Republicans use ‘communism’ as scare tactic to get votes

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Carlos Linares | Guest Opinion

I’ve heard about communism my entire life. My teachers (from first to 12th grade) were Marist Brothers who came to El Salvador after being kicked out of Cuba by Fidel Castro. They didn’t have anything nice to say about Castro and had lots to say about the horrors of communism.

Because of my career in international development, I have lived and worked in 23 countries around the world: Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Venezuela, Kuwait, Myanmar and others that happen to include Populist Autocrats, Military Dictatorships, Oil-rich Monarchies and Communist countries.

So, now that I am in my 70s, it is a good time to tell you what I’ve learned about communism.

For one, “Communist” is the favorite accusation of the far right against their opposition. The far-right uses the threat of communism to scare you and make you vote for them.

Communism is a form of government where the state owns most of society's resources, including property, education, transportation, agriculture and the means of production. In practical terms, all of this means that the State (the government) owns everything. It means there is no private ownership of anything.

Communist countries, for instance, are countries where all agriculture production happens on land owned by the State, and the farmers are tenants. And in some cases, private land is expropriated by the State and given to the landless workers. In communist countries, the State owns the banking system. Not just the Central Bank, all the banks. This happened while I was living in El Salvador — all the banks were “nationalized.” It was a terrible idea.

In communist countries (like Venezuela) and in monarchies in the Middle East (like Kuwait), the State owns everything in the energy sector: oil drills, pipelines, oil tankers, refineries, trucks, pumping stations and so on. And as if we were living in a communist country, or in a monarchy, the former U.S. president tries to manipulate the energy argument to his favor. When he says that drilling more oil (“drill, drill, drill…”) will benefit your pocket, he is lying. Increased production benefits countries like Venezuela and Kuwait and the owners of the oil companies, not you. Oil production in the United States does not belong to the United States government, it belongs to private companies.

The Democratic Party has never claimed, or will ever claim, that the government must expropriate oil drills, gas stations, or anything else in the energy sector. The U.S. government does have its own energy reserves only for military purposes.

The Democratic Party has never claimed, or will ever claim, that land should be expropriated, or that all the banks in the United States must be “nationalized.” So, what is this name-calling all about?

It is about the Republican Party using the “communist ghost” to scare you and make you vote Republican.

The Democratic Party does not want to expropriate anything because we know capitalism in a democracy is a much better system of government. We the people of the United States love private property, we love freedom, we love prosperity — we love owning our means of production; and know that communism doesn’t work. Even communist countries like Russia and China, recognizing the failure of the communist system, have been implementing private sector initiatives for decades.

Obama and Biden were also accused of having a communist agenda during their campaigns. So, what happened? Well, we did not turn into a communist country during those administrations. The “communist ghost” did not materialize because it was a lie. The lie did not work then and will not work this time either.

Back home in the 1970s and '80s, many of my colleagues and I working for affordable housing were labeled communists by the extreme right. I think the extreme right doesn’t understand the difference between communism and service to others. Service to others is a fundamental Christian value. Let’s not confuse the teachings of Jesus Christ with communism.

Sometimes I wonder if the Republicans think that Jesus Christ was a communist. Somebody should ask them.

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Carlos Linares is an international development and environment specialist with 45 years of experience. He serves as Chair of the Buncombe County Democratic Party Hispanic Outreach Committee, Secretary of the Lake Committee in Biltmore Lake, and member of the Community Advisory Board of Blue Ridge Public Radio/NPR.

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