Leading Democrats: ‘Expropriate the Expropriators’

Bill Quigley

14 Nov 2007

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Leading Democrats:
‘Expropriate the Expropriators'

A
political satire by Paul Street

This
article originally appeared in Znet.

"Obama proclaimed his determination to link the ‘new
American revolution' with ‘revolutionary proletarian forces and cadres around
the planet.'" SatireHammerAndSickle

Tired of
defending their business-friendly and state-capitalist policy proposals against
Republicans' insistent description of them as weapons of radical Leftist "class
warfare," the leading Democratic candidates for the United States presidency
have taken a surprising new turn.

"Let's Get Real"

"Listen,"
Hillary Clinton told a stunned collection of reporters yesterday in Des Moines,
Iowa. "If the Republicans and the right
wing noise-machine are going to just constantly call us socialists, let's show
them what the word means. And let's quit running from who we actually are. I've
been doing it for too long. It's time to say what we really think. No more hiding behind reformist bourgeois
labels and agendas. Listen up Fox News, because you're going to love this.
We're Marxist-Leninists, and we always have been. Deal with it."

"You know,
it's like my mother used to say," Clinton added: "be careful what you wish for,
because you just might get it."

Wearing a
red bandana and a Che Guevera T-Shirt autographed by Hugo Chavez, Clinton
introduced her "fellow-travelers on the road to American and world
socialism." Her new "comrades" and
fellow Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama (sporting a new black
beret and dashiki), John Edwards (wearing a vintage Soviet Red Army jacket
purchased from a Russian clothier), Bill Richardson (dressed as Fidel Castro
and sporting a Cuban cigar), Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd joined her on the stage
of a high school auditorium to unveil a new 10-point plan "to overthrow private
ownership in the means of production and distribution" and to establish
"workers' control."

Eschewing
the "limited goal" of "socialism in one country," Obama proclaimed his determination
to link the "new American revolution" with "revolutionary proletarian forces
and cadres around the planet" to "overthrow the world capitalist system
within the next 20 years."

"The candidates gathered to unveil a new 10-point plan
‘to overthrow private ownership in the means of production and distribution'
and to establish ‘workers' control.'"

"I'm a
realist," Obama said. "Let's get real about solving poverty, inequality, and
environmental collapse and putting meaning back into democracy at home and
abroad. Let's admit a basic truth: none
of these problems are going to be fixed - none of these things are going to
happen under capitalism."

"I'm not
opposed to all social systems," Obama added.
"What I do oppose are dumb, destructive, oppressive, and exploitive
social systems based on class, race, and gender hierarchy and the rule of the
privileged few."

"Expropriate the Expropriators"

Edwards
dried a tear from his eyes as he read a passage from Leon Trotsky's 1905
pamphlet "Results and Prospects." Embracing Trotsky's theory of "permanent
revolution," the former North Carolina Senator confirmed suspicion that his
"two Americas" theme of class inequality is inspired by Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels' famous 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.

Edwards quoted Marx and Engels with approval: "You are
horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your
existing society, private property is already abolished for nine-tenths of the
population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the
hands of those nine-tenths."

"Edwards confirmed suspicion that his ‘two Americas'
theme of class inequality is inspired by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' famous
1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto."

"And that's
exactly what we see in the United States today. Enough is enough," Edwards said.
"America needs a president who will tell the truth and show a little
backbone. It's time to expropriate the
expropriators!"

"Look
proletarians," Richardson said, "it's like the old boys used to
say: you've got nothing to lose but your chains and you've got a world to
win. Working men and workingwomen of
the world unite!"

"We can do
that!," Obama added.

"I Was Ashamed"

Richardson
confessed that he has been "a secret Marxist" since the age of sixteen, when he
first read Frederick Engels' pamphlet Socialism: Scientific and Utopian.
Richardson recalled that his youthful conversion to Marxism "did not go over
well with my dad," a leading Citigroup executive.

His
father's scorn pushed the future New Mexico Governor into a long struggle to
cloak his real ideological identity.

The
presidential candidate admitted that he served as "a point man for that
reactionary capitalist ‘trade bill' NAFTA" in the U.S. Congress during the
1990s "to conceal my underlying faith in socialist transformation." Still, he
quietly hoped the bill would help "advance the day when the American
working-class understands that it has no country."

