THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS HELD HOSTAGE:  Keywords: Elections, Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America DSA, communisms, American Marxism, industrial armies, labor unions, factionalism, ideological extremism,

 

 

The Chinese People's National Congress, detail of the delegates.
A large portion are the Communist Party Army representatives

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS HELD HOSTAGE

 

The Chinese People's National Congress. Perfect for listening, obeying, and clapping

A Meditation about the Communist Takeover in progress

By Xuan Quen Santos

 

PARTISANSHIP, IDEOLOGY, TRIBALISM, EXTREMISM AND FACTIONALISM

        An open community system in which many voices are heard and taken into account when a decision that has broad community implications is made is not ideological in nature, partisan or divisive. It is a method to arrive at decisions in a large group. This has been an aspiration of human groups since diverse opinions and different perceptions are considered. It is not an easy process even in small groups. Think of a typical family with three children (ages 14, 9 and 5) trying to decide where to go for Sunday lunch in a situation of multiple choices. The larger the family and the increased number of choices adds complexity to the process. There are also other circumstances when a group must urgently arrive at a decision facing limited choices, none of which will satisfy everyone. Think now of a larger group, such as a family reunion. Expand the group to your HOA or club. Move on to the city, county and state… Reaching an agreement is a challenge.

We just entered the final weeks of a mid-term, national election cycle. The noise, the cost, the promises, the accusations, the lies, the choices…are trying the patience of the most patriotic voter and questioning his faith in the system. Most fingers are pointing to what is indistinctly labeled as extreme partisanship, ideological tribalism, and extremism. It may be all three. The Founding Fathers were aware of the dangers the new country would face by not finding ways to agree on how to face and solve the problems of the future. The word they used was “factionalism”. In the XVIII century there were no political organizations in any way similar to today’s political parties. The word ideology did not even exist, and they were convinced the old feuds over blood, ethnicity and religion would soon wane under the fundamental limitations to the power of government established by the Bill of Rights. Of course there were disagreements, but like President Thomas Jefferson described their common goal, “differences of opinion are not differences of principle”.

As I see the problem today, it is precisely because the differences are of fundamental principles; the factions today are split between those that begin their political intentions within the principles established in the constitutional legacy of the United States of America, and those that start by attempting to dismantle its carefully constructed edifice abusing the liberties the constitution they hate provides them. The extreme left is out to destroy the foundations of this country. It is not a foreign attack. It is from within. It is not a matter of opinions.

THE ORIGINAL RIGHT-LEFT MODEL

         The political designation of “right” or “left” is ancient, but its meaning has changed over time. In antiquity, whether Greek or Roman politics, it was the simplest way to vote in an assembly without taking too much time to count. When a final decision was made, whether in the agora or in the forum, the presiding officer would simply call for the voters to physically move in the room. If they voted “yea”, they would move to his right side. If they voted “nay”, they would move to his left. It was seldom necessary to count as the simple observation of the size of the groups would suffice. For high level trials involving public punishments were involved, the system was secret. “Ostracized” and “black-balled” are the remnant terms. The majority of oyster shells or black pebbles in the urn were for punishment, instead of white pebbles. Right or left had no politically ideological or partisan significance of permanent consequence.

POWER POSITIONS FROM THE TOP DOWN

         During Medieval times, small kingdoms began to form in what had been the Roman colonies and provinces, the power structure that emerged was for the ruler (originally a tribal chief or a Roman retired commander) to be owed support (fealty) from his vassals or knights in the equivalent of a military order of ranks. At the bottom were the conquered occupants that became serfs (servants) attached to the land. The realm was distributed in a similar pyramidal structure. The ruler had councils that provided counsel. They evolved into courts, with advisers and obedient executives, and usually a mix of the powerful and religious scholarly prelates, often delegates of the Pope. But the ruler was not bound to the advice or opinions received. Historic precedents, such as the challenge to the king’s power by his knights that produced the Magna Carta turned the operation of the court into a system of rights and laws. The layers of ranks took the form of a rigid “class” or “caste”.

         This gradually changed from the romantic style of the Arthurian legend and the knights of the round table to the elaborate royal court of Louis XIV, the absolutist Sun King. As the kings created permanent bureaucracies and professional armies, the Medieval lords lost power, except for the wealth of their distant estates. The court under the royals was broken into three rigid layers of people. That was the original definition of “a class” of people. An example is the French system of the États Généraux (Estates General) assembly that was seldom convened: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the commoners represented by delegates of the autonomous cities and towns, including the peasantry (Third Estate). Everything had to do with the land and its resources under their control. Each estate counted as one third of the consultation which usually made the Third Estate the least influential regardless of their larger number.

ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS FACTIONS APPEAR

         In England, the sequence of rebellions by the nobles and Magna Cartas that stopped them, resulted in increasing rights of the “peers”. It eventually evolved into the parliamentary system that became a legislative body. Since the regime of King Henry VIII, the power of the clergy was much diminished after losing most of their lands and the remnant became his personal vassals. Much like the French system, the power of the state was somewhat divided into the hereditary House of Lords and the elected House of Commons. 

House of Commons of the United Kingdom

The English Civil War (1642) resulted in the Catholic king’s loss of his head. Headless King Charles II was supported by his powerful first cousin King Louis XIV. Parliament eventually invited a foreign non-Catholic ruler to assume the throne under the name of “the Glorious Revolution” (1688). Constitutional monarchies were the result. The labels of Whig and Tory began as a conflict between church denominations mixed with the power struggles over the successions between Scotland and England. Gradually, they became voting blocs, similar to the idea of a political party but without a permanent or ideological organization.

THE SEATS ON THE RIGHT ARE THE KING’S SUPPORTERS

Since Henry VIII, tradition in England has it that the supporters of the King -the party in government- sit to the right of the dais or the throne, in both houses. What tradition calls “the loyal opposition” sits on the left side. In this scheme, ideologies can move around, depending on the elections. At the moment in 2026, the Labor (socialist) Party is in government, thus it is on the “right”. During the American Revolution, the Tory party controlled the British government and supported the authoritarian monarchy. The ideas of John Locke, Algernon Sidney and Adam Smith were popular with the Whig party. Those inclinations were reflected in the colonies that debated independence or a share of power in the British parliament without the tag of “right” or “left”.

IDEAS BEGIN TO BECOME POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES

       Up to the XVIII century, elections and voting were not frequent in France. In fact, they were not defining of the king’s final decision; they were “consultations”. They were always concerned about the issues of the moment. Wars, taxes and disputes about succession and power, or religious affiliation were common topics. The century that separates the English Civil War and the French Revolution introduced substantial changes in the political discourse, language and topics.  This is the period of The Enlightenment when the Divine Power of Kings was questioned, when natural rights were assumed as universal, when the idea of a “social contract” opened the door to alternative designs for the political system, when self-determination and independence became a goal of leaders. Up to then, it was not possible to identify political parties with ideologies and defined policy paths towards a future vision that would drive their political activity. It is also the century during which the fundamental ideas that would shape economic science were discussed. The forces of the market and free trade were recognized as the source of wealth creation in opposition to the monopolies created by royal charters and the idea of expansive colonies. The clash of ideologies and policies had its opening forum at the start of the French Revolution. It is also the dawn of political parties, not as a projection of “class” interests but as associations organized to participate in government through their own political conceptions.   

         Already experiencing a severe fiscal and economic crisis, King Louis XVI issued a convocation to the Assembly of the Estates General in 1789 under pressure of growing popular discontent and violent street riots. The Assembly had not met since 1614. Twelve hundred deputies arrived at Versailles on May 4. The representatives of the Third Estate, the Commoners, were the largest number as they filled the room on May 5. The Assembly took place in a warehouse cleared for the occasion that usually stored the props and decorations used for celebrations and performances at the palace. Within the room, too small for the large gathering, the clergy and the landed nobility occupied the seats to the right side of the King who was seated at the center of one end on an elevated dais. The commoners, most of them standing, occupied the space on the left.

