**************************************************************************************
Toward Socialist America
by Robert D. Gorgoglione (RobeGorgolio@aol.com)
1995 (Revised, July, 2004)
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism; but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until America will one day be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened."
(Norman Thomas six-time Socialist Party candidate for President)
Americans may not be willing to vote for a program under the name of "socialism," but put it under another party label -- whether liberal Republican or Democrat -- and they're by and large in favor of the idea....
(Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party USA)
WHAT IS SOCIALISM?
Economic control of people by government:
Since there are several major forms of Socialism, it is important to begin with a good definition:
Socialism: Government control and/or ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods and services.
Or simply: Economic control of people by government.
In order for government to regulate and control economic activity, it must first control people, for it is people buying and selling in the market place that make up the economy.
The above definition of Socialism includes democratic socialism, Fascism (Corporate Socialism), Naziism (National Socialism) and Communism (International Revolutionary Socialism).
It was 40 years ago that I began to realize that the United States had already moved far down the soul-destroying road of Socialism. Little did I realize that I was not alone in coming to such an unpopular and "politically incorrect" conclusion.
Lets turn to the evidence that will prove that we are and have been on the road toward a Socialist America since at least 1933 (Roosevelt's New Deal).
In 1936, in an attempt to show the striking parallels between the Socialist and Democrat Party platforms, Al Smith, a former democratic presidential candidate, declared:
Make a test for yourself. Just get the platform of the Democratic Party and ... the Socialist Party and lay them down ... side by side and ...scratch out the word Democrat and scratch out the word Socialist and let the two platforms lay there ...
The Republican Party is in need of its own Al Smith as we shall see.
SOCIALISM: THE ROAD TO COMMUNISM
Earl Browder, then general secretary of the Communist Party USA, in an address before the National Press Club in Washington D.C., in August of 1936, told assembled reporters:
The program of the Socialist Party and the program of the Communist Party have a common origin in the document known as the Communist Manifesto. There is no difference, so far as the program is concerned and final aim...
The Socialist follow the lead of the Communist, the Democrats follow the lead of the socialist, and the Republicans follow the lead of the Democrats. At the end of the road is complete Socialism which is Communism. Before we can go Communist, we must first go socialist.
EARL BROWDER: "America is getting socialism on the installment plan."
In 1966, 30 years later, Earl Browder was quoted in the Pittsburgh Press as follows:
America is getting socialism on the installment plan through the programs of the welfare state. There is more real socialism in the United States today than there is in the Soviet Union (Union of soviet Socialist Republics).
Americans may not be willing to vote for a program under the name of "socialism," but put it under another party label - whether liberal Republican or Democrat - and they're by and large in favor of the idea ...
We have no real socialist party, no socialist ideology, but we have a large-and growing-degree of what 50 years ago would have been recognized as socialism.
NORMAN THOMAS: "The United States is making greater strides toward socialism ..."
By the mid 1950's, Norman Thomas, six time candidate for President of the U.S. on the Socialist Party ticket, proclaimed that practically all of the planks of the Socialist Party platform of 1932 had been adopted by both the Democrat and Republican parties. In 1957, the Harvard times-Republican" of April 18 quoted Norman Thomas as follows:
The United States is making greater strides towards socialism under Eisenhower (A Republican) than under Roosevelt.
US News and World Report of July 14, 1969 noted:
The late Norman Thomas ... observed in 1964 that the Democrats "have through the years taken over measures once regarded as Socialist, but then so have the Republicans but to a slightly less degree.
HAS THE U.S. ADOPTED THE "TEN POINT PLANK" OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO?
In order to comprehend, more fully, just how far down the Socialist road (under both Democrat and Republican presidents) we have traveled, consider the following from the Ten Point plank of the Communist (Socialist) Manifesto of 1848:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rent of land to public purposes. (Confiscation and ownership of vast areas of land by both the Federal and state governments with the remaining private lands under intense restrictions and regulations.)
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (The Federal Income Tax was adopted in 1913. Many of the states have since adopted their own versions of the graduated income tax.)
5. Centralization of credit ... by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. (The Federal Reserve Banking System is a national bank with a very powerful and "exclusive monopoly.")
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (i.e. government FCC regulations on radio and Television and the ICC regulations on the railroads, trucking, and the airlines etc. Amtrak and Conrail are owned by the Federal Government. Some bus and transportation services are owned by state governments and regional metropolitan areas.)
10. Free education for all children in public schools. (Government public Schools, colleges and universities.
WERE WILLIAM Z. FOSTER'S PROPOSALS ("TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA") ADOPTED IN THE UNITED STATES?
In 1932, William Z. Foster, Chairman of the Communist Party USA authored the book Toward Soviet America. Beginning on Page 277 he declared that there would be:
....revolutionary Nationalization or socialization (such as Environmentally restrictive controls and regulation) of the large privately--owned ... factories, mines and power plant, ... railroads, waterways, airways, bus lines [and] ... the whole body of forest, mineral deposits, lakes, etc. ( National Parks and forests etc.)
