WASHINGTON WINDOW
By LYLE C. WILSON
United Press International
WASHINGTON (UPI) — President Eisenhower was saying the other day that Americans should reject the theories of Karl Marx. He told a news conference that he was greatly disturbed by the spread in the United States of an idea which dated back to Marx’s Communist teachings of more than 100 years ago.
Specifically, Eisenhower objected to Marx’s doctrine of the class war, the ultimately violent contest for supremacy between what Marx called the proletarians and the bourgeoisie. That may be translated into labor (proletarian and management or capital Bourgeoisie). Eisenhower’s reference to Marxian theory came during a discussion of steel labor contract negotiations.
Karl Marx and a collaborator, Friedrich Engels, made their pitch for the class war for a classless society 111 years ago, in 1848. They then wrote “The Communist Manifesto.” Their work is the basic document of all of the Socialist parties in the world today, including the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Non-Socialist parties and governments have nibbled at various parts of the Marx-Engels prescription for a classless society, adopting bits and pieces of it. Of the 10 steps toward socialism or communism proposed by Marx and Engels, however, one notably, has been accepted and made grimly effective in even the most capitalist nations, including the United States.
Marx and Engels’ 10 steps to Utopia were these:
Abolish property rights in land and apply all rents to public purposes.
Impose a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolish all rights of inheritance.
Confiscate property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralize credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly.
Centralize the means of communication and transport in the hands of state.
Extend factories and instruments of productions owned by the state; bring waste lands into cultivation and improve the soil generally with a common plan.
Make all persons equally liable to labor; establish industrial especially in agriculture .. 17 agencies especially in manufacturing industries; gradually abolish distinction between town and country, by more equitable distribution of population.
Provide free education for all children in public schools; abolish children’s factory labor in its present (1848) form; combine education with industrial production.
“In a sense,” Marx and Engels wrote, “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: abolition of private property!”
That is the Socialist-Communist program which Nikita Khrushchev was saying just a while ago would establish a way of life for the present crop of American grandchildren.
Amarillo Globe-Times (Amarillo, Texas) Jun 22, 1959
YesterYear Once More 