The Freedom That Communism Brings By Glen Wallace Without the existence of widespread communism in this country our

lives would be much more restricted and less free than they our today. Imagine a world where as soon as you walk out of your front door having to pay a toll just to walk on a sidewalk. And that s if your lucky enough for a vendor to have created the sidewalk. !aybe the owner of the property outside of your front door doesn t like pedestrians or anyone for that matter and has put no trespassing signs everywhere" causing you to be a prisoner in your own home# What an awful world. But that is just the sort of world that you might face if the supporters of free enterprise capitalism had there way. But it s not the sort of world I want to live in. I love being able to stroll down the sidewalk anytime without having to swipe my credit card at every intersection just to pass through. I love having beautiful parks" full of nature where people like myself with little money can visit and be with the towering trees that birds flutter about in. Anyone can look up property records online and see that most city parks have valuations in the millions of dollars that I m sure some greedy capitalist would love to get there hands on to bulldo$e and turn into a high%rise condo with big iron gates surrounding the property to keep out the unwashed masses like myself. I m sure it also irks many capitalists that I can go the public library and be able to check out a book or movie without providing the least bit of revenue to some profiteer. &he communism that I m suggesting be implemented is not absolute but rather broadening of its implementation in this country and abroad. It would be a broadening because this country utili$es a lot of communism already. 'ot only does communism already exist in the ()A" most people use and enjoy it" without thinking that they have become the least bit of a pinko commie. What I m referring to is the publicly owned property that nearly all of us use such as sidewalks" the freedom of the open *public+ road" parks" bike paths" libraries" lakes" rivers and streams. &hose properties are owned by the community for all to use and therefore to advocate and support the continued creation and maintenance of community owned land and infrastructure is to support communism. ,emember" the term communism is derivative of such terms as commune and communal. But I recogni$e that there can never be a practical" nor desirable" absolute and completely communal society. -or an absolute communist system to exist" there

would be absolutely no room for privacy" for every space and possession" no matter how personal would be rightfully accessible to everyone e.ually. /very house" apartment and bedroom would be freely available to all to enter and use at their pleasure. )uch a state would be absurd and completely unacceptable to virtually all members of society. &herefore" a balance needs to be drawn between maximi$ing communal freedoms while retaining what individuals cherish as personal and private. I m advocating for collectivism for the sake of individualism. &his is what I call transcendental communism. In many ways transcendental communism is the polar opposite from the 0egelian communism that was the foundational philosophy for the systems such as those found in the cold war era countries behind the iron curtain that we usually associate with the term communism. With 0egel the goal is to somehow use the citi$ens as vehicles to create a great mind or spirit of the people as a whole as it progresses through a dialectic to some 0egelian utopia. -or 0egelian communism the whole is more important than the parts and thus justification was achievable for all the human rights abuses that occurred in such places as )talin1s )oviet (nion. While !arx may have claimed that religion is the opium of the people" I would counter that 0egelianism is a religion in itself. Whenever presented with the teachings of 0egel" I would think to myself of what a interesting construct it was" but it was still merely a construct of 0egel1s imagination. 0egel would go on and on with these long convoluted sentences that are difficult to follow" but in the end" he merely has come up with an ontology of history and society that could be the case" but nowhere in my readings did I find him even attempting to provide any kind of compelling justification for believing that his version of reality is the case. It seems as though we are supposed to accept 0egel1s teachings based on a combination of faith" appeal and maybe some intuition of it being correct. But for me" I have no faith in 0egelianism" nor do find it the least bit appealing or intuitively spot on. And yet I m told that 0egel has had a profound influence on the development of history not just in communism but also with capitalism around the world from the time of his writings to present. &he thing is" I don t know how this happened where someone whose writings are so difficult to comprehend" and whose ideals don t seem all that idealistic could ever have been adopted by so many in positions of power. I suppose if my reactions to 0egelianism were so uni.ue and just about everyone else loved his concepts then I would understand. But I don t think that is the case. Instead" I believe that" in general" 0egelianism runs counter to the unwritten social contracts of civil eti.uette and ideals of fairness and social harmony. I believe that transcendentalism is much more consistent with the dreams" ideals and social contracts of most members of society especially here in America.

