Why Van Jones Had to Go

One thing is certain, Van Jones was a political liability. But that is not why he should have resigned. Van Jones had to go because he is a communist and communists can do no good for this country. In fact, communists can do no good for any country. Communist philosophy is wrong in every respect, philosophically, economically, Constitutionally, historically, and most importantly, on the facts. There is no possible way that a person operating on the principles of Karl Marx could accomplish anything of value for a country.

First of all, in spite of what Marx said, Marxism is wrong because it is predominantly an economic theory rather than a theory of man. No economic theory can trump the Constitution. That document is not a document of economics; it is a philosophical and political document that defends individual rights. As such, hierarchically, it trumps any economic theory.

Marxism starts with a theory of historical development that sees class and economics as fundamental factors in history rather than man and his rights. The critique of capitalism that Marxism advances is wrong historically, philosophically and economically. For instance, a Marxist can claim to understand everything about you by means of identifying the economic class to which you belong. He assumes, under this premise, that you will always seek to defend your class and if you are a capitalist, you have no place in the future; you must be eliminated. Anyone who has this position is blind to reality. This view is completely untenable, it is discriminatory and it is a clear indication that the Marxist is going to make many bad decisions.

The Marxist critique of capitalism is supported by several intellectual tricks; one is called polylogism, the idea that every economic class has its own logic that cannot be understood by people of other classes. This view destroys intellectual debate and assigns some classes to the category of being wrong. The other trick is called historical materialism that assigns the class of “the rich” to a historical role that is supposedly being dissolved by history in favor of “the proletariat” that represents socialism or communism. On this basis alone, how could a Marxist create a “green jobs” program that accomplishes anything lasting or meaningful? At the outset, he is prejudiced about people with skills, training and genius because they are categorically on the wrong side of history.

The Marxist critique destroys intellectual intercourse between rich and poor and opens the door for some of the most vile lies and moral outrage by the Marxists. The intent of this anti-capitalist outrage is to ensure that “workers” (capitalists) who create affluence are not allowed a voice in society and to justify their exploitation or exclusion in society.

There are only two kinds of economic creatures that have a place in a “green jobs” program; oligarchs and racial minorities.

Oligarchs: Only companies that use government to capture markets can participate. These tend to be less productive companies that want to use government to overcome competitive weakness due to poor management or the adoption of obsolete technologies (Remember, the morning before this bill was proposed, an amendment was added to it that earmarked a large portion of new tax revenues for companies that would invest in green jobs specifically in the Midwest. Who are these companies? They are all companies that are involved in research and development of green technology, some of them financed by oligarchs from Russia, who expect to receive large infusions of investment capital from the Stimulus Package and government grants. None of these companies expect to compete in the open market. In fact, they will be propped up by the government that has a stake in their success. The Obama administration is hoping (beyond hope) that these new "green" companies will mitigate the negative impact of the Cap and Trade bill on coal and oil companies. The administration appears to be blind to the very real possibility that not only will this bill destroy those industries, but it will replace those companies with organizations providing less efficient energy alternatives).

Racial Minorities: A Marxist as the “green jobs” master, who has openly stated that capitalism is about white people poisoning black neighborhoods and white destruction of native tribes will operate, not like a capitalist with any eye on efficiency and profitability, but like a commissar. He will command that hiring decisions be based on social goals rather than job skills. He will ensure, specifically, that few competent white people will be given new "green" jobs. This will institutionalize racism as government policy and force these new green companies to hire people who will, in many cases, be less productive union employees with guaranteed jobs. Using Marxist theory, those people who are the "proletariat", meaning racial minorities, will be given preference for those jobs...which amounts to a re-distribution of jobs from coal and oil industry employees, who will not find jobs in the new eco-economy, to previously "excluded" groups. These will be permanent jobs paid for out of tax payer money.

A program like Cap and Trade can only collapse - forcing the government to backtrack on hundreds of unworkable policies in order to "fix" the myriad problems it has created, not to mention the resulting economic devastation and unemployment.

Although Marxists claim to be “scientific” due to their belief that religion is the opium of the masses; they are very religious in some major ways. First, their allegiance to science is really pseudo-science, a fake science that seeks to validate the “historical factors” that they have accepted on faith. For a Marxist, as a polylogist, all truth is “proletarian” while anything that comes from a true inductive process is “bourgeois” meaning capitalist and unworthy of consideration. Under this view, Van Jones would have been focused on science provided by "scientists" living off of government grants, people with a vested interest in bad global science; people who will act to solve a non-problem that has not been scientifically proven - in the name of science. If you don't understand the harm of this policy, you don't realize that real science, when it is free, discards false notions as soon as the facts disprove them. Our government will cling to global warming "science" forever because it will help them achieve "social" goals, not economic goals.

