QYou commies are enemies of freedom. --Al H.
AThanks for your comment, Al. It gets to one of the biggest misconceptions people have about our party, and about socialism and communism in general.
In fact, we consider ourselves to be the great defenders of freedom. We support, and fight for, every freedom that can be exercised equally by all people: freedom to embrace, or not embrace, a set of religious beliefs; freedom to speak your mind without government interference; freedom to love and marry the consenting adult of your choosing; freedom to determine your gender expression and how you live in your body; freedom to make your own decisions about reproduction; freedom to own and use firearms in ways that don't limit other people's right to safety... We also fight for a new freedom: the freedom for working people to control their own labor and the wealth it creates.
The only freedom we don't support is the freedom to use property to control and profit from the labor of others. We don't support it because it can't shared equally. If the employer is free to make profits from other people's work, then his employees are not free to control their own work and the value it produces. In this case, freedom for business owners means bondage for workers.
This inequality has big implications for democracy. For example, the Supreme Court decided not long ago that unrestricted campaign donations are a form of protected political speech. That means the more money you have, the greater your voice in the democratic process, and ultimately, the less voice people without money have. Discrimination in housing, hiring, and lending also depend on the ability to use property to limit the freedoms of others.
Ultimately, you might say, we're for equality of freedom. Every person should enjoy the same freedoms and protections. Capitalism, which protects the freedoms of billionaires and big shareholders by limiting the freedoms of working people, is the real enemy of liberty. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote, we want a society "where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Photo: Creative Commons 3.0
In fact, we consider ourselves to be the great defenders of freedom. We support, and fight for, every freedom that can be exercised equally by all people: freedom to embrace, or not embrace, a set of religious beliefs; freedom to speak your mind without government interference; freedom to love and marry the consenting adult of your choosing; freedom to determine your gender expression and how you live in your body; freedom to make your own decisions about reproduction; freedom to own and use firearms in ways that don't limit other people's right to safety... We also fight for a new freedom: the freedom for working people to control their own labor and the wealth it creates.
The only freedom we don't support is the freedom to use property to control and profit from the labor of others. We don't support it because it can't shared equally. If the employer is free to make profits from other people's work, then his employees are not free to control their own work and the value it produces. In this case, freedom for business owners means bondage for workers.
This inequality has big implications for democracy. For example, the Supreme Court decided not long ago that unrestricted campaign donations are a form of protected political speech. That means the more money you have, the greater your voice in the democratic process, and ultimately, the less voice people without money have. Discrimination in housing, hiring, and lending also depend on the ability to use property to limit the freedoms of others.
Ultimately, you might say, we're for equality of freedom. Every person should enjoy the same freedoms and protections. Capitalism, which protects the freedoms of billionaires and big shareholders by limiting the freedoms of working people, is the real enemy of liberty. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote, we want a society "where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Photo: Creative Commons 3.0
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