The Communist
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My podiatrist calls me “the Communist” and I, in my mind, call him “the MAGA.” I am told that I should switch to a different podiatrist, but I don’t think I could find either a podiatrist or a dentist who is not a Republican. Perhaps they are not all MAGA extremists, but they all want to stop offering benefits to people they consider “deadbeats”, they all love the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which was more about tax cuts than about jobs, they all believe in unregulated Capitalism, and they feel that compassion is bad for societies. I’m sure this is a sweeping generalization, after all many doctors contribute their medical skills to projects in developing nations and Doctors without Borders (possibly not full of Republicans) operates in many places without access to medical clinics or hospitals. Since these are not government projects these professionals do not see any contradiction in this.
Am I a Communist? I have lived through the rise of two big Communist regimes. However idealistic Marx and Lenin were in their manifesto, Communism has not proven to generate a culture I would want to live in. The Russian Revolution did rid the nation of an aristocratic system with a Czar and his courtiers. (Not much different from a dictator and his oligarchs.) The Russian Revolution was supposed to act like a giant pitchfork that turned over the class structure and exposed those who toiled, the workers, to the daylight of a better day. This is not at all what happened. If you wanted to escape a bloody purge you had to join the Communist Party or keep a very low profile. You had to conform to certain shifting policies or chance ending up in Siberia or dead. Stalin was an unholy terror. The USSR closed its doors and turned the entire country into a prison. Five-year plans and Ten-year-plans were drawn up, but the goals were not often met. Citizens had few incentives to work hard, and the economy was not thriving.
In China there was Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Again, the pitchfork turned over the haystack of social and cultural life. People who were once farmers became petty officials and regional governors with little to guide their decisions beyond revenge for real and imagined slights. What sounded good on paper did not produce anything but chaos in practice. We still call China a Communist country, but it works more like a Capitalist dictatorship.
Because I believe that having a society that is too top heavy is an invitation to future revolution, because I believe a society is better if those at the bottom do not feel hopeless and are not without the basics like food, temperature controls, clean water, educational opportunities and job opportunities, because I believe people sometimes need programs to tide them over tough times, because I believe a society is better off if its citizens are healthy, and because I believe it is worth it to spend our tax dollars to offer benefits I am called a Socialist or a Communist. Businessmen spend a lot of time these days talking about work-life balance. I am simply advocating for the value of economic balance (not equality) in a Capitalist democracy.
Our forefathers did not give us a Capitalist system although many lived as entrepreneurs. The Industrial Revolution was in its infancy. I am not opposed to Capitalism; in fact, it has given us amazing gifts. But pure Capitalism has its downsides. Unregulated Capitalism has led to the out-of-kilter economy that we have in the US and globally with wealth concentrated in the hands of very few. Yes, someone had a big idea that created the profitable business that led to economic growth, but these ‘someones’ have not shared the wealth with their workers without whom they would have far lower profits.
Unregulated Capitalism has led to abuses of workers, outsized profits for the few and to a taste for dictatorship. Absolute power corrupts as the classic wisdom goes, but it also gives powerful, devastatingly rich people “dictator’s disease.” They believe that if they could run a company so successfully, they could run a nation just as successfully. While I have no problem with mixed economies that take the best from various economic models and use whatever works without necessarily labeling it, those who are profiting from unfettered Capitalism vehemently back an economic purity and tough love society that lines their pockets and their bank accounts.
Capitalists also believe in infinite growth. They are addicted to growth and every year must see growth in the economy or, yikes, the economy will fail. This belief in perpetual growth also has downsides. Barreling ahead without consideration of things like waste disposal or toxic air, water and soil has taken us to the brink of human extinction. Refusing to accept that ignoring the health of our planet results from denial and negligence makes it almost impossible to stop or reverse the damage that has been done. Such denial will eventually stop growth in its tracks and cause the economic failure that growth Capitalists dread. Millions will die in climate conditions that do not support human life. That’s one way to tackle earth’s population problems, one way that is inhumane and random. Whose politics is more dangerous, mine or my podiatrist?
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