Red Thought

CB: Well said /// On Oct 3, 2021, at 5:29 PM, Peggy D wrote: 

Know well, young friends, what we have just experienced: the effective pernicious pervasiveness of red baiting to nip in the bud any sniff of reparation for the damages wrought by, excused by, and disguised by the progress wrought simultaneously, as the pursuit of maximum R.O.I. [Return On Invested] capital unleashes the productivity of industrializing [and now digitizing] labor.

Red Summer was called red and happened when it did because red stood for communist and a party called Communist had defeated the Czar and withdrawn from what their sympathizers and followers around the world, hoped was the war to end all wars.

The fear of red + black = The promise of socializing capital. Socialism is a belief that humans need to socialize capital.

Capital is socialized when a State (defined as laws and the means to enforce them) is subject to the Dictates (defined as legislation enacted by representatives elected by, ie dictated to by) the Proletariat, (defined as humans who have nothing to sell but their labor power).

There was a time when people understood the logic and language that equated majority rule democracy with the dictatorship of the proletariat. (of course that was before there were more people sleeping on the street and in prison than selling their labor power for enough to reproduce it, enough money to keep their skills up to date and their kids likely to do as well)

Socialists do tax, ie 'take from,' the rich to spend for the poor. They move "money" ie capital from where it piles up to where it is needed.

I wasn't around when the term "communist" was fashionable in Marx and Engels circles. Nowadays The word "communist" is sort of like the word "christian when christians were revolutionary visionaries, willing to get thrown to the lions to sustain our faith in heaven on earth, that the arc of history bends toward justice, but we don't expect to reach it in our lifetimes anymore than Moses or Dr. King did.

A communist, at least one like me, hopes to see a little more socialism while we're here.

And we recognize that in the US of A this requires a lot more support for taxing the piles of money (aka capital) accumulations of bits (interest, fees etc) subtracted from jillions of monetary transactions to facilitate exchanges of different forms and amounts of labor.

Socialization of capital is taxing capital, taking from where bigger and bigger piles end up in fewer and fewer hands when capital is not regulated by the state; ie when the laws are not enforced to ensure that enough is taken from the top to prevent the top heavy calamities that recur if money (tokens or PayPal clicks) isn't reallocated to sustain and advance the productive, creative, life enhancing, humanity reproducing force of human labor.

Labor, defined as time spent doing what another wants to earn the means [money] to get what one wants from yet another(s). A shorter, more gross definition of labor might be "bossed time for pay."

Bottom line, wealth is the monetized difference between world average labor time added and world average labor time consumed by the labor[ers] who add it. M(WALT A - WALT C)

Marx, at least the English translators I read, called that difference (which I like to call the common wealth') 'Surplus Value.' And Marx used the term "necessary labor value" instead of WALT A, and instead of WALT C, thus "necessary labor value" was read two different but interdependent ways which have confused many students of Marx, including members of the CPUSA with PhDs in economics who have read more pages of Marx than I and never asked me to be on the Economic Commission.

Finally, speaking as a active member of the CPUSA from Reagan's inauguration (Jan 1981) until the Atlanta Olympics (Aug 1996), of the CLP before that, and as a white adjunct of BWC before that(back to 1974), it is my opinion that whatever the current line of the CPUSA is, it is more cautious and conservative than any of you at your most daring. The PW is published by the group proud to use the term "communist" continuously and longest in the US. But the CPUSA is not the only group in the US who claim to be communist, and the CPUSA is definitely not the only group that will be called communist by those who fear justice, those who most oppose reparation.

I myself will never resign from the CPUSA, never knowingly act to undermine it, nor let it be undermined in my presence. For me, being afraid to be associated with any group labeled "communist" is equivalent to being afraid of being associated with any group labeled "N- - - -r lovers," or for that matter "jew lovers" "fa… or dik.. lovers,"

chu ..k or ch…nk, or sickos, . . .any stereotyped scapegoated group about which whoever the divider is talking to, knows too little to know they're being denied help from.

What I am careful about and appreciate discipline to prevent is alerting those unwilling to be taxed what is needed to repair the damage done since Reagan so they set their fascists agents to destroy those more vulnerable than I. I learned, initially to my surprise in Alabama, that Black Jesus preachers, whose actions are progressive, understand the whites they can trust will be called communist and some will call themselves that; and the whites they shouldn't trust will make them offers they can't refuse. They have to find a way to not refuse but stay the course .

peggy