A few weeks ago, Dennis Prager said, "No one understands what socialism is."  He is right.  Even economists are confused, and for good reason.  After Joseph Stalin gave socialism a bad name, socialist journalists and historians changed its definition to dissimulate socialist activities.  They settled upon a new definition: "the government's takeover of the means of production."

The new definition made socialism into something that is not likely to happen, thus concealing ongoing socialist operations.  The operations of socialism could proceed; however, the operators could no longer be called socialists.  This ruse persists today.

In the eighteenth century, the term socialism was a nebulous bromide to reference a desired perfect society.  Karl Marx codified it in the Communist Manifesto.  It was subsequently identified as "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and more commonly as "Take from the rich and give to the poor."  It is the Robin Hood theory.  Perhaps that is why it sells so well.

Taking from the rich to give to the poor, or to anyone else, is an economic system.  Make no mistake: socialism is an economic system.  

Socialism has had various monikers throughout its history, starting with the name Marxism, followed by fascism, Leninism, communism, and the Third Reich.

 Each moniker represents a different intent or method to implement socialism.  Marxism is socialism by force.  But force upon whom and by whom?  Marx envisioned force by employees upon their employers.

When he published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the ideal of socialism spread throughout the world like a flash of light.

Marx was only twenty-nine years old when he wrote it.  He was an occasional journalist and sold op-ed articles to various newspapers.  He was impoverished his entire life, and in later years lived off pecuniary gifts from his friend Friedrich Engels.

Marx's hatred of the wealthy and their supporters, the bourgeoisie, is obvious throughout the Manifesto.  The class warfare and hatred that he created have survived to this day in socialist philosophy.  In the 1800s, American newspapers were rife with articles and political cartoons that promoted socialism and its innate hatred.

Socialism survives on the noble ideal to help the poor but operates with a false economic assumption made a part of the philosophy by Karl Marx.  He said, "The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at."

In other words, in economic terms, the wealthy do not share enough with the poor, so they must be controlled, punished, or eliminated.  This is the false and destructive aspect of the socialist economic philosophy.

In the U.S., the bourgeoisie have become Republicans, who must be controlled, punished, or eliminated.

In 1848, when the Communist Manifesto was published, Horace Greeley was the unquestioned leader of our media.  Greeley read it and declared himself a socialist.  He wrote numerous articles and op-eds promoting socialism.  Greeley even employed Karl Marx as a European op-ed journalist for his New York Tribune newspaper.

In the 1850s, our American media became promoters of socialism and promote it to this day.  One can fairly say socialism was created by a journalist and is perpetuated by journalists.

To Horace Greeley's credit, he disagreed with Marx's demand to implement socialism by force or violence.  The rest of our media followed his lead.  That has served our country well.  Elsewhere, journalists sided with Marx and precipitated numerous wars to implement socialism.

In Germany, Marxism was particularly revered.  In a book, The Big Lie by autodidact historian Dinesh D'Souza, the author refers to a fascinating observation by a German historian, Gotz Aly.

Aly points to the leftist journalist Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term anti-Semitism.  Aly claims that in 1879, Marr "faulted Jews for outperforming ordinary Germans."

In Germany, Jews were the bourgeoisie.  They owned many of the businesses and tended to be quite wealthy.

Hitler was born in 1889 and grew up in an atmosphere that viewed Jews as the bourgeoisie.  Hitler was a Marxist-style socialist because he wanted to somehow, forcefully rid his country of Jews.  D'Souza points out that Hitler became obsessed with the German question of what to do with the Jews — Judenfrage.

It is no wonder that Hitler founded a Marxist-style socialist party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

In D'Souza's book, we find that Hitler said in 1927, "We are socialists.  We are the enemies of today's capitalist system of exploitation ... and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

In Italy, contemporary journalists of Wilhelm Marr were Giuseppe Mazzini and Alessandro Mussolini (Benito's father), a politician who wrote op-eds for a socialist journal.  Benito was born in 1883, six years before Hitler, and was raised in a socialist family.  He was quite brilliant and an excellent writer and orator.  He was also a journalist.

By 1909, Benito had written for a variety of socialist newspapers.  By that time, he was widely read throughout Europe.  One of his most ardent admirers was Adolf Hitler.  Benito was also a Marxist-style socialist; however, that changed.  

By this time, Marxist philosophers and journalists throughout Europe were expressing frustration that Karl Marx's revolt had not occurred.  Mussolini formed a union of workers, but they failed to revolt against the owners of their businesses.  Mussolini was quite frustrated.  He concluded that workers would never revolt against their employers, so he decided that an outside force, a government, must do it for them.

Finally, Mussolini and discontented socialists, restless revolutionaries, and discharged soldiers met to discuss the establishment of a new force in Italian politics.  Mussolini called this force Fasci di Combattimento — the Italian Fighting Leagues, or the Fascist Party.  In the days of ancient Rome, a fasces was a bundle of rods, often including an axe.  It is a symbol of power by force. 0

Mussolini's followers wore black shirts.  In 1922, the black-shirt fascists marched into Rome and took power with little resistance.  Socialism had won the population.  

So fascism is also socialism by force, like Marxism.  However, it is not force by employees; it is force by government.

Marxist fires had been burning in Russia.  Vladimir Lenin had concluded the same as Mussolini: that a government rather than the workers needed to force socialism.  He named his force the Communist Party, and his followers were Bolsheviks.  They took power by force in the October Revolution of 1917.

Lenin was an expert in the study of Marxism and, although not a journalist, was quite a philosopher and writer.  He added something new to Marxist philosophy.

Lenin believed that the evils of capitalism included commerce with other nations.  By trade and commerce the capitalist country could subjugate other nations, make them dependent, and force them into capitalism.  To prevent this, Lenin advocated communist revolutions in other countries to pre-empt the capitalist conversion. 

Leninism, or communism, is socialism by force of government by imperialism.  Hitler was learning from Mussolini and Lenin.   

Let's set aside the monikers and look at the economic system of socialism.  Take from the rich and give to the poor.  How do we take from the rich?  We tax them.  Taxation is the sword and tool of socialism.  It is the fasces of socialism.

The U.S. had no income tax until 1913.  By 1926, in the Roaring Twenties, unfettered capitalism had brought prices down so low that one person, earning the average wage of only $1.24 per hour, could pay off his home in five years, purchase a vacation home, pay that off, and support a family of five all the way through college.  Note that our vacation home boom in resort towns occurred at that time.

So what happened?  Why is our goods-to-price standard of living so much lower and still declining each year?

Franklin Roosevelt increased income taxes for the poor in the lowest income bracket from 4 to 24 percent, in the highest bracket to 94 percent (reducing what we could afford to pay), and corporate taxes to 40 percent (increasing the price we must pay).

This is nonviolent socialism at full throttle.  We became a hybrid capitalist-socialist nation.  Franklin Roosevelt had completed the transformation of the Democrat party into a socialist party, and their occasional moniker is "progressives."  

James T. Moodey is a retired entrepreneur, author, and economic essayist.  His recent book, The Ladder Out of Poverty, determined why the poverty rate has not declined since the Great Society promised to end poverty.

Image: Praveenp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).