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Obama no Marxist

Of course President Obama is neither a Marxist nor a socialist. Anyone who would claim that he is obviously doesn't know the meaning of the words. Some basic education seems to be in order.

I was born and raised in a socialist country, East Germany and actually laughed to read those terms used to describe the current US president.

By the way, being either a Marxist or a socialist is not a crime. Neither is being a capitalist.

Obama is both a Marxist and a socialist because they are the same thing only perhaps in differing degrees. Obama believes he is justified in confiscating money from one person and redistributing it to someone else= what Marxists and socialists do! "From each according to their ability and to each according to their need". There are several problems with that idea however!
#1: It punishes achievement, innovation,investment, hard work and self control and rewards inefficiency, lazyness, and the irresponsible. When those riding in the entitlemen wagon out number those who are trying to pulling the wagon, the whole system collapes,as it always has and always will.America is close to that collape now and no "bailout" will help!
Another problem with Marxism and socialism is that who decides who gets what and who loses the efforts of their work? Socialism and Marxism always produces dictators who enforce the redistribution with tanks and machine guns. The cost of socialism and Marxism is freedom and prosperity! The results are poverty, suffering and death. No thank you Karl Marx, you can keep your socialist "utopia". We saw it in USSR, Cuba, China and everywhere else people bought into your lies!

I think most people think of a Marxist, as a communist and a socialist as someone within the capitalist system who wants to give to those who have not earned a benefit something paid for by those who have worked hard to get something.

In those terms Obama was trained by Marxist thinking professor and is now taking us deep down the road to socialism., through his spend and spend and spend and spend and spend philosophy. He thinks throwing money at a problem will solve it. I can give a person a fish or teach them to fish and they they can feed themselves in the future. At what point does he not understand the economy?

Greetings:

I think the administration of Barack Hussein Obama is more akin to the National Socialism of the Third Reich.

The same can be said for previous administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, for they are all equally guilty of betrayal.

Under National Socialism, the government exercises total control over all private industry, finance, and commerce.

Isn't that what we have now, and have had for some time past?

Let's look at some other comparisons to the Third Reich:

Deciding who is worthy to live, and who must die, i.e., abortion and euthanasia.

Laws mandating racial preferences and racial quotas.

Thought control, manipulated and enforced by legislating "hate speech", "hate crimes", "politically correct" speech, and revisionist history.

And, of course, gun control.

What if those six million Jews had been armed?

So, knowing this, what do WE do?

If it's not too late, we might begin by no longer voting for Republican or Democrat candidates.

We should also carefully study the Holy Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.

Arm yourselves, and pray.

Thank you.

John Robert Mallernee
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400

The first poster is correct - it is not a crime to be a Marxist. I think the millions of people who died around the world at the hands of Communists in China, Russia, Cambodia and elsewhere might think it should be a crime to be a follower of the teachings of Karl Marx.
Regardless of what we call Barack Obama it is apparent that the notion of individual responsibility that has been the norm in this Country (at least until FDR came along) doesn't sit well with Barack. I just call him a big-government statist who thinks the Federal Govt should micromanage the economy and control the most important aspects of the economy. He's also an admitted "wealth redistributionist"

The underlying belief is that somehow capitalism equals freedom of choice, but the problem is that the natural outcome of free markets and capitalism is that it brings about consolidation and oligopolies that dominate key industries. With few massive companies dominating such industries, it naturally brings about reduced competition, reduced choice for consumers, and reduced pressure to reduce prices. Think of so many industries that fit this model -- from automobiles to energy to healthcare to retailing.

The consequence is that consumers don't have the freedom to get the products and services that want -- for example, consumers have been demanding an alternative to oil for decades, but the auto industry refused to deliver. When it did in the mid-1990s (GM's EV1 electric plug in), the industry lobbied to kill regulations requiring it and took it off the market just before oil prices skyrocketed at plug-ins would have reduced our dependence on Iran and other oil dictatorships. Again, OLIGOPOLY reduced our freedom and hurt consumers.

The bottomline is that government MUST step in to bring about solutions that the free market and capitalism CAN'T deliver due to oligopoly.

Socialism is the step between freedom and communism. Corporatism is the step between freedom and fascism. Obama is a corporatist. He was raised by communists and fed nothing but Communism. His books reek of his love of communism read them. Obama is a corporatist which puts us on the road to fascism. Fascism is just the right fork of totalitarianism that is communism and fascism.
Just because one former East German thinks that he is not a communist does not make it so the Chinese government knows that he is a communist and so do thinking Americans.

