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Latin Leftists Gloating Over 'Comrade' Bush's Bailout
CARACAS, Venezuela - They don't call him President Bush in Venezuela anymore.
(L-R) Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's President Evo Morales, Brazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa pose for a picture after a meeting in Manaus September 30, 2008. (REUTERS/Juca Queiroz/A Critica - BRAZIL) Now he's known as "Comrade."
With the Bush administration's Treasury Department resorting to government bailout after government bailout to keep the U.S. economy afloat, leftist governments and their political allies in Latin America are having a field day, gloating one day and taunting Bush the next for adopting the types of interventionist government policies that he's long condemned.
"We were just talking about that this morning on the floor," said Congressman Edwin Castro, who heads the leftist Sandinista congressional bloc in Nicaragua. "We think the Bush administration should follow the same policies that they and the International Monetary Fund have always told us to follow when we have economic problems - a structural adjustment that requires cutting government spending and reducing the role of government.
"One of our economists was telling us that Bush has just implemented communism for the rich," Castro said.
No one in Latin America has been making more hay of Bush's turnabout than Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, a self-proclaimed socialist who is the U.S.'s biggest headache in the region.
"If the Venezuelan government, for example, approves a law to protect consumers, they say, 'Take notice, Chavez is a tyrant!'" Chavez said in one of his recent weekly television shows.
"Or they say, 'Chavez is regulating prices. He is violating the laws of the marketplace.' How many times have they criticized me for nationalizing the phone company? They say, 'The state shouldn't get involved in that.' But now they don't criticize Bush for having nationalize . . . the biggest banks in the world. Comrade Bush, how are you?"
The audience laughed and Chavez continued.
"Comrade Bush is heading toward socialism."
That certainly isn't the view of the Bush administration, which sees the government plan to buy toxic mortgages and the takeover of a major insurance company as well as two huge mortgage lenders as distasteful but necessary temporary measures to right the listing U.S. economy and prevent a worldwide depression.
Mark Weisbrodt, director of the leftist Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, advises numerous Latin American governments.
He called the recent Bush administration policies ironic.
"The biggest nationalization in the world was of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The biggest nationalization of an insurer was AIG. People are saying that Bush is privatizing risk and socializing losses," Weisbrodt said.
John Ross, who has begun providing advice to the Chavez government, along with his boss, former London Mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone, criticized the U.S. president and his conservative political allies.
"They have abandoned every policy that they've advocated that other governments should follow over the past 20 years," Ross said by telephone from London. "And they've adopted the measures that they've condemned other governments for taking.
"This is not the end of capitalism. But it is the end of Reaganism and Thatcherism," he added.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a conservative, was a close ally of President Reagan in the 1980s.
In Peru, Congresswoman Nancy Obregon said she thought Bush's actions were sounding the death knell for capitalism.
"He's driving it into the ground," said Obregon, a socialist. "He's imitating Evo Morales."
Morales is the socialist president of Bolivia who has nationalized a half dozen foreign companies.
But Bolivia's ambassador in Venezuela, Jorge Alvarado, took issue with Obregon's comparison.
"Bush is guilty of a double-standard, but it would be an exaggeration to say he's imitating Evo," said Alvarado. "He'd have to be re-born to imitate Evo!"
Manuel Sutherland, a senior official in the Caracas-based Latin American Association of Marxist Economists, said that Bush has become a fellow traveler.
But Sutherland said he wasn't about to let Bush join his group.
"He carries out nationalizations to save capitalism," Sutherland said. "We want to sink it."
- Posted in
73 Comments so far
Show AllI normally don't like Hugo when he opens his big mouth to taunt the US or Bush, because the energy would be better spent making the Bolivarian revolution more permanent than it now is.
That being said, this is too perfect a serendiptous happening to ignore the hypocrisy of it all. Comrades Bush, McCain, and Palin ndeed. It ought to be a chant that follows McCain and Palin wherever they appear for a campaign event.
Poet
I love Hugo. He has whats commonly called 'cojones' in the Latin world. But ofcourse us Americans cannot stand it when we have 'our' faces rubbed in the sand. If we here in the U.S. spend even an ounce of energy supporting the Left in Latin America, not just Bolivia but a whole slew of contries down South would be better off. Instead the best we can come up is a bitchy snide remark !
But I could be wrong !