       After long winded speeches by the king, his advisors and members of the clergy, it became clear there was a division. The first two estates would support the monarchy, and the commoners wanted reform. The commoner faction became contentious. Many sterile days of debates led the deputies of the commoners to conclude they would be overruled by the two privileged classes. On June 17, the commoners rebelled and formed the revolutionary National Assembly, not as part of the ruling state, but of the people. The revolution began. They moved the meeting to the palace Tennis Courts Hall and obtained the concession that voting would be by majority of delegates, of which they were in control.

The Estates General meeting at the tennis courts in Versailles

       The Estates General ceased to exist. On July 9, the National Assembly transformed itself into the National Constituent Assembly and began to function as a governing body and constitution-drafter. Following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, the assembly of commoners became the de facto government of France. As could be expected, the traditional divisions marked the early days of debate. Factions became clear. Congregated on the right were the conservatives who wanted little change in the system, among them many large farmers and urban merchants. In the center sat those that proposed a constitutional monarchy along the lines of the British system, many of them lawyers and professionals. The revolutionaries sat on the left without a unified plan; some wanted a republic as opposed to a king, others were more radical. Among them were the agitators of the mobs that were already spreading violence and a takeover of the property of the church and the nobility. The right-left model was limited to the discussion of the new form of government, a road to grab the power of the king.

       In August 1789, the revolutionary government abolished the feudal system, including the titles of nobility, their tax exemptions and other privileges. In November, the Assembly suspended the judicial system and confiscated all the property of the church, including land, universities, hospitals, hospices, schools, and of course, monasteries, convents and temples. In other words, the First and Second Estates were eliminated. It implied the monarchy was next, as it happened. The rest of the history of failure of the French revolts is well known and has been rewritten by socialists as a major success. My comments are limited to the ideologies and political parties.

The French reign of terror executes Queen Marie Antoinette Habsburg de Bourbon

     Ideological currents were just forming and differentiating. This is reflected in the names they received, without a clue of ideology, unless you followed the speeches and publications of the leaders and influencers of the time. Some of the names were: Feuillants, Jacobins, Cordeliers, Montagnards, Girondins, and sans-culottes. The “without-culottes” were the origin of the partisan political mob. At the time, knee breeches (culottes in French) were the fancy attire of aristocratic men. Working men wore long pants (pantaloons). Gradually, the radical anti-monarchy, anti-church and anti-nobility took control. The Jacobins, Girondins and Montagnards, who sat on the left, became radicalized and eventually eliminated the conservatives and moderates. The best known leader was Robespierre who became a tyrant leading the Montagnards in creating what historians labelled The Reign of Terror. The sans-culottes became the foot soldiers of the revolution, the urban mob. At the end, nobody sat on the right side. Chaos, anarchy, hyperinflation and scarcity followed the street riots and the vindictive operation of the Committee on Public Safety led by Robespierre. In 1794, Robespierre was tried, condemned and guillotined by the political machinery he created.

       Between 1789 and 1799, France moved through four main revolutionary governments: the National Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the National Convention, and the Directory. The first French republic ended when the military hero of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, took over to establish order. The First Republic was over. It did not take long for him to become absolute dictator with the title of Consul, a title of ancient Roman origin. Later he crowned himself Emperor and expanded his control over most of Europe. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated and the monarchy re-established. In 1830, a second French Revolution (revolt) overthrew the new Bourbon king, and a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe, a distant relative, was introduced. In 1848, Amid revolutions across Europe, Louis Phillippe was overthrown and the Second Republic was established. A nephew of Napoleon was elected to another constitutional assembly, and eventually was elected President. Not long after, he staged a coup d’etat and became Emperor as Napoleon III. An objective review of France’s political history of the last 250 years does not point to a real historic revolution. It points to a series of revolts that go through cycles of changes. In that sense, it is revolving, going round-and-round, and always returning to the same place. It is like replacing a flat tire with another tire that will also bust. The real revolution in political and economic systems happened across the Atlantic. As I write this note, another round of the Parisian mob violence is beginning to spread to other cities and countries.

IDEOLOGY IS BORN IN JAIL

       Literally, “ideology” was born out of the Reign of Terror during the first French revolt. The term was proposed by a young French aristocrat while he spent the year 1794 as prisoner of the Revolution awaiting to be tried. Antoine Destutt de Tracy was a friend of Lafayette, then in charge of the Civil Guard and prisons during the revolts. Influenced by studying Locke and Condillac, and after the experiences of the times, he became a leading proponent of the idea of a liberal, electoral republic identified with a free market economy. After his release he proposed “the science of ideas” that combined practical as well as philosophical elements. His writings influenced Thomas Jefferson, who edited two of his books in English. Tracy went on to become a respected scholar and professor while maintaining a limited participation in politics.

       The term ideology has acquired a less ambitious and more narrow meaning in political science. At the time Tracy was writing, the seduction of anything science or scientific was captivating the interest of many intellectuals and literati. Marx used it to brand his ideas about socialism/communism. Comte turned the humanities into the social sciences with positivism. Theology was expelled from the universities taken over by the state. Research, science and technology were the focus of the new universities. If his intention was to do away with philosophy, he was not successful. Ideologies are now considered just a specific view of a political idea that is accompanied with policy directives and courses of action. In some circles, the term ideology has a pejorative connotation. Napoleon, a pragmatic politician without principles, used it to insult his critics. Marx did the same. The term caught on regardless of its original intent. It has been useful to identify political currents by distinguishing them by their ultimate objectives and policy proposals.

THE …ISMS APPEAR

 The only significant change the French political revolts contributed to history is the identification of ideologies and parties with significant names. The change happened between the first revolts in 1789 and the third revolt of 1848. Paris was the international battleground of the mobs where Marx and Engels met and trained as agitators, ending exiled in England.

       A good guide to the appearance of ideological currents that have become political parties can be found by reading “The Law” (1850), by Frederic Bastiat. He was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848 (The third revolt). Bastiat died not long after and “The Law” is really his posthumous account of the ideas debated at the time on the floor of the assembly, or in the press.

       Bastiat and few others were identified as “liberals” for their defense of free trade, inspired by Adam Smith and Richard Cobden’s calls for the elimination of protectionism and monopolies. Of course, the “monarchists” were still around and they were the “conservatives”. The “ultra-royalists” wanted a return to absolutism. The innovation came from the new “isms”. “Socialism” is mentioned with the names of Blanc, Cabet, Considerant, Fourier, Robert Owen (The English and American investor in cooperative factory towns), and Saint-Simon. “Terrorism” starts with names as Robespierre, by then already recognized as the founding of the Reign of Terror during the first revolt. He is followed by Villaud-Barenne and Saint-Just who was nicknamed the Archangel of Terror. Proudhon completes the list as the self-proclaimed “anarchist”, known for his phrase “property is theft”. Bastiat made a connection with the frequently used policy for “managing” the economy and the new “isms”. “It is to be pointed out, however, that protectionism, socialism, and communism are basically the same plant in three different stages of growth. All that can be said is that legal plunder is more visible in communism because it is complete plunder.” Protectionism is not a political ideology; it is an economic policy that protects national production from foreign competition by establishing trade barriers and tariffs. Monarchism, Republicanism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Terrorism and Anarchism were in the process of establishing their ideological identities while street violence was running rampant as “the mob”.

SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM AND MARXISM

       It was during the same period that agitators from all over Europe flocked to Paris. Among them were young Marx and Engels. Working with English leaders of a coalition of trade unions from different countries, they established The Communist League in 1846. As police persecution increased, many of the radicals left. Marx and Engels moved to London where the Communist League commissioned them to write their launching political platform. 1848 marks the publication of the Communist Manifesto and its 10 policies to destroy capitalism. Much later, their ideological construct began to take form and spread. It was after four decades they proclaimed it a scientific theory. They appropriated for their ideology the name of “scientific socialism”, and threw all the other related “…isms” in a basket to be ridiculed: religious, communitarians, romantic, and utopian socialists, even ideologues. Their own construct clearly indicates that socialism will result in a workers’ paradise called communism. By then, the political brands seemed clear. The ideas promoted by Marx and Engels have become known plainly as Marxism since the “scientific” brand was controversial and questioned from the start.

AMERICAN FACTIONALISM WAS NOT IDEOLOGICAL

       From 1765 to 1776, the British colonies in America were divided as the British king’s abusive troops were arriving and new taxes were imposed. Some wanted a negotiated political participation in Parliament. Others wanted their own king. A few began to call for independence with a new form of government. After 1776, the decision to become independent and establish a new government was firm. The concerns about the future divided the political leaders of the Continental Congress into two main factions. They did not identify with the “isms” appearing in Europe, but promoted the debate about the powers delegated to the new government. The faction of Whigs, called Federalists when debate began, did not propose a true federal system, but wanted a “strong” federal (national) government. Adams, Hamilton and initially Madison were the leaders. On the opposition were the proponents of a federal system that would respect and respond to the sovereignty of the former colonies recognized as equal but separate states. Jefferson, Mason, Henry and later Madison, plus a large number of those who history has vilified as “anti-Federalists”, eventually created the first political organization with a name. They established the Republican party. Historians have re-named them in more recent times as Democratic-Republican, although that combination did not appear until after 1830. The adjective “democratic” was an aspiration of the Republican vision used to describe their aim at a wide popular political participation of a nation mainly of small farmers and business proprietors. They actually despised democracy as a failed system, particularly envisioning a very large country in the near future. To add to the confusion, the initial agreement of all factions to act jointly received the name of “Articles of Confederation”. Ideological “isms” were absent when the agreement was reached in 1789 with the final compromise.

The Second Continental Congress of America meeting in Philadelphia

As any compromise is not definitive, and the line of separation of powers is not clear beyond dispute, it has been a source of friction and review of the terms for 250 years. It was clear that the idea of an all-powerful federal government, even with statutory limitations, always has the risk identified in Lord Acton’s dictum, “power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely”. True federalism has the risk of dissension and division, as it happened during the American Civil War. The US system is neither one; it is not a compromise of both. It is a new system where the two ideas are balanced by the people delegating specific functions to the different levels of government with considerable independence from each other; a limited degree of sovereignty empowers the government of an incorporated town, county, state and the federal government. Without much specificity, the balancing act is kept together by the constitutional edifice and the judicial review of changes or challenges under the loupe of the guiding principles of the original Constitutional documents. Some friction can always be expected during the process of adjustment, but not dissension and division once settled.

        By the 1830’s, the main issues of debate had been put aside. The old Whig designation disappeared. Western expansion, avoiding another European war, growing concerns about Indian lands and slavery in the south introduced a new faction. The democratic Republicans split. Jackson and the southern politicians took the Democratic emblem, leaving the Republican party with its current designation. It is important to point that the old model of left-right political designations did not apply in the United States. There was a growing concern about the “isms” showing up in the European revolts and their possible importation into the new country. The halls where the government assemblies met did not have established seating or sides and “factionalism” happened about issues, not about the new ideologies. Not having seating arrangements by party or ideology, but rather by region, state and seniority fostered interaction and civil discourse rather than “group think”, party obedience and concentration of power on the party leaders.

       Ideological factionalism did not take its present form until the supermajority voting blocks of the Democratic Party enjoyed the power of managing the country’s economy for four terms, from the Great Depression until post WW II. The “New Economics” of inflation promoted by Lord Keynes provided the tools for vote buying and the growth of the federal government.

       During the same period of the XIX century, the European countries went through the process of political reorganization and redrawing of maps caused by multiple wars and revolutions. Ideologies that had no borders became the foundation of national political parties that adopted similar platforms. It was inevitable that some of them would operate without borders. The names of the many “isms” the French revolts infected the world with did not take hold in the United States until the American country became involved in the European wars. Before then, without political support, odd, exiled or persecuted political European visionaries came to America. They founded many experimental settlements of communitarian-communist groups that did not last very long.  Names such as New Harmony by Robert Owen, the Shakers, the Perfectionists of Oneida, The Amana of Iowa, Cabet’s Icarians, the Phalansteres of Fourier are now just footnotes of history. Massachusetts inherited the failed communal settlement of the early Pilgrims, and replicated the failed idea again in Brooks Farm and The Fruitlands near Harvard.

      The many early revolutionary “isms” did not prosper in America but not because they were prohibited, defeated or attacked. As Chris Jennings explains in The Story of American Utopianism (2016), “As the Republic surged westward, the dream of a transformed, egalitarian social order burned off like mist under the hot rising sun of American Prosperity.”

AN AMERICAN INTERLUDE

The two visions that occupied the early American debate can be exclusionary (A strong national government vs a system of multiple layered governments with specific functions, and a federal government with subservient powers) but they do not have to. In fact, the tension that arises in search of a complementary balance of those two visions is a characteristic of the American political system. Since the “isms” of ideological currents have dominated the language and the debate, it should be obvious that those that support a “strong national federal government” would find it expedient to intrude, limit or simply ignore states and citizens’ rights in order to promote their greater power agenda. Articles 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights (Ten Amendments to the US Constitution) are the only safeguard if We, The People, remember we have them. The possibility of a single “ism” to dominate all levels of the layered governments exists, but it is unlikely that it would happen again.

IDEOLOGICAL FACTIONALISM TAKES OVER

The growing extreme factionalism we have been observing in American politics is new. The seating arrangement in the houses of the US Congress in left and right factions dates only to the last few years of the Democratic Party led by “moderate socialist” FDR and “radical anti-fascist, anti-imperialist populist” Henry Wallace (These are the descriptors used by the free press and historians to describe their inclinations). Wallace was censured internally for cooperating with the Stalin regime without authorization, and he lost the final nomination for VP to Harry Truman. The language of right and left did not enter the American political arena until the fourth presidential term of FDR. The new seating decision facilitated the partisan control of the elected party members. Since then, the members of the DP sit on the left side of the hall, as viewed from the back (The right side of the presiding officer).

       In the early days of the founding of the republic, in PA, NY and DC, the elected representatives of the states sat by lottery. A few “august” members had been honored with a permanent “desk” that served as their office. This was the case of former President John Quincy Adams. Members of Congress did not have offices until 1908. Civil discourse and personal interaction with opponents were the ambient of the hall. In the XIX century, seating was organized more or less by region, and also by seniority. This kept the representatives of each state in close proximity. Very few had desks. Some sat on stools. After the Civil War and until 1908, the current and former Speakers, Committee Chairmen, and leaders of the parties had assigned seats in the front. Everyone else was seated by lottery. After 1908, when individual offices became available, desk arrangement was kept only in the Senate.

During WW II, the Democratic Party maintained a supermajority in both houses, and they decided to sit as a block on the left side of the halls, as seen from the public (as the public enters from the back). Republican Party members sat on the right side. By forcing this seating arrangement that broke tradition, the Democratic Party became the leftist party in the United States, and joined the leftist organizations of the rest of the world. It also institutionalized tribalism, factionalism, extreme partisanship, and political ideology. The end of the process is what we observe now, in 2026.

