This article was originally published as a booklet, and 1000 copies were distributed at the 2024 Libertarian convention.

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Why are Russia and China rising while US society stifles innovation?

A Message from the Center for Political Innovation

Growth is good. This should be common sense. It is completely healthy and normal to want to see things improve in your life. It is completely healthy and normal to want a more comfortable life, to provide better for your family, to see things in your community get better, and to take pride in your achievements.

Growth isn’t just about money. Sure, seeing a rise in your income is great, but growth is about much more than that. Human beings are tool-making creatures. While other species merely interact with our environment, we force the environment to serve us. The whole history of humanity is a story of constantly reinventing our relationship with nature and reaching a higher plane. Ants have been making their ant farms the same way for thousands of years. Beavers have been making their beaver dams the same way for thousands of years. But in just 7 or 8 thousand years, human beings have gone from hunter-gatherers in the woods to space travel, iPhones, and artificial intelligence.

Humanity is a creative species, constantly striving to expand its population, lengthen its life expectancy, and make living conditions more comfortable. Growth defines humanity.

So, why does it seem like a contrary message is being blasted everywhere? Why does despair, hopelessness, and pessimism seem to be seething throughout Western civilization? Why is “degrowth” suddenly trendy? What has gone wrong?

There’s one section of the world where growth is everywhere. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remarked: “Every time I visit China, I am stunned by the speed of change and progress. You have created one of the most dynamic economies in the world while helping more than 800 million people lift themselves out of poverty – the greatest anti-poverty achievement in history.”

Since 1949, 850 million people have been lifted from poverty. 70% of the world’s poverty reduction has been achieved by the Communist Party of China. China has high-speed trains that can go over 200 miles an hour. China continues to send spacecraft to the far side of the moon to retrieve samples used in fusion energy research, paving the way to a higher energy source than fossil fuels. China is centralizing its Fusion Energy Research with the goal of creating the industrial prototype fusion reactor, or “artificial sun,” by 2035.

But China is not alone. Despite devastating sanctions and attempts to isolate the country, the IMF admits that Russia’s economic growth continues to expand. Oil exports have held steady, and the state is using oil revenue to expand the industrial base. Russia is experiencing an agricultural boom, now the leading exporter of wheat. Russia responded to sanctions imposed in 2014 by rebuilding its farming system. The Economist proclaimed in 2018, “Russia has become an agricultural powerhouse.” The growth continues. “By 2030, the production of Russia’s agriculture sector is expected to increase by at least one quarter compared to 2021, while exports should rise by half,” the Russian President recently explained. Russia is also supplying fertilizer to African countries.

The explosion of growth happening in Russia and China is going global. In October 2023, a publication from Boston University described China’s global infrastructure projects: “Go big or go home. That seems to have been the mantra of China’s decade-long effort to finance infrastructure projects around the world: an airport in Pakistan, a high-speed train line in Indonesia, a port in Ethiopia, Africa’s longest suspension bridge in Mozambique.” The article went on to explain: “Between 2013 and 2021, China provided at least $331 billion in financing to an array of countries, largely in the Global South; African countries alone have received $91 billion.” The Center for Strategic and International Studies described Russia’s expanding economic relationship with Africa: “Trade revenue between Russia and African countries almost doubled from $9.9 billion in 2013 to $17.7 billion by 2021. Grain exports are of particular importance, as nearly 30 percent of Africa’s grain supplies come from Russia. Moscow’s leading trade partners in the region are countries in North Africa—particularly Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco—which together account for approximately 67 percent of Russia’s total trade with the continent. Moscow mainly exports wheat, coal, refined petroleum, and electronics to these states, while importing fruits, sugar, and vegetables.

Asle Toje of the Norwegian Nobel Institute contrasted the pessimism and confusion rising in the West with the explosion of growth and optimism happening in the East: “In the West, the current times are often seen as a time of uncertainty and fears…this agonizing over the future, and we often forget that for many others, especially on the Eurasian continent, this is a golden era, and in the Eurasian continent, we’re seeing a lot of power accumulating, we’re seeing roads, cities, train networks snaking through the post-Soviet wilderness, and creating a fabulous amount of wealth and dynamism. And this is also happening globally; we are living through a time of great technological progress, a time of engineering marvels that have been unsurpassed in human history.”

This short booklet will help you understand the problem and what can be done about it.

Lets Talk About “Woke”

There is a group of very obnoxious people in society these days, and many of us find them very annoying.

They always want to remind you of how “good” they are. Whatever the latest trendy social media cause is—whether it’s #BlackLivesMatter, #StopTrump, abortion, transgender rights—you can be sure they are all over it. While these issues might genuinely matter to them individually, at the widespread level we’re talking about, the primary driving factor is being good, correct, and beating everyone else.

