Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
Look at the Wikipedia for Black Lives Matter. This is a very loose group of activists with no organization that I can see. Not one with any kind of control over what members do.
Some may be Marxists but as far as I can tell that is something that no longer exists since the fall of the Berlin Wall and maybe before that.
It just looks like someone blowing a dog whistle and expecting a re-action.
|
I think you are right about the protestors being a loose group of activists—for the most part, deliberately. I think a number of groups have a hand in it, and a sizable percentage of protestors are simply protesting injustice. However, a certain percentage of those leading out are ideologues with a definite political agenda of changing America. Some are anarchists, some Marxists, some socialists, some anti-capitalists, and there are more. There are Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites, general Communists. They know the difference. We don’t really need to.
Marxists definitely did NOT disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many Marxists didn’t like the Soviet Union because they said it didn’t follow Marxism very well. One of my fellow teachers (I’ve just retired) is actually a member of the Marxist party and teaches classes in “activist writing.” Several more are very sympathetic. They write articles supporting what is going on, and they are excited.
Most people who use the word Capitalism don’t understand what Marx meant by the word in his famous book Das Capital. I can’t pretend to understand. However, in short, Marx saw Capitalism as arising out of Feudalism and predicted that it would wither away or be overthrown and replaced by Communism. Capitalism meant that the people with lots of money were able to own “the means of production” and hire people to work for them. To maximize their profits, they paid as little as they could get away with, thus oppressing workers. If, like me, you are a proud Union member, you know that definitely happened and still happens in places, and unions helped workers fight for fair pay and benefits. (And, yes, some of those leaders were corrupt and some were Communist-influenced.) When you say today that you believe in Capitalism, as do I, you aren’t saying you believe in robber barons oppressing workers. You mean you believe in the private ownership of companies that are free to try to prosper and create and invent, right? That’s not what Marx meant. A lot of Marxists today think we are still in the bad old days. But tens of millions of us are part owners of capitalist companies through our investments in mutual funds and stocks. So WE are real Capitalists with a stake in the system. But the American Capitalist system, like most elsewhere in the world, is relatively benign. There are lots of safeguards (thanks mostly to union demands and to government) that help make sure that workers and the unemployed are taken care of to some extent. It’s sort of a benevolent Capitalism. The owners have come to realize that happy, well-paid workers are less likely to waste capital by protesting or striking, and they BUY products, thus making more money for capitalists like us and providing more jobs for workers. Workers are welcome to invest, too. These modifications have actually strengthened capitalism and helped it to survive.
However, a lot of Anarchists and Marxists and Communists want to end Capitalism so that “the workers own the means of production” (to quote Marx). It really means taking everything from the rich and giving it to the poor, but with the communists in charge. I think giving workers stock so they own part of their companies is great. Lots of companies do that, including Apple, FaceBook, most banks, etc. But these Marxists and others want to destroy the Capitalist system, which means taking away our investments and leaving us dependent on social Security to stay alive.
Most BLM protestors know nothing about this. They have other motives, often good ones. When my daughter marched carrying a sign that read “Peace Matters,” it was not because she wants to overthrow the government. But some of the leaders DO. They disagree about many things, but lots of the leaders, especially the pale ones, DO.
And remember this. The way terrorism works is NOT by destroying enough stores or businesses so there aren’t any more. The aim of terrorism is to make enough of us furious that we will call for our own government to be overthrown by those who promise law and order. Then those oppressed by law and order will rise up and overthrow the law and order people. Then the groups behind the terrorists can sneak in and start running the people who feel they are oppressed.