What is Capitalism? Legalized Theft.

Capitalism is an economic system centered around not only the private ownership, control, and operation of industrial means of production (the factories, farms, and other manufacturers of food, clothing, and all the products and services we use every day), but also the deliberate redistribution of a vast, overwhelming majority of global wealth into the pockets of those same private owners of the means of production.

Why do capitalists want so badly to control the means of production? Because if they control the economic way in which the United States works, they control the flow of money. By controlling the flow of money, they flow that money right into their own pockets. Capitalism is, very simply, legalized economic theft by a perceived "elite" class, the capitalist class.

Capitalism is the theft of wealth and resources from society, through the weakening and eventual destruction of two initial targets. The first, the regulations of government, which might limit the rate of upward wealth redistribution. To destroy their enemy of government is, to a capitalist, simple deregulation of markets, or the near uniquely American ideology of "free market economics", AKA Randian objectivism, or "laissez-faire capitalism".

In order to create as much wealth for himself as possible, regulation is an obstacle for the capitalist to overcome, an "immoral" imposition upon his "freedom" to be as insanely wealthy as possible, damn all of the consequences for society and everyone else. The second target of capitalists are labor unions; whose power of political organizing and lobbying, whose collective bargaining rights, seek to wrest control of both capital (wealth) and the means of production, from the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class.

Unions exist to protect the working class, and prevent the theft of our wealth from us. These concepts which we are trying to help the people of Frederick county understand are under an umbrella of social, political, and economic theories we call "class conflict". We who work, we who are poor, we who can't make ends meet, we are the workers who are crushed under the wheel of capitalism.

We were told that post-secondary education is the magic key to wealth and success. We were told that the American dream is real, and that everyone can be, and has a right to be, millionaires. That everyone can be rich, a society of perfection and freedom. Our ancestors who came here on boats, millions of them not of their own free will, sick and starving, in bondage as slaves, they were told that everyone will have a job in America, a western Mecca where "the streets are paved with gold". That was a selling point of America at one time, literal golden streets. People believed that, and they were lied to.

To the people in Frederick who do not understand, or do not believe the reality of class warfare against the working poor, we have a message for you. We're sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but we were lied to as well...all of us. The American dream isn't real. It is an illusion, an ideology that we are culturally pressured to believe, to accept, and worst of all, to stop questioning.

And those who exist in our country who are paid to defend capitalism do so because they desperately hope that they'll become rich as well. It's an entire country focused on the concept of "I will succeed", according to capitalists. But of course in capitalism, your "success" of obtaining wealth means that it was stolen from someone else, just as Frederick itself was stolen from Piscataway indigenous people. In recognizing this, we recognize capitalism for the unjust theft that it is.

What is wealth, in capitalism? Capitalism says that wealth is "excess" money created from labor, that wages which are paid to you are fair, and that you need to work harder in order for "the company to make money". The money that the company "makes in order to be profitable" comes directly from wealth your labor created, which you are not given access to, for "the company's sake".

What does this create? Legalized theft. Capitalism is a system devoted to the theft of your money, theft of the wealth that your labor creates, in order to create "profit" for a capitalist who did not do that labor. In short, they are stealing from you. And we all let them do this. It's not like we chose to do this, however, this was never our fault for the most part. We have no choice but to exist in capitalism in order to live.

But we, the socialists, have a different choice to offer you, the liberals, centrists and conservatives of the capitalist ideology. We suggest you stop letting your money be stolen from you. Stop letting Frederick be sold off to private property developers who are buying up Frederick piecemeal, and building luxury housing that lifetime Frederick residents cannot afford. Now your homes are being taken from you, and again you are told that everything is fine, all is going according to plan.

This, too, is a lie. We are the new Piscataway, the new victims of the same old capitalist ideology. Their land was stolen from them centuries ago, and now yours is being taken from you. And if you might require a patriotic message to satisfy your conscience, to allow you to resist the theft of your homes, I have one for you.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, evinces a design to reduce them invariably under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their responsibility, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." -United States Declaration of Independence.