&ranscendentalism values the breaking of barriers that prevent our full pursuit of self actuali$ation and achievement. &ranscendentalism treasures and values the individual" but does so in the context of the individual as metaphysically connected with all the other members of not only fellow members of humanity but also with the rest of the universe. While transcendentalism values social harmony" 0egelianism values societal conflict as a necessity for societal development. While 0egelians may think that there is a valuable conflict here with transcendentalism as the antithesis to thesis of 0egelianism" I would contend that transcendentalism is superior on its face and should have been adopted as the foundational philosophy in the ordering and development of governments around the world instead of as has been the case with the intractably faulty 0egelianism. With transcendental communism the priorities are the reverse of !arxist20egelian communism so that public ownership is maximi$ed in order to maximi$e every individuals freedom. When touting the benefits of wealth" very often at the top of the list of benefits is the freedom that wealth brings. Wealth is said to allow the freedom to travel" sample different fine cuisines" pursue hobbies" live anywhere one chooses" enjoy the arts. 3overty" on the other hand" is a shackle of economic tyranny that strictly restricts freedom. If freedom" then" is a moral ideal" then is it fair to have in place a system of economics that allows so much poverty that prevents access to that ideal4 )ome may argue that wealth disparity is necessary to provide motivation to work and come up with ideas that will either lift someone out of" or avoid poverty. &he argument continues that those acts of work and idea generation that were used to avoid poverty also helped develop the rest of civili$ation that we all enjoy today but would not exist without the threat of poverty always hanging over the heads of those workers and idea generators and risk takers. I would counter that to make such an argument is to make the jackass fallacy that underestimates and over simplifies human nature as that which is only motivated by base instincts such as the pursuit of material wealth or avoidance of its lacking. All sorts of ironies can be found in the jackass fallacy" one of which is the fact that many of those activities that are considered the freedoms that wealth affords also involve a considerable amount of work. )ports such as s.uash that the wealthy are known to widely love involves a great deal of work" but those wealthy s.uash players never expect to be paid for all that work 5 instead the opposite is the case 5 they usually fork over a hefty sum of cash every month in a health club membership just for the privilege of engaging in all that work . While society may not benefit much from people playing s.uash" there are all sorts of hobbies" like woodworking for one that builds things of both practical and aesthetic value that people build without any compensation whatsoever. Another irony can be found in the fact that the wealthy" free%market advocates also seem to just love

the philosophy of Ayn ,and. &he irony there is that ,and did not herself commit the jackass philosophy" but instead touted the drive in individuals to create and achieve greatness in action. According to ,and" that drive comes from within" not from without by way of the lure of wealth and avoidance of poverty. 'or where the heroes from the novels of ,and s favorite author" 6ictor 0ugo" greedy" money hungry individuals. )omething from within that was much greater and more noble than greed drove 6ictor 0ugo s characters. With transcendental communism" the goal is to harness that noble drive to build the utopian ideal. All we have to do is create a government that gives people the opportunity and means to do the sort of work that each individual is driven to do. As an example" there could be government centers of invention" where the inventive minded citi$ens could be provided all the tools" supplies and space they need to build their prototypes. What those inventors create" if deemed useful" would then become public domain as far as intellectual rights go. 'o inventor would become rich off of their inventions" but I don t believe that greed is what drives inventors in the first place. I think one of the greatest inventors of all time" 'ikola &esla said it best when he stated 7I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... )uch emotions make a man forget food" sleep" friends" love" everything.7 As you can tell" I m also using a rather liberal definition of the term communism. I do not believe the government has to own all of the means of production for that government to at least be partially communistic. I recogni$e that competition can be a good motivating force. 0owever" private ownership is not necessarily the only route to a healthy competition between producers of goods and services. &here can always be some way of measuring performance between two or more government owned producers along with all the same pageantry that goes along with an athletic competition. &he winner then would get bragging rights that could be cherished at least as much if not more than profitability by competing private companies. Additionally" in a competition for competitions sake" with the competing government companies" the employees would be more apt to share in any victory much the same as team members do in an athletic team achieving victory. With the current capitalistic system of private companies competing among themselves" the rank and file employees often don t feel much sense of victory or satisfaction even when their employer does better than any of its competitors. !ost of the employees feel like mere grunt servants and are just happy to be able to keep their job as they live desperately from paycheck to paycheck. And when it comes to the top executives" many of them have more money than they could ever know what to do with and so it becomes primarily the challenge of the competition itself between their fellow executives that is what is now motivating them" not money. 'ot only do many have more money than they know what to do with" the list is

