Is Obama a Stalin-grade communist?
I'd answer no to that question. He is more of a Marx-grade communist. Stalin's version of 'communism' was a perversion - it bore some resemblance to traditional communism (i.e. communism as described by Karl Marx) on the outside, but was fundamentally a different creature.
If the question was, 'Can Obama be accurately described as a Marxist, or a communist in the traditional sense?', then the answer is clearly yes. His stated policy plans are consistent with those of communism as it was initially laid out.
However, to be fair, most elected politicians in the U.S. today can accurately and reasonably be described as communists. Not the least among them is President Bush. He has become, or perhaps merely revealed himself to be, a great proponent of communist policy. It can reasonably be argued that he has initiated and overseen the most sweeping expansion of communist ideology into American political policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Will Obama, with the help of Congress, continue that expansion? Based upon his statements, I have little doubt that he will. He may run further and faster with it than any of his predecessors. But, at the end of the day, he will just be one more in a long, albeit intermittent, line of torchbearers. He didn't light the torch and he didn't carry it to where it is today. In fact, he wouldn't be in a position to be the one taking it up now, had it not been carried so far already. He will probably carry it further and faster than anyone before him (though that will be no small feat given what has happened in the last 6 months), but ultimately he is just going where the collective has sent him.
That is where we should be focusing our energy, if we don't like Obama's communist ideology - on the collective. Change the will of the people such that they seek tougher solutions with staying power, instead of the easy, visually alluring, feel-good communist solutions that will eventually reveal their fundamental, societally-destructive nature. Is it still plausible to change the will of the people? I have my own opinions about that, but the answer is really irrelevant. Plausible or not, it's the only possible fix - so we should zealously pursue it until time runs out.
The distinction I referred to earlier between Marxist communism and Stalinist-'communism' is at the core of the problem. Most people wrongly accept the Russian model as the best example of what communism is and how it comes about. It isn't. I'm fairly certain that, if Marx were alive today, he would look upon what has happened, and is happening, in the U.S. and western Europe with a great deal more pride than he would look upon the Soviet Union with. He'd likely consider us his legitimate children, and disown those step-children, that once made up the Warsaw Pact, as the illegitimate usurpers of his name that they were.
This misunderstanding among most people about the true nature of communism has presented a great obstacle to combating its ideological principles. Without understanding why, some people have an inherent, almost viscerally negative reaction to the word communism, as they associate it with the U.S.S.R. - the devil's empire. Whenever someone uses the word communism (or socialism) to refer to actual communist policies, some people immediately go into an emotional, irrational, defensive state. This phenomena isn't helped by the fact that some people callously use the word communism as a generic slur, as opposed to an accurate description for the nature of certain policies.
We can't have an intelligent conversation about why communism won't work, because we can't have an honest conversation about what it is, because we can't get passed the word. If we ever do, perhaps we can start to make some progress.