"What can I
say?" Richardson said, "I was ashamed."

"Kissing Bourgeois Ass" to Get
Elected

Other
Democratic presidential candidates spoke on things they've done and said to
"pretend [we] aren't Marxists." Edwards admitted that he built the largest home
ever constructed in North Carolina and joined the board of a parasitic Wall
Street hedge fund (the Fortress Group) to disguise "my underlying commitment to
permanent proletarian revolution."

Obama
laughed as he read selected passages from his bestselling 2006 campaign book The
Audacity of Hope. "Here's a good
one," Obama said, as he recited the following paragraph:

"Calvin Coolidge once said that ‘the chief business of
the American people is business,' and indeed, it would be hard to find a
country on earth that's been more consistently hospitable to the logic of the
marketplace. Our Constitution places
the ownership of private property at the very heart of our system of
liberty. Our religious traditions
celebrate the value of hard work and express the conviction that a virtuous
life will result in material rewards.
Rather than vilify the rich, we hold them up as role models...As Ted
Turner famously said, in America money is how we keep score."

"I wrote all that reactionary nonsense to keep the
capitalist thought police off the trail."

"The result
of this business culture has been a prosperity that's unmatched in human
history. It takes a trip overseas to
fully appreciate just how good Americans have it; even our poor take for
granted goods and services - electricity, clean water, indoor plumbing, telephones,
televisions, and household appliances - that are still unattainable for most of
the world. America may have been
blessed with some of the planet's best real estate, but clearly it's not just
our natural resources that account for our economic success. Our greatest asset has been our system of
social organization, a system that for generations has encouraged constant
innovation, individual initiative and efficient allocation of resources...our
free market system."

Shaking his
head in mock amazement, Obama asked, "is that kissing the ass of the
bourgeoisie or what? I wrote all that reactionary nonsense to keep the
capitalist thought police off the trail and impress the people with the money
and power."

This
comment elicited an understanding pat on the back from Democratic Presidential
candidate Joe Biden, who attended the gathering with a little red book
containing hundreds of quotations from the former Chinese Communist dictator
Mao Tse Tung.

"Refreshing Honesty"

At Biden's
prodding, Obama agreed to read another passage from Audacity, reciting
lines in which he wrote that "there are seeds of anarchy in the idea of
individual freedom, an intoxicating danger in the idea of equality. For if
everybody is truly free, without the constraints of birth or rank and an
inherited social order, how can we ever hope to form a society that coheres?"

"Geez
Barack, Clinton interrupted. "That was a little over the top even for me. We
all know who pays for our campaigns and runs the world - people like Robert Rubin. But you sounded ready to embrace feudalism
there. I mean...what was your opinion of slavery when you wrote that book?"

"You've got
me, Hill," Obama said. "No doubt about it. But remember," the junior senator
from Illinois shot back, "you've been setting the power-serving bar pretty damn
low. I've been trying to get some of
that Bob Rubin money too."

"Point
taken," Clinton responded.

"It's
refreshing to hear this new honesty on the part of my fellow Democratic
presidential candidates and my fellow Marxists," said Dodd

"Working with Capitalist Scumbags"

"'Look at my main political advisor and media guy David
Axlerod,' said Obama. ‘He's a complete corporate pig.'"

Clinton
confessed that a desire to "hide my Marxism" led her to undermine universal
health care by advancing an incomprehensible, neoliberal and corporate-friendly
health care reform package during the early 1990s.

"‘Managed
competition,' we called it - what a terrible and reactionary joke! Our slogan
should have been "All Power to the Big Six Insurance Companies!'"

Fear of
"being outed as a radical socialist" has induced Clinton to oppose elementary
increases in the taxation of privileged households' exorbitant incomes to
bolster the funding of Social Security and to hire Mark Penn as her main
political advisor. Penn runs a
corporate public relations firm that specialize in spin for union-busters,
Shell Oil, and big tobacco companies.

"It makes
it tougher for your guys to detect my Marxism," Hillary told reporters, "when
I'm working with capitalist scumbags like Penn."

