Would Karl Marx Support The FAIRtax?
An indirect tax, like the FAIRtax or state sales taxes, is a tax that is added to the cost of a product and collected by a retailer who then sends it to the government.
A direct tax is a tax that is paid by the citizen or organization directly to the government that imposes it. Examples of the direct tax include income taxes and property taxes.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. It has been cited as one of the basics for communism and socialism. It opens with, A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism” and ends by stating, The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite.
The Manifesto calls for a …heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (A direct tax.)
David Ireland published What Marxist Tax Policies Actually Look Like. After carefully reviewing the accumulated literature written by Marx and Engels and people who worked with them, Mr. Ireland found:
- Marx proposed two principal programs as the solution to society’s main ills.
- One was educating all children at the state’s expense – an education which is equal, and two was a complete reorganization of relief for the least wealthy of the nation.
- In order to pay for these two programs and at the same time replace all the present, unjustly distributed taxes, his plan proposed a general, progressive tax on capital. The rate would increase as the amount of capital involved rose, and there would be a heavy, graduated income tax on individuals.
- In this way, the burden of public administration would be shared by everyone according to his ability and would no longer fall mainly on the shoulders of those least able to bear it, as has hitherto been the case in all countries.
- The tax landscape of Marx and Engels was very different from our own. In 1849, indirect taxes accounted for 40% of the Prussian Royal Finance Ministry’s total tax take. Direct taxes accounted for only 29%.
- Poor households spent between 60 and 80 percent of their incomes on food, which was heavily taxed by the government.
- Because of the way the taxes were included in the prices, consumers often paid a price increase of as high as 90% in the case of rye flour, and a smaller but still meaningful 20% premium for wheat flour.
- Instead of complaining about some people making more money than others as many do today, Marx makes the case for the legitimacy of income inequality both in the Grundrisse where he wrote, ‘the wages being paid are economically just, i.e., determined by the general laws of political economy’ and in the Critique of the Gotha Programme which called it, ‘the only “fair” distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production’.
- Marx opposed the indirect taxes in use at the time because these taxes most impacted the ones least able to pay and allowed the wealthy to escape being taxed.
- If properly levied so as not to fall most heavily on the ones least able to pay, Marx preferred indirect taxes.
CONCLUSION
There are many reasons why Marx would support the FAIRtax, an indirect tax.
The FAIRtax corrects the issues Marx was addressing by:
- Providing a prebate/tax credit that allows everyone to make tax free purchases up to the poverty level for their family size;
- Only taxing new retail goods and services and not taxing the used goods that many of the lower income groups purchase;
- Eliminating the wealthy’s ability to buy favorable tax treatment that allows them to pay a lower rate than the rest of us, or even escape taxation altogether. That was a problem in Marx’s time the same as it is today.
- Reducing the price of goods by 10% to 20% by eliminating the embedded costs of the income tax system, thus helping everyone;
- Eliminating the 7.65% to 15.3% payroll taxes taken from the income earned by the lower income earners increasing the amount they can spend to support their families;
- Bringing manufacturing and good jobs back to the U.S. and creating higher paying jobs;
- Making everyone aware of the costs of the federal government by showing the amount of the FAIRtax on the receipt of each retail purchase;
- Eliminating the need to file federal income tax returns;
This was the attitude of many of the wealthy in Marx’s time. They paid no taxes while everyone else paid all of the taxes.
It is the attitude of many of the wealthy today. They purchased benefits that protect them from paying taxes at the same rate as the rest of us.
Please share this article with your more liberal friends. Show them that the best way to tax the rich is to make them pay federal taxes on everything they purchase.
IT IS TIME FOR US TO TAKE BACK CONTROL AND DEMAND THAT CONGRESS PASS THE FAIRTAX!
WHAT CAN EACH OF US DO?
We can write letters and make calls to our elected representatives and attend Zoom town hall meetings demanding that if they really want to allow Americans to “TAKE BACK CONTROL”, the first step is to eliminate the income/payroll tax system and enact the FAIRTAX!
We all should remember Edmund Burke’s warning that applies to our efforts to TAKE BACK CONTROL, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
If you want to prevent the IRS from being further weaponized to punish those of us who may object to the D.C. opinions and dictates of what is good for us, then help us PASS THE FAIRTAX!
The IRS will be gone and we will pay our taxes when we make purchases. WE and not D.C. Elites will decide how much federal tax we pay!
If you have friends who don’t know about the FAIRtax, send them to FAIRtax.org. Have them watch the white boards under “How It Works” and, if they agree, ask them to please join us.
Then contact your Members of Congress and the President and demand that Congress pass -the FAIRtax—the only fair tax.
Remember, if we don't continue to tell the truth and demand a change, then this quote from George Orwell's 1984 may foretell our children's future:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Is it hopeless? When confronted with a seemingly impossible problem, remember the statement attributed to the author George Bernard Shaw who wrote, You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
Isn’t it time for us to ask, “Why not?”
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