Is Obama a Marxist?


No.
That is the short answer to the question.
Whenever a politician deeply angers the American right wing, I start to really like that particular politician. They must be doing something right.
Plenty of Glenn Beck addicts, and right winged Americans who seemingly have no idea what Marxism actually is, keep throwing the word MARXIST at Obama. I take great offence at this, because I quite like Marx. I also quite like Che Guevara.
I quite like Marxism, I quite like Bakunin too. And Obama is quite the opposite. And here’s why.

  • He isn’t forcing business to meet production quotas.
  • Those same businesses that aren’t forced to meet production quotas are also not run by the workers.
  • He has never called for a mass workers revolution.
  • Nor are the above three points ever going to happen.
  • Left wing, does not mean Marxist.
  • Government interference in some aspects of the economy, in order to prop up demand during capitalist busts, are not Marxist. In fact, they are Keynesian. Which again, is not Marxism. The World is not as black and white as the right wing likes to make out. The choice isn’t Reagan, or Marx.
  • A Marxist would not put ex-bankers in his Treasury.
  • Actually, A Marxist wouldn’t have a treasury, because a Marxist wouldn’t be in power, because power wouldn’t exist.
  • Regulation on amoral industry to stop it becoming immoral industry, is not Marxist.
  • Keynes was not a Marxist.
  • Safety nets like Social Security, are not Marxist.
  • There is no democratic control of the means of production.
  • Wages exist.
  • Your State and National borders exist.
  • Government programs paid for by taxpayers are not Marxist because A) Money would be abolished under true Marxism, and B) Government wouldn’t exist under true Marxism, because Marxism is pretty close to what Bakunin and Kroptkin advocated.
  • Being black, and friends with Muslims, does not make him a Marxist terrorist who hates White people.
  • Nor does it make it so, if Glenn Beck says it.
  • Obama is President. Head of a Government. A Nation State. The very concept of a President, Government and State is anti-Marxist.
  • In fact, any kind of government regulation set by the State from Minimum wage to Medicare, runs contrary to Marxism, because it legitimises the State.
  • No industry is Nationalised (unless you count the police force and fire department as industries, by most Right Winged Americans tend to over look those).
  • And before you say it, Healthcare in the U.S is not Nationalised.
  • Ask your local supermarket chain if they’re making a profit. If they are, then Marxism has not come to America.
  • Being Atheist, does not make one a Marxist. (Obama’s religious beliefs are irrelevant).
  • Obama has never tried to suggest that private property be abolished, that division caused by the free flow of capital is the root of all evil, and all means of productions be taken over by a workers revolution. Until he does, he in no way can be considered Marxist.
  • The Founding Fathers were neither Socialist nor neoliberalist proponents, because they did not know what Socialism and Neoliberalism were. Are you a proponent or exponent of Chrositographicness? You’re neither, because you don’t know what it is, neither do I, I just made it up. Similarly, the words Neoliberalism and Socialism would have made no sense to the Founders. Stop trying to manipulate their words to suit your agenda.
  • Higher taxes on the rich, does not mean Marxism. In fact, Marx never mentions the concept.
  • Just because Obama hung around with members of Socialist and Communist parties in his college days, does not mean he wishes to turn America into the USSA. It’s like saying, he was friends with a few posh British people, and so that clearly means he wishes to revoke independence and become a colony of the British again.
  • A society that uses welfare to further perpetuate the division between employer and employee, is not Marxist.
  • Obama is further to the right than Britain’s Liberal Democrats, who are centre-left. He is further right than the Swedes. Both the Lib Dems and the Swedes are not Marxists. The entire World other than crazed right winged Americans understand this. In fact, Swedish healthcare, EVIL MARXIST healthcare, ranks close to the top of the World rankings. America’s system, well, let’s just say it’s fucking appalling. Swedish education, including higher education is free for all, and they still have a higher rate of social mobility than the U.S. EVIL MARXISTS!!!
  • If we were to look at the politics of, say, Conservative hero Disraeli, we see that actually, by todays standards, Disraeli is more ‘Socialist’ than Obama could ever hope to be. Obama is a one nation conservative of old.
  • The ‘hike’ in the top rate of tax by the Obama administration for 2013 to 36.9% is not at all a tax hike, and just a rise from the Bush era. Between 1993, and 2000 (also known as the boom years), the top rate of tax was …. 39.6%… exactly as the President has proposed for 2013. By mad Republican standards, every President has been a mad Socialist. Except for Bush. Reagan would certainly fall into the category of ‘Marxist’ by 21st Century Republican standards.
  • George Orwell’s 1984 does not represent a Marxist style of government. It was a critique on the misuse of Marxism for totalitarian gain. It is an Authoritarian government; Stalinist, if you will. The whole point was to critique Stalin. Orwell was a Marxist. 1984 was not Marxism. Saying “it’s like 1984!!” when speaking of Obama is nonsense and then saying he’s a Marxist, is incompatible. You do not have a telescreen in your house. You do not have a number assigned to you by the single ruling party. You do not have to work changing history for the government owned media, and your kids do not report you to the thoughtpolice who then do not go on to torture you into submission. Therefore, stop using the phrase “big brother society”, your scare tactics wont work.

