The United States of America, the greatest country in the world, ever! If you Don't like it get out.

The United States of America is the greatest country in the world, ever. People are scaring me, not because of who they say they are voting for. But why. Every response I've been given is based on, " I don't want the same, or I want change", what kind of bullshit, lame answer is that? Just once I would like someone to give me a bonafide reason why you like Obama. Explain how one idea of his will work, and how he is going to pay for it.


I mean most people I speak to sound like an Obama ad. Which speaks volumes to the job that the Obama Team is doing. But the argument still loosely puts together some good ideas, but mostly anti-free market rhetoric combined with the doom and gloom economic situation. I get that. I hear you loud and clear. And I'm not trying to change anyones mind. I just was hoping for one person, to tell me why they are voting for Obama.


If the answer is for "Change", and I've said this once and I'll say this again, remember In 1959 the people of Cuba got "Change", be careful what you ask for.

So to those of you who think the USA is the evil empire, that uses capitalism to take advantage of the masses. If ths country is so damn bad, I propose you move.


Here are a few suitable locations for you:


Cuba: Cuba is one of the most Socialist nations, as it has a mostly state-run economy, universal healthcare, government-paid education at all levels, and a number of of social programs. It does not have a stock exchange.


North Korea: The same is true of North Korea, which has an almost entirely state-run economy, as well as the same social programs mentioned for Cuba. Like Cuba, North Korea does not have a stock exchange.


Venezuela: Economy has more private ownership, but the government social programs are quite extensive and the foreign policy is very left-wing. Cuban doctors and teachers have been brought to Venezuela to provide some medical and educational services.


China: A substantial part of the economy is still state-run, although there are not as many social programs as there once were and universal healthcare has been eliminated. Still has a Socialist-type foreign policy, for the most part.


Vietnam: A significant part of the economy is state-run. Close ties with Cuba, Venezuela, and Belarus.


Syria: Although not commonly referred to as Socialist in the West, Syria has a mostly state-run economy and universal healthcare, along with a left-wing foreign policy.


Belarus: Much of the Belarussian economy is state-run and some govt. social programs are available. Belarus has close ties with Venezuela, China, and other Socialist countries.


Sweden: Mostly private industry, but many well-funded govt. social programs are offered. Universal healthcare and government-provided education at all levels is made available.

And you can take this as your manifesto :

The main ideas to come out of Marx and Engels' collective works include:

Exploitation: Marx refers to the exploitation of an entire segment or class of society by another. He sees it as being an inherent feature and key element of capitalism and free markets. The profit gained by the capitalist is the difference between the value of the product made by the worker and the actual wage that the worker receives; in other words, capitalism functions on the basis of paying workers less than the full value of their labor, in order to enable the capitalist class to turn a profit. This profit is not however moderated in terms of risk vs. return.

Alienation: Marx refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature" ("Gattungswesen", usually translated as 'species-essence' or 'species-being'). He believes that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to the employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and in so doing generate alienated labour. Alienation describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism - it isn't necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated.

Base and superstructure: Marx and Engels use the “base-structure” metaphor to explain the idea that the totality of relations among people with regard to “the social production of their existence” forms the economic basis, on which arises a superstructure of political an d legal institutions. To the base corresponds the social consciousness which includes religious, philosophical, and other main ideas. The base conditions both, the superstructure and the social consciousness. A conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production causes social revolutions, and the resulting change in the economic basis will sooner or later lead to the transformation of the superstructure. For Marx, though, this relationship is not a one way process - it is reflexive; the base determines the superstructure in the first instance and remains the foundation of a form of social organization which then can act again upon both parts of the base-structure metaphor.[citation needed] The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be a dialectical one, not a
distinction between actual entities "in the world".

Class consciousness: Class consciousness refers to the awareness, both of itself and of the social world around it, that a social class possess, and its capacity to act in its own rational interests based on this awareness. Thus class consciousness must be attained before the class may mount a successful revolution. Other methods of revolutionary action have been developed however, such as vanguardism.

Ideology: Without offering a general definition for ideology[, Marx on several instances has used the term to designate the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, “ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces”. Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society, as=2 0well as its ruling ideas, will be determined according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. As Marx said famously in The German Ideology, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”. Therefore the ideology of a society is of enormous importance since it confuses the alienated groups and can create false consciousness such as commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as capital ~ a degradation of human life.

Historical materialism: Historical materialism was first articulated by Marx, although he himself never used the term. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to life, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies).

Political economy: The term "political economy" originally meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the new-born capitalist system. Political economy, then, studies the mechanism of human activity in organizing material, and the mechanism of distributing the surplus or deficit that is the result of that activity. Political economy studies the means of production, specifically capital, and how this manifests itself in economic activity.

Class
Marx believed that the identity of a social class is derived from its relationship to the means of production (as opposed to the notion that class is determined by wealth alone, i.e., lower class, middle class, upper class).

Marx describes several social classes in capitalist societies, including primarily:

The proletariat: "those individuals who sell their labour power, (and therefore add value to the products), and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production". According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat due to the fact that the worker's labour power generates a surplus value greater than the worker's wage s.


The bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat. The bourgeoisie may be further subdivided into the very wealthy bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie.


The petit bourgeoisie are those who employ labour, but may also work themselves. These may be small proprietors, land-holding peasants, or trade workers. Marx predicted that the petit bourgeoisie would eventually be destroyed by the constant reinvention of the means of production and the result of this would be the forced movement of the vast majority of the petit bourgeoisie to the proletariat.


Marx also identified various other classes such as:

The lumpenproletariat: criminals, vagabonds, beggars, etc. People that have no stake in the economic system and will sell themselves to the highest bidder.


The landlords: a class of people that were historically important, of which some still retain some of their wealth and power.


The peasantry and farmers: this class he saw as disorganized and incapable of carrying out change. He also believed that this class would disappear, with most becoming proletariat but some becoming landowners.

Marx's theory of history

The Marxist theory of historical materialism understands society as fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time - this means the relationships which people enter into with one another in order to fulfill their basic needs, for instance to feed and clothe themselves and their families. In general Marx and Engels identified five (and one transitional) successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.

Primitive Communism: as seen in cooperative tribal societies.

Slave Society: which develops when the tribe becomes a city-state. Aristocracy is born.


Feudalism: aristocracy is the ruling class. Merchants develop into capitalists.


Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the true working class.


Socialism ("Dictatorship of the proletariat"): workers gain class consciousness, overthrow the capitalists and take control over the state.


Communism: a classless and stateless society.