Just in time for Halloween, a little post on what seems to scare Americans (or at least, Palin’s brand of “Real Americans”) most: Socialism and Marxism.

*SHUDDER!*

No, really. Okay. A couple quick points.

  • I haven’t read Das Kapital, but I have wanted to rather badly for the past six months. But I’d like to quote the author of Das Kapital: a Biography, Francis Wheen: “(A wall street banker to a friend of his): Oh, yes, we all read (Marx) on Wall Street.  No one understood Capitalism better.”
  • Marx was deeply conflicted, in his work, because on one hand he was describing that Capitalism was more powerful than any other system in the world, and knew it wouldn’t go away completely, but his books seem to be his wishful thinking that it would. (i.e. even Marx found Marx to be a little over dramatic.)
  • News Flash: Marx wasn’t a “Marxist” in the sense that most people mean it. From Russia to Albania, his work has been “reinterpreted” (i.e. totally ignored except for the revolution parts).
  • Marx’s own motto was – hmm, similar to Buddha – “Question Everything.”
  • Rand totally destroys socialism/Marxism in its purest form in a parable in Atlas Shrugged.  But AS is itself a parable about Capitalism in its purest form, and I could tear that down in five minutes.  Writing silly stories about PURE political systems is irrelevant, and I wonder why only the Repugs can get away with it — or at least, are the only ones who are taken seriously; when I hear some smelly guy with a duct tape wallet in a coffee shop ranting about Scary Capitalism, he makes me want to slap him, not attend his rallies…

Having more than a passing interest in Marx and/or Socialism is not a crime.  And frankly, someone who knows a lot about a system that – YES, in its purest form does not work – but is the diametric opposite of the the system that we are in, THAT IS COLLAPSING RIGHT NOW AS WE BLOG, would be a fan-freaking-tastic asset to have in our government, let alone in the White House.

All right, I’m gonna hit “Publish” now and wait for Michelle Bachman’s Anti-American Evil-Doer Finding Squad to come get me…

More on Marx here.