Socialism for corporations and the rich used to be known as fascism - check out Italy under Mussolini and Nazi Germany(where it was titled national socialism) under Hitler.
Combined with bringing home a combat hardened regiment to illegally patrol the streets.....
Germany under Hitler had NATIONAL SOCIALISM. Scandinavia and other EU countries have DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM. Very different. Mussolini, a National Socialist, said that the best form of FASCISM occurs when the STATE takes over the CORPORATIONS. In the USA, at least up till now, we have had the CORPORATIONS take over the STATE. Regardless, they are both the same shade of BROWN.
Actually, the corporations ran the state, just very indirectly.
My sentiments are w/ the Latin Liberated Leaders too.....SINK THIS BULLSHIT SHIP CALLED "CAPITALISM" NOW!!!! BOYCOTT THE TRANS-NATIONALS...DUMP YOUR CAR FOR BIKES AND MASS TRANSIT AND SHOP ONLY AT MOM & POP SHOPS!!! SAVE YOUR NEIGHBORS AND YOU SAVE YOURSELF IN THE PROCESS : )
PEACE!
M
bligh4
If I were Hugo I wouldn't gloat too much. The price of oil is sinking along with our economy...
Good point.
As long as the price stabilizes in the medium turn between $80-$90 a barrel Venezuela won't have any problems.
Don't forget monetary collapse as part of our possible future. Chavez has been arguing in OPEC for years that they needed to remove the "dollar fix" on crude oil. If they fix it instead to a currency index or some other thing, demand collapse wouldn't be that big of a deal as long as our currency is hit bad enough.
There are reasons that this hasn't happened. But the further down things go, the U.S. will have less ability to socialize the loss and getting oil away from the dollar will look better and better to the producing countries.
That's the kind of thing the "bailout" was about, sweetalking the European and Asian banks into not dumping their dollar-based paper "assets".
I wouldn't put what the South Americans aside lightly, they are an up-and-coming region, they have broad popular appeal, they are stinking loaded with resources, and the most important of them are either insulated from the current crisis or already so capital poor that it may be of no matter. They also have every reason to see the U.S. Government, American Businesses, and Western Capitalism in general as their mortal enemy.
I also wouldn't be too sure that the U.S. Government and those U.S. Business care one little teeny-tiny bit about the ordinary workers of this country. Hell, Mr. "Hope and Change" Barack Obama can't seem to see anyone past the "middle class" that makes "up to a quarter million dollars a year" as a family!
IMF restructuring or removal of the dollar fix on oil or dumping of dollar-paper tanking the currency are all possibilities now, some more remote than others.
But Don't Panic,
-matti.
Venezuela does not need petroleum. However, Chavez did a great thing in turning the toxic fruit of laissez-faire capitalist petroleum speculation into public benefits for the Venezuelan people. Let's all give Chavez a huge round of applause for this fantastic achievement.
bligh4
Hugo does not NEED oil only if he is willing to give up 80% of the country's income. If he can get along on 20%- then more power to him. I know if I lost 80% of my income I would be rather concerned...
Venezuela still has oil, it is still expensive, and there is no shortage of demand. That said, Chavez is investing tons into diversifying his economy, becoming food secure, and promoting local cooperatives as well as major national and international initiatives. I wouldn't worry about Venezuela. They haven't lost 80% of anything. The press was calling him "flush with oil money" when it was at half the price it is now.
In a country like Venezuela that socializes energy, they are better isolated and protected from international fluctuations in the price of oil. In the long run, because Venezuela possesses more oil than it needs, the entire country profits from the growing scarcity of oil regardless of short term disruptions like a collapsing American economy. If only we had socialized our energy resources here in America. The price of gas would still be less than $1.00, the American economy would not be collapsing right now, and we wouldn’t have so many billionaires, all of which would improve the wellbeing of most of us. But we are too corrupt a culture to socialize. There are too many cheaters. We really have a lot to learn from countries like Venezuela.
Bush is NOT a socialist. Taking from the private sector and giving to the
people is socialism. Taking from the people and giving to the private sector is fascism.
Fred54
Bush has failed our country just as he has failed every company he has had. Because he is playing in a failed political system and playing in a faile economic system. These Latin Leftists should be able to partake in enjoying the blowback they have seen coming. They certainly have earned the right to say I told you so. If we can continue listening to them we might be able to find a way out of the problem Capitalism has brought us.