And so, they really want you to be “wrong.” They hope to discover that you are somehow a “bad” person. Talking to them is frightening because they listen to every word you say, hoping to “correct” you and thus prove themselves to be “better.”

In their minds, being a “good” person means constantly “exposing,” “denouncing,” and “disavowing” others. The more they “call out” others, the better they feel.

But their obnoxious traits go beyond excessive political correctness. They often have needlessly large amounts of body piercings, gaudy hair colors, classify themselves as some obscure sexual or gender identity, and openly discuss mental health issues. Being different is fine, but doing anything and everything specifically to inflict oneself onto others is not simply “being different.”

But to “be different” is to be “good” – and how will anyone know if no one can see it? Their desire to prove their goodness is compounded by a self-indulgent quest to advocate for their “unique” identity and experiences like religious mission work. They believe no one has suffered as they have, and they constantly seek to win in what some jokingly call “the oppression Olympics.”

They see themselves as victims on a personal journey of discovering and rediscovering their victimhood. They believe being a victim is great because victims are “good.” Moreover, the “victim” label functions as a moral justification for their expressions of rage, regardless of who is on the receiving end.

However, their explosive rage is actually a way to cope with (and mask) a misanthropic hopelessness that’s hiding just below the surface. When they’re not exploring their perceived victimhood or lashing out at those they see as privileged, they view the world and their fellow human beings with contempt.

They believe there’s no future, that the planet is boiling over, resources are running out, and it’s human beings fault! In their eyes, we are a cancer on the planet. They see the future as bleak.

They believe they can prove their goodness by using low-flush toilets or riding bicycles instead of driving cars. To punish society, to try to tell everyone else what they’re doing wrong, they may vandalize prominent works of art or scream into social media, but it doesn’t do much good.

All of this makes perfect sense if one believes that the future is dark and hopeless. This leads to a cycle: rage when you have the energy, and stew in self-doubt when you are too tired to rage anymore.

And, of course, there’s always a great pastime to distract from self-hatred: drugs. Whether it’s magic mushrooms, ecstasy, cocaine, opioids, marijuana, or just old-fashioned alcohol, if they just say they’re going on a spiritual adventure to learn about themselves, it’s definitely not a habit or a problem.

If they end up harming themselves or committing suicide, it’s seen as evidence of their oppression, garnering more sympathy from a world they believe doesn’t understand their hardships.

Apparently, we’re all going to die anyway! There’s no future for our racist settler colonial civilization founded on preserving cis-gender, hetero-centric patriarchy, so why not numb the brain to enjoy the ride?

Perhaps the worst thing: nothing stokes their rage more than seeing people taking care of themselves and striving to succeed or innovate. Exercise and physical fitness trigger them. People starting their own businesses or getting excited about new projects must be shut down. How dare these people be optimistic? How dare they be happy? How dare they not share the hopelessness and resentment that define their world?

If someone is confident, fit, optimistic, happy, or working toward something good, they must be stopped. They must be labeled as “fascist” or somehow a “bad” person. Such people, finding fulfillment in their lives, working to achieve goals, and having meaningful relationships with others cannot be allowed. Everything must be done to stop them at all costs.

Yes, they are willing to suddenly collaborate with people they deem toxic, including the US government, the police, and the military, if it means shutting down some confident, happy person out there. If they can “take down” someone who exudes a different vibe, that is one of the most important victories they can achieve. They might feel good for a day or even a week, but it’s inevitably back to the same old hopeless cycle.

It’s Not Just About Politics

We have all seen this type of person. It’s not just about politics; it’s a much deeper problem. It’s a mindset that is being actively pumped out and cultivated at the highest levels. As people who want the best for ourselves, our families, our country, and our community, we are repelled by it.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we have our own share of it inside. We all do. What makes us different from the pink-haired menace is that while they embrace it, we are fighting against it. It might be harder on some days than others, but we are actively trying to suppress this pessimistic, destructive, rage-filled, depression-prone sentiment.

When we see the “woke” people, they horrify us. However, when they aren’t attacking us and making our lives unpleasant, we have to admit we feel kind of sorry for them. They are useful in a way, as a negative example. This is what we would become if we ever gave up the fight. If we surrendered to the part of our minds that the social media apparatus and the richest and most powerful people are trying to pump up, we would be just like them—miserable—determined to make others miserable—repugnant, unpleasant, and hopeless.

