‘Change’ and Marxism

Occupy Wall Street is an un-American movement generated by an un-American depiction of our country. In 2008, the leaders of the Democratic Party painted the United States as a “decaying, racist, capitalist realm,” unable to provide medical care for the poor, to rebuild her “crumbling schools,” or to replace the “shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race.”

A young generation of Americans, who had never been taught real history in school, became galvanized by the Democratic Party’s pledge to “change” that rotting America. Some eighty thousand of them gathered in front of the now famous pseudo-Greek temple resembling the White House that had been erected in Denver, shouting for “hope and change.”

Of course, people everywhere want their political leaders to be better than their predecessors. But “change” is also the quintessence of Marxism, which is built on the dialectical materialist tenet that quantitative changes generate qualitative transformations.

In my other life, when I was national security adviser to Communist Romania’s President Nicolae Ceausescu, I wrote the lyrics of his ode to “change.” Ceausescu pretended that his predecessor had devastated the country, and he pledged to change that change. In those days I heard that ode to change a thousand times, and today I am stunned by its similarity with the Democratic Party’s “change.”

“Change” is now the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement as well. Capitalism is evil, and it should be changed. “Rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.” “Tax the rich! Redistribute their wealth.” “Occupy. Block. Strike. Take over!” “Change! Cuba is the future.” “Long live Che!” These are just a few of the slogans and signs dominating the Occupy Wall Street encampments.

Today it is not politically correct even to whisper the word Marxism. Nevertheless, there is a real and organic connection between Marxism, the Democratic Party’s “Change,” and the Occupy Wall Street movement’s calls for abolishing (American) capitalism. In his Manifesto, Marx portrays “America” as a “racist capitalist country” that generated “despotism and exploitation,” and he urges his followers to “eradicate [American] capitalism” by wresting “by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie.” Marx advocates ten “despotic inroads on the rights of property,” which became known as the Ten Planks of Communism. The first is the “abolition of property.” The next two are a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax,” and the “abolition of all rights of inheritance.”

The United States spent too many years fighting Marxism, and its free population of independent entrepreneurs will never succumb to that heresy. Be that as it may, Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party has endured to turn 162 years old this year, and the remaining Marxists of the world seem to be clamoring to see their fantasy finally come to pass: the eradication of American capitalism.

On October 6, 2011, in a broadcast in English, the Cuban radio station that calls itself “A Friendly Voice Around the World” announced that the Workers World Party (WWP) had decided to join the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations “against the capitalist system and in favor of a socialist future.” Radio Havana also reported that a WWP conference to be held on October 8 and 9 in the Bronx in New York City would debate, “from a Marxist perspective,” America’s current economic crisis and its “fight against racism and imperialist wars.”

On October 10, people carrying Workers World Party signs calling for the “Destruction of Capitalism” joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. “Behead bankers and the rich who won’t give up wealth,” a demonstrator stated. “Immediate across-the board debt forgiveness for all,” others demand. They also want a guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment, along with a minimum wage of twenty dollars per hour — for now.

The WWP is a Marxist party that was financed by the Soviet KGB during the days when I was at the top of its community. The KGB created the WWP in 1957, with the initial task of helping the Kremlin to generate a favorable impression of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary among the trade unions and the “colored” population of the United States. In 1959, the WWP got its own newspaper, Workers World, edited by the KGB’s disinformation department and at one time printed in Romania. To camouflage Moscow’s hand, the early issues showed both Lenin and Trotsky holding up a banner saying, “Colored and White Unite and Fight for a WORKERS WORLD.”

The WWP website now states: “We’re independent Marxists” whose “goal is solidarity of all the workers and oppressed against this criminal imperialist system.”

Currently, the WWP has a national office in New York and 18 regional headquarters across the United States, the addresses of which are posted on the internet. Now the WWP represents itself as a “national Marxist-Leninist party promoting socialism, supporting working class struggles and lesbian/gay/bi/trans liberation, organizing protests, and denouncing racism and sexism.”

On October 11, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) held a national teleconference to discuss the “Occupy” movements, and also to endorse them: “The movement reflects a new level of class-consciousness.” According to its communiqué, the CPUSA and Young Communist League (YCL) began “working in ‘Occupy Los Angeles.'”

“The bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means,” a CPUSA speaker shouted at an Occupy Los Angeles demonstration. “No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution and Indian so-called Revolution. … India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty. … Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us. French Revolution made fundamental revolutions. But it was bloody. … Long live Revolution! Long live socialism!”

Marxist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, still recovering from surgery, recently addressed the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators via Venezuela state TV. “This movement of popular outrage” is growing because “poverty’s growing, the misery is getting worse,” he said, referring to the causes of the U.S. protests. In response, crowds at the New York Occupy Wall Street encampments erupted in cheers of joy, raising a giant hammer and sickle in sign of victory. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking on state TV, predicted that the Occupy Wall Street movement would ultimately grow “so that it will bring down the capitalist system.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi seems to agree. “God bless them,” she said about the Occupy Wall Street movement. “It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.” Representative Barney Frank, minority leader of the House’s Financial Services Committee, welcomed “the Wall Street energy,” and expressed hope that it would be “translated into political activity.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka congratulated the Occupy Wall Street protestors in New York, bringing them bagels and water. The Service Employees International Union and the Transport Workers Union joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as well.

Former White House “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, who resigned after it was revealed that he belonged to the U.S. Communist Party, also announced his support for Occupy Wall Street, which he believes is the start of an “American Autumn.”

Vice President Biden also endorsed the chaotic Occupy Wall Street demonstrations: “The core is the American people do not think the system is fair.” Even the U.S. president stated that the protesters “express the frustration of the American people.”

I paid with two death sentences — from my native Romania — for the privilege of becoming a citizen of this unique land of opportunity, and I am incredibly proud to be an American.

On that fateful day of July 28, 1978, when the U.S. military airplane that brought me to freedom landed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., I was exactly three months short of the round age of fifty, and I more than ever regretted that I had kept postponing that step for so many years. The joy of finally becoming part of this magnanimous country was surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive.

On November 9, 1989, when I watched on television as the Berlin Wall was being torn down, my eyes were full of tears. The whole world was expressing its gratitude to the United States for her 45 years of successful efforts to keep freedom, democracy, and law-abiding liberty alive in most of the world.

Is my adoptive country perfect? Of course not. Since 1792, however, elections have been the American way of correcting the past and improving the future. Fortunately, we still have free elections. Last November, an overwhelming majority of Americans expressed their disgust with some of the members of the Congress who wanted to “change” America, and they voted them out of office.

Let’s hope that in November 2012 the voters will restore American exceptionalism. For that to happen, let’s also hope that the candidates running for the White House will stop fighting with each other, and will start focusing on how they want to cure the country’s current economic and political ills.