Calling Kamala Harris a “Communist” is Just Plain Dumb

“You Can’t even take a bath these days without 4 or 5 Communists jumping in the tub with you!” — Monty Python-

Donald Trump’s campaign has reached the silly stage. Although, given that it started at the meshugganah stage, you could argue that this is an improvement.

Fo weeks, Trump has unsuccessfully argued that people shouldn’t vote for the Vice President because her name sounds funny or because she had the gall to claim to be both Indian and black simply because she is Indian and black.

Shockingly the American people were not moved by such compelling arguments. So now, the GOP feels obliged to dig deep into the vault and pull out old Joe McCarthy’s biggest hit. “She’s a COMMUNIST!”.

In fairness, Republicans have recently called anyone they disagree with on the left…ALL those on the left, as “Communists”.

The “Left” includes liberals, progressives, moderate Republicans, climate-change believers, science followers, people living in Vermont, people living in most other states, those who own “their pillow” as opposed to “My Pillow”, as well as those who don’t believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump by an unholy alliance of George Soros, Lady Gaga, a bunch of Republican Secretaries of State and the angry corpse of Hugo Chavez.

In press releases, congressional hearings, speeches at CPAC and tweets to numerous to count, actual Republican elected officials are saying that those who don’t agree with even their most unhinged conspiracy theories are the direct disciples of Karl Marx, Frederich Engels and John Lennon (that’s who they think it is. Trust me). We’ve seen this not only from Donald Trump and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Q (who is Posh Spice, I just know it!), but from allegedly sane Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz (I said “ALLEGEDLY”!!).

Sometimes Republicans say other words like “Socialism” and “Collectivism”. And while Socialism is totally different from Communism, those using the terms usually don’t know the difference, and more importantly, they don’t want their listeners to think there is a difference.

That’s why even when they use the softer term, they’ll often follow-it up with some variation on “So you tell the Democrats we don’t want to be like Fidel Castro or Che Guevera’’. Again, they don’t think their base knows who Che Guevera is. But his name is foreign and exotic, and if you link him with other historically problematic figures, it does the trick.

The problem is that with each “Commie” tweet, Trump and his cultists are revealing how little they know and how intellectually lazy they are. While Democratic and progressive politicians have our faults, we are, in no sense of the term Communists.

On the contrary, all the Republican red-baiting shows that they have no idea what Communism actually is. So here, dear right-wing friends, is a brief primer on Communism. And if you feel compelled to thank me, I take a size 14 in cowboy boots.

As I used to say when I was younger about my dating life, and even before that about the location of my homework, “it’s complicated”. There are different branches of Communism and different schools of thought within each. But to keep it simple, Communism is a set of related theories about politics and economics. Basically Communism has a couple of defining characteristic in each of these areas:

Economics — Economically, Communism believes two things. First and most importantly, there is no private ownership of the means of production. In other words, all of the factories, stores, warehouses, etc., are owned by the workers (represented by the state) not by individuals or corporations. This is supposed to prevent the evolution of a wealthy owner class that lives better than and exploits the workers. This class is known as the bourgeoisie.

Second, since wages are not set by those with an incentive to keep them low so they can get richer, they can theoretically be set at a rate that allows the workers to live a life equal to his or her fellow citizens. This is represented in the Marxist slogan “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Clever. Although it doesn’t rhyme. These things are so much better when they rhyme.

So, let’s compare the economic policies of modern American liberals with these Communist doctrines. Has Kamala Harris, or any other single, well-known, American politician called for eliminating all private ownership of business in America? No. No there isn’t.

I have never seen Kamala speak at a rally calling for replacing “Macy’s” department store with “Mother Nation Provide Many White Blouses” department store. Even Bernie Sanders has not called for replacing “Pizza Hut” with “Glorious State Red Goop on Dough…Hut”. This major, indispensable tenet of Communism simply does not exist in America.

Nor does the concept of an identical income for all citizens appear in any plank of the Democratic platform. We know this because about a third of America lacks the income for even some basics of life. I think it’s fair to say that Jeff Bezos is earning more than “his needs”. Unless his “needs” include a private space force and owning a number of continents around the planet

Sure, the left calls for higher taxes on the wealthy and an increase in the minimum wage. If both of these were enacted in their most aggressive main-stream form, they would address about .00003% of income inequality in America. Nobody is calling for putting Bezos on a state salary of $60,000 per year plus the use of a communal butter-churner.

And this goes to a bigger point. The minimum wage, health care subsidies, food stamps, all of the things that make up our paltry social-safety net are NOT COMMUNISM. In fact, Communists hate these things and in many cases despise liberals and their (in their view) sad half-measures more than they hate the capitalist robber-barons. I know this because there were some actual Communists at my college and I would argue with them all the time from the liberal perspective. This, along with my personality, made it so I was hardly ever invited to parties.

How about…

Politics — Communism does not believe in a pluralistic, liberal democracy. They believe in something very different and very specific. They call for a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” by which they mean the working class, as represented by the Communist Party (historically, this generally turns out to be the guys with the most guns). Democracy is bad because the people may choose to reinstate policies favorable to the dreaded bourgeoisie.

Again, let’s compare. Are there progressive leaders who are calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat, or a bar on political participation to those who favor the bourgeoisie?

On the contrary, most Democratic politicians spend a great deal of time calling, sucking-up to and eating mushroom quiches with the bourgeoisie. I was the most liberal member of the Pennsylvania Senate for much of the time I was there. But I certainly spent a lot of time at the homes of the bourgeoisie. In fact, there were times the bourgeoisie felt that I overstayed my welcome and threatened to call armed servants of the bourgeoisie to remove my ass from the property.

Ironically, if one thinks about it…is there a political party that is hostile to basic democratic institutions and aggressively trying to stop those who don’t agree with them from participating in the political process? Admittedly, most voter suppression is not quite sending people to gulags. But can we be sure that’s not on Stephen Miller’s bucket list?

The bottom line is that there is absolutely nothing about Kamala Harris that in any way resembles Communism. That’s just a word that the right uses to scare people who have never read Marx, have no actual idea of what Communism really is, and would likely benefit substantially from the improvements to our capitalistic society that the left is proposing.