Hoa binh
We had a chance to end corporate power over government by letting them fail...now they have the life line to sustain their power.
The timing of the West's decline could not be more fortuitous for the Indigenous Peoples of South America as they rid themselves of Euro/American colonialism and imperialism. Add to that the great visible bonus of a humiliated comrade Bush and it is beyond what anyone could imagine or could have prayed for.
"...People are saying that Bush is privatizing risk and socializing losses,..." Those people are obviously way smarter than US Joe and Jane Sixpack. To call a republican smart would be an oxymoron in itself, much like 'Military Intelligence'.
The comparison to Nazi Germany/Europe is indeed correct. Few here have a clue that the little angry man called bush applies the same principles we all should know from that disturbing era. The equivalents of IG Farben, Mercedes Benz (that's right, they too used Konzentrationslager (concentration camp) inmates to manufacture their 'goods'. The same way 'corporations' benefited from the Nazi rule, the very same way they supported the Nazi Regime. Knowing that there is already a well functional prison 'work' program in the US that benefits those corporations and is not held against the tax payers costs of those prisons, it makes the more sense to figure that an increasing criminalization of citizens will give the corporations more 'Zwangsarbeiter' (forced laborers). Without a glorification of any political system, South America deservedly heads into a direction that starts to benefits the people, not the capitalist pigs that have exploited this resourceful continent in self service mentality since the Spanish/Catholic thieves arrived.
Forget about elections - the only vote You have is at the register
Justice is served.
Never before has the USA been in a position to live up to it's own creed; and never has there been a bigger failure.
The truth after all is that 'Democracy" in the USA has never been anything but a cover for the "Oligarchy".
Now, taking into consideration all of the death and destruction the USA has exported to the world for most of the 20th century and almost from the begining of the 21st century in the name of "Democracy" using the "good ole USA" as the "world's example" it was time to put up or shut up, they did neither----so the world will decide-----and soon.
The conservative element within this society should all be packing over night bags in preparation for lengthy stays "in safe havens" or planning mass suicide. It is they who brought this upon themselves----and then the rest of us.
Instead, in just a few days, the USA will be lining up to vote in a system that has proved itself to be an abject failure, a lie, a ruse for just a few---to gain control of the many.
And what do they have for choices? Obama, who may or may not be a "change"---but most likely a superficial one---"the first half black man to be elected President" ----who made few changes in the corruption of the truth except crossing the color barrier, with "Uncle Joe"---one of those who helped make the mess in the first place.
Then on the other side we have 'Grandpa McCain'---another war criminal elevated to a position of credibility by the "Democracy that sold out"----and his winking little cutie--- bible thumping Muppet-------and it just keeps going on and on in a vast theatre of the absurd---that increases in absurdity with each day.
Hugo, Che, Fidel, Mao, "Uncle Ho"----they all are having a good laugh along with
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Touch the Clouds, and so many more------
Someone pulled the veil away and revealed the USA for what it truly is-----a fake---and it was the USA that pulled the veil away---by their own greed and stupidity.
The world cannot possibly continue to ignore the USA----and they now have the absolute responsibility to themselves and the rest of us to dismantle the USA---and use them for the negative example they actually are. They truly are a dangerous rogue nation, capable of the most horrific acts of cruelty, death and destruction, hypocrisy and duplicity. If they are not dismantled they will surely drag the rest of the world into the slime along with them. The world deserves better.
There really is justice---you just need to look for it.
Bravo NativeSon! Well said.
Very good observation NativeSon. All spoken with calmness and assuredness. You see those windows of opportunity being missed and can’t help to ask why. The empire hasn’t been kind to you over the centuries, but you still have your humanity.
Hoa binh
"...People are saying that Bush is privatizing risk and socializing losses,..." Those people are obviously way smarter than US Joe and Jane Sixpack. To call a republican smart would be an oxymoron in itself, much like 'Military Intelligence'.
