THE SECOND BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

The Second Bolshevik Revolution is happening in America with scarcely more publicity than the first one in Russia in 1917.  

The goals of the Second Revolution are largely the same as the October Revolution of 1917:  destroy capitalism, redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots, establish a classless society, establish an economy run almost totally by bureaucrats who try to provide free goods and services to everyone.

Now, as then, the Revolution is carried mostly by the young.  In the original revolution, almost 75 percent of the revolutionaries were under 30 years of age.  22 percent were under 20, 37 percent were 20 to 24, and 16 percent were 25 to 29.  Older people generally had little use for the revolution, then as now.

The original revolution, like the current one, was based on a collection of myths that were useful as long as the working class (have nots) could be persuaded to believe them.  The philosophy was that the proletariat or working class would rise up and overthrow the bankers and capitalist class.  They would seize popular control of wealth and the means of producing it.  The larger goal was to replace private ownership of property (a profit based economy based on competition) with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production.

The current revolution likes to caution us that they are not Communists.  They would never go that far.  However, Karl Marx used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably.  In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), he identified two distinct phases which would follow the overthrow of Capitalism:

Phase One would be transitional and fairly moderate.  The working class seize control of the government but would continue to be paid based on individual performance--how much, how long, or how well they worked.  This might be what we today envision as "socialism" or unfulfilled communism.  This seems to be what today's socialists want to speak of publicly, realizing that fulfilled socialism or communism is not yet something the American public would tolerate in principle.  So today's revolutionaries will not speak of anything behond Marx's phase one.

Phase Two, according to Marx, would achieve a totally classless society, establishing a command economy in which bureaucrats control wages, prices and production of goods and services.  Private ownership of properly would be completely eliminated and the government would own and control everything--from houses and apartments to factories, railroads, airports, shops and stores to the flowers that grow beside the roads.  Lenin asserted that phase one corresponds to socialism and phase two corresponds to communism.  The general principles of socialism and communism are the same--socialism being unfulfilled or incomplete and communism being fulfilled or fully realized socialism.

For much of the Twentieth Century, one-third of the world's population lived under Communism.  The brutal inefficiencies of the system caused the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991.  Thereafter, China and other countries were forced to allow more economic competition and some makeshift capitalism to salvage their economies.  Only North Korea clings to the pure form of socialism without compromise and it remains among the poorest nations on earth.

Who supports the Second Bolshevik Revolution and why?  Mostly it is the younger generation, under 30, which sees themselves as the have-nots, cheated by what they like to call "capitalism" which has denied them all that they want and deserve.  They would like to destroy the banks, large industries and corporations, which they see has evil and corrupt--just as their original cousins did in 1917.  They believe a just and utopian society can be created when they (the young revolutionaries) seize control of government and destroy the capitalist class.  Then, government can distribute free healthcare, education, housing, cell phones, food and heaven knows how many other free goods and services to the masses.  The have-nots will become haves and the wealth of the capitalists will be used to provide all of this.

Alas, they fail to study history. The failures of socialism are there for all to see, if only they would.

It didn't begin with Karl Marx in the 19th Century.  Socialist thinking can be traced at least back to the 4th Century, B.C. and the writings of Plato (Republic).  Plato, in fact, has been called "the first planner."  He would have social justice delivered to the masses by those who govern.  I'm fairly certain it would be free to everyone and paid for by a tax on the wealthiest one percent (the capitalists).  https://mises.org/library/it-started-plato