We don’t want to be that, and we know that. As hard as it might be, we have made a commitment to ourselves to not be this way. But we have realized that probably the most useful thing in not collapsing into this state of being is other people.

We can’t do it alone. We need friends. We need our family. We need our community. We need our beliefs.

As much as we might get annoyed with the people around us, as much as we might disagree with them, or be disappointed by them, we need them. We don’t just need other people; we need something to believe in.

Eurasia is Rising

Everything cannot be a lie. Everyone cannot be a fraud. Truth has to exist, and we need truth with which we can stand with other people… and with those other people, we need to BUILD.

We need to create. We need to perform. We need to beautify the world. We need to improve things. We need to help people. We need to feel a sense of satisfaction that comes from making a contribution.

It’s not about making money. It’s not about getting a better reputation; it’s about taking the world around us and exerting our effort to improve it. We want living standards for the people in our community to go up. We want the level of material comfort and technological advancement to increase. We want people to live longer and have more children. We want life to be easier and more comfortable.

We want hope, we want community, we want truth, and we want growth.

The mindset that you are struggling day in and day out to cultivate within yourself—optimism, creativity, and the willingness to work with other people to achieve—is very much alive on the other side of the planet.

When I attended the World Youth Festival in 2024 in Sochi, Russia, I met with members of the All-China Youth Federation, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Vietnam, student organizations from across the African Continent, Russia’s patriotic Movement of the First organization, the Robert Serra Youth Movement of Venezuela, among others. What I heard was a totally different tone. I heard love for their countries, hope for the future, and a belief in the power of humanity to better its conditions and strive for a higher plane.

Xi Jinping, China’s President, recently proclaimed: “Whether in the past, present, or future, Chinese youth have always been and will always be at the forefront of propelling the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Xi has referred to youth as the “spearhead and vital forces” in a wide range of projects crucial to the future of China and the world. He recently told students: “You should maintain firm ideals and convictions, work hard in study and training, hone your skills, and dedicate yourselves to serving as the loyal guardians of the Party and the people.

Technology and Economic Crisis

You are not alone in noticing that while significant parts of the world are progressing, there are significant issues in the West. Many people attribute this to some sort of conspiracy or cabal. Indeed, conspiracies do exist, and rich and powerful individuals often conspire among themselves to further their own conflicting interests.

However, we assert that the challenges facing Western civilization are not rooted in the malicious intent of individuals. Instead, they are rooted in economics.

Growth is beneficial, and technological development and growth should progress hand in hand. As technology advances, society’s wealth should increase. Human beings should be able to move towards a more prosperous society with increasing abundance as technology diminishes the necessity for human labor.

Yet, this is not the current reality.

Consider self-driving cars, for instance. If car transportation could be entirely automated, it would be a positive development in a rational society. It would eliminate the chore of “driving,” allowing human labor to be utilized elsewhere.

But that’s not the society we live in. Andrew Yang explained it this way: “All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society.” He predicts that in a few years, “we’re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one year of college… We have five to 10 years before truckers lose their jobs,” he said, “and all hell breaks loose.” Something that should bring more prosperity and abundance is threatening to bring massive economic disaster.

As it becomes easier than ever to produce products in the age of 3D printers and significant technological breakthroughs, an age-old problem is emerging more prominently than ever: Poverty amid plenty, or poverty created by abundance.

There’s a famous allegorical dialogue between a Polish coal miner and his son that goes like this:

Son: Why is it so cold?

Father: Because I cannot afford to buy any coal to heat the stove.

Son: Why can’t you afford to buy any coal?

Father: Because I lost my job at the coal mine. I was laid off. I am unemployed.

Son: Why did you lose your job? Why were you laid off?

Father: Because there is too much coal.

Why should people be hungry because too much food has been created? Why should people be homeless because too much housing has been produced? Furthermore, why is the Biden administration working with gigantic financial institutions like BlackRock and strategizing with the World Economic Forum to reduce global crop outputs amid a pending crisis of malnutrition in Africa? Why are tent city encampments springing up across our country en masse, with people becoming homeless, as millions of empty apartments and houses can be found everywhere? Furthermore, why is the rent and cost of housing increasing at the same time?

We have an economic system in which the worker is never able to purchase what he produces.

Let’s say you own a tire factory. A represents the materials necessary to create the tire, such as rubber, etc. B represents the costs of transporting the tires to where they are sold. C represents the human labor that is hired to assemble the tires. D represents the final cost of the tire when it is purchased.

A + B + C = D

Something is missing, of course. You, as the factory owner, need to make a profit. You cannot change how much the shipping costs. You cannot change how much the materials cost. You can only diminish the value put into the product by human labor. So, the equation should properly read this way:

A + B + C1 + C2 = D

C1 represents the wages paid out to the employees in the process of production. C2 represents the profit extracted from the labor value and taken as profit.

