Does Communism Work...

Why Communism Doesn’t Work in North America and What We can Do to Successfully Create Social Activism While Maintaining a Decent Profit Motive for Our Workers and Executives.

I am not a communist or a socialist. I am a progressive-thinking North American with African and Caribbean ancestry. I don’t think Socialism will ever work for North America because we have too much anti-communist rhetoric allowed on the open air waves. I also think most North Americans don’t understand or accept socialism because they think it is un-American. Little do they know that there has always been a stream of far-left thinking and activism in North American politics and history...

You can trace the roots of Mother Jones Magazine and the roots of the North American labor movement and you will find socialists deeply involved and embedded at every level. There were also committed socialists involved in the Civil Rights movement and the Anti-War movement in our country. Most of them were White, but there is also a history of Black socialism as well.  However, I feel that we basically need to use Capitalism to put forth social activism in the year 2013 and beyond. We also need to make the Capitalist system more humane, less exploitative and more driven to serve people than to make huge profits at the expense of human rights, labor rights, decent living standards, good working conditions and decent wages.

Certainly there are models that come to mind that have been very successful at working social activism into the mix of successful Capitalism. ``Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream’’ comes to mind as does a few other companies such as ``Virgin Airlines’’ or ``Southwest Airlines'' { I am not sure which} and a few other companies. These businesses have, if I'm not mistaken, a long history of treating people who work for them with dignity and respect and paying well.  There are several other companies that do this as well. The way I am constructing my business, for example, is to have a strong for-profit side and a mechanism to feed money into the non-profit side to do the social activism. There are many other examples where this has been done successfully, such as Annie's Pretzels.

The time for consistent positive social change to be supported actively by the corporate structure has come.  Not just hand over a few million dollars and take a big fat tax cut for your effort, but actually partner with the people on the front lines of the company and decide what to do for the future of the company, the future of Our nation and the future of Our World.  How do we create diversity and maintain fairness; how do we develop sustainability and work that concept throughout our system; how do we allow women to reasonably raise children and maintain a household AND a job without losing their dignity and their minds; how do we help White people understand that the party isn't necessarily over just because they are becoming a so-called minority; how do we create fairness when race, gender, class, ethnicity, age and sexual orientation are still major players in deciding if a person gets a certain job, maintains that job and moves on into the corporate hierarchy.  These are real questions for the corporate sector to ponder and decide on as we reach into the next phase of the Obama Age.

The dollar is weakening and other monetary formations like the Euro and other monetary components still to be devised are taking over world markets and becoming of increasing value to world markets. But I digress. Let me get back to my original premise.  Communism isn't the future.  I am a left-thinking American and I know this for a fact.  Central Committees and other leadership formations of Communist Parties can be just as corrupted and misled as the corporate sector. The problem is, that often leadership in Communist countries cannot be overthrown easily.  They often don't hold regular elections and can be the center of nepotism, cronyism, unfairness, discrimination, and, as I said, corruption. Once someone gets inside the Communist Party in some countries where leadership is Communists, they had better act as the Party wants or they may find themselves in political or even physical trouble. Communism is too limiting.  Free markets are the answer, but if you think we have Free Markets in the United States, you are sadly mistaken.  We have something that is about as chocking as Communism, if not more so.  We have the rule of the rich, the rule of the Oligarchy, the rule of the monopoly and the corporate structure and the rule of the Ruling Class.  This is a world of discrimination and the flexing of muscle by people like the Koch Brothers who own several corporations and put Tee-Party loyalists in place through the primary system and through their very strong financial manipulation.  Such people work behind the scenes to twist arms, make deals and crush opposition that often ends up chocking all the liberty, freedom, diversity and justice out of our democratic system and making a mockery of our Constitution--that is if anything much is really left of our Constitution.  With Bills like the Patriot Act I and the Patriot Act II and the National Security Act, we have lost or are losing our right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to not be searched and many other rights.  But the people are asleep at the Wheel, many of them, and the Oligarchy is taking advantage of our ignorance.  Still, Capitalism and democracy are much stronger than Communism.  But Capitalism in another formation--not its’ present form.  We have to ALL get involved to make this system of ours work.  We have to vote, have our say, fight for what we want, and make our voices heard.  We can't just vote once every four years and expect things to change that way.  We have to be actively engaged and make the changes we want.  Other- wise, we will lose this democracy we have and it will be maintained as a corporate state like it presently is. 

That means you.  Every North American needs to take part.  If you are sick of the Gun runners at the NRA having so much control over the process of who get a gun in our country, you have to not only write your Congressperson, you have to write your governor and your city council person and you may have to attend a rally or two.  You may have to be willing to give up that Saturday night movie or theater presentation to write a check to the Brady Campaign or whoever else is fighting for reasonable gun laws and put your money where your mouth is.  I have been doing it for 35 years and on a very light salary.  Our system might look like an old beat up Ford right about now--what with the fiscal cliff and the non-cooperation in D.C., but look around... What else is working? NOT MUCH ELSE!! 

I am no longer a Democrat.  I am registered Independent. The Democratic Party has taken Black voters for granted for generations and the Republicans hate us and don't want us to vote for them in any significant numbers.  Register Independent and work for positive social change.  Most of all read and think.  Watch Free Speech TV and Public TV and National Public Radio and The British Broadcasting Company.  If you actually watch FOX and think that has anything good for our Nation, I feel sorry for you.  I twice voted Republican for governor of Pennsylvania.  I wasted my vote.  I was sorely disappointed both times. But our local politicians in the Democratic Party are elected by us as Black voters, but they REALLY don't do a damned thing for us either.  How can we possibly have a city with no central shopping area with Black stores? How can we possibly have no Black hotels in Philadelphia? How can we, in 2013, with a Black President in the White House, still have such a small middle class and a broad underclass?  The Black politicians here have failed us significantly.  There are some who have and do work diligently to advocate for Black economic advances and good education for our students such as State Senator Vincent Hughes; State Senator Shirley Kitchen and State Representative Dwight Evans [Sometimes].  But most of the others are held in the pockets of White and Asian City ``Fathers'' who don't give a crap about Black and Latin and poor people and probably never will.  Do you see the Asian community worrying about who is in office like we as Black people ado? No!! They own ALL the businesses in our community and they are sucking us dry each and every day along with the Big Supermarket chains and all the other businesses that are owned by White and Jewish merchants.... This picture doesn't change by voting.  We need to get informed and read books like ``Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy,'' by Maggie Anderson.  My new book coming out very soon: ``A Grass Roots Criteria for Liberation: Writing in Wet Cement,'' has a book list of over 400 books in the back.  It is a book about how to help our Black youth become an advantage to our society instead of an economic and political light weight like we are used to them being perceived as.  It will help parents teach their children better ethical values and better Ways of treating each other.   It will help our youth learn the importance of sharing; respecting elders; intervening in a crisis with LOVe and communications instead of a knife or a gun; it will teach critical thinking and respect for achievement and entrepreneurship.  It encapsulates my own life story with many ethical lessons and political analysis.  It will be a Best Seller. But remember, if you want our system to work, keep on your pointy toed shoes [Like my Mother Mrs. Jessie M. Gibson, used to say] and keep the pressure on your politicians--and I mean REAL pressure with plenty of letters and phone calls.  Don't be afraid to shop at stores like ACME in the meantime, which has a union and which has traditionally treated employees with much more respect than say, a Wal-mart. Our system doesn't work perfectly, but like my Ole Uncle Pete Peterson used to say, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

You can read more articles by Brother Tracy Gibson at: http://thepoliticsofreal.blogspot.com