America is a Communist Country

Now, I will be arguing using the Communist Manifesto, since this is a writing by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I'll cite each page I get it each quote from. The steps that my opponent outline are from the Communist manifesto, but it is important to read what is said before it. It is clear these are not the only steps, and it is said in a few paragraphs before those steps on page 26 of the communist manifesto, "that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class to win the battle of democracy"[1] I will argue in the next point that America does not have the proletariat as the ruling class. There are other things which are necessary for a communist society as well, which I will discuss. Communism requires a proletarian dictatorship which the United States does not have In section 2 of the Communist Manifesto, page 22, it reads "the immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat"[1] and on page 25 it reads: “the working men have no country. WE cannot take from them what have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to tbe the leading class of the nation…” It is clear that the economic elite have power in the United States, and a study conducted by princeton confirms that special interests and economic elites have the most influence over government policy while the common people have no to little influence[2] Thus, the United States does not meet this condition of the conquest of political power by the proletariat. Do I even need to go into how our government is directly run by millionaires and billionaires?(especially now with Donald Trump as president?) I hope not. Communism requires the abolition of bourgeois private property which not all private property is abolished in the USA From page 22 of the communist manifesto, it also reads "The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system producting and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few"[1] While my opponent brought up how people pay property taxes, and thus land is owned by the government, they only do so with physical land property. This is not the most important type of property. For example, the laptop I am using right now is my personal private property. The items the business owner uses to have their workers work with is their own private property. For example, a warehouse that owns a forklift, the forklift is the business owner's private property. The only tax you have to pay on that is sales tax, but that's it. There is no continuous tax on items like that. Communism would abolish private property such as that as well, not just land property. Additionally, while you could argue that people don’t own the land since we pay property taxes on land, I would still argue we do own it. If we didn’t, then why is it considered trespassing for someone other than yourself to go on the property without your permission? If it was the government’s property, then getting permission from the government would allow one to go on another person’s property, but you need permission from that person. Communism requires the abolition of the family On page 24 of the Communist manifesto, it reads, "Abolition [aufhebung" of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the communists."[1] Considering there are plenty of people in the United States still with families, and society as a whole doesn't raise children, this is another reason we do not have communism. Each of these three elemetns are vital to the establishment of a communist society, none of which the United States has. The US has a mixed economy Now, since the US does have the things which my opponent pointed out, but doesn’t have the above, it could be argued that the US has a mixed economy: a little bit of socialism/communism mixed with capitalism. I would therefore argue that in reality the US has a mixed economy Sources: [1]https://www.marxists.org... [2]https://scholar.princeton.edu...