The comparison to Nazi Germany/Europe is indeed correct. Few here have a clue that the little angry man called bush applies the same principles we all should know from that disturbing era. The modern equivalents of IG Farben and Mercedes Benz (that's right, they too used Konzentrationslager [concentration camp] inmates to manufacture their 'goods') utilize American citizens that are fed into the prison system for the most ludicrous reasons. Thus the same way 'corporations' benefited from the Nazi rule, the very same way they supported the Nazi Regime. Knowing that there is already a well functional prison 'work' program in the US that benefits those corporations and is not held against the tax payers costs of those prisons, it makes the more sense to figure that an increasing criminalization of citizens will give the corporations more 'Zwangsarbeiter' (forced laborers). Without a glorification of any political system, South America deservedly heads into a direction that starts to benefits the people, not the capitalist pigs that have exploited this resourceful continent in self service mentality since the Spanish/Catholic thieves arrived.
Forget about elections - the only vote You have is at the register
My apologies for the glitch in the post. My pc acted up...
When you follow popular/civilian struggles for constitutional rights, right livlihood and humanity around the world, all of the militarized divisions drop away. The monoculture of the technocracy has precious little social depth aside from creating social problems and the mega projects are the technological equivalent of the financial crisis/ Superfund cleanup calendar. scat.
I would love to see an article with critical analysis about the market research and advertising industry - interviews with the pricipals who run the ad campaigns for say - the army. How are their retirement accounts doing?
The irony here is that Hugo is getting his money and power from the same gas guzzling drivers who claim to hate him whereas the folks who sympathize with him generally drive more fuel efficient vehicles, take public transportation, and even conserve as much as possible. I would love to see the Hugo bashers give up their gas guzzlers if they really meant what they said.
Also, the price of oil will go right back up right after the election. Anyone who says the price of oil will keep going down even after this year hasn't been paying attention to history in the recent years.
"whereas the folks who sympathize with him generally drive more fuel efficient vehicles"
Exactly, how this for incentives?
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNcePwj2rD9bZR4BLgMoWYjDm6lQD93K3HR03
Now that's the kind of real leadership America needs. Unfortunately, in America, any such leader would face tremendous opposition in Congress and possible attempted rightwing military coups just like it happened to FDR in 1934 and four other potential ones which basically happened to fizzle out. I'm afraid America won't change much until she is forced to her heels and made to weep. :=(
Tons of wind & solar plants + battery swap stations in place of gas stations + solar panels for homeowners to recharge their vehicles + swapping out gasoline cars for completely electric cars = won't happen here, but it would be nice. Oh, and Israel is turning their entire country into only electric vehicles, and drivers will be able to pull up to a station, and get their depleted battery swapped for a fully charged one, and drive away. Sound good?
That looks promising for Israel. I hope that Israel will quit siding with the Saudi royal elites and be itself without the US. I wish Israel well and hope that it will recover from its war-against-Palestinians disease.
As for electric cars, don't they require more coal and nuclear? I'm not so sure solar and wind will provide enough energy for those electric cars unless people drive too little and I'm not sure that happens in Israel.
Israel "sides" with the "Saudi elites"???
Yeah, Hezbollah & Iran are Shia, Saudi Arabia is Sunni. And since Arab countries don't give a crap about the Palestinians, they have no problem working with anyone to contain Shia influence.
Supposedly the Midwest and deserts further west have more than enough wind and solar resources to power our entire country, even with all-electric cars. Plus there is still geothermal potential in several states (supposedly enough to power our whole country too), and who knows how much power we can get from tidal generations off our gigantic coastlines. Simply put, we DO NOT NEED DIRTY AND DANGEROUS ENERGY SOURCES. That's just BS these industries are feeding people to stay in business. The only genuine obstacle would be the legal problems of building solar and wind turbines on that barren land (There could be tens of thousands of property owners involved, even more) and then getting right of way for transmission lines. In any case, I think installing solar panels on just about every building in the country would be a good idea, lessening the reliance on central power grids and/or providing emergency backup. As well, tidal generators or offshore wind farms wouldn't have as much trouble powering coastal areas. (BTW this is all drawn from articles I have read over the past couple years from lots of sources, so please don't ask for citations. This is from memory).
It is good that Chavez socialized the Venezuelan oil for the good of his people. I know that you think it is bad for the poor there--didnt you go down there to work awhile back? (I may be thinking of someone else). But, in the long run, I think, rather than the "free mkt" constantly draining their resources, it was the best thing to do.
Remember a few years back when Chavez gave free heatin goil to New Yorkers?
Maybe the CIA should stop trying to assassinate their leaders down there.
I'd like to add that contrast Chavez to King Abdullah. Why does the US lick Saudi Arabia ass even as it backstabs them. America is more like a "Stepford Wife" to Saudi Arabia. America begs for abuse and trouble and Saudi Arabia gives it to his own people and the US in the form of terrorists. When will this country ever grow up and learn?
On c-span, I heard a GOP congressman say, "Wasnt that hilarious taht the King of Spain told Hugo Chavez to shut up?". I called him and asked, "Wasnt it even more funny when the P of China (gawdm, I cant think of his name!!), told Dubya to shut up? So teh CVongressman prefers to monarch of Spain to the democratically elected Hugo Chavez? He was elected. That is more than Bush can say>"
Had enough yet?
Capitalism kills.
sp-usa.org
Some day in the not-too-distant future, we're all going to be working for the South Americans in some fashion. Latin America is rising in global stature while North America is fast sinking.
I wonder how hard it is to move down there--Venezuela or somewhere.
Seriously--my Spanish isnt that great--but it could get better.
I am glad to see them break the chains of capitalism. I just dont like looking like a stupid "Bush yankee"!
I think they know that most people here do not agree with Bush. I get a newsletter from Venezuela twice a week. But, the furthest south I've ever been, in this hemisphere, is Mexico.
I don't begrudge these political leaders-- markedly superior to our decadent, deplorable imperial political elite of para-corporate technocrats-- savoring the moment, even gloating.
After all, think of the avalanche of insufferably smug chauvinistic jingoism proclaiming that the USA "Won" the Cold War, and the corollary pyroclasts of self-righteous derision and invective sneering at the ostensible final proven failure of Communism and the concomitant Triumph of Free-Market Capitalism after the USSR disintegrated and the Berlin Wall came down.
Every Amerikan politician, corporate media infotainwhore, and even wingnut humorists like P.J. O'Rourke and Dennis Miller strutted upon the stage to put in their greasy two cents.
Talk about yer hubris! It cried out for comeuppance.
An advice from people that conscious or unconscious are fully following latinoamerica path towards a 'XXI Century Socialism'.
Of course the elite' resistence to implement these steps will prefer to
continue exerting control in goverment through extreme 'emergency' powers for
continuously patching an structurally unsustainable economic system.
Anyway please read the following article that could have been written by any
of the latinoamerican democratic leaders:
Building a Huge Public Enterprise Sector
Time to Design a New Economy
By STANLEY HELLER
Enough with criticizing Wall St and making suggestions on how to patch it up! The system has cracked wide open and we shouldn’t waste time inventing methods for putting Humpty Dumpty together again. We need to construct alternative ways of living. We need radical plans for a new way of guaranteeing the collective welfare of humanity and we need them in a form easily understandable to the hundreds of millions worldwide who will be impoverished and enraged by the ongoing collapse.
I don’t have the answers, but I’ll dare to suggest certain principles in thinking and action.
1. Reject the notion that the crisis is all the fault of “liberals” who forced, forced banks into lending money to poor people for mortgages. This idiocy is the line presented by the blowhard Rush Limbaugh and others. Nobody pushed around the billionaire titans of Wall Street. Clinton-Gore bent over double for them. And the crisis wasn’t caused by a sudden fit of “greed” either. In our business world you go for maximum profit 24/7 or you’re out on your keester.
2. Reject the notion that there’s a shadowy world of finance separate from the good old real economy. They are intertwined. The so-called financial crisis is a crisis of the whole international business economy. What the hell is this stuff about ”Wall St.” vs. “Main St.” anyway? Who shops on Main St.? Main St. was Wallmarted out of existence years ago.
3. Realize that this country has the ability to raise massive amounts of money. If it can raise a trillion to bail out Wall Street and trillions to murder Iraqis it can raise enormous sums to reshape the economy and the health care system.
4. It is madness for the government to take over dead corporations and toxic securities. Instead it should seize whatever banks it needs and directly lend money to companies who make real products or provide services to clean up and conserve the planet.
5. The prime reason the corporate chiefs resorted to paper schemes to enrich themselves is because they were so successful in keeping wages down. To keep up buying power they got Americans to work more and more hours and take on more and more debt. That couldn’t go on forever so Wall Street went gaga producing financial paper. It blew bubble after bubble declaring them to be 100 carat diamonds. The real way to guarantee buying power is to guarantee decent wages. To do that the government has to create a huge public enterprise sector, businesses collectively owned by their employees.
