effect of the concentration of wealth on politics here and abroad. Constitutions, laws, traditions, and social contracts have all proven incapable of coping with this tendency, again as Marx predicted. Organized labor has failed, ultimately, to match the power of concentrated Capital. Liberalism is bankrupt; in my eyes, the only hope for a prosperous future lies in the awakening of class consciousness among us who work for a living and the creation of a new political mass movement for socialism, that is, for the management of the wealth of the nation in the interests of its people.
In terms of current politics, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan clearly represent the interests of Capital. They have zero interest in doing anything that does not aid and abet the redistribution of wealth into the hands of their rich backers. All other positions, such as those on abortion, immigration, race, or religion, are mere diversions: bread and circuses, if you will. They are meant to distract us from the common interest we have as working Americans in opposing the systematic plundering of our wealth and the fruits of our labor. We are set against one another: black against white, Anglo against Latin, Christian and Jew against Muslim, straight against gay, man against woman. It is a classic "divide et impera" tactic that has worked brilliantly for the Right since Richard Nixon's time.
We must ask ourselves why any sane American outside of Wall Street supports Romney, Ryan, or indeed any candidate of a Republican party so clearly dedicated to the dismantling of any potential engine of future prosperity for the average American. These people believe it is preferable to give a few million dollars to one man, whom they call "job creator", than for several thousand ordinary men and women out of whose labors fortunes are made to get a thousand dollars each. That is the essence of the Republican creed, and it is profoundly elitist and anti-democratic.
These are people who talk of letting sick people die and call it freedom; when they rob from the poor to give to the rich, they call it Christian. They keep more people in American prisons -- many run for profit -- than Stalin had in his GuLAG at its height. They own a military juggernaut so large it consumes as many dollars in a year as all the rest of the world's armies put together, and they call it patriotic. They are building a "homeland security" establishment Himmler would envy to protect us against a few medieval madmen.
Why would any sane American vote Republican?
They rail against the Left, but there is no Left. Would a socialist President put the likes of Bernanke and Geithner in charge of the economy? Would a Marxist trust the advice of a Goldman Sachs man like Larry Summers? Barack Obama rescued Capital in its crisis; now it is stabbing him in the back. Marx -- and Lenin -- would have told him so.
I am a socialist. I believe that capitalism must eventually choke in its own corruption, and that socialism -- the working people of America organized in their own common interest -- is the way forward. But I don't see it happening in my lifetime, and in the meantime civilization and its essential infrastructure, the crucible of our common future, must be preserved. And so I have made the only rational choice: to support Barack Obama for another term as President, to support progressive candidates for Congress and on the state and local level, and to fight capitalist lies and the stooges and dupes of the Right.
We have no other choice.