    Obama is not, never has been, and never will be a Marxist.

    About these ads
  • 17 Responses to Is Obama a Marxist?

    1. octo says:

      very good response…,hard work it must have been,
      one remark…even a socialist economy must have a form of governement…I can imagine no more parties in control, but each project in society (transport,work,housing,energy,education,telecom…)managed by the ones the workers,farmers and small enterprises (better word then ‘bussinises’ elect on those lists…see blog. Thanks for this contribution, I’ll post it on facebook and my blogs for spreading it.

    2. I agree.
      But Marxism is not Socialism.

    3. Jonty says:

      I like your answer to that rather silly question, of course he isn’t, just because he is a fairly rare liberal thinker what is still quite a conservative political system.

      I can’t stand how some feel it necessary to push our politics and politician on to the outer edges of the spectrum which is simply dead in modern day politics (for the time being anyway)

    4. Geoff says:

      I always thought the idea of calling a war illegal was silly.

    5. Yes.We.Can. says:

      Maybe Glenn Beck should run for President and mock children and make fun of Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg.

      Right.

    6. americafarm says:

      You do not have a telescreen in your house, you have an internet connection. You do not have a number assigned to you by the single ruling party, you have an IP address. You do not have to work changing history for the government owned media, but you have to go to Diversity Class (history changed!), and your kids do not report you to the thoughtpolice but your neighbors do and the SPLC is actively looking for you to turn you over to the police who will label you a domestic terrorist and then do go on to torture you into submission by putting you in solitary confinement, 23 hour lock down, with no heat or plumbing. Please educate yourselves on thought crime and hate speech/free speech crimes and realize the Department of Justice will not tolerate “hate speech/free speech”.

    7. Thats the worst comparison ive yet seen.

    8. Charles says:

      As a wise man said: “All
      for ourselves and nothing for other people
      seems, in every age of the world, to have been
      the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
      That was Adam Smith in the Wealth of
      Nations, not Karl Marx.

    9. Joe Dwyer says:

      I like your article, however, it sounds like you are comparing him to anarchism, or anarcho-communism rather than marxism. Just my two cents.

    10. Rick says:

      By this logic, Stalin was not a Communist until AFTER he butchered his own people. Even a marxist must take a careful foothold before showing his hand. Such rabid denials must mean there are a LOT of liberals that have been tricked into following this ideology. You are afraid of coming into the light. I don’t blame you.

    11. Ah of course. Obama is merely talking about helping people with no health insurance; when secretly he plans to shut down all the means of production and hand it over to the Proletariat, whilst at the same time getting rid of all wages and profits and money itself. I HAVE BEEN TRICKED!!! I will go out this very moment and spit on a homeless man! :D

      “By this logic, Stalin was not a Communist until AFTER he butchered his own people.”
      - By what logic exactly? Stalin wasn’t a Communist. He was a totalitarian. Communism has no supreme leader and has no State. Stalinism was entirely at odds with Communism in its purest form. I believe George Orwell made this point far better than I could.

    12. Black Flag says:

      Futile,

      Let’s be perfectly clear.