long of individuals touted as some of the greatest and richest capitalists of all time that have lived a rather modest lifestyle that would be best described as upper middle class at most. &heir motive clearly wasn t money. &heir motive seems to be rather competition and the challenge itself of building a business. Well" couldn t that same sense of challenge also exist for building a government owned business4 I don t see why not. Also" there is a distinct disconnect and confusion in the field of medicine where in the capitalistic system it is recogni$ed and glorified that many if not most people who go in the field of medical research do so primarily out of desire to help others in finding a cure or better treatment for some horrible disease. And at the same time the medical field is still fundamentally profit motivated with the prevailing assumption persisting that the only way to motivate people to come up with cures is to provide the profit incentive" not the charitable incentive that is touted as the reason so many are trying trying to find a cure# )o which motive is the one driving medical research4 !oney or altruism4 &he response one might hear is that altruism is motivating. Well" I believe that charity is enough of an incentive for researchers and profits get in the way of" more so than helps" in finding cures. &herefore" in the field of medicine" I believe the means of production should be much more government owned so that the pesky nuisance of constantly having to search for profits is no longer an obstacle and the focus can be solely on helping patients. )eeing how capitalism gets in the way of medical progress" there is clearly a need to expand sociali$ed medicine well beyond what is currently employed. In medicine the people should indeed own all the means of production" and if necessary" distribution as well. &hen all the focus can be solely on letting the researchers" scientists and visionaries in the field of medicine focus solely on finding cures without having to be pestered by the relentless bean%counters of capitalism. I think whenever someone sees the term communism" people tend to automatically assume the word is referring to the system used by the so%called communist states of the former eastern block and some Asian nations. I say so% called because they are2were pseudo%communist nations that merely paid occasional lip service to communist principles to help build what was in reality a tyrannical oligarchy that only cared about gaining power and cared nothing about the welfare of the community they were governing. 3erhaps the biggest mistake was to use 8arl !arx s philosophy on the relationship between a worker s labor and the material wealth created by that labor as a complete playbook for how to run an entire government system. I don t know if !arx ever even intended for his philosophy to be used as a complete system" but some did" and in doing so" left the door wide open to the abuse of power. And when it comes to political power" if you give an inch they

