By Luca Mendieta @ Shutterstock.com
At The Federalist, Thurston Powers explains how the Black Lives Matter movement is resurrecting traditional Marxism. He writes (abridged):
It isn’t surprising that Black Lives Matter is a communist organization—but the type of communism they subscribe to is. They are conservative communists attempting to fold the progressive movement back into traditional Marxism.
BLM has turned its back on intersectional theory, the modern conflict theory that birthed safe spaces, trigger warnings, and the Oppression Olympics. Instead, BLM is rebirthing the traditional class struggle, reframing it in terms of black and white.
The policy platform proposed by BLM in August did nothing to hide this traditionalism. Its calls for collective ownership of resources, banks, and businesses, a highly progressive income tax, a guaranteed minimum income, and government jobs are lifted straight from the pages of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto.” Here are two excerpts for comparison:
“Communist Manifesto”: Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Black Lives Matter: A right to restored land, clean air, clean water and housing and an end to the exploitative privatization of natural resources — including land and water. We seek democratic control over how resources are preserved, used and distributed and do so while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous family.
But more important is BLM’s use of the black versus white dichotomy.