The worker is never paid the full value of the labor he puts into the product. This is the basis of Marxists’ claim that the working class is exploited. Some might argue that the employer deserves compensation because he put up the money and created the enterprise. This is a separate point that diverts from the real problem inherent in this transaction. Beyond any perceived unfairness, the problem is this:

C1 < D

The worker is never paid enough in wages to purchase the product he produces. The wages paid out in the process of production are never enough to buy the products created.

This is called “overproduction” or “value crisis.” The worker can never buy back what he produces. This is the basis of the boom and bust cycle.

However, the problem becomes intensified by technological advancement. In order to increase their profits, the owners of the industry are constantly looking to replace human labor with machines. Automation reduces labor costs. Corporations are competing with each other, trying to produce more efficiently and create more products.

But this leads to a bigger problem. Let’s look at our equation:

A + B + C = D

A + B + C1 + C2 = D

If C, the human labor put into production, goes down, C2 decreases as well. The less human labor that is involved in the process of production, the less profit an employer can make.

This is called the “Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall” or “The Tendency of the Falling Rate of Profit.” It forces the corporation to turn out even more products to make up for the decreased rate of profit per item sold.

These inherent problems in production organized for profit lead to a general rule of economic history, which is that when there is a huge leap in technology, the result is a long-term economic crisis. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, observed this: “Technology is scary. The first technology revolution caused World War I. The second technology revolution caused, directly or indirectly, World War II. Now we are in the third technology revolution. What if a Third World War? If human beings do not have the same enemy, we will fight among ourselves. The enemy should be poverty… the enemy should be disease. I think that all those countries: China, Russia, USA, European, should share the technology, unite together to fight this war, and this is the war that, if we fight it together, young people will be much happier.”

Jack Ma also remarked that technological leaps in Data Technology and Artificial intelligence can lead to a bright future and expansion of the spiritual and emotional existence, which really make us human: “Over the past one hundred years, we made people like machines. Now we make machines like people. But the right way to do it is to make over the next ten to twenty years a machine like a machine and people like people. A machine will never be able to conquer human beings. Machines are smart, machines are stronger and faster, but a machine does not have a soul, does not have values, does not have a belief that people have. So we should not make a machine think like a human being. We should make a machine learn like human beings.”

Imperialism: A Global System of De-Growth

We do not live in the era of individual factory owners selling their products; we live in the age of gigantic corporations tied in with banks, stretching their tentacles all across the planet.

This global system of “trusts, cartels, and syndicates” dominating the economy, not just in their home countries but the planet itself, is called “imperialism.” Imperialism is defined by the dominance of financiers. The age of “captains of industry” like Henry Ford or Andrew Carnegie is long gone. We now live in the era of bankers, and the primary way that the small clique of bankers that dominates the western world today stays in power is by holding back economic development.

While it would be normal for those who own businesses to want economic growth, the ultra-wealthy monopolists maintain their power by enacting degrowth. They want to impoverish the world and keep it poor so that they can stay on top.

The people of Mexico have been growing their food since before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. However, “Free Trade” policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) put an end to that. The Mexican farming sector has been eliminated. Mexico has been “de-grown,” and Mexicans import their food from American agribusiness corporations.

A century ago, the British empire burned the vast textile looms of India and forced the people who had been weaving for centuries to import their cloth from Britain.

No African country exports more oil at this time than Nigeria. The Niger Delta Region is full of petroleum, one of the most vital commodities in our global economy. But the people of Nigeria live in utter poverty. The CIA World Fact Book describes a life expectancy of only 60 for males and 64 for females, with 53.7 infant deaths per live births. Only 62% of the adult population is literate. How can a country with so much natural wealth remain so impoverished?

The reality behind the global crisis is this: it is easier than ever before to churn out products. Human technology has created a more efficient process of production than ever before. The result is that millions of people have no place at the assembly line, the rate of profit for each product created has drastically decreased, and the billionaire financiers who run the world are in a desperate drive to “de-grow” the world, reduce living standards, reduce the population, and demolish their international competitors in order to stay at the top.

The countries targeted in US wars are all countries that have broken out of this disastrous economic setup and refused to be captive markets. Until 2011, it was not Nigeria, but Libya, that produced the most oil of any African country. Libya seized control of its oil resources in a popular revolution in 1969 led by Col. Moammar Gaddaffi. Libya had the highest life expectancy on the African continent and built the world’s largest irrigation system, “The Great Man-Made River,” greening the desert with the goal of creating their own food. Africans from across the continent were trying to get to Libya to gain employment.

