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Thomas Piketty seems to be the darling of 21st century intellectuals as Ortega y Gasset was of the 20th century. His masterly researched and written magnum opus Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been touted by both the European and the American left, and it is essentially Marx 2.0, or one might say Marx for the 21st Century. He showcases his erudition throughout the text, and one should note that his tone is not radical or revolutionary, but rather composed, intellectual and academic. He comes to us as the scholar, the professor, not the angry radical with his fist in the air, but one should not be seduced by his cerebral and congenial manner, as his ideas and sentiments are as pestilential as Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and others of their ilk.

His aims are, among others, global registry of financial assets, global coordination of wealth taxation, and progressive wealth tax rates. One in The United States of America and in the West should be as concerned of this as others seem to be of Islamism and Sharia, and one might label his oeuvre Creeping Socialism. All elements of privacy would be eradicated in Pikettys dystopia (though he would term it a Utopia, I am sure), and the spirit of collectivism would triumph over the spirit of rugged individualism that we so cherish. Americans should always be on guard against the type of phrases that he uses such as the common good, the general interest and of course the oft-used the people, as all are precursors of Socialism. He notes, A tax on capital would promote the general interest over private interests while preserving economic openness and the forces of competition. (Piketty, 471) It should be stated that Frances 75% wealth tax that Piketty gushes over was a complete and abysmal failure and had to be rescinded, as the wealthy, the professional, and the accomplished French fled to Russia (Gerard Depardieu), the U.K. Belgium and Switzerland, among others. This same scenario played out here in America when California raised its taxes. The wealthy and accomplished hightailed it for Nevada, Texas and Florida.

Socialists and progressives seem to thrive in what The Great One at Yale Harold Bloom termed The School of Resentment though he meant it in a Literary sense against those who have attacked great works of Art based upon gender, race and class, but let us leave Literary matters aside and return to Piketty. One can well imagine Piketty, Cornell West, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders standing on a street corner together, having a cup of coffee, complaining about Trumps latest vulgar tweet, when a gleaming Ferrari pulls up to the light. Undoubtedly, they would resent the selfish capitalist showing off his wealth in such an ostentatious way and mention the struggle of working people and so on and so forth. Yet is not the spirit of America, the spirit of capitalism, to see that car and say Wow - how did this person attain that sense of success and how can I achieve it too? Maybe they could offer some economic-advice? The difference is that the Socialist resents whereas the Capitalist aspires, and is not economic aspiration in our blood as Americans? Did not our ancestors flee the class-based stratified societies of the Old World to seek economic opportunity - to go from being the help to having help - to go from toiling on the land as a serf to being the landowner - to go from paying rent to collecting rent? Sam Zell, the successful American capitalist, commented accurately that the 1% should be emulated, not resented, and I could not agree more.

If one studies the Cultural Revolution in China, one sees that the enemies of the Chinese communists were intellectuals, individual exceptionalism, rich farmers, rich landowners and private business interests. I remember when studying this thinking to myself that I aspired to be everything that the Chinese Communists and Piketty resent and despise. To read voraciously in my spare time so as to rival the intellectual habits of Oxford dons, to train maniacally in the gymnasia to attain physical exceptionalism that equals an ancient Greek sculpture, to one day own land as a landlord and/or farmer and to have private business interests. And I strongly believe that all Americans, and all men/women, should at least have some of these aims, be it to think for oneself not as part of a collectivist herd, to be an independent farmer like Jefferson or Thoreau, to be a rich landlord like Trump (even though you may not like him personally or approve of his political persuasions), or to be a rich investor like Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger. For to be rich is to be free. Munger himself comments, Like Warren (Buffett, not Elizabeth) I had a considerable passion to get rich. Not because I wanted Ferraris - I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it. (Lowenstein, 75)

One should note however that the sentiments of Piketty, Warren and Sanders are not novel as this spirit of resentment is referenced by Napoleon Hill in his seminal Think and Grow Rich where he states, For more than twenty years it has been a somewhat popular and growing pastime for radicals, self-seeking politicians, racketeers, crooked labor leaders, and on occasion religious leaders, to take pot-shots at Wall Street, The Money-Changers, and Big Business. The practice became so general that we witnessed during the business depression, the unbelievable sight of high government officials lining up with the cheap politicians, and labor leaders, with the openly avowed purpose of throttling the system which has made Industrial America the richest country on Earth. (Hill, 60) Was he describing 1937 or 2017 ?

As America moves forward into the the 21st century it would seem obvious that we are going to face many threats with perhaps the top three being The Rise of China, Creeping Sharia (Islamism in general), and Creeping Socialism and while the first two will likely be more problematic, one should not discount the threat of Piketty and other academics/politicians who come not with all the Gold of Asia, with dirty nukes, but rather with a smile, a friendly mien, clutching Marx under one arm and Lenin under the other.

-Pietros Maneos, The American Capitalist,

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Against Thomas Piketty & Creeping Socialism - HuffPost

If immigrants ultimately voted mostly Republican, the Republican Party would be defending illegal immigration and Democrats would be demanding a wall and threatening sanctuary cities.

With this example of blatant hypocrisy and its implications in mind, we can frame a question: Why do we have a health system? We dont have a food system and people would die without food. We have mostly a free market for food, and the major health issue of the poor is not lack of food but obesity.

We have a health system because of the desire to create a socialist paradise and the demand of some incumbents to stay in office and consolidate as much power as possible irrespective of the outcome of the means.

We have a health system because of the constant propaganda and education of almost three generations of Americans that health is somehow different from all other life events and must be protected by a socialist state.

Many Americans still recoil at the idea, and so our elites keep coming up with health schemes that are bastardized bureaucratic nightmares so bad we can only assume they were designed to fail.

The major problem with health care in America is misplaced insurance. Surprised? Think about it. The elites solution: Nationalize health insurance and tie it up with hundreds of pages of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.

This is like solving the problem of young boys throwing rocks at windows by making sure they have smoother rocks.

There are only two solutions to health care. 1) Socialize it, or 2) reduce government interference and turn it into a free market.

A socialized health system would create the largest bureaucracy on the planet. Keep in mind bureaucracies do process, they do not do outcomes.

Consider some basic realities. Those who can pay have the power to choose. In a free market that is you. In socialized systems, that is not you. Why would a person want an unnamed bureaucrat leafing through thousands of pages of regulations making decisions that influence your well being and maybe even your life?

Where are the feminists on this issue? They have demanded control over their own bodies. In a one-payer system, you have no ultimate control over your body. You control nothing except who you vote for, and as recent history has shown that changes almost nothing.

In a free market a person has control over what happens to their own bodies when they pay the bills, not when insurance is paid for by your employer and especially not when it is paid for by a faceless government bureaucrat.

The cost of health care is now outrageously expensive, mostly because patients have been led to believe someone else is paying the bills. Obamacare and the Republican plan simply compound this misperception and rachet up the cost.

In a one-payer system, it appears no one pays the cost directly, even though the cost will bankrupt the nation in the long run. The immediate cost will literally be taken out of our bodies, and on this July 4th weekend, out of our freedom to choose.

Dennis Clayson is a marketing professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Socialism and GOP health bill - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Marxism appeared to have suffered a knockout with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989. It looked at the time like the postscript to Ronald Reagans long struggle against Communism, the struggle Peter Schweizer called Reagans War.

Now in what seems like the blink of an eye, Bernie Sanders has somehow become the most popular politician in the United States. By contrast with Reagan, here is a guy who has deeply felt what Vivian Gornick called The Romance of Communism. As we all have learned, Sanders merged the personal and the political when he spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. No honeymoon in Vegas for the class warrior from Burlington by way of Brooklyn.

In a recent column of great interest Joel Kotkin purported to explain Why socialism is back. Kotkin seemed to offer some political advice along with his explanation. These [leftist] economic positions could gain a majority, Kotkin counseled, but not if the progressives maintain their polarizing embrace of the most radical aspects of social identity and environmental policy.

The lefts identity politics replicates Marxist class struggle with racial categories. The lefts environmental policy serves up the rationale for state control of the means of production. They are both extensions of what the late Harry Jaffa the long arm of socialism. Kotkin advice to the contrary notwithstanding, they arent going anywhere. Kotkin to the contrary notwithstanding, under Democratic rule we are destined to get the full catastrophe good and hard.

The late Harry Jaffa cogently warned that the socialist temptation would survive the fall of the Soviet Union. If anything, the fall of the Soviet Union would enhance its appeal. The defeat of communism in the USSR and its satellite empires by no means assures its defeat in the world, Jaffa argued. Indeed, the release of the West from its conflict with the East emancipates utopian communism at home from the suspicion of it affinity with an external enemy. The struggle for the preservation of western civilization has entered a newand perhaps far more deadly and dangerousphase.

And here we are. Kotkin raises the question for the current popularity of of socialism or socialist remedies.

Socialism has certain permanent advantages over freedom. It preys on such enduring features of our character as ignorance and envy. See, for example, Publius in Federalist 10.

But what is behind the resurgence now? According to Kotkin, The primary driver is the global ascendency of neo-liberal capitalism, which in virtually all countries has accelerated inequality.

Americans, however, have rarely begrudged our fellow citizens their success so long as we have had something like an equal opportunity to achieve it. It seems to me that current barriers to opportunity have much more to do with the resurgence of the appeal of socialist bromides than what Kotkin calls neo-liberal capitalism except insofar as neo-liberal capitalism has erected such barriers.

Reaganite policies fostered the fantastic economic growth of its era. Reagan prevailed politically before the fall of the Soviet Union with the great economic growth that his policies fostered. We can achieve such economic growth again if we can lighten the governments heavy hand and continue to press the case for freedom against the claims urged on behalf of the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.

NOTE: For much more on Jaffas contribution on the point above, see a certain new book by our own Steven Hayward.

