It was a place far away and not so long ago, where the bears roamed free and Pushkin was a household name: Communist Russia. The USSR.The Red State has been defunct since the Commies folded their tent 10 years ago under the freezing winds of the Cold War, but this love for “the people” lives on, right here in our own backyards. And Saturday’s celebration of May Day offered the perfect opportunity to explore the red in our own red, white and blue.By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russia embodied Europe’s most progressive and egalitarian ideal: socialism. But surprise! May Day’s roots can be found right here in America. In 1886, workers gathered in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to rally for a 40-hour week. Things got out of hand and a cop was killed. Four protesters were convicted of the slaying and executed. Up until the start of the Cold War, May Day was meant to memorialize the “Haymarket martyrs.”Yes, the world has certainly changed since 1989, but the ideals of communism – found in Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” – are far from dead. While it is true that Marxism – as practiced in the Soviet Union and Albania – has indeed vanished, Marx still wields considerable power. In fact, his ideas are so deeply embedded in our own political systems that we don’t even notice they are there.First of all I’d like to congratulate the anonymous communists who gathered in front of the north campus United Dairy Farmers on Frambes and High Street Saturday evening. These underground Marxists managed to crawl out of their vodka stupor long enough to celebrate the nationwide unification of dairy farmers (and you wondered why there is a UDF every three blocks).As these demonstrators proved, we Americans still identify ourselves by class, with divisions along Marxist lines. In a 1996 survey, 45 percent of Americans called themselves “working class” (i.e., proletariat) and 45 percent “middle class” (bourgeoise).In “The Communist Manifesto” Marx placed “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax,” (such as the United States has today) to move the proletariat toward supremacy. His No. 2 prescription for the proletariat was to “wrest all capital from the bourgeoise and to centralize all instruments of productions in the hands of the state.”No. 1 on his list was abolishing private property. This idea lives as well. Campus Partners has routinely threatened south campus business owners with eminent domain (taking private land for public purposes).But it’s in the area of collectivism and state control that the influence of Marxist ideas are most powerful and least noticed. One piece of evidence is that until very recently, it has been an object of faith that the massive, government-run pension system called Social Security should fund the retirements of all Americans.Of course, neither Social Security nor Campus Partners are admittedly “Marxist,” but the concept that individual right and responsibilities can be blithely overridden to meet collective ends comes straight from Marx.Perhaps the best example of Marxism here on campus is President William “Brit” Kirwan’s goal of diversity. Many before Kirwan have tried to ensure diversity through “multiculturism,” an effort to incorporate on campus those issues that are especially relevant to women and ethnic minorities. Many multicultiurists see society through Marx’s lens – where race or gender supplants economics as society’s key problem.Lesser experiments than the United States have led to genocidal rampage of Pol Pot’s killing fields; endless impoverishment for Castro’s Cuba; and starvation in North Korea, where the exalted Kim dynasty lived like royalty amid famine.Historian/philosopher Georg Hegel said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” We are in the farce stage of history right now, and it’s the best part.
Michael C. Bender is a senior history major from Middleburg Heights, Ohio. Whenever he is in Columbus, he listens to 91.1 FM The Underground.