6. We can no longer afford a medical system in this country lorded over by the medical insurance corporations. The waste is too damned expensive. Single-payer universal health care is an immediate economic necessity.
7. We can’t afford imperial wars. We have to bring all the troops home now. Most of our terrorist problem is caused by our insatiable meddling and stealing of resources. The rest of the problem can be dealt with by intelligent police work and military measures within our borders.
8. The idea that people are going to finance their retirement with corporate paper was a monumentally bad idea. Fixing social security, making it universal and greatly expanding its payments should be a no-brainer.
9. We should have a moratorium on home foreclosures for some set time until citizen committees can determine if the overwhelmed debtor is a person trying to hang on to his/her modest house or a speculator who ran into hot water while trying to flip real estate.
10. We cannot consume fossil fuels and other resources on the current American scale. It’s not just a matter of developing new fuels. Global warming is real. We have to think up ways of living smaller and closer to home.
11. We in no way want to repeat the tyranny and exploitation that went down under the name of “Communism”. We’re in a new century. Let’s use computers, the internet and trade unions to radically expand the scope of democracy by bringing it into the world of business.
12. Understand that we’re going to have to go out in the streets and raise some major hell to get anything at all accomplished.
Stanley Heller is moderator of the listserv StopTheWarPolitics. He can be reached at stanley.heller@yahoo.com
STANLEY HELLER says he does not have the answers, but I think he does.
I would add that many infrastructure industries, like transportation, energy, banking, and health care should be what is called in Canada a “Crown Corporation”. We could call them “Federal Corporations”. Through the government the people own these corporations. All employees would work for the government. These corporations would answer to the legislature. Their CEO and high management would work under fixed government salaries approved by the legislature. No CEO would be permitted to earn more than a certain amount, perhaps 10 times the minimum wage. Profits would be either reinvested into the business, or added to the national bank. Losses would be reported and the legislature would conduct open strategy meetings. When necessary general plebiscites would be conducted for controversial decisions. Thus the people would decide. Unlike Canada, I would propose that it would be illegal for any private corporation to conduct business operations in a federally operated industry. Private airline, banking, medical, and oil companies would be disallowed. Many Americans call such a system communism, but it is radically different from communism as it was implemented in Russia. In this system private enterprises would be active in a wide range of industries, but not in crucial industries that affect all citizens, industries like energy, transportation, banking, health care, etc. The decision to define a particular industry as “Federal” would be done by the legislature. The idea is to protect the population from the greed of today's corporate and government leaders. The legislature (Congress) would be expanded (perhaps tripled in size) to accomadate this suprvisory roll. All legislative processes would be publicly broadcasted or published for all to see. All attempts to circumvent official Federal Corporations with under-the-table private practices would be treated as criminal activity with severe financial penalties. I wish I lived in such a country.
Their employees would NOT answer to the government, they would unionize and answer to NO ONE. Don't believe me? Do you think employees of PEMEX or the CFE in Mexico answer to the government? Do US public school teachers answer?
HAHAHA
Since you proudly support a fucked up system that has only gotten worse and ruined the US, you're part of the problem, sir. Unionization isn't necessarily a bad thing and would definitely help poor suckers such as yourself earn better income instead of whining about Chavez. He's no threat to the US. Grow up and stop being a rightwing liar.
This would work, if enough people wanted it.
hope,
What a great post!
It is a great post. Is the website StopTheWarPolitics.com?
Venezuela has suffered little direct effect from the market chaos because Chavez nationalized the most important companies that once traded on the minuscule Caracas stock exchange and because its currency is fixed by exchange.
Bush shows that fascism and communism are two sides of the same conservative coin in the service of an elite.
I am sorry; I think you are confusing the only communism you were allowed to be taught better known as that of the Old USSR and the Old Peoples Republic of China, better known as Red China.
Exactly -- which just happens to have given Western "capitalists" such a sweet deal that the one of the world's greatest ironies has occurred the past 3-4 decades in particular.
While the corporate-wing in D.C. and their propaganda radio outlets across the country lambast "liberals", unions, and taxes -- they offshore their entire manufacturing arms to places like "Communist" China.
So how exactly is it that the so-called commies treat so-called capitalist CEO's better? Either CEO's adore Communism, or else China is properly labeled tyranny instead.