take a mile % and a !arxian system gave several feet of leeway to the bureaucrats. And it s now historical record that the bureaucrats that got that leeway used it in such a horrific manner that the some of the pseudo%communist perpetrators such as )talin and 3ol 3ot have become rightfully vilified as ordering some of the worst cases of mass murder not just in modern history" but in recorded history as well. &he solution then is to implement a communist system measured by libertarianism. While most people automatically consider libertarianism and communism to be mutually exclusive" close examination reveals that not to be true at all. Instead" utilitarianism9 the belief that it is acceptable to sacrifice justice for a few individuals for the betterment of the society at large" is the antithesis of libertarianism. But in a true communist system" there need not be any sacrifice of principles for the sake of the greater community good. If one is living within a civili$ed society then by doing so" the citi$en agrees to an unwritten social contract to behave in a certain way based on the need for the society they live within to be labeled civili$ed. In any social contract there is never any allowance for the breach of any individuals inalienable rights for the sake of the common good. Built into the rules of the social contract are a respect for the rights of the individual insofar as the reason for civili$ation is as a vessel for precious souls sharing the experience of life. It is understood by the citi$ens that civili$ation is not the end in itself but rather the means to the end of an ideal for the individual to explore life. &he so%called free market economy has never encouraged the greatest amount of freedom for the individual as the name implies. &he term free market is simply the re%branding of the out%of%favor term laissez%faire . &he term laisse$%faire went out of favor because it rightfully implied that that form of economy was designed to help the wealthy elite. :ne might wonder what the difference is between a free market economy and a laissez%faire economy and the answer is there is no difference. It just sounds so much better to the common man a term that uses the word free. Additionally" the common man has little to no inclination to go out of their way to be politically active in an effort to create an economy that will benefit primarily the elite as a laisse$%faire system clearly does. But everyone wants to be free. And a cursory look at what the proponents say is a free market" one might think that getting the government off the backs of business will allow for more freedom in general. But in fact the opposite is the case insofar as the government is the only thing stopping business from exploiting workers and the environment to the point where the common man is a slave to the corporation that owns all the land to point where there are no more parks where the common man can roam free. :nly a few plutocrats who own the remaining private land left have the ability to roam free in nature.

/veryone else in a truly maximally free market is now in bondage to their owners who now own the workers and all the land. A free market encourages a sort of economic ;arwinism where instead of survival of the fittest you end up with survival of the evilest where the business owner willing to stoop to the lowest moral level in aggressive tactics corners the markets and becomes indistinguishable from a mob boss. It is ironic that free market proponents treat property rights with such a level of sacredness that they do when property rights are determined by the government. &here is no necessary e.uivalency between legal property rights and moral property rights. ;on t forget that slaves were considered legal property in the (nited )tates and <olonies for hundreds of years before it was made completely illegal. While some might argue that slavery violated obvious moral rights of the slaves themselves" I would counter that the hoarding of wealth and property in such a few hands violates the moral rights of the destitute cohabitants of the same land as the wealthy few. And !arx did a plenty good job arguing why the workers deserve a greater share of a nations material wealth than would necessarily occur under a market capitalist system. I think a case could be made that much of !arx s works were of an normative nature" arguing how things ought to be rather than just allowing for things to fall into place in a certain way according to an economic ;arwinistic scenario. If we take as a given that to be a conservative means to conserve traditional moral values" then it should follow that !arx was a conservative insofar as he advocated for the conservation of the traditional value of fairness in the treatment of workers. And conversely it is the advocates for a free%market2laisse$%faire economic system who are the liberals insofar as they advocate for the abandonment of the traditional value of fairness and instead allow for the return to a nihilistic state of nature system where might makes right where predators are rewarded and the humble and meek are punished. &here has never been any mutual exclusivity between the communism I am advocating for and all types of capitalism. It should be clear from what I already wrote that communism already exists in the ()" and capitalism obviously also has coexisted with communism in this country since this nations inception. In fact it has been communism that has allowed for commerce to flow as freely as the publicly owned freeways and waterways that act as medium for the commercial trade of material goods. It is no accident that communism and commerce have the same prefix. <ommerce is simply a system that the community has agreed to foster because of its benefits to society without necessarily violating any of the citi$ens inalienable rights. &here is a general consensus amongst the community that there is a certain degree of healthiness to competition that spurs on the sort of boot%strap entrepreneurial business

building that helps create both opportunities for the entrepreneur and the customers of that businessperson in the community. &here is no opposition from the community mindset against having a genuinely meritocratic system in place that rewards for innovation and hard work in bringing better products and services to the market. <orrespondingly" a degree of allowance is made for risk% taking being built into the product or service cost that should be paid back to some degree upon purchase. (nfortunately" in modern capitalism" what has been done is a great deal of exaggeration of the risk%cost of any product or service to the extent that allowed for a rewarding for some businesspeople above and beyond the risk%cost of a product or service. &hat exaggeration of risk% reward balance has led to the sorts of wealth imbalance we have seen in western capitalist countries. It is rather the psuedocommunist states that glorify and demand obedience to a single figurehead that is mutually exclusive to a true communist state. By putting any one individual so far above all others you have a monarchy that goes against the social contract principles of a community acting in each others interests without violation of personal rights. It also goes against the general principle of e.uality for there to exist the worship of any one individual as has been the case in many of the psuedocommunist states in history where such reverence has been encouraged to the point where huge multistory posters of government figureheads have been put up in public places. When that happens" the society has devolved from being a commune to being a cult. And there are big differences between a commune and a cult. In a commune everyone has e.ual rights and e.ual say where consensus rules and nobody is held above others as is the case in a cult. (tilitarianism has been" and continues to be used" as a justification for restricting the freedoms of individuals" in order further the goals of both capitalist and pseudo%communist systems. While many may be very familiar with the ways utilitarian principles have been used to justify communist tyranny % sending dissident writers to the gulag was justified by the belief that their authors beliefs presented an obstacle to reaching a utopian !arxists state" but few reali$e how often utilitarianism is used to justify restrictions on freedom because exercising that freedom is believed to result in lower revenue for certain industries. &he most obvious example of this is the efforts by the music recording and motion picture industries to restrict the freedoms of individuals to copy" share and manipulate digital works as the individual sees fit in the privacy of their own home. &he recording industry argues that it is :8 to sacrifice the freedoms of the individual owners of copies of artistic or intellectual works" because if freedom were allowed in that case" society as a whole would lose out on future works because the creators of those works would no longer have the incentive to create because the guarantees of profit from those works would be

gone. &he problem with that argument is twofold. -irst is the mistake of prioriti$ing values whereby specific freedom of action is given a lower priority to vague theories about both to the benefits to society as a whole in the form of better arts and entertainment and improved profits garnered from sales that would have been lost to file sharing. )econd" no attempt is made to prove that people would no longer create music without the incentive of money. ,ather the theory is put forth and the legislatures consider the theory" especially a theory coming from large campaign contributor" sufficient justification for restricting the freedoms of individuals handling digital works. &herein lies the problem with utilitarianism= some theory about the benefits to society as a whole can always be thought up to justify any given restriction on freedom and justice for individuals. And typically there isn t any demand by lawmakers that the theories about societal benefit be in anyway corroborated with evidence. ,ather if the theory makes any sense at all" by the principles of utilitarianism" it is justifiable to impose any degree of draconian laws that impose tyranny on a people" if it can be successfully argued that in the long run society will be better off for it. What ends up happening though is the government or corporate official puts forth the appealing utilitarian argument for the tyrannical measures while at the same time" being motivated by entirely different" selfish reasons for implementing the measures. If utilitarianism is allowed any acceptability by society" all that is re.uired by the ruling elite to impose a harsh draconian tyranny onto the populace" is merely a little creativity to generate a useful fiction that the people will buy. While some may argue that the injustice faced by those that can no longer file% share pales in comparison to the injustice endured by the millions of individuals sent to )talin s gulags" I would counter that" in a way" we already effectively have our own sort of gulag system in this country in the form of the prison industrial complex. And there are many capitalists that benefit tremendously from our prison system" that since the start of the war on drugs" this country has incarcerated millions of citi$ens for engaging in the non%violent act of merely possessing or selling a substance that people wanted to use out their own free will in their own bodies. Industry groups that act either as vendors for government run prisons or operate privately run prisons" have lobbied legislatures to pass laws recommending or mandating longer prison sentences for non%violent drug offenders. &he utilitarian justification presented for the longer prison sentences is that society as a whole will benefit by limiting the scourge of narcotic drug intoxication but undoubtedly the real reason for desiring the longer prison sentences is that it will result in more prisoners re.uiring more product and therefore more profit for the prison vendors and private prisons operators. It may be a very poor justification for the grave act of taking away someones freedom and putting them in a cage for years at a time" but therein lies the problem with utilitarianism % any excuse" reason or