However, in 2011, Libya was destroyed by a US-backed “revolution.” The country was forcibly “de-grown” with NATO bombs. Now the country is in ruin, with open-air slave markets, rival factions seizing territory, a lack of electricity, and economic devastation.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the country was economically demolished. Farms went bankrupt. Factories shut their doors. Naomi Klein’s study, The Shock Doctrine, explained that by 1998 “more than 80 percent of Russian farms had gone bankrupt, and roughly seventy thousand state factories had closed, creating an epidemic of unemployment.” The number of Russians living below the poverty line reached 74 million during the late 90s, with Klein writing that “25 percent of Russians – almost 37 million people – lived in poverty described as ‘desperate.’” The rate of drug addiction increased by 900%, and the suicide rate doubled.

As Russia was economically collapsing, the United States embraced it. Yeltsin and Clinton were noted for their close relationship, and US media and documentaries bragged about all the US “meddling” that made sure Yeltsin was re-elected in 1996.

The hatred for Russia in US media began when Putin came into office and started restructuring their economy. Putin put Gazprom and Rosneft, two state-controlled energy giants, at the center of the economy. The inflow of oil and gas revenue into the state budget enabled Russia to rebuild its industrial sector. During the first 8 years that Putin was in power, industrial output increased by 125%, and the country had finally reached the levels of production and growth it had during the time of the Soviet Union. The Russian GDP increased from $764 billion to $2096.8 billion between 2014 and 2017. The former CEO of British Petroleum, John Browne, observed: “No country has come so far, in such a short space of time.”

With Russia once again a competitor, suddenly it became the object of scorn, demonization, and efforts to destabilize it from within yet again.

China was the “sick man of Asia” before 1949. At the time the Communists took power, China had very little electricity and not a single steel mill. Today, however, China makes half the world’s steel. China has the world’s largest telecommunications manufacturer, the world’s fastest trains, and the world’s largest hydro-electrical power plant. Xi Jinping explained: “It is an essential requirement of socialism to eradicate poverty, improve people’s living standards, and achieve common prosperity among the people.”

China is making huge breakthroughs on the road to fusion energy; it produces the majority of the world’s electric cars, and it has a vibrant and pioneering space program. After China’s recent lunar launch, a French researcher named Pierre Yves-Meslin remarked: “It is a bit of a mystery to us how China has been able to develop such an ambitious and successful program in such a short time.”

China was once a captive market, subdued by the British with two “Opium Wars” that prevented it from developing and building up its own economy. The China of the 1920s and 30s was one of mass starvation, illiteracy, sexual slavery, competing warlords, and drug gangs. But when China broke free, that started the process that led to creating what is now the second-largest economy in the world with over 800 million people lifted from poverty.

The imperialists want the world to be their impoverished captive market, but it is rapidly slipping out of their hands. The new economy emerging around the world with the BRICS is a threat to the monopoly of Wall Street and London, so they target it with sanctions, war, threat, and other schemes.

The results of the US-backed “regime change wars” or “revolutions” speak for themselves. As bad as Saddam Hussein may have been, no one can argue that Iraq today is better off. The NATO bombing and de-stabilization of Libya has reduced the country to ruin. The civil war the US fomenting in Syria hoping to topple the government resulted in millions of refugees and the rise of the terrorist group known as ISIS. US occupation of Afghanistan was 20 years of chaos with drug gangs and terrorist organizations getting stronger. From the fall of the Soviet Union, to Hillary Clinton’s 2009 coup in Honduras, never has the destabilization of a country in the name of “human rights” brought a better life or improvement for the country subjected to “liberation.” But the goal is always achieved, beating down an independent country and helping secure the global monopoly of the big western bankers and their governments.

Imperialism is all about degrowth. But they are bringing the degrowth home. What they once did to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, they are now doing to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Alabama. The roads are crumbling. The water isn’t properly purified. The power plants are in shambles. Obama, Trump, and Biden all promised to revamp the country’s infrastructure but failed to deliver. The heartland of the country is being hollowed out.

Why?

This is because the industrial middle class that once made America so prosperous is no longer needed. In the global, high-tech economy, there is no need for a layer of well-paid autoworkers, steelworkers, and manufacturers in the imperialist homeland. The USA is rapidly collapsing into a low-wage police state. The inflow of migrants, the rise of government surveillance, the sinister schemes dreamed up by the World Economic Forum about how you will “live in a pod,” eat bugs, and “own nothing and be happy about it” are intended to save a dying system.

