PrintMarch 30, 2010
ObamaCare and the Forces of History
Democrats describe the passage of the new health care legislation as "historic." Last week, for instance, President Obama said, "In just a few days, a century-long struggle will culminate in an historic vote." In her remarks just prior to the vote on the health care bill, Nancy Pelosi likewise stated that, at last, "We had come to this historic moment."
On the surface, a discussion of the historical significance of national health care seems innocuous. When something that has never happened before happens, it can certainly be described as "historic." However, the word "historic" means something quite different in the Marxist lexicon. It signifies the beginning of the socialist revolution.
Far from being a mere economic system, Marxism is an all-encompassing theory of history and a prophecy of the future. In other words, according to Marxism, everything that has happened in the past, that is happening now, and that happens in the future is part of a predetermined and unstoppable "historical process" driven by the impersonal forces of history.
The Marxist theory states that the history of the world is a history of class struggle. As such, there has always been an oppressor class and an oppressed class who are in constant conflict. In Roman times, for instance, there were freemen and slaves. In the Middle Ages, there were lords and serfs. This oppression was based purely upon economics, meaning that the class in charge of the means of production oppressed the class that was not.
In our current time period, Marxists believe that the capitalist class (the "bourgeoisie") uses its economic power to exploit and oppress wage laborer class (the "proletariat"). The Marxist prophecy, however, places a special significance on the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as it is regarded as the final class struggle. Why? Because after capitalism comes communism.
Under communism, Marxism preaches that private ownership of property will be abolished. Since oppression is possible only because of economic exploitation, the inability of anyone to acquire economic wealth will prevent the formation of an oppressor class. Thus, the historical cycle of class warfare will be broken, and in its place, a Utopian communist world will emerge, promising eternal love, peace, and harmony. However, capitalism does not disappear overnight.
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx describes the process by which capitalism will be destroyed. It is called the socialist revolution.
Marx wrote that capitalist oppression will gradually result in wealth being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. As the number of capitalists becomes smaller, the number of proletarians will necessarily become larger. The impoverished proletariat, who won't own private property anymore, will adopt the communist belief system.
Proletarians will then use their large numbers to "win the battle of democracy." This means that the proletariat will use their majority in a capitalist-created democracy to pass laws that will "wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie [and] to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State." The moment the proletariat is able to pass socialist laws is pivotal under Marxism, as it signals the ascendancy of the proletariat to the ruling class. When the proletariat becomes the ruling class, the socialist revolution begins.
Once the revolution begins, Marxists believe that it cannot be stopped. The proletarian majority will continue to confiscate private property until universal communism is achieved.
To a Marxist, the rise of communism is inevitable. Indeed, Marx did not see himself as an economist or philosopher at all. Rather, he saw himself as a secular prophet whose writings documented historical and future fact. Thus, the only question in a Marxist's mind is not if the socialist revolution will begin, but exactly when.
With socialism firmly in place in Western Europe, the Marxists saw the United States as the last bastion of the bourgeoisie. To be sure, socialist-inspired legislation has been around for decades in America in the form of entitlements and similar programs, but these served mainly to increase the size of the proletariat, not to nationalize the private sector. The combination of a Marxist president and a Marxist-controlled Congress in America, however, finally gave Marxists the long-awaited power to enact true socialist legislation that would end capitalism once and for all.
The single-minded zealotry displayed by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi in their quest to pass the health care bill revealed the significance of this legislation to the Marxist cult. The ability to enact a law which nationalizes one-sixth of the American economy would prove that the proletariat has finally become the ruling class.
In the minds of Marxists like Obama and Pelosi, then, the passage of their health care legislation is "historic" because the prophesied socialist revolution has arrived. Flush with victory in the first battle of the revolution, they will continue to press their socialist agenda with religious fervor, as they believe that they cannot be stopped.
Unfortunately for Marxists, their prophesy is a proven hoax. Marx himself predicted that the 1848 socialist revolution in Europe would lead to universal communism. It didn't. In 1917, Marxists then hailed the Russian Revolution as the beginning of a world-wide revolt. That didn't happen, either.
The Marxists are correct in one respect. There is a greedy, oppressive class that attempts to enslave all other classes. They're called Marxists. A study of history shows that one group of people specializes in defeating that special kind of evil. They're called Americans. Thus, the only certain prophecy is that by picking a fight with America, Marxists have written the last chapter of their twisted theology.
The year 2010 will go down in history not as the beginning of the socialist age, but as the end of it.
