The United States of America is the world's marketplace.  Without the worldwide trade generated by American demand, the international marketplace will fail.  Today we are witnessing an undeniable demonstration of this fact as world markets reel in response to our domestic financial crisis.  This lesson must be burnt into our collective conscience.  Our nation is the last repository of free-market economic principles, and a fundamental change in our government toward socialism will spell worldwide economic disaster from which we may never recover.

Yet this is exactly the endgame of the American radical left -- increasingly indistinguishable from today's Democratic Party -- and offers the only internally consistent explanation for their historic obsession with divisive policy.  From their early support of Hitler to their central role in the current financial crisis, the left's contribution to domestic and foreign policy at federal, state, and local levels can be described only as wantonly destructive.  Their takeover of schools and popular culture has been equally toxic.  Their environmental radicalism has spawned the energy crisis while offering no viable alternatives.  It defies logic.

But there is logic, a deadly logic, and in the '60s, two radicals gave it a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy.  As explained in a prior article, the goal was to create a groundswell of demands for public services to overwhelm government, create crisis, and usher in a widespread call for fundamental economic reform at the federal level, with socialism the ultimate goal.

Democrats embrace the rhetoric of "compassion," but look past the rhetoric to the results.  This country is polarized as never before because of their relentless agitation for extremist positions on every issue and the outrageous tactics they use to promote those positions.  But while radical Saul Alinsky's tactics guide today's Democrat electoral game plan, the Cloward-Piven Strategy describes the overarching goal of almost every left-wing organization/movement/ideal today.

How Do They Survive?

These organizations rarely produce anything of value, yet they are extremely adept at not only surviving but flourishing.  Many receive their financial backbone from prominent philanthropies.  They also receive subsidies and tax breaks with the help of friends in federal, state, and local government.  This fact is unknown to most voters, who would be outraged if they fully understood how their tax dollars are being spent.

Our mass media is mostly to blame for the current state of affairs.  The left's strategies could not survive the light of day.  Radicals require a sympathetic media to deliver their message in an acceptable fashion and actively suppress inconvenient facts that reveal these organizations' true character and agenda.

It is a tangled web of radical interconnections, with the ultimate goal being an end to our constitutional framework, the fall of our Republic, and its replacement with a radical vision of socialist utopia -- finally removing the last major roadblock to world socialism.

These radical individuals are highly motivated, in many cases intelligent and talented, and sometimes even driven by what they would describe as altruistic motives.  Yet the impacts of socialist central planning are inarguably destructive.

Marx may have had some interesting insights on history, but despite his ponderous three-volume Das Kapital, he was no economist.  Instead, Kapital provided the intellectual excuse for Marx's anarchistic Communist Manifesto.

And the severe verdict of history on his perverted vision is without equal: over 100 million people murdered by their own governments in times of peace, more than all the wars of history combined.  The rest face abject poverty, mass starvation, economic and environmental ruin, all overseen by smothering, indescribably brutal governments -- a gray, barren existence for all but the apparatchiks.

So why are so many Westerners infatuated with this demented vision?

Entrepreneurial Parasites

The high-minded types are driven by a galling sense of superiority.  They are addicted to their own egos.  They know better and can defy the verdict of history because people as smart as they are weren't around when Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Ethiopia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Congo, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. went Red.

Living well in affluent, capitalist America, it is all theoretical, so they can indulge their fantasies while promoting this destructive agenda with impunity.  For these people, ignorance is quite the blessing, for if they soberly analyzed their ego-driven beliefs, they would be embarrassed.

If you examine their pasts closely, you learn that most of these people also came from upper-class backgrounds.  Ph.D. chemistry professor George Wiley, the black radical who led Cloward's and Piven's National Welfare Rights Organization, was a well-to-do son of a Rhode Island family.

Wade Rathke, the NWRO veteran who started ACORN, was from a similarly well-to-do background, although he dropped out of Williams College.

Obama's radical friend Bill Ayers' family was very wealthy.  Looking at his arrest photos, and listening to his smug self-righteousness, you really get the impression that he was little more than an arrogant, spoiled brat, with a titanic sense of entitlement that allowed him to rationalize mass murder.

This is a familiar story throughout the American left and indeed with many of the most infamous communist leaders around the world.  For example, Communist China's first leader, Mao Zedong, the inspiration for Ayers and many other radicals, was the son of the wealthiest man in his home town.

According to the incredible biography Mao: the Unknown Story, he was lazy and arrogant, and he refused to work, despite his father's repeated attempts to find him suitable employment.  He finally saw an opportunity for real advancement working for the Soviets.  During the Long March, he was carried by porters.

As young idealists, many of these people are initially snared into this ideology by the exaggerated sense of self-importance that is often a characteristic of youth.  But we all have to live, and as they grow up, they discover that the radical profession can be a pretty lucrative racket.  Despite their high-minded rhetoric about saving the poor and oppressed, communists and socialists are what I call entrepreneurial parasites.

Consider what they demand of us: sacrifice of all worldly goods to the state; penurious, barren lifstyles; slavish observance of their dictates; and full-time commitment to the well-being of the state, while our jobs, careers, industries, the environment, even our lives are threatened.  But how do they live?

Obama's pal Ayers, who describes himself as a "small 'c' communist," lives in a lavish home, in the upscale Hyde Park neighborhood, with a six-figure (or more) income.  It is easy to see how, given the open spigot of money his organizations receive from the various non-profit funds he's ingratiated himself to.  Bill Ayers' father, Tom, had been CEO of Commonwealth Edison, so Ayers fils is used to money, and later developments in his career point to a hand up from Daddy.

Barack moved to Hyde Park, too, within easy walking distance of Ayers.  It is difficult to find anyone in the American Marxist elite who doesn't fully enjoy the fruits of capitalism in his or her personal life.  In fact, Obama's early career seems to have been centered on dispensing foundation money as a means to secure his career in politics.  Here is a perfect example.

Obama's work on the boards of Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge during the 1990s has been widely publicized, but during that period, Obama also worked for four other foundations: the Joyce Foundation, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Leadership for a Quality Education -- run by John Ayers, Bill's brother -- and the Chicago Public Education Fund, whose board also included failed bank magnate Penny Pritzker, later finance director of Obama's 2008 campaign.  During that period, Obama shared a small office with Bill Ayers, Mike Klonsky, and Mike's wife, Susan (both prominent movement communists).  The mass media has never reported on any of this.

This taste for wealth is not limited to American socialists.  Every socialist dictator from Stalin to Saddam has lived in opulent surroundings with multiple estates, scores of servants, and every kind of luxury and indulgence available to him.

Marxist austerity is meant only for the rest of us.

See, for example, Gorbachev's dacha in Foros, Crimea -- a testament to communist modesty if ever there were one.  Same with all the leaders of communist countries.  Indeed, Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov was murdered for his extensive reporting on the opulent, decadent lifestyles of Bulgarian Communist leaders.  It's a good racket, if you don't mind blood.

While socialist leaders live in lavish style, in every country where socialist policies are imposed, they measurably worsen the lives of everyday citizens in direct proportion to their scope.  Even countries with vast natural resources, like Russia, founder because their economies are constructed on the fatally flawed economic principles of socialism.

Despite this, they still manage to live on, in many cases hanging by mere threads for years.

How?

The dirty little secret of socialism is that it cannot survive without capitalism.  Capitalist countries provide the resources necessary for these socialist governments to continue.  In addition to providing a market for their goods, Western nations keep socialist countries afloat through grants and loans from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other governmental institutions, as well as huge investments by private companies.

Even China, widely misunderstood as the next free market, practices market economics only one-way, in international trade, while maintaining iron-fisted central planning internally.  The country could not maintain its current level of economic growth without the markets provided by the United States and other Western countries.

Finally, there is a vast network of American enterprises, owned covertly by foreign dictators, whose true purpose is to provide underground income for these leaders and their socialist governments, while offering convenient cover for industrial and military spies.  This fact is rarely mentioned and largely unknown.

At its core, socialism can only be parasitic.  It cannot survive without its capitalist host.  Therefore, if the United States becomes a socialist country, worldwide capital will soon dry up.  Remaining market economies around the world will succumb either to their own internal socialist movements or to direct military threat from abroad.  Without the protective umbrella of American military might, they will have no other choice.

Without the markets and resources capitalist economies provide, the many socialist countries that have survived on our largesse until now will find their income stream shut off.  The world will plunge into an unprecedented, cataclysmic depression.  This depression will be of indeterminate length because the wherewithal for recovery -- a large capitalist economy -- will no longer exist.  With a world controlled by parasites, the host will die.

At this point, even the parasites will be in danger.  The socialists' internationalist agenda truly is a Conspiracy of the Lemmings.  It is not merely a criminal conspiracy; it is criminally insane.

Barack Hussein Obama has become the standard-bearer to bring this agenda to fruition here.  The socialist economic agenda he has publicly articulated is enough in the current financial crisis to plunge our economy into deep recession.  The disarmament agenda he has publicly articulated is enough to strip us of the meager defenses we currently have against a rogue missile attack, and Iran has already telegraphed plans to launch such an attack.

What is even more frightening is the agenda he has not shared, but is implicit in his radical upbringing, his radical connections, and his limited but demonstrative experience.

We are seeing this agenda being played out before our very eyes today.  I will repeat what I have said many times before: 2012 will be the most important election in U.S. history, because it will decide our fate as a nation.  Please take to heart Breitbart's parting words:

This is my war cry for 2012. You need to join me in this war against the institutional left. This is not your mother's Democratic Party. John Podesta, George Soros, this is not your mother's Democratic Party either... I don't care who the candidate is, and I haven't since the beginning... Ask not what the candidate can do for you; ask what you can do for the candidate. And that's what the Tea Party is. We are there to confront them on behalf of our candidate. I will march behind whoever our candidate is because if we don't, we lose. There are two paths... one is America and the other one is Occupy... Anyone that's willing to stand next to me to fight the progressive Left, I will be in that bunker. And if you're not in that bunker because you're not satisfied with this candidate, more than shame on you, you're on the other side!

(Editor's note: This is an updated and expanded version of an article originally published elsewhere in 2008, a follow-on to the September 2008 American Thinker article "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.")