Degrowth is not socialism; it is highly controlled capitalism in which the productive forces are destroyed, and living standards are driven down in the hopes of stabilizing the system.

One of the most blatant examples of the heavy-handed degrowth agenda of the US state has been the repression of the Uhuru movement. If one visits St. Petersburg, Florida, or St. Louis, Missouri, you will see a kind of Black community organizing that is very different from CNN’s beloved George Soros “Black Lives Matter” mobs. The African Peoples Socialist Party and the Peoples Democratic Uhuru Movement have built a farmers market, classes for pregnant mothers, basketball courts, and other services to facilitate economic growth in the Black community. They have condemned the government welfare programs that maintain a state of defeated impoverishment among Black people and instead have pushed for the construction of a strong economy in Black neighborhoods and communities.

The response of the US government to this effort to bring about growth in some of America’s poorest regions has been FBI repression. The FBI stormed into the homes of Omali Yeshitela and other organizers across the country. Drones were flown in, swats teams kicked down doors. Chairman Omali described its this way: “In St. Louis, my wife and I were at our dining room table, preparing for her to attend a training session at the Uhuru House headquarters… Suddenly, a booming voice from the darkness startled us, instructing everyone to come out with their hands up and empty. The voice identified itself as the FBI, followed by explosions echoing throughout the neighborhood. As the explosions rattled the house, knocking plaster off the walls, it was initially difficult to believe the situation unfolding. I asked my wife to stay upstairs while I went to investigate and inform others, but communication was jammed, leaving us isolated. Upon descending, I was confronted with an armored personnel carrier and armed agents, reminiscent of a scene that ended tragically for Fred Hampton in Chicago years before. I felt the laser beams targeting me, convinced they were about to kill me. Fortunately, I made it downstairs without incident. However, my wife faced a drone as she opened the door, and both of us were quickly handcuffed. Confusion reigned as we demanded answers, only to be told of an impending indictment involving a Russian national, with our names somehow involved. They conducted a thorough search, seizing electronics and employing forceful tactics like battering rams and flashbang grenades. Similar raids were simultaneously carried out elsewhere, disrupting communities and instilling fear.”

Now, three Americans, Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel, face a possible sentence of 15 years in prison, charged as “Russian Agents.” Their trial is set to begin on September 3rd. Tucker Carlson has spoken up about the case, as have many others. It is a blatant example of the government moving to crush economic development and free speech by accusing community organizers and advocates of economic empowerment of being “foreign agents” due to their statements about Ukraine.

The way Julian Assange has been brutally tortured just for giving a platform to those who would leak the dark secrets of the deep state reveals how little western leaders truly believe their rhetoric about “democracy” and “freedom.”

The way January 6th protesters have been sentenced to astronomical amounts of time in prison for an event that was clearly arranged by more powerful forces, or the way students opposing Israeli crimes are facing expulsion and police brutality, all reveal what the agenda of the big monopolies and their government truly is.

They have a vision for a high-tech dark ages, abolishing our freedom to preserve their profits, as they march humanity toward a new world war. We must resist this scheme with all of our might, as we come to understand the roots of the crisis.

The Road to Freedom is Abundance

The “woke” ideology, being utilized to rally young people to push for destruction, is not standard or classical Marxism. It has very little in common with what was carried out by Stalin, Mao, Castro, or other Marxist-Leninist political leaders in the 20th century.

Stalin mobilized the Soviet people to rapidly build and industrialize. The communist governments of the 20th century were all focused on increasing productive forces, raising living standards, building universities, and modernizing their countries. Whatever shortcomings they had, it cannot be denied that aside from a few outliers like Pol Pot, Communism has been a pro-growth movement.

In fact, the vision of “the higher stage of communism” laid out by Marx is very much a post-scarcity society in which growth has zoomed to higher levels than ever before. Marx wrote in Critique of the Gotha Program: “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

A society in which “labor becomes life’s prime want,” meaning that technology has increased to the point that people only work because they want to, a society where the “springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly,” this is the ultimate pro-growth vision. The breakdown of inequality, as Marx envisioned it, was not intended to be forced, but rather to come about as an all-around expansion of human productivity.

This is what was behind Deng Xiaoping’s famous statement “Poverty is not socialism, but to be rich is glorious.” You cannot create equality with willpower or force. The basis of oppression, enforced social hierarchies, and state power is scarcity. The road to freedom is abundance and economic expansion.

History has shown us this. Human rights did not appear out of nowhere. The reason talk of “the rights of man” did not arise until Europe in the 1500s is not because humans were just evil until that point. It was with a new level of economic development that a new level of freedom could be realized. The rise of capitalism was a great advance over feudalism, just as feudalism was a great advance over slavery.

