The president's priorities during the December fiscal cliff debate were clear: expand government assistance to the welfare class at the expense of those who are actually working and succeeding. Obama has a vision of America as a socialist economy in which the masses trade in their freedom for a pittance. If the 2012 election was any indication, that arrangement seems to be gaining in popularity.
The real motive behind Obama's expansion of government, however, is not concern for the poor, but rather an insatiable lust for power. As Milovan Djilas put it, "[p]ower is an end in itself and the essence of contemporary Communism" (The New Class, 1957, p. 22). Djilas was the best-known dissident in communist Yugoslavia, for which he was sentenced to a total of fifteen years in prison (serving nine before his release). He understood that Marxist leaders govern not in the interest of the people, but instead in their own interest. Tito's many palaces boasted of legendary opulence, and they were off limits to all but a few.
When I lived in communist Yugoslavia, I saw firsthand what Djilas describes in The New Class. I saw sumptuous suburban enclaves where only the ruling communist elite were permitted to enter. For the elite there were special stores overflowing with luxuries, including imported goods of every kind. For the masses, there were gray apartment blocks and state stores with empty shelves. While the communist rulers traveled in black limousines, hidden from view by dark glass and drawn curtains, the masses rode to work jammed into airless trams and buses. I remember it well, because I rode with them.
Is America headed in the same direction? In our own country, Obama continues to seize control of health care, financial services, education, energy, and every other sector of the economy even as he demands higher revenues and the right to redistribute them. He does so by dividing rich and poor and by pretending that he is acting in the interests of the poor. Marshal Josip Broz Tito did the same in Yugoslavia, just as Lenin did in Russia, Mao did in China, Kim Il Sung did in North Korea, Fidel Castro did in Cuba, Hugo Chávez did in Venezuela, and every other Marxist dictator has done without exception. All of these leftists concentrated power in the state, rewarded themselves and their associates with regal powers and privileges, and stripped the masses of their freedom and economic opportunity.
Obama is overreaching in the same way, and if he is not blocked by voters in 2014, he will transform America into a socialist state. By his own admission, radical "transformation" has always been his goal.
Marxist revolutions have always sought to concentrate power in the state by inciting the masses to envy the rich. From start to finish, Obama's re-election playbook was classic Marxism: convince the less affluent that they have been exploited by the rich and promise them everything in return for their votes
By Jeffrey Folks
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