THE INTERNATIONAL UNDERGROUND EXTREME LEFT IS HERE

             The grassroots! The lowest level! The disenfranchised! The forgotten! The oppressed! The poor and exploited! The Marxist ideological scheme plainly stated that those would rise from their alienation and create a violent upheaval that would lead to paradise. It did not happen. The free enterprise system they vilified as capitalism ended up raising the level of “the proletariat” all over the world. Rigid classes disappeared and upward mobility characterized the emergence of middle classes that did not exist before, particularly in America. Once socialists accepted that reality, socialism exists only in the minds of twisted intellectuals and their followers. The original labor movement of the late 1800s has disappeared and most of it became disentangled from Marxist-communist influence. Most, not all.

THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS' ARMIES

             !Workers of the world, unite! So did the 1848 famous phrase of the Communist Manifesto call the workers to action. They aimed at the employees of industrial and large agricultural operations of the developed countries. They labeled them “industrial armies”. They also aimed at the growing numbers of trade guild members and apprentices that were losing their privileges of “closed shop” monopolies and setting prices. The industrial jobs were new, and the farming jobs were ancient. Just a century later, there are no “guilds” left, except for old professions and trades that still require “licenses” controlled by them. The number of industrial workers has been dropping since then as a proportion of total employment. The world has moved from an agricultural economy, and then to an industrial era; the XX century turned into a service economy, and we are now labeled to be an information economy. Competition for qualified workers guarantees mobility and better salaries. In the USA, with the exception of the seasonal horticultural workers, agricultural employees tied to the farms are non-existent; the population living in farming areas is less than 1.5% of the total, when in 1850 was close to 60%.

The Chicago Haymarket Riot of May 1886.
An icon for communists around the world is celebrated as International Labor Day, on May 1

             The promotion of the “industrial armies” was an early objective of socialist agitators. Although Marxist claimed they had forecasted the future, they never saw it coming. In the United States, the growth of labor union employees from 1890 to 1914 multiplied by six, something normal for any startup. From the start of the XX century, union membership rose from an early 3% of the labor force to a top of 26% reached in 1953. This growth is deceiving as it was the result of specific mandates and privileges given to the labor unions by FDR’s government to obtain their political support. The New Deal included the approval in 1933 of the National Industrial Recovery Act guaranteeing to labor the right to collective bargain, a right enlarged by the Wagner Act of 1935. The organization of new labor unions led to a frenzy of strikes organized by the CIO. Many were aimed at specific non-supporter businesses such as the automobile and steel industries. For the unions, aside from the Wagner Act, the two most important victories to their demands in this period were the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act (Wages and Hours Law) of 1938. Shortly after the war ended, much of the national production began to free its management from the government war powers. The economy grew in new sectors and since 1953, the total number of union workers as proportion of total employment declined. As unionization in the private sector declined, the Democratic Party saw one of its voting blocs shrink. The trend was altered in 1962, when the Kennedy-Johnson issued Executive Order 10988 granting federal employees the right to collective bargaining. Since then, private sector unions have continued to decline at the same time public sector unions have taken control of several sectors of the federal government, particularly in education. The influence over the states’ rights to regulate and manage their educational systems greatly increased when the Carter administration made a last minute concession to the teacher’s unions by creating in 1979, the federal Department of Education at a cabinet level. Does this not explain a lot about the decline in national standards? Does this not explain the virulent ideological infection that has spread to undermine the American legacy of freedom?

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (2 million)
Socialist agitator, important figure in the LGBTQ+ movement
Union teachers control the school systems in NY, Chicago and Los Angeles

        The workers’ revolution requires agitation and agitators, creators of crisis and violence. While the laborers enjoy their Fords 150 and a family vacation on their travel trailer, the useful idiots and their managers riot and demand to destroy the US constitution. Saul Alinsky moved from the slaughterhouse unions of Chicago to the suburbs around the university. Pupils like Barack Obama the community organizer, and Hillary Clinton the perennial angry candidate, learned the lesson. The political system has to be attacked from the streets but taken over through the electoral process. Never popular enough, the radical left has been working the grassroots disguising their identities and intentions and taking over the bureaucracy of governments. Just look at the plethora of NGOs, disguised as non-governmental organizations. They have been really used as government contractors by the leftist governments to expand what they could not do within the law. It is only now that they have become visible at the national level as extreme democrats. For several generations now, they have been organizing and winning elections at the low levels: school boards, county and city governments, college boards, professional associations, state houses of representatives and senates…It is obvious that they believe the moment has come to move up. They have to consolidate their brands, and the Democratic Party has become the vehicle.

Norman Thomas, socialist candidate to the US Presidency several times
Listen to what they say and believe them

         It is not true the political system of the United States is a two-party system. At the federal stage, the two-party structure dominates the discussion. There is a lot more going on that has not received enough attention. The gradual takeover of the Democratic Party by radical extremist minorities has been a growing phenomenon. It really responds to the idea of organizing at the base. Just a few agitators can create chaos. Just a few dissenters can swing the majority count one way of the other. The Democratic Party is about to be taken over by hardline ideologues that respond to different visions of the socialist scheme.

Vintage political poster of the 1936 election

        Before the inscriptions for the 2026 election cycle close, there are already 55 political parties qualified to appear in the ballots of the federal elections. Some parties are registered in multiple states. Only the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are registered in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Three other established parties have been recognized in past elections in more than 10 states. They already have some name recognition and have been able to elect candidates to federal office. They are the Libertarian Party that has qualified in 35 states; the Green Party has qualified in 20 states, and the Constitution Party in 12. The requirements for qualifications vary from state to state. There have been other organizations that existed to promote specific agendas, such as the Christian Coalition, or several promoters of the legalization of marijuana or abortion.

       There are many other small political organizations registered as political parties. Some have existed for many years but often disappear not long after. In many of them it is easy to identify their ideological genealogy in the French revolts. In the federal election of 2024, the following names of parties registered for elections in some states: Socialist, Socialism and Liberation, Socialist Equality, Socialist Workers, Young People’s Socialist League, American Solidarity, Workers, Progressive, and Communist. Their own descriptions and platforms describe their Marxist and revolutionary ideology. Not identified as political parties, there are many college and university chapters of the same organizations that have existed since the dawn of the XX century. The DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, has not been a national party. They appeared in the 1980s out of the fusion of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM). Since then, they have been actively promoting candidates in local elections. They will participate in the federal election in 2026 under the disguise of the Democratic Party.

       There is also an American Independent Party established in California, which is not to be confused with voters registering as “independent”. Independent voters have no party affiliation. What has been a common occurrence is that a few politicians have labeled themselves as independent to hide their true inclination, but they end up joining a major party; Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont has identified as an Independent that caucuses with the Democratic Party. Earlier in his career, he had declared himself socialist, or social democrat. He now does not conceal his ideology. Since his deal with the Democratic Party by offering his “Bernie Bros” in support of the DP to attain control of the majorities in Congress, he effectively opened the door to DSA candidates that have become national figures and will stand for elections in 2026.

THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA TAKE OVER 

As a bloc with its own specific agenda, they will control the Democratic Party even if they are only a handful. They can prevent their “big tent party” from obtaining a majority vote they would otherwise have by counting the DSA bloc. They will hold the DP hostage.

BOOK TO EXPAND ON THIS TOPIC:

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A treatise on communism, its roots and its current status around the world. Provides all the answers needed to the current questions about the new rise of communism in the United States. Chapters on the totalitarian roots of radical Islam and the current situation in China. Marxism is dead, but not buried yet. The last holdout of Marxist devotees are the formerly respectable American colleges. Guess where the daughter of Xi is going to school: Harvard. Guess where DEI spread from: Harvard.

WHEN AMERICA BECAME SOCIALIST: Keywords: American communism, Fascism and Nazism, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Barack Obama, Keynes, Harvard and Columbia, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Erhard, Hayek, Friedman, useful idiots, Fabian Socialists, Bernie Sanders, Edward Markey.

ARE WE THERE YET?