Human beings are constantly marching toward a higher plane of development, more efficiently forcing the environment to serve us, expanding our population and living standards. As we advance our technology, we constantly reinvent our social systems. As society becomes more abundant, the population increases, as we live longer, we become more free.

Separating “human rights” from economic development is one of the biggest deceptions of the western liberal order. It frames “freedom” as a question of abstract morality, completely disregarding the conditions in which state structures are created and social contracts are forged. Western leaders impose crippling sanctions on countries, justifying it with rhetoric about how the peoples of the targeted countries are having their human rights violated. Does it not occur to US leaders that a lack of development, a lack of foreign trade, is itself a big factor in human rights being restricted? How do western leaders expect a society to become more “free” if its ability to decrease poverty and develop is cut off?

Where did “Woke” come from?

Woke-ism is the result of a sinister project of manipulating politics that started with intelligence agencies. The CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom Program began in the 1950s. The US government began coordinating with Rockefeller think tanks and the Ford Foundation to reinvent the political “left” and separate it from economic questions. The CIA funded magazines like Encounter and Partisan Review and brought us the Frankfurt School, a new brand commonly called “Cultural Marxism.”

The focus of this new brand was not on mobilizing the working class to seize control of the means of production and raise productive forces, but instead, demonizing the bulk of the population as a tyrannical ignorant mob and celebrating non-conformity. Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality, Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, and Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem have nothing to do with the popular movements that built labor unions or fought against colonialism. These are elitist screeds of a middle class that sees the bulk of the population with contempt and fear and seeks to control them. The striving of the people to see their living standards increase and to not have big bankers rip them off and loot their country is deemed “fascism.”

Woke-ism, with its shrill contempt for the bulk of the population and its pessimistic view of the future, takes elements of Trotskyism, the French Revolution’s guillotine bloodlust, the natural rebelliousness of teenagers, and synthesizes it into a deadly cocktail for breaking people psychologically and helping set the stage for the low-wage, degrowth police state Wall Street and London are looking to set up.

The sinister role of Zionism cannot be ignored either. While Marxists called for the Jewish people to merge and assimilate with the rest of the working class and strive for a socialist society free of bigotry and discrimination of any kind, Zionism maintained that Jews were a special elite group that could never fit in with European civilization and needed their own state. Zionism is the original anti-populism. It was Lenin who once described it as “the spirit of the ghetto,” the call for Jews to exist as a separate group with a separate state. The way Israel is given billions of American taxpayer dollars each year, loads of free weapons, and protection from the United States as it shocks the world with criminal actions in Gaza fits in with the overall dark, degrowth vision of the dying imperialist system.

Woke-ism and the corresponding economic philosophy of degrowth is a reinvention of fascist economics. As the Nazis rebooted Germany’s economy temporarily with military spending and the creation of a slave labor underclass, the woke element and the Silicon Valley elites that put their message on blast want to save their system from a crisis of overproduction by attempting to grind the wheels of history backward. It is a hopeless endeavor that can only be temporarily successful, coming at a massive cost in terms of basic humanity.

Many American working people dislike woke-ism and its pessimistic and dark message. It appears that as anti-woke blowback brews among the working class, the ruling elite are trying to manipulate these sentiments as well. Even though many people voted for Trump because he said he would stop American involvement in foreign wars, Trump supporters are being manipulated and channeled into supporting the heavy handed repression of college protesters who want an end to US support for Israel. The idea that woke-ism is somehow a big conspiracy from China, not from the ultra-rich on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley is also pushed very hard in conservative circles.

Anyone who has been to China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela or any of the anti-imperialist countries knows that their ideology and way of living in resistance to the dying global order of western bankers has nothing in common with the pessimistic “woke” trend. This is being intentionally distorted by pro-war and pro-Israel conservatives. A toxic “anti-woke” brand that pushes “survival of the fittest” market individualism and lies to justify regime change wars is likely to grow more prominent in the coming years. This must be opposed and exposed for the deception that it is.

A Government of Action

So, what can be done? We need a society where growth is promoted. We need a society where human creativity and brilliance are unleashed, not stifled and restrained. We need a society where the economy is rationally organized to ensure constant growth.

21st Century Socialism, the Socialist Oriented Market Economy of Vietnam, or Socialism with Chinese Characteristics are adjustments. They are not the old Soviet model. They have plenty of room for tech developers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. In fact, the state goes out of its way to subsidize and promote the middle-class layer of independent creators. The strength of socialism in Nicaragua has been its micro-entrepreneurship program, enabling thousands of people to start their own businesses, launch their own cooperatives, and be subsidized in doing so to make the country wealthier overall.