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The socialist temptation - Power Line (blog)

Marxist professors, including some of recent notoriety, are preparing for the upcoming Socialism 2017 conference, where they will strategize to build the left and fight the right.

More than 1,500 professors, students, and left-wing activists from around the country are expected to gather in Chicago from July 6-9 in hopes of fighting injustice and oppression while resisting the political system that spawned Trump.

"It is ironic for professors to claim to support socialism and academic freedom and free speech."

[RELATED: Prof: To save American democracy, Trump must hang]

The four-day event will feature more than 100 meetings addressing topics such as misogyny, Islamophobia, immigration, racism, and much more from a socialist perspective.

A workshop called How Capitalism Works and How It Doesnt, for instance, will make the case that because capitalism is a system based on incessant accumulation based upon the exploitation of wage labor, it also therefore contains within it the seeds of its own demise.

Other offerings include Mapping the Enemy: What Is the Alt-Right?, Marxism and Cultural Appropriation, Strategies for Anti-Capitalists, and Shut it Down? How to Fight the Right.

[RELATED: Leftist Fight Club trains UCF students to fight Republicans]

Many of the lectures, including the opening plenary, will be delivered by university professors, some of whom have become the subject of recent controversies related to inflammatory political remarks.

Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor will keynote the opening day of the conference with an address about Fighting Racism in Trumps America, during which she will deliver a speech that she had previously cancelled amidst backlash for comments she made about Donald Trump.

Speaking at Hampshire Colleges graduation ceremony in May, Taylor told graduating seniors that President Trump is a racist, sexist megalomaniac. Fox News subsequently picked up the story from Campus Reform, after which Taylor claims that she received more than 50 hateful, and sometimes threatening, emails that prompted her to cancel two previously-scheduled speaking engagements.

[RELATED: Prof tells grads Trump is a racist, sexist megalomaniac]

Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud will also be on hand to address a meeting sponsored by The Socialist Worker on the topic of Lies, Damn Lies, and Fake News, during which she will discuss the new presidents obvious disdain for the truth, which she believes has made right-wing outlets treat the credibility of government spokespersons with greater skepticism in their quest to do whatever they can to fuel the rights agenda.

Cloud came under fire earlier this month for a tweet that she sent out during a local March Against Sharia in Syracuse, which she counter-protested along with masked antifa demonstrators. As the tense standoff began to wind down, Cloud boasted that we almost have the fascists in[sic] on the run while calling for Syracuse people to come down to the federal building to finish them off.

Cloud has denied that her tweet was intended to incite violence against the conservative demonstrators, but the organizer of the march countered that from her perspective, it was clear that Cloud was trying to shut down free speech and incite violence against us.

[RELATED: Protest leader insists Syracuse prof was inciting violence]

Turning Point USA spokesperson Matt Lamb told Campus Reform that he finds it ironic for professors to claim to support socialism and academic freedom and free speech, pointing out that socialist nations such as North Korea and Venezuela are notorious for denying their citizens even basic freedoms while simultaneously impoverishing them through misguided government policies.

The government cannot be trusted to redistribute goods and services, Lamb remarked. This is why Venezuelans have to eat pigeons and dogs.

[RELATED: UMass courses promote resistance to capitalism, patriarchy]

Professor Paul Le Blanca longtime social justice activist from La Roche College who will be speaking at a Socialism 2017 workshop called Imagine: Living in a Socialist USAresponded to Lambs argument by contending that North Korea and Venezuela are not true models of socialism because they are subject to elitist rule, and thus are not an accurate indication of what socialism would look like in the USA.

Le Blanc told Campus Reform that he believes the U.S. could achieve socialism through a mass social movement that would be politically independent of any pro-capitalist politicians, even going so far as to suggest that socialism could arise through a Third American Revolution.

That won't be easy, he acknowledged, but we believe it is worth the effort.

Conference organizers are particularly invested in attracting college studentsto the event,encouraging them to plaster their campuses with posters and brochures promoting Socialism 2017 and offering a 50 percent discount on registration fees.

Campus Reformreached out to request comment from professors Cloudand Taylor, as well as the organizers of Socialism 2017, butno responses were forthcoming.

Follow Campus Reform on Twitter: @CampusReform

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Profs gather to 'fight the right' at Socialism 2017 conference - Campus Reform

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Presidium of the Second Northern Oblast Congress of Soviets, 1 August 1918. Seated: Uritskii, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, and Lashevich. Standing: Kharitonov, Lisovskii, Korsak, Voskov, Gusev, Ravich, Bakaev, and Kuzmin. St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. (The Bolsheviks in Power, p. 325)

This article will be made available online on August 7.

Russell was both a liberal and a socialist, a combination perfectly comprehensible in his time, but almost unthinkable today. As a liberal, he opposed concentrations of power in all its military, governmental, and religious manifestations. But as a socialist, he equally opposed the concentrations of power stemming from the private ownership of the means of production, which therefore had to be put under social control.|more

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Bertrand Russell and the Socialism That Wasn't - Monthly Review