 WHEN AMERICA BECAME SOCIALIST

A Meditation about the new Rise of Communism

by Xuan Quen Santos

WHEN DID AMERICA BECOME SOCIALIST?

    During the last two decades, socialists have again come out from the dark corners of the college watering holes. From pretending to be community organizers they have taken their masks off and admit they are political agitators. It is no accident that it coincides with the biggest decline in educational standards at all levels, led by the formerly respectable Ivy League centers of academic snobbery where “grade inflation” is prevalent. The useful idiots are out led by influencers on Tik Tok. To my dismay, they have been able to make a crack, not a dent, on public opinion only because the language used for political discourse has been altered. It is a plan. I use the word “idiots” in the classical Greek ἰδιώτης (idiōtēs) meaning those who participate by voting irresponsibly in total ignorance and may even exchange their votes for a pittance. The adjective “useful” was added by Lenin who used the Russian word for “simpletons” простаки (prostaki). Other communist leaders used the word “innocent” meaning naïve or sucker in American English.

DOUBLE-SPEAK AT PLAY

    Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), the Fabian socialist “Father of Double-speak” who himself wore a mask as George Orwell, said it clearly: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give appearance of solidity to pure wind” (Politics and the English Language, 1946). He was “the” expert. He had been an ardent supporter of Soviet communism after WW I until he saw and experienced the violence and brutality of its actual operation. Blair-Orwell was not alone.

    Like the British Fabians, thousands of disenchanted literati around the world withdrew their enthusiasm for Soviet style of revolution, but most remained convinced “socialists at heart” and continued their activism without admitting their true color. The takeover of western culture and the disguise of a “middle-way” became their new strategy. Cultural change implies a change in the basic beliefs and values of the people. It changes slowly through education, formal and informal. It aims at changing the objectives of the institutions that educate: the traditional family, the community controlled schools and universities, the media, the arts and the churches. What is changed through cultural change is the basic conception of how a community provides its needs and how it is kept together; meaning in “college style” words, its economic and political systems.

    Marxism was flawed from the beginning in 1848. It was only an attempt to transform “history” as an academic discipline into a new science. It was based on an erroneous concept of human nature and on the basic errors of what then was just a beginning exploration into the science of economics. Its historic and contemporaneous data were only Euro-centered when they were in the middle of an era during which political and economic ideas and institutions were in flux; the mercantilist-colonial economies and the ancient regimes of the divine rights of monarchs were collapsing.  What was really taking place in the young United States of America as a new political and economic order was assumed to be a clone of Old England’s decaying system. It was not.

    The exceptional qualities of the new nation across the Atlantic were ignored by the European elites, but not by the common people. At the same time Europe was degrading and losing population, the new United States was experiencing annual population growth rates as high as 16% per year and becoming a super-power. After the Civil War, the re-writing of American history under the Marxist lens had begun spreading in academic circles, fitting the selected facts with the new language into the mold of socialist dialectics. From one generation to the next, the Giant Captains of Industry became the Robber Barons. Revolution became a popular mantra, not only in the labor movement, but among students and academics in the leading colleges and universities.

CALL IT WHAT IT IS

    Marx and Engels are usually pointed as the “modern” starting point of socialism after they cleverly added the adjective of “scientific” to their socialist scheme. They were very clear in their proposal. Socialism would emerge out of the economic conflict between the oppressed proletariat and the oppressor capitalist minority. The conflict -the revolution- would spontaneously end triumphantly in a new form of political and economic system called communism. In their scheme, socialism is the path to the end goal which is communism. This was the design. Any other interpretation is an error believed by useful idiots or a deflection made by cunning comrades in disguise.

There is no difference. There has never been.

 Socialism is not a mild form of a welfare society of free people. It is clearly another path to a totalitarian state where a few manage the lives of the many. In the words of a famous refugee from the Soviet Union, “There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same end: communism proposes to enslave men by force – socialism by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide”. Her name was Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum (1905-1982). The world is more familiar with her pen name, Ayn Rand. Her novels and movies gave birth to the American Libertarian movement and inspired the generation of the Reagan Revolution.

REVOLUTION BECOMES THE BACK DOOR

    When Marxists around the world came to their epiphany after the Soviet terror, two changes took place. Those that still believed in the religion of violent change by revolution as a method had to devise ways to get it started. The spontaneous Marxist revolution would not happen. Instigation of social conflicts, violence and terror, became the way to “create the conditions for the revolution”. They are the true heirs of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. The mobs were unleashed. Their work begins with labor agitation and economic demands at the lowest end of the social structure. In their lingo, they are in the stage of “praxis”; it simply means putting the theory into practice, practicing the revolution. The absurdity of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    The revolutionaries are pariahs in the moderate system. Their visibility represents a danger to the end-goal. To cohabit, the revolutionaries are usually in disguise, in the shadows and the underground; many of their activities are clearly illegal. But they are always there and will act in support of the fake moderates. The fake moderates nurture and protect the mobs that “spontaneously” support their gradual advances in policy with riots and demonstrations, bombings and even assassinations. The moderates cover up for them; they deny their existence as organizations; they bail them out of jail.

ELECTIONS BECOME THE FRONT DOOR

    Those who accepted that revolutions would not happen saw an opportunity opening in the new castrated constitutional monarchies and new experimental electoral republics that appeared all over Europe expanding the voter rolls. Marxists in disguise began to form political parties and participate as candidates in elections. New labels mask their identity with words such as popular or peoples, democratic, social, liberal, republican (as opposed to monarchies), national, workers or labor, and others that are still in use. In some countries, even the label communist appeared. The combination of social and democratic seem to have been favored in its two forms: democratic-socialists, and social-democrats. The electoral path was open. Gradual adoption of policies that expand the role of government (the political system) in the lives of the people (the economic system) became their platform to promote greater dependency.  

MODERATES IN APPEARANCE ONLY

    The apparent “moderation” of the socialists is not totally fake. It is in the interest of the individuals that act “socialist”. They became “rent-seekers”, as the new Public Choice Theory of economic behavior of politicians would call it. As they became part of the political establishment, their leaders received some respectability and resources. They couldn’t look too radical to appeal to the average voter that does not like radical changes. Gradualism was their method and the best way they could milk the system until “the conditions for revolution appear”. National emergencies and crises, such as war or a natural disaster, provide these opportunities. Socialists were paid and shared in the benefits of power. They were corrupted by bribes and adulation. It should be no surprise they always deny they are on the path to communism through false promises made to the voting masses. I will just mention the cases of Senators Bernie Sanders and Edward Markey; both have become multimillionaires during their decades-long activities as elected politicians representing the socialist camp of New England.

    Do you remember when ANTIFA was in the news and US Congressman Jerry Nadler (NY) denied their existence? He categorically stated that it does not exist as an organization, but it is only an idea. That was the party line. Jerry Nadler was member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee shortly after college. He continued as an activist once the Democratic Socialists of America were established, which he conveniently withdrew from in 1999 as his seniority in Congress began to weigh in his public visibility as a Democrat. He is now DSA “in pectore”.

    Do you remember that at the same time when US Senator Tim Kaine (VA) was campaigning as the VP candidate of Hilary Clinton, his son Linwood (AKA Woody) Kaine was detained by the Minneapolis police for throwing bombs at a Trump rally? He was part of a group of eight masked men wearing black uniforms. The incident disappeared quickly from public view.  There is history behind. Tim Kaine says his Harvard sabbatical year in Honduras in the 1980s as a volunteer with the Jesuit missions in the northern rural area was a defining moment in his life of service. That area is where the large banana and coffee plantations operate. He says he spent a year teaching carpentry and welding to boys. Dr. Andrés León Araya, a professor of anthropology at the University of Costa Rica, in his 2015 dissertation at CUNY, describes the work of the Jesuits in the Aguan valley of northern Honduras as “…oriented mainly around organizing and supporting peasant cooperatives.”  He adds “These were all priests influenced by Liberation Theology”. “They were particularly active in the area of political training, especially through their radio schools – teaching reading and writing as the basis for political organization.” They were organizing the communist anti-American labor unions.