Whomever controls the language - controls the world.

The far-right has made large enrodes by denigrating the words "liberal" and "socialism" for the last 30 years, but America is wise to them today as we all witnessed in the elections of 2006 and 2008.

To "Maxist=socialist", if they are the same, throw in United Order as well. My, the nut cases are out early today....

You're right. The far-right has also hijacked and corrupted the word "conservative" to mean the views held by radical far-right authoritarian extremists. True conservatives are now considered to be moderates. Sad.

"Obama is a corporatist. He was raised by communists and fed nothing but Communism."

That's easily the silliest thing I've read in the paper today.

Are you saying that Harvard Law School teaches its students "nothing but Communism?"

"Obama believes he is justified in confiscating money from one person and redistributing it to someone else= what Marxists and socialists do!"

What do you think taxes in any form are? Taxes take money from people and use it for other purposes. So if that's what makes Obama a marxist and socialist, then all of our presidents have been socialists and we've been a socialist country for a long, long time.

Part of the problem is that few know who Marx was. Marx was a philosophy PhD of the continent who was an expat in Britain for most of his life. He believed he solved the riddle of capitalist accumulation with his theory of surplus value which was largely based on Ricardo's labor theory of value. He attempted to answer the question - in a system which mostly sees the exchange of equilavents, from whence come profits? His answer? Surplus value. To Marx human labor is everything. Labor is that unique commodity which can create more value than is necessary to sustain it. This excess is surplus value which is the source of profits and capital. He anticpated the efficiency of capitalism.

Marx was in fact a western economist, the last of the classical economists. To understand Marx one must live in a capitalist system. The Chinese Communists and the Soviet economists understood Marx not at all.

Marx had nothing directly to do with either the 1917 revolution in Russia or the rise of Mao in China.

Marx is still worth study because he deals upfront with the relationship of labor with capital.

To "Capitalism = Freedom? | 6:36 a.m." yes, capitalism does equal freedom. If the government decides that it will produce all automobiles in the US. Do you have a choice? How about if the government takes over health insurance and taxes you for your insurance preminums, do you have a choice to be covered by health insurance any more? If the government takes over all banking institutions and mandates interest rates and minimum qualifications for loans, is there any choice left to make?

What you are forgetting is that freedom requires that you have choices. Freedom is lost once you eliminate choices.

If, as you say, "OLIGOPOLY reduced our freedom and hurt consumers." What will happen when we have a government mandated/supported/owned monopoly?

Tell me again why the Danes rate as the happiest people in the world?

There's nothing wrong with Marxism. It's just another economic theory. It would work too, if implemented perfectly and if the people in that society were perfect, selfless and only cared about the common good and not their own familie's welfare.

Problem is... there hasn't been a population yet in the world that can live it perfectly. Somebody (usually in the government) always thinks their family deserves more than another family and they accquire it and then other people covet what he has and want it for their family, so unrest and displeasure starts and the black market grows until the mafia controls the goods and services people want and what the government dols out to the people is considered shody and second-class and the system breaks down. People get tired of working harder in the hopes of improving their familie's condition, just to realise that their family only benefits from that extra work if they can find a dishonest way to hide that income from the government.

Check his background Obama_fans! He was raised by guys who embraced the marxist theory (his college advisors). Read Obama's writings. Check his mentor's background.

here we go again. don't you dems just love throwing that argument here in utah? the united order is a perfect society in which one chooses to live in and is governed by god. if there was such a thing as perfect human beings then maybe we can talk mrxist, but we don't. obama is far from perfect, and despite you defense of your "savior" president, the majorty of america does not support marxism, even the majority of those who voted for obama. i agree completly with Nothing wrong with Marxism | 8:48 a.m. June 29, 2009 above. obama is a marxist and the only reason he won the election was because the economy was bad and he talked the sweet talk. if he had said he was a marxist, he wouldn't have come anywhere near the white house.

Mr.Mallernee, do you pay for your stay at the Armed Forces retirement home or does our National Socialist government?

Thanks for writing, Erik, but your rationality and common sense are lost on a crowd like this one. The typical DN reader is the perfect example of Stephen Colbert's "truthiness."

To "Nothing wrong with Marxism | 8:48 a.m." assuming you believe in the Bible, there is one instance where a population was able to willingly share everything. If you look up the story of the City of Enoch, they were able to share the wealth and eliminate poverty. THe trick was that they were led by a prophet, not elected officials. They were led by God, through a prophet.