On page 281, he added:
There will also be ... social insurance against unemployment, old age (Social Security), ...free medical services (Medicare, Medicaid etc) ...All houses and other buildings will be socialized. (regulated and government owned Housing).
Now comes the shocker beginning on page 316 - 317:
Superstition (religion) will vanish in the realm of science; ... class ideologies ... will give place to scientific materialist philosophy (Humanism). ....the schools, colleges and Universities will be grouped under the National (Federal) Department of Education ... studies will be revolutionized being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of bourgeois (middle class) ideology.
Science will become materialistic, hence truly scientific: God will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools. ....there will be a great organization of science, backed by the full power of the government. (Sound familiar?)
On page 318 we read:
A National Department of Health (the Department of Health and Human Services) will be set up. A free medical service ... will be established ( National Health Care).
HAS THE UNITED STATES ADOPTED PORTIONS OF THE "NATIONAL SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY PLATFORM?
Now we come to the National Socialist (Nazi) parallels that exist in the United States. Many of the famous Twenty-five Points of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZI) have been echoed by both Republicans and Democrats alike. Here are a few:
1. ....provide work and the means of livelihood for the citizens of the state....
2. We demand an extensive development of provision for old age. (Social Security).
3. The State must undertake a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education, with the aim of giving to every capable and industrious [citizen] the benefits of a higher education.... We demand educational facilities for specially gifted children of poor parents ... at the expense of the State. (Think of the Federal "Goals 2000" and "No child left behind." etc.
4. The State must concern itself with raising the standard of health in the nation.... (National Health Care, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)
5. The Party ... is convinced that our nation can only achieve permanent well-being from within on the principle of placing the common interest before self-interest. (Special interests and "group rights" replace "individual rights.")
Other points included such things as -- are you ready -- gun control (registration, and confiscation), federal welfare, and yes, day-care. They even had their own National Endowment for the Arts.
Now we will let Adolph Hitler have the last word:
We are socialist, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human beings according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions. (Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by J. Toland in Adolph Hitler, Garden City, N. Y. : Doubleday.
STRIKING SIMILARITIES BETWEEN FDR'S "NEW DEAL" AND MUSSOLINI'S FASCISM (CORPORATE SOCIALISM)
Charlotte Twight's scholarly America's Emerging Fascist Economy, (Arlington House, 1975) page 20, points to Fascist Pretenses about property rights, which are in turn abrogated by license, regulation, limiting competition etc. Twight explains that:
To sustain its power and achieve its economic ends, fascism seeks to make its people economically and psychologically dependent on the government. [This] enhances the governments ... control over its' citizen's economic activities.
Fascism also installs the mandatory government licence as a central economic weapon, for compulsory government licensing of businesses allows the political hierarchy to control the nation's economy without the appearance of totalitarian coercion.
Altruistically phrased, vague licensing standards such as the national or community interest, local needs, or the personal qualifications of the applicant preserve a facade of justice and due process to conceal unlimited governmental power. Exactly such elastic standards for government licenses prevailed in Nazi Germany.
Unfortunately, these same Corporate Socialist controls and regulations are now in full bloom here in our beloved country, the United States of America.
Many of the principles of Mussolini's Italian Fascism as well as Hitler's German National Socialism have also been adopted in the United States by both the Republican and Democrat Parties. Please notice that what follows has striking parallels to what we have already covered!
It was Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, who wrote:
I have wanted the ... government, above all, to give great care to the social legislation needed to carry out our part of agreed international programs for industry and for those who bear the future of industry .... in fact, it has ratified the laws for the eight-hour day, for obligatory insurance, for regulation of the work of women and children, for assistance and benefits, for after-work diversion and adult education, and finally for obligatory insurance against tuberculosis. All this shows how, in every detail in the field of labor, I stand by the ... working classes. All that it was possible to do without working an injury to the principle of solidarity in our economy I have set out to do, from the minimum wage to the continuity of employment, from insurance against accidents to indemnity against illness, from old age pensions to the proper regulation of military service. There is little which social welfare research has not already been advanced by me. I want to give every man and woman so generous an opportunity that work will be not a painful necessity but a joy of life ...
Pure "New Deal" philosophy!
Now I have to confess. The author of the foregoing was not Roosevelt. It was the Socialist Benito Mussolini ("My Autobiograhy", New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928). You have to admit that it sure sounds like Roosevelt.
In Architects of Conspiracy by William P. Hoar, on page 127, we find the following shocker:
The economics of Fascist Italy were soon being imported into this country by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose C.C.C., W.P.A., PWA. and other Depression-era schemes proved so damaging. Indeed, in his 'memoirs' former President Herbert Hoover told it as it was: 'Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 .... [these ideas] were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body , urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's corporate state' and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true.