A NEW MODEL IS IMPOSED

    The most interesting case is what the British socialists/communists did. They changed the language and continued their true nature operating in disguise. Their logo is still “a wolf in sheep’s skin”. I am referring to the Fabian Society, cradle of the disguised “labor” party, home of Lord Keynes and 3^rd Earl Bertrand Russell, and EVERY British Prime Minister of the Labor Party. It has been the hub of propagandist literati like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and of course George Orwell and Harold Laski, that they have taken over “culture”. The Fabians designed the constitutions used as the models for de-colonization. As such India, Pakistan, half of the Middle East and half of Africa were born socialists in disguise. This explains much of their failure to move forward. The main countries of that list created the non-aligned movement, playing for favors between the Soviets and the USA. They still do even if the brands have changed. Another pretended “middle-way”.

    The British socialists had been early supporters of the Soviet revolution, but became disenchanted once Stalin’s policy of terror was impossible to hide. They had supported the German socialists also. The Fabians had promoted “eugenics” and “social-Darwinism”, which became the “scientific” justification to the German national socialists’ racial policies (NAZI party) that resulted in the Holocaust. The British royals are German, and they had to change their names adopting the name of their castle in the first decades of the XX century. King Edward VIII was a known Germanophile, which may have been another contributing factor in his abdication, lasting as a monarch for less than a year in 1936. WW II changed their alliances. The British socialists took distance from the Germans shortly before WW II began, but acted more discreetly with the Soviets when they became allies during WW II, all the way into the Cold War.

    The British scheme reflects their effort to be in the middle of the road between Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s German nationalistic (anti-Soviet) socialists. To achieve this, they had to redefine political language with a new model. They began to call the nationalist-socialists Axis powers (German and Italian) with the term “fascist” for extreme right. They intentionally omitted their socialist origin and their anti-Soviet internationalism. It was Mussolini who made the Roman Fasces the Italian brand. On the opposite end of the model, the Soviet communists became the extreme left, representing the internationalist socialists. Where did the Fabians place themselves as the British socialists? In the middle. They have claimed to be the “middle-way” and adopted the “moderate” label of social-democrats.

THE NEW MODEL OF LEFT-RIGHT

EXTREME LEFT

    The Soviet Marxist regime, THE COMUNIST INTERNATIONAL-COMINTERN. Now the heads are New Russia and the Chinese state. The state owns and manages the resources, operates production, and distributes what people need. Private property does not exist. Revolution, war and terrorism are not discarded. Elections and the monetary system are staged only for the existing external public opinion. Lenin explained how he destroyed in Russia any trace of capitalism in a few years: intentional hyperinflation. Aims at a new world order.

Stalin and Hitler were partners as long as Hitler went stayed south

THE MIDDLE WAY

    Proposed in England and Germany after the failures of the Soviet Revolution and the National Socialist regime. It rejects revolution and recognizes the benefits of what they called “capitalism”. It was viewed as a gradual and moderate path to communism. It does not seek total state ownership of the means of production and aims at a “democratic” form of government combining the efficiency of a market economy in production with the states total planning and distributing what people need. A center-left version is Democratic Socialism that aims to a more equal and just society managing the economy "democratically" by worker’s self-management.  A center-right version is Social Democracy that has state intervention in the market economy to reduce inequality, promote social welfare, operate public services, and ensure wealth redistribution through progressive taxation. Any of the many versions that have appeared aim at establishing a “welfare state” as an electoral vote buying scheme. The Middle Way eventually can only be financed by monetary expansion. The most famous Fabian Socialist was Baron, Lord John Maynard Keynes who proposed to better manage inflation to stimulate the economy.

EXTREME RIGHT

    Originally the label applied to the National Socialism (NAZI) of Germany and the Italian socialism labeled Fascism by Mussolini. Their key commonality was their rejection of the Soviet plan of a new global communist order governed by Moscow. Thus, ultra-nationalism was a response that marked their independence. Hitler and Mussolini were thrown into wars by the conditions created by the victors of WW I and the Soviet threat. Both countries established authoritarian governments ruled by a dictator. Both created a war-driven economy but without taking ownership of the industrial base; the government co-managed the system with the leaders of industry. In both countries, socialists existed long before and had been governing. The differences from the left were a clear recognition of the failure of the Soviet economy that resulted from the destruction of what they had called capitalism. Both countries veered to “right” as a result of the failed socialist policies that collapsed the Weimar Republic and the chaotic socialist constitutional monarchy of the Italian Risorgimento.

Mussolini first, then Hitler, began as socialist hardliners, until they chose nationalism
 as opposed to Soviet international domination

THE CLUES ARE IN THE DETAILS

    In the case of Germany, much of the welfare state had previously been created during the agonizing constitutional monarchy and the socialist Weimar Republic. Germany had already invented Social Security. Hitler also inherited a destroyed monetary system with one of the highest recorded hyperinflations in history. Mussolini was still fighting the Middle Ages. Italy as a modern state did not exist as a unit until the US left after WW II in 1946. Rome and the central region had been known as The Papal States for a millennium. Its remnant after a pact in 1929 with Mussolini is a much reduced Vatican City. In the south, the influence of the Spanish royals of the House of Bourbon had continued into the XIX century. In the north, the Royal House of Savoy had become the head of a more or less unified Italy just in 1870. By 1880, long before the Soviet Revolution, the government of the constitutional monarchy had been taken over by socialists. In the chaos that followed WW I, Mussolini, who had been a communist guerrilla, fought against the pro-Soviet socialists and launched his own brand, the "Italian Combat Leagues" (Fasci Italiani di Combattimento). He fought the Soviet promoted industrial riots and in 1922 ended up in control of the government appointed by the king. A few years later, he joined at the last minute Hitler’s forces that were about to defeat France under the condition that he would recover for Italy the northern Alpine and Adriatic territories that had been invaded by Austria and taken from Italy.

QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERS

    From this model, several obvious questions immediately appear. Where are all the other ideologies in the model? Where are the traditional monarchists? Where are the conservatives, classical liberals, liberal-democrats, libertarians and free-market entrepreneurs (Labeled capitalist exploiters by socialists)? Do socialists make a distinction between different FORMS of government, such as tribalism, monarchies, federations, republics, dictatorships, etc.? Do the particular forms of government have their pertaining characteristic economic system?

    None of the other non-socialist political ideologies contemporaneous to Marx, Stalin or Hitler are included. THE IDEOLOGIES INCLUDED ARE JUST DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY. There is a reason: Marx created an erroneous explanation of the causes of history. He was neither historian, economist nor statesman or politician. He was a student of philosophy that became agitator. He never proposed a form of government. The final formula for organizing that Marx and Engels proposed four decades after evading the questions raised by the Communist Manifesto (1848) simply assured socialists around the world that the state would disappear, would vanish, would wither away…! The emphasis of all the Marxist versions of socialism is on controlling the economic system. They are indifferent to the political system in power. They will infiltrate and take control of whatever there is and lead it to its self-destruction. In the cases of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini, they took over the agonizing constitutional monarchy that was becoming a parliamentary republic. Elections were the vehicle and then a coup d’etat. 