Yet, even though most Marxists reject religion, they have accepted a basic tenet of religion that “man is his brother’s keeper”; that it is man’s duty to sacrifice for the sake of others. This premise creates some of the most vicious cruelty that any political ideology has ever mustered. If you are a capitalist, in this view, you are a thief (exploitation theory), a liar (polylogism) and a throwback to the past (historical process). The solution for the Marxists is brutal repression and re-distribution. But, as has always been the case when Marxists rule a country, the money re-distributed becomes a shrinking pot that shrivels to nothing and throws the nation into chronic poverty.

This means that Marxist principles result in catastrophe for man. Classism is wrong because it seeks to identify an individual by means of whether he is part of a group. Marxists claim to be against racism of any kind but when they say that white people are the scourge of mankind, they don’t consider that kind of statement to be racist. Yet, the result of this view is the same regardless of whether the excluded group is made up of Jews or white people: social decline and genocide. By this view, you can make any individual into an enemy and justify his destruction. You can do it to Jews, to white people, to Hispanics, to businesspeople or any group that you decide is ripe for hatred. Mr. Jones' statements about white people expose the cruelty and exclusion that is to come from his view of history.

An even worse aspect of Marxism is the contention that Marxism is the only truth; that it can’t be denied, that a defender of individual rights is an enemy of the people, a cruel heartless fascist intent on subjugating mankind and stopping the advance of the next historical phase that belongs inexorably to socialism. Marxists insist that true freedom consists of sacrificing for the collective. Marxists do not question this lie; they act on it ruthlessly, making themselves into some of the most vicious man-hating advocates for the so-called “good” in history.

To justify their brutal repressions, Marxists have another argument to support their altruistic premises. This is called “exploitation theory”. It holds that any form of profit from land, money interest, labor, etc., is theft. For the Marxist, economic value comes only from the labor that is being expended on the capitalist’s property and this means that the capitalist, the owner of machines, factories, housing units, farms, etc. is nothing more than a robber. According to this view, the capitalist exploits the people he hires to work on his property and, because he expends no labor, he has no right to the surplus value created by the worker.

This doctrine created two of the most brutal and hateful dictatorships in human history. It justified the expropriation of every factory in Russia and China and the brutal suppression, murders and other forms of discrimination against the people who once owned these properties. Armed with exploitation theory, Marxists have historically destroyed the very people they need to create a working economy. These wrong headed policies have left Marxist societies without the benefit of the organizing skills and management genius needed to create affluence and prosperity. The result was a society that routinely operated according to the whims of ignorant savages like Stalin and Mao; as well as the decisions of "commissars" who routinely disregarded the principles of supply and demand, creating in the process massive waste, fraud and corruption. All of this in order to ensure that no worker was exploited.

Exploitation theory is a lie. Labor is a factor in production but there are other more important factors. These include capital accumulation (savings), management skills, efficient resource allocation, production planning, technology planning, business process planning and implementation, leadership, effective market planning, logistics, not to mention having the foresight to create and offer the best products for the best price; all of these are skills necessary for efficient production; all of which add value and justify the profits created by capitalists. Property in the hands of efficient managers is what creates value. The recognition of property rights, the very enemy of Marxist theorists, is the single most important factor in the creation of a society that works.

Yet, intellectuals like Van Jones praise themselves with romanticized notions about their being righteous defenders of downtrodden minorities who have been victimized by capitalism, forgetting, in the blindness of fanatics, that the supposed downtrodden also have a right to be left alone, that they have rights, that they should not be required to attend group meetings every night to be indoctrinated and evaluated; that they have a right to the results of their labor but no right to the results of the labor of property owners, and that forcing them to give up most of their production for the collective is immoral. Marxist intellectuals, for some reason, are blind to the fact that the real oppressors of men, the real slave drivers, the real imperialists and militarists, are Marxists.

We have a basic choice going forward as a nation. Should we have an expanding role for government, creating ever larger welfare programs for rich and poor alike? Should we accept the premises of Marxist ideologies while we wonder why things are getting worse and why our “bosses” don’t give a damn about us? Or should we roll all these nearly endless rights violations back and allow private capital and voluntary interests to predominate?

I question why we are having this debate at all. Marxism has been such a miserable failure throughout history that even a Marxist should know better...if there is any honesty left in the world. In fact, we’ve already answered these questions in our founding documents. The answer to Marxist ideas is individual and property rights. Van Jones? You've got to be kidding.