How Marxist Are the 2020 Presidential Candidates?

Karl Marx

As I have previously pointed out, in The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx listed 10 items that would be required to advance Marx toward a communist society. It is a checklist.

Target Liberty will take this list and match it up, on an ongoing basis, against candidates running in the 2020 presidential election and based on their comments, speeches and websites will checkoff under their names any item on the checklist when they call for it as part of their positions.

Marx wrote:

The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy...

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and other conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. 

These measures will of course be different in different countries. 

Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all immigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of the National Bank with the state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; to bring into cultivation of waste land, in the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8.  Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9.  Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

In determining what items should be checked off against the candidates, TL will, of course, adjust for the modern day. For example, instead of calling for free public school education, we will check this item off for any candidate who calls for free college education.

The current declared candidates are:

Julian Castro
John Delaney
Tulis Gabbard
Kristen Gillibrand
Richard Ojeda
Elizabeth Warren

Target Liberty readers are invited to submit news items that show a particular candidate should have a checkmark against a particular item on the list because of a comment, speech, etc. Send all items to marxistlist@epjmail.com

-RW