Keynes "New Economics" of inflation paved the way to war
 as a way to promote the economy and increase the power of government

    England, even today, is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government. Monarchy and socialism would seem an oxymoron to anybody. The king is for the tourists and the useful idiots. The parliamentary government is the state. The last two English governments have been led by the Fabian socialist government under the mask of Labor Party.  This is not new. During the emergence of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, to the end of WW II (1908-1951), Old England had eleven changes of party in government. Of those 43 years, the crucial years from 1908 to 1922 gave rise to the communist USSR and the Socialist Weimar Republic; liberal socialists were in power. During the next crucial years of Hitler and Mussolini consolidating power (1929-1936) the Fabian socialist Labor party was in power. They were also in power during the partition of Europe and the beginning of the Cold War (1945-1951). The socialists Prime Ministers of those periods lasted several years in their role, while numerous Conservatives lasted less than a year in the periods in between. The Brits parade their royal family as a distractor. They really are under the “big tent of ill-defined socialism”. For decades since the interlude of PM Margaret Thatcher, there is no significant difference between conservatives and labor. They all pretend to manage their socialist economy. During the 43 years between 1908 and 1951, socialists governed for the crucial 27.

A MARXIST DIALECTIC SCHEME

    The new model is simple enough to be implanted in political language. Perfect for useful idiots! But there is more. It is a good example of “dialectic-materialism”, the analytic tool Marx applied to how humans respond as a collective to economic conditions. It was derived from F. Hegel’s dialectic method for studying the changes in ideas. You have probably heard about its components: A thesis is contradicted by its antithesis; from solving the conflicts of the opposing ideas, a synthesis is found that will take the discussion to a higher level. Hegel was an idealist.

    Marx, who was a radical Hegelian in college, applied the method to his analysis of historic material conditions, hence, he gave it the name of “dialectic materialism”. Marx described his times as the beginning of the final stage of history when capitalism would implode. The thesis: Capitalists (The Oppressors) become rich by the systemic exploitation of the proletariat laborers (The Oppressed). The anti-thesis: The proletariat will increase in number and in poverty, becoming alienated. The synthesis: 1) Capitalists will become a few monopolies that will continue to lower wages. 2) The proletariats will organize and rise in revolution that will destroy capitalism by taking over the means of production to be administered by a new form of collective organization called socialism. 3) The next stage appears when the state is no longer necessary. Marx and Engels made such promise in Anti-Dühring (1876): “The state power becomes superfluous, and then ceases to exist of itself. The government of people is replaced by the administration of things and the directing of the processes of production. The state is not abolished, it withers away.”  That stage was given the name of communism.

A LENINIST REVISION OF HISTORY

    Lenin was the master at making facts fit a narrative. The EXTREME LEFT-EXTREME RIGHT model promoted by the deceiving British Fabians required a lot “making the facts fit the narrative”. For the Marxist method of opposites synthesizing into a new and improved system, they had to create the opposites. It was easy to place the Soviet regime on the left. To place the antagonists of the Soviets on the right, they had to alter their description. The first erasure was their origin as Socialists/Marxist political movements; it is never mentioned. The terms NAZI and Fascist were always highlighted. As the NAZI atrocities became identified with Jewish and other minorities for reasons of racial supremacy and hate, the nationalist focus (as anti-Soviet internationalism) disappeared. The new narrative: The Soviets were fighting capitalists for the people, while the NAZI and Fascists were fighting against the people with the capitalists. Because the term NAZI became trapped in the anti-Jewish image, fascist was chosen as the generic insult for the extreme right. 

    If you consult the many definitions of “fascism” and “fascists” you will see that they are an effort to create a category that fits a narrative. It is even used to label historic authoritarian dictators that existed long before Mussolini was born. It is also used to tag any authoritarian leader that fights against communism, or even the “middle-way” commonly described as “democracy”. Not surprisingly, Socialists today refuse to tag Putin as a fascist but they don’t use the term communist. He is now described as a “reactionary” leader of “Putinism”!

In the new language, Fascism is just an insult to anyone that opposes communism or socialism

    For the new model of political language to work, the old occupants had to be evicted (erased from history, eliminated from the common mindset, discredited…). Ultra-right capitalism has to be on the right. Prime Minister Margareth Thatcher, President Ronal Reagan and President Donald Trump have been referred to as fascists.

MONARCHS ARE OUT

    In 2026, there are only twelve European states nominally ruled by a monarch.  The seven that count for anything are: The United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Spain. All are “toothless” decorative constitutional kings or queens, and some oddities. The oddities that appear on some lists include Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Andorra, and the Vatican. There had been about 60 just two centuries before. Conclusion: the age of European Emperors, Kings and Queens has been over for a long time. They all navigate for their survival the “middle-way” socialism, which includes the Popes since Leo XIII, with the exceptions of Popes Walesa and Ratzinger who lived and suffered the terrors of Stalin and Hitler. Monarchies and their conservative parties were clearly on their way out by 1848. Anarchism, terrorism and revolution did spread in Europe in 1848, but Marx had nothing to do with it. At that time, he was a totally unknown young agitator that was learning from the Paris revolts. By 1848, a third revolt was taking place in France, wrongly identified as a revolution. Marx was one of many useful idiots that got caught in the chaos of the Post French Revolution that was the first revolt. Non-Marxist socialists claim the French events of 1789 as their birth, which is just French propaganda. A real revolution had started in 1776 and had outlined the design of a new and different political system, that even many Americans don’t understand.

Mao Zedong resisted the Soviet expansionism and created his own
version of Chinese Socialism. Is Xi Jinping a fascist?

REPUBLICS ARE IN

    When a lady asked Ben Franklin at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1789, “What kind of government are we going to have”, his answer was, “A republic madam, if we can keep it”. The follow-up question should have been, “What kind?”. Republicanism can be presented as an ideology only as opposed to monarchism of the absolute kind. When kings are out, republicanism as a political ideology is also out. All modern monarchs are really a monarchic constitutional parliamentary republic. Consider also the name of communist China: PRP, the People’s Republic of China; or the original USSR: Union of Soviet Socialists Republics. The United States of America is a federal republic. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea are different countries. Can you identify what ideology corresponds to each of them? If you go down the list of about 200 countries that exist today, a large majority claim to be republics. If you try to identify their political ideology from their name you will not be successful. Count how many are using the terms democratic, people’s or popular and you will have included the rest of the declared communist states in existence: Algeria, China, Congo, North Korea, Laos, Sri-Lanka, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Timor and Nepal.

The USSR did little in WW II, but gained much as gift of the western allies.
On what side was the US State Dept?

    For the EXTREME LEFT/EXTREME RIGHT political model to be confirmed, CAPITALISM had to also disappear into the MIDDLE-WAY, just at the Marxist Soviet system had synthesized into “moderate” socialism. The death of capitalism was one of the many predictions of Marx’s "scientific" socialism that never happened, although it was announced around the world at the initiative of the self-serving Fabian socialists of England. The Fabian model concludes that capitalism has also disappeared and blended into the middle. It was said to happen in the USA.

THE PROPHECY OF 1848 FULFILLED IN 1929

    Marxism forecasted the end of capitalism “by its own internal contradictions” in 1848.  The frequent European wars of the second half of the XIX century culminated in WW I. Each war brought its own monetary and economic crisis. Marxists declared it an inevitable crisis caused by “the business cycle”. This obvious lie has spread. Inflation and destruction have consequences that are not the result of productive business activities but the result of flawed governmental policies that businesses and savers fall victim to. The sequels of WWI came not only with the disappearance of powerful nations, empires and kingdoms; their currencies disappeared too. It came also with the disappearance of political ideas and organizations. The royalists, conservative and classical liberal parties went into oblivion. Revolution, democracy and socialism under many names and masks became fashionable. Monetary inflation was abused to finance war and growing entitlements introduced by a growing electorate of manipulated idiotes. The triumphant powers were the Soviet Union with its international reach of terror, and the United States of America with the strong US Dollar and its peculiar federal constitutional republic. The period from 1848 to 1929 can be viewed from the perspective of stability as a death of capitalism from a thousand cuts. The turning point was 1929.