      Obama is merely taking about helping people with no insurance by stealing the wealth of other people to pay for it

      There are many ways to help people – you can give them your money, time or talent.

      But stealing my money so that you can help people is an act of theft and is evil.

      Stalin was a Communist and a Totalitarian. In fact, Communism requires totalitarianism for it MUST take from one group by force to give to another group.

    13. yes i know i’ve heard your arguments before. Anyone who is taxed is threatened with death blah blah let the poor die it’s only fair blah blah. I don’t accept it. I have no issue with my tax money going to providing our national health service, or setting up homeless shelters, or helping those unemployed actually live. We have no issue with it. We quite like it. I know you think that the Government will rape my face and shoot me if i don’t like it, but I don’t buy it. Whereas a company taking the majority of what I earn for them, and giving me as small as possible back whilst the guys at the top keep the rest for themselves and their lovely new Merc (which ironically, is how Stalin ran the USSR; one big company), even though they spent the day at the local golf club; is the height of human freedom, we should all bow down in honour and awe to men in expensive suits, they’re wondrous; I know your arguments, I don’t like them and I don’t buy them.

      Communism requires no totalitarianism. None at all. Stalin was not what Marx intended.

    14. Black Flag says:

      Futile,

      yes i know i’ve heard your arguments before. Anyone who is taxed is threatened with death blah blah

      Whenever someone brushes off Law as lightly as you do demonstrates a massive misunderstanding of what LAW is

      All Law is violence – massive, unrelenting violence.

      You jaywalk, you get a ticket – you refuse the ticket, you get arrested, you refuse arrest, you get physical force, your resist, you die….for jaywalking….

      That is the LAW. It means violence all the way to death if necessary.

      When a person brushes aside this truth allows very great evil to become law.

      let the poor die it’s only fair blah blah.

      “Fair”?? Please define the “universal” meaning of “fair?

      It doesn’t exist

      Fair is an subjective attribute

      What you think is fair does not make that fair for anyone else.

      And that’s your issue, Futile. You believe you are the God of “fair” – that you know like a God what is fair for all people.

      But you do not.

      Yet you want to impose it.

      It doesn’t make you a God – it makes you evil.

      I don’t accept it. I have no issue with my tax money going to providing our national health service, or setting up homeless shelters, or helping those unemployed actually live.

      Give all your money to it then!

      Why don’t you?:?:?:

      Because you are a hypocrite.

      You don’t care at all – you just don’t want to give any more than you have to so you look into other people’s wallet and complain!!

      Give if you want, Futile, but that gives you NO RIGHT to my wallet.

      We have no issue with it. We quite like it.

      Who is this “we”??

      It’s not “me”!!

      So it cannot be a “we”

      It is a YOU!

      And that is what it is really about.

      You believe you will end up with an unearned benefit from this thievery.

      Your circumstance – for whatever reason – have placed you in the needy.

      So as a savage, you have no problem advocating for theft of others to feed yourself.

      And you believe this makes you a “we”.

      It does not, sir — it makes you a savage.

      I know you think that the Government will rape my face and shoot me if i don’t like it, but I don’t buy it.

      No, it loves you.

      You depend on it for your life, and thus, when it will ask you to kill for it, you will – and you will kill children and women and innocent people when it tells you to do it.

      Because, if you don’t, it will kill you.

      Whereas a company taking the majority of what I earn for them,

      If you believe you are not getting your worth, quit.

      Do it all yourself and prove it to “them”.

      Bet ya can’t.

      Communism requires no totalitarianism. None at all. Stalin was not what Marx intended.

      Marx had absolutely no idea what he was proposing.

      And if Communism is scaled beyond the small family unit, it requires totalitarianism to enforce in any scale larger because the rational can no longer be emotional, and must be political.

    15. Loved this. Intelligent points mixed with humorous tones.

    16. xena says:

      Er, what happened to my other comment?

    17. When did you post it? If I didn’t approve it, I missed it. I’ll go back and approve it.

    Leave a Reply

    Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

    WordPress.com Logo

    You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

    Twitter picture

    You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

    Facebook photo

    You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

    Connecting to %s

    Follow

    Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

    Join 1,183 other followers

    %d bloggers like this: