George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 August 2018.]
Among an alarming fraction of today’s younger generation, capitalism has become a dirty word, and communism has lost all of its historical barnacles. Along with socialism, today communism is viewed by our millennials as a more socially just system, a version of which should replace capitalism as our society’s organizing principle for wealth generation and commerce. Millennials, also known as Gen Y, are the generation born between the early 80s and the late 90s. Today they number about 80M in the US, and academically they have tested and demonstrate themselves as not our brightest generation. (more here)
When they assemble to support politicians like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, and Alexandra Ortega-Cortez, they frequently become an unruly and violent mob to express their anger through assaulting university speakers they don’t like to smashing shiny store windows representing the capitalistic wealth of our nation. (more here)
Today there is rising the idea of a ‘fully automated luxury communism’ or FALC that paints a future of humanity living lives of leisure in harmony with communally-owned advanced technology that does all the work and produces all the wealth that is equitably shared by the people. In that world, no longer is anyone stressed striving to labor in order to own property that makes possible the good life. Today, organizations such a Plan C are expanding young memberships, inviting these to work for a world “centered on the commons” in which people will ‘naturally’ behave unnaturally as altruists.
Spokespersons such as Aaron Bastani of Novara Media teach listeners that “there is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions, … in recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.” Bastani sees FALC achieving something closer to that — “a society with collective control over its own high-tech, work-reducing gadgets. He believes what little work will be necessary in the future, such as optimizing 3D-printers and agricultural robots, will be organized much the way editors currently manage Wikipedia — in a decentralized, non-hierarchical fashion.” Students of history recognize this as the achievement of the Marxist/Leninist communist ideal in which all humanity lives in unregulated harmony after the then superfluous state has withered away.
But what none of these pied pipers talk about to their eager young audiences is the nature of the path required to get us from here to there. After listening to the animated exhortations of over-zealous speakers, these audiences, innocent of history, leave such emotional rallies to gather in the streets to proclaim the advent of their new world. But what none of them realize nor are prepared for is the draconian aftermath that must now come when the exhilaration and excitement of street demonstrations end. Then must begin the real fight, or as Bastani says, “if you want this, what you need to do is seize the means of production. We need to get automation and make it subordinate to human needs, not the profit motive. It’s about seizing the bakery rather than stealing the bread.”
Then will begin the long civil war required to take what’s not yours and kill those who resist such takings. The road through the way station of socialism to communism has never been an easy one. Revolutions such as occurred in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and many other lands, all took long, slogging years of civil war that spread wholesale misery across the land and took lives of millions, and then in the aftermath of devastated economies and terrorized societies, destroyed the lives of uncounted more millions for decades to come. And in the end, for some reason not taught in our schools, the halcyon days that Marx and Lenin promised never came to pass in lands and among peoples who abandoned the fundamental rights to personal property, individual security, and shared liberty.
This is the real battle for the hearts and minds of Americans in which we are now engaged.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
rebanesruminations.com 
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