justification that has some appeal to the public can always be found with it for implementing tyrannical measures. But the actual reason for measure that would be unappealing to the public" can remain hidden by the tyrants. -reedoms are something that should be held with a degree of sacredness by those who are responsibly for managing them. In a free society" it should be the freedoms that come as a first priority" and it should then be the problem of business and police to find ways to deal with the re.uirement of citi$en freedom" not the other way around as it is .uickly becoming in this country. In the communist system I envision" a society is organi$ed to allow the most freedoms possible with the understanding that there is a certain degree of necessary scarcity in the world. In any given community" there is only so much space for roads" sidewalks and natural park areas on surface lands within the confines of that community. I think there is a degree of unwritten understanding by individuals of that fact already and has resulted in the open widespread willingness of citi$ens to think there is a need for public roads" sidewalks and parks to use and enjoy and not think they should be converted to privately owned and operated entities with the same accompanying property rights by the owner as a homeowner has. But in a society that values capitalism and free enterprise while decrying communism so much" the properties owned and used by the public are rarely called by the communist leading term the peoples as in the peoples sidewalk " or the peoples library . Instead the leading term public is used even though both the peoples and public used in the same contexts mean basically the same thing" regardless of whether you live in a communist country or a free market capitalist one. I would contend that )talin and company perverted and thus gave a bad image and reputation to the term communism in much the same way as the 'a$i s perverted the swastika symbol. >ust as the swastika is one of the oldest known symbols that was used by mankind for literally thousands of years before the rise of the &hird ,eich" communism as a form of ordering society was used for thousands of years before the <ommunist 3arty was ever formed. In fact" communism is such a natural and fair way of running a community" that I believe it has been used throughout human history" recorded or not. I believe most native American societies were using a form of communism before the invasion by western <aucasians. <ommunism was such a common sense idea to the first nations peoples of this continent that they didn t really have a conception of land ownership like the colonists did. ,ather" it was intuitively obvious to the native American peoples that the land was created for everyone to use in a responsible and respectful manner. Ironically" it is our current system of income taxation that tends to drive the

greatest anti%government sentiment among the populace that is also one of the most anti%communist policies ever invoked. -or" it is through income tax as the primary source of federal government revenue that capitalistic enterprises are able to avoid the burden of funding the government through having their own profits taxed. <ommunism is communal" where consensus is the author of the social contract that writes government policy. &he universal dislike of income taxes among the community of this country is the mandate for policy change whereby income tax becomes the last resort for government revenue rather than the first resort as is the current policy. &here is a plethora of potential revenue streams other than income tax that are either not leveraged sufficiently or not accessed at all. &he lack of effort to even bring to the table by either party any other significant revenue besides income tax demonstrates the entrenchment of crony capitalism within professional politics in this country. -or there is two primary sources of potential government revenue" either from the worker or the capitalist. Both ;emocratic and ,epublican politicians have shown whose side they are on by largely letting the capitalists be freeloaders while burdening the hard workers of America with funding the government. :ne simple means of increasing government revenue would be to better leverage natural resource extraction from federal government owned lands. A good way to think of federal land is as being communally owned by a large investment group" namely" the citi$ens of the (nited )tates of America. While I generally support preserving rather than exploiting natural ares" if it is decided to extract natural resources from federal lands" it would make sense to maximi$e the return on such an extraction. But from my understanding" the mode of revenue generation from resource extraction on federal lands is to hold no%reserve auction for the rights to extract the resources from a given segment of federal lands or waters for a set amount of time and then let the private party winner of the auction reap as much bounty as they can from their segment" regardless of how much they paid for the rights to the segment.