As was the case in corporate socialist Italy, and Germany, American corporations were financing and organizing corporate socialism right hear in the United States in an effort to consolidate and control, i.e., monopolize, the wealth and productivity of the American economy for themselves. This was the essence of the "New Deal".
Even many republicans have been and are supporting these corporate socialist principles and programs.
Now for the Republicans.
RICHARD NIXON'S "GREAT SOCIALIST REVIVAL"
One of the most startling articles ever to appear in an American magazine appeared in the September 21, 1970 issue of New York Magazine entitled "Richard Nixon and the Great Socialist Revival." by the very liberal (socialist) Harvard Professor John Kenneth Galbraith.
Galbraith began by proclaiming:
Certainly the least predicted development under the Nixon Administration was this great new thrust to socialism. One encounters people who still aren't aware of it. Others must be rubbing their eyes, for certainly the portents seemed all to the contrary. As an opponent of socialism, Mr. Nixon seemed steadfast ....
Further on in his article, Galbraith writes:
But I had come reluctantly to the conclusion that socialism, even in this modest design, was something I would never see. Now I am being rescued by this new socialist upsurge promoted, of all things, by socialists not on the left but on the right. And they have the blessing and conceivably much more, of a Republican Administration.
Professor Galbraith, in making reference to the British Fabian Socialist "doctrine of the commanding heights" wrote:
The new conservative socialism in the United States has taken over the strategy of the commanding heights with a vengeance.
It was during the Nixon Republican administration that the following steps (among others) toward Socialism were taken:
1. The socialistic Environmental Protection Agency was created by an unconstitutional executive order, thereby by passing Congress, and giving the Federal government virtual control and power over all land, air and water.
2. Federal Revenue Sharing, which has led to a greater and more direct federal control of state and local governments, and therefore greater socialistic concentration of political and economic power.
3. The total and complete elimination of any remaining gold backing of our currency which has further facilitated the weakening of the value of the dollar, thereby creating greater price inflation (rising prices).
4. Socialistic price controls leading to growing shortages which nearly led to rationing.
5. Greatly increased treasonous foreign aid, trade and financial credit and loans to our communists enemies. (Particularly Soviet Russia and Communist China.)
6. Greatly increased spending for unconstitutional socialistic programs such as social services, entitlements, medical care, education, foreign aid and other socialistic transfer-of-the-wealth schemes etc. (The sharing of someone else's wealth, of course.)
Was President Nixon a socialist?
So now you can see clearly that both the Republican and Democrat Parties have become very effective vehicles for pushing the United Stated toward complete socialism. Unfortunately the process continues even under the George W. Bush administration.
PRES. BUSH: "... a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic (Clinton) administration."
One of the major policy areas where President Bush is continuing and expanding the work of the Clinton administration is in the area of socialistic environmental regulation. Bush stated:
And now, a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration.
Of course this statement can be applied to most if not all major policy objectives such as:
1. Education: In January 2002, Mr. Bush signed into law the "No Child Left Behind Act," which radically increased the federal role in education. In his most recent budget proposal, the fiscal 2005 budget, Mr. Bush proposed spending $64.3 billion for the Department of Education, as compared to $35.7 billion in 2001, the year he assumed office -- " an 80.1 percent increase.
2. Foreign Aid: In March 2002, Mr. Bush called for a 50 percent increase in "core development assistance" over three years. In his fiscal 2005 budget, he proposed $16.6 billion in total spending for "international assistance programs," as compared to $11.8 billion in 2001.
3. Agriculture: In May 2002, Mr. Bush signed into law a gargantuan farm bill he supported that increases direct farm program spending by $73 billion over 10 years and also contains $243 billion for food stamps.
4. Health Care: In December 2003, Mr. Bush signed into law a new prescription drug entitlement program he championed. When passed by Congress, the administration estimated that the program would cost $400 billion over 10 years. Subsequently, the administration revised the $400 billion estimate upward to $530 billion.
Is President Bush a Socialist?
Notice how much these programs parallel those of NAZI Germany, Fascist Italy and William Z. Foster's Toward Soviet America.
A very good way to measure the growth and advance of socialism in these United States is to look at the growth of Federal spending and the size of the Federal budget. It took well over 100 years for the federal budget to reach about 1 billion dollars in 1916, just before entering the First World War. 46 years later in 1962, it reached about 100 billion. Now, 42 years later, in the year 2004, under a Republican administration, the federal budget is rapidly approaching 3 Trillion dollars. Even with price inflation factored in, this is astronomical. Less we forget, the National dept has now surpassed the 7 trillion dollar level!
Now if you think these figures are staggering, start adding up the exploding growth of all state and local spending and dept.
Now imagine how prosperous and rich we would all be had the Federal Government's spending been frozen at the 100 billion dollar level of 1962, while being forced to return to it's strict Constitutional limits.
[It should also be made clear that Naziism and Fascism are classified as Corporate Socialism, a political and economic system by which giant corporations and banks maintain their monopolistic control of a nations economy through government regulatory regimentation and financial control. That is, government interventionism as apposed to competitive free enterprise. Remember, socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality, a tool by which monopoly capitalists consolidate and control the wealth.]
CONCLUSION AND SOLUTION
In conclusion, all of the above is a perfect description of the political and economic realities that exist in the United States today!
In Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, socialistic and welfare-state ideas were developed in the name of socialism. But here in the United States, socialism was promoted in the name of: "social reform," "social justice," "equality," "civil rights," and Liberalism, etc
Republican and Democratic administrations come and go, but the show remains the same. The rapid growth and increasing size of tyrannical taxis and very burdensome regulatory controls of government and the loss of most of our precious God-ordained rights to individual liberty continue no matter which party is in power. The Lock-step march toward complete socialism (Communism) continues unabated.
We Americans should never forget the wise counsel of the Father of our beloved country, George Washington:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
If we as a people and a nation do not return to those principles and precepts of our divinely inspired Constitution and Competitive Free Enterprise System, and once again worship the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, we to will pass into oblivion and history as have other great civilizations before us.
But let us not despair. There is great hope if we will but seek wisdom and counsel from the great Benjamin Franklin who, was instrumental in helping to guide and steady the Framing Constitutional Convention 1787 to a great and successful conclusion. At a time when the Convention was on the verge of breaking up, and the new infant nation was close to sliding into anarchy, as is the case for us today, Benjamin Franklin gave the following wise counsel:
We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it? ... In This situation ... groping as it were in the dark to find political truth ... how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father (God) of lights to illuminate our understandings? ... I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall the the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise (or survive) without his aid?... Henceforth [let us pray for] the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings upon our deliberations,...
It was with the assistance and inspiration of Heaven that our Forefathers settled this choice land and brought about the birth and rise of this nation with faith and great sacrifice. Now may we follow their great example, and walk in their footsteps; pick up where they left off and restore our country to its former greatness and glory; that we may once again be a shining light of Liberty and hope for a world in darkness and bondage, for this is our destiny!
----------------
APPENDIX : Socialism Is Legal Plunder
"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole --with their common aim of legal plunder -- constitute socialism.
Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.
But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.
To prevent this, you would exclude socialism from entering into the making of laws? You would prevent socialists from entering the Legislative Palace? You shall not succeed, I predict, so long as legal plunder continues to be the main business of the legislature. It is illogical -- in fact, absurd -- to assume otherwise". (From Bastiat: "THE LAW", p. 22 - 23)
The Nature of Legal Plunder:
"When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it -- without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud -- to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed! "How is the legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime --" (THE LAW, p. 21, 26) "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat, 1850, (Following the French Communist Revolution of 1848.)
-----------------------
"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own -- THE HARM DONE BY ORDINARY CRIMINALS, MURDERERS, GANGSTERS, AND THIEVES IS NEGLIGIBLE IN COMPARISON WITH THE AGONY INFLICTED UPON HUMAN BEINGS BY THE PROFESSIONAL 'DO-GOODERS', who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others -- with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means."
The Mainsprings of Human Progress
by Henry Grady Weaver
---------------------
"This government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. IT does not educate. THE CHARACTER INHERENT IN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAS DONE ALL THAT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED; AND IT WOULD HAVE DONE SOMEWHAT MORE, IF THE GOVERNMENT HAD NOT SOMETIMES GO IN ITS WAY. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it."
David Thoreau
The American Tradition by Clarence B. Carson
------------------------
"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security." (Vol. 2, Book 4, Chapt. 5, p. 126)
Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
(This essay was converted to html and placed online by John Ray but all responsibility for its contents lies with its author)
Back to List of excerpted references
Go to Index page for this site
Go to John Ray's "Tongue Tied" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Dissecting Leftism" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Australian Politics" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Gun Watch" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Education Watch" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Socialized Medicine" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Political Correctness Watch" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Greenie Watch" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Food & Health Skeptic" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Eye on Britain" blog (Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Leftists as Elitists" blog (Not now regularly updated -- Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Marx & Engels in their own words" blog (Not now regularly updated -- Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "A scripture blog" (Not now regularly updated -- Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's recipe blog (Not now regularly updated -- Backup here or here)
Go to John Ray's "Some memoirs" (Occasionally updated -- Backup here)
Go to John Ray's Main academic menu
Go to Menu of recent writings
Go to John Ray's basic home page
Go to John Ray's pictorial Home Page (Backup here)
Go to Selected pictures from John Ray's blogs (Backup here)
Go to Another picture page (Best with broadband)