"I know
just what Hillary means," Obama chimed in.
"I mean look at my main political advisor and media guy David Axlerod.
He's a complete corporate pig. Talk about you're ‘running dog lackeys of the
ruling class.' For him, it's all about making me look like I'm a progressive
friend of ordinary working people when I've really been working for Exelon and
Goldman Sachs - nice big money folks like that. A lot of the reporters here
probably know that I was the first presidential candidate to officially support
the extension of NAFTA to Peru, for crying out loud. Yeah, I've been a real
friend of the working class! Senator Clinton and I have hardly raised $170
million between us just by calling up Joe and Jane Six Pack and relying on
the Internet."

More Than "Just Bribery"

Reading
Obama's book reminded Dodd of "something else Marx wrote in 1848": "the ideas
of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." "It's just like Marx wrote in The German
Ideology," Dodd argued: "‘the class which is the ruling material force in
society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. That class which has the means of material
production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of
mental production.'"

"Marx
wasn't just talking about politicians like us," Dodd told an astonished press
corps. "He was also talking about you
folks - the capitalist media."

"Right on,
Chris," said Biden.

Dodd told
reporters not to exaggerate the extent to which the actions and statements of
politicians can be reduced simply to bribery - to the power of those with money
to purchase the loyalty of candidates and policymakers. He advised journalists
to "function as critical thinkers" and "pay attention to the complex, partly
autonomous and interesting cultural and ideological processes and dynamics
whereby moral and ideological hegemony is attained and maintained by and for
dominant classes."

"The Power of the People"

"Let
us proceed to build the new socialist order!"

"Look, theoretical debate is great," Edwards interjected,
"but let's move on. Here's the bottom line, people: the big capitalist sell out
and the ‘hegemony' are all over now.
We're sweeping all that into the dustbin of history. We can finally
talk about who we really are. Let us
proceed to build the new socialist order, starting right here in eye of the
damn imperialist hurricane. Power to the people!"

"Right on, John, you steely-eyed son of the proletariat,"
said Hillary Clinton. She grabbed a bullhorn
and led the Democratic presidential field in a number of chants, including the
following:

"Fight the
rich, not their wars."

"Ain't no
power like the power of the people and the power of the people don't stop."

"No blood
for oil."

"One, two,
three, four, we don't want this racist war"

"Hands off
Iraq, hands off Iran."

Only one of
30 assembled reporters joined in the chanting.

"I am Their Kronstadt Rebellion"

But it
wasn't all just self-congratulation and team-spirit on the high school stage in
Des Moines. The self-declared "Spartacist" Joe Biden and Dodd (a "Frankfurt
School" enthusiast) conducted a vituperative debate over how to interpret the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Edwards was overheard dismissing Clinton as
"Bukharinist" and referring to Dodd as "a petit-bourgeois intellectual."

Dennis
Kucinich arrived late to question "just how much of an ideological change the
top Democrats were really making" in announcing their shift "from authoritarian
neo-corporate liberalism to authoritarian neo-Marxism-Leninism."

Kucinich
told reporters that he is "a left-Marxist in the Rosa Luxembourg tradition" and
that he is also influenced by "left-anarchist" thinkers like Bakunin, Rudolph
Rocker, and Noam Chomsky.

"I'm not
sure there's all that much difference between the old Democrats and their new
‘Marxist' packaging," Kucinich said. "I am their one man Krondstadt Rebellion,"
Kucinich added, telling reporters to "read your Soviet history."

"We'll Deal with It"

The
politically influential Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs, a leading
contributor to all of the leading Democratic presidential hopefuls, offered no
comment on how the bombshell Marxist disclosure will affect the Democratic
Party's recently attained advantage in raising campaign money from corporate
America. But an anonymous Goldman Sachs
insider dismissed Mitt Romney's recent charge that the firm has fallen under
the control of "the international financial and communist conspiracy." "I guess he forgot to add in ‘Jewish,'" this
source said.

The
nameless Wall Street insider added that "global investors seem happy enough to
do business with a giant nation that still sometimes likes to call itself
‘Marxist' - the so-called ‘people's republic of China.'"

"Maybe it's
time for the United States to come under some nominally ‘Marxist'
leadership. If that's what happens,
it's just like Hillary said: we'll deal with it."

Paul Street is a writer, speaker, activist, and
satirist based in Iowa City, IA and Chicago, IL. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the
World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm); Racial Oppression in the
Global MetropolisSegregated
Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post-Civil Rights America (New York:
Routledge, 2005. Paul can be reached at paulstreet99@yahoo.com.

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