    On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange listing of the major US corporations dropped 13% percent. The following day, Black Tuesday, it dropped another 12%. By mid-November, the market value of the corporations had been reduced to half. Panic spread. A liquidity crisis became a banking crisis by the inaction of the monetary authorities of the time.  The decline continued through the summer of 1932, when the Dow Index closed at 41, its lowest value of the twentieth century. The Roaring Twenties wild ride of easy money and expansive government programs that accompanied the WW I effort and the rescue of Europe were over.

    The USA emerged victorious from WW I, even if it was not an American war. The war-effort economy was exuberant. For the USA, the war was short (1917-1919) and limited in cost and extent. The USA entered the war as an "associated power" the year in which Russia (Just transformed into the USSR) withdrew from the front. Internally, victory produced unlimited enthusiasm for a promising future; easy credit and erroneous changes in monetary policy followed, leading to over-speculation and over-investment in some areas which resulted in overproduction and a crash of agricultural prices. A boom had been promoted stimulating what turned out to be over-production, such as in agriculture. Prices fell. The late correction created a liquidity crisis, a credit crunch, insolvency and bank failures. The Dust Bowl appeared in the farmland. Because of the new influence of the US Dollar in the international economy, as the European industrial base and their monetary systems were financed with dollars, the crisis spread around the world. The boom of the Roaring Twenties ended in a record bust. The Marxist prophecy seemed fulfilled.

MARXISTS AROUND THE WORLD PROCLAIM THE DEATH OF CAPITALISM

    On March 6, 1930, The Daily Worker newspaper, founded in Chicago by communists, socialists, union members, and other activists in 1924, described the massive demonstrations that took place in 30 major cities of the USA.  It had been called by the Communist International from Moscow and was organized by the communist parties in many affected countries. Labeled “International Unemployment Day”, it took place as unemployment reached over 7,000,000. The Roosevelt administration expanded the Keynesian tricks to manage the economy, in effect impeding the quick recovery that the free market forces would have launched. The editors, among calls for the final revolution, had this vision of the impending future: “The workers of the whole capitalist world will show the capitalist bosses today that their system of capitalist wage slavery, which has already condemned 7,000,000 American workers to unemployment and hunger, will not much longer be tolerated by its millions of victims. Capitalism has no remedy for the breakdown of its own system of pillage, exploitation, murder, and starvation of the useful members of society. Only the working class, by its own revolutionary action against the capitalist class and government, can and will solve this problem”.

KEYNES COMES TO SAVE THE UNITED STATES

    Declaring Keynes the economist that took the world out of the Great Depression, or calling him the savior of capitalism, or of the United States economy, was a common occurrence until the 1980s. He commanded respect, and his opinions developed a cult-like following among economists until recently. Reflecting what many economists and politicians believed, the historian Steven Pressman named him “the pragmatic savior of capitalism” in his book Fifty Major Economists (1999), reflecting what the economics establishment had been reciting for six decades. The iconic historic figure of Keynes needs to be exposed as a fraud.

    Keynes was not a defender of the market economy. As a good socialist, he always used the term “capitalism” coined by Marx as an insult. He came to bury the very free market economy of the United States and transform it into the “middle-way” socialism he really believed in and supported.

    By the time the Great Depression arrived, Keynes was already a celebrity. He had forecasted correctly the failure of the treaties that ended WW I which led to Hitler’s regime, and would lead to another war. He had been feeding the academic circles with bits of a “new theory” that would debunk the assumptions of the Classic economists about money and prosperity, and the failure of Stalin’s and Hitler’s forms of socialism. 

    As a notorious member of the Fabian Society, he was looking for socialist alternatives to Stalin and Hitler in stealth. His ideas and details kept changing and led to many criticisms. At the same time, the economic crisis became bigger, and the establishment economists were at odds and unable to agree on solutions. Keynes offered hope with a different and new method to solve the crisis. In 1931, he was invited to participate in the famous Harris Conferences at the University of Chicago, then the academic center for new economic views. His presentations and discussions received considerable support for his ideas on counter-cyclical public spending, particularly with economists already influenced by socialist ideas.

    In a speech in Dublin in 1931, Keynes presented his sketchy ideas for what he described as fixing the "decadent international but individualistic capitalism". That year was the peak of the Great Depression; a background he used to publish The Means to Prosperity with specific policy proposals for tackling unemployment in what by then had become a global recession. The book contains many ideas supporting public spending and job creation with one of the first mentions of the “multiplier effect”. Copies were sent to many world leaders, among them the recently elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the desperate moment, his proposals received total attention. Keynes personally met with FDR in 1934. The age of “New Economics” was launched. The cult spread quickly among the New England academic admirers and followers. In 1936, he published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, regarded by many as his most important work.

    The Fabian socialist John Maynard Keynes came from England and saved American capitalism. That is the history fabricated to implant the Middle-Way in the United States of America. He gave us the poison pills of socialism: an ever increasing welfare state financed with monetary inflation.

    The “savior of capitalism” never believed in it. Keynes told the truth about his position before he became a celebrity. On the same year The Daily Worker was established in Chicago, Lord Keynes was clear that his ideas were a way to terminate the defective capitalism his generation had described as being on its deathbed. Marxists had labeled it “capitalism” defining capital as originating in stealing the value of labor. Others had described it as “unbridled selfish individualism” with the French phrase “laissez-faire”. In a lecture he first delivered in 1924 titled The End of Laissez-Faire, Keynes gave birth to the idea of a “mixed economy”, part market, part government control. An excerpt follows: “A time may be coming when we shall get clearer than at present as to when we are talking about Capitalism as an efficient or inefficient technique, and when we are talking about it as desirable or objectionable in itself. For my part, I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any other alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable…”

Keynes (L) and Keynes (R)
A debate between the Father of Inflationary Socialism and his
nemesis who proposed a return to sound money out of the hands of government

THE ANSWER TO KEYNES AND HIS THURIFERS

    There are simple ideas to cut through the smoke of incense the Keynes cult has used to cover the naked truth of their intentions and errors.There is an essential contradiction in the idea of a mixed economy, where the government is expected to manage the market. Nobel in Economics Friedrich A. Hayek, who became the academic nemesis of Keynes, and was also his friend and colleague, explained the conflict in the 1940s: the more government plans and decides, the less the citizens can plan and decide. Personal freedom can’t exist in that scheme. In the 1980s, Nobel in Economics Milton Friedman who had become the recognized authority on inflation demonstrating the flaws of Keynes ideas, explained the same contradiction to the leaders of Communist China: The market is a decentralized system that works from the bottom up without anybody directing it; your government operates centrally directed from the top down. There is no reconciling.

Milton Friedman and Premier Zhao Ziyang in 1988 discussing
the market economy as opposed to a state managed economy.

WHERE DO THE MIDDLE-WAY SOCIALISTS PLACE THE USA?

    Beginning with the pro-Soviet and League of Nations policies of W. Wilson during WW I, followed by FDR’s New Deal policies during the Great Depression and the Atomic accommodation with Stalin after WW II, and ending by adding the Nobel for Socialism to Obama before he launched the Great Recession, it became obvious to the world that the socialist establishment of Europe was under the impression that the United States of America had already joined the socialist Middle-Way on the path to communism.

What do you think?

NEW BOOK AVAILABLE AT AMAZON AND OTHER ONLINE BOOKSTORES

A treatise on Inflation. What the Bible teaches about inflation. The errors in economic theory that have turned a destructive evil into "monetary policy". The errors of Keynes and the Federal Reserve. The original proposal of Lenin to destroy capitalism quickly was kept a secret until recently. Keynes knew about it. The new Secretary of the Treasury, and the recently appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve know what needs to be done. Follow the Constitutional directive on monetary policy and abandon the absurd "dual mandate" that is a socialist fiction. Prepare for the Battle Against Keynes that is coming.

New book available at AMAZON in different editions