The difference between capitalism and socialism is not the role of government. State ownership and taxation exist in all societies to some degree or another. Socialism is not the redistribution of wealth. All governments “tax and spend” to some degree or another.

Some capitalist societies like Saudi Arabia and Singapore have a huge amount of state oversight and control of the economy. Others, like the United States, have a tradition of a more laissez-faire approach.

The question of capitalism or socialism is rooted in the purpose for which production is organized. Friedrich Engels stated that “under capitalism, the means of production only function as preliminary transformation into capital.” Marx spoke of the “anarchy of production.” Mao Zedong described capitalism as a system of “profits in command.”

Capitalism is an economy where the drive of owners to make profits dictates economic activity. Socialism is when society overall controls the means of production to ensure growth is not restricted. Socialism is when a government of action leads a well-organized population to organize the economy and control it so growth is constant and never restrained.

The creation of a “government of action” in the United States would fulfill the American revolution. The very basis of the war of independence was the desire of the people for an economy that was not simply a trading hub in the British sea-based empire of plunder. The American people wanted their own economy, they wanted westward expansion, they wanted GROWTH.

The Civil War continued this battle, as the Confederate Slavocracy, which banned looms and discouraged technological development, sought to maintain a primitive agrarian economy that could supply cheap cotton to the British textile monopolies. Abraham Lincoln led a coalition of small farmers, industrialists, labor unionists, abolitionists, and slave revolutionaries like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas to smash the plantation system and its Wall Street allies. The US Civil War was the Second American Revolution, and the Republican Party newspaper of New York City, The New York Tribune, hired Karl Marx as its London correspondent. Marx wrote glowing articles about Lincoln as “the single-minded son of the working class,” and Communist August Willich rose up to the rank of Brigadier General.

It should be noted that the US Civil War and the American revolution itself were both preceded by mass episodes of spiritual rebirth. The First and Second Great Awakenings were explosions of Christian revivalism that called for the country to turn around, repent from its ways, and recommit itself to the principles of equality and justice.

The Center for Political Innovation puts forward a 4-point economic plan to restore the US economy:

1. A mass program to rebuild the country. Hire the unemployed and put them to work rebuilding the crumbling roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals of the country. Construct high-speed railways, new universities, new power plants, and give the country an overall tech upgrade to let innovation flourish.

2. Public control of our natural resources. The oil, gas, coal, and timber of America, the natural wealth flowing from the country’s soil, should be utilized to make the country overall wealthier, not to enrich Wall Street firms. Utilizing our natural resources to fund the public budget would take the burden of taxation off the population.

3. Public control of banking and canceling of debt. A national bank as well as state and local banks should have a monopoly on credit and lend money strategically as part of an overall plan to expand the living standards and production. The debt that hangs over the economy as a curse must be lifted. The printing of money must be handled by the public, not the Federal Reserve rip-off system.

4. An economic bill of rights, similar to that proposed by Roosevelt in his final State of the Union address. To ensure a strong economy in the United States, the labor power of every person must be utilized, healthcare must be made available to all, quality education must be provided. This shouldn’t be seen as a handout or charity but rather as an investment in the nation. It is human labor and human creativity that are the sources of all wealth and expansion, and human beings must be properly cultivated to make a more prosperous country.

We believe in growth. A new economy is rising around the world, and in China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and the other countries that continue to resist the all-out war drive against them from Wall Street, growth is also the priority.

Too many people exist in a dark, pessimistic state of being, left behind by a society that has no place for them. In our high-tech world, the strengths of every individual can be utilized to make life more beautiful. The narrow limits and artificial restrictions imposed by the dominion of ultra-monopolists must be broken.

China is not our enemy. Our enemy is an outdated, irrational system where the chaos of the market takes precedence over humanity’s intrinsic need and drive to expand to greater heights.

A new world, beyond imperialism, where countries trade with each other on the basis of win-win cooperation, and all humanity marches toward a world without scarcity or state coercion can be realized.

The Center for Political Innovation recently led the US delegation to the World Youth Festival in Sochi, Russia. At the gathering, Russian President Putin said the following: “So, we are all born equal, but the question is, do we grow and develop under equal conditions? The answer is, unfortunately, not. This is the greatest injustice in today’s world order. If you ask me what can be done for everybody to live and grow under equal conditions, unlocking their talents for the benefit of their loved ones, their family, their country, and perhaps humanity as a whole, I do not know. But what I do know for certain is that we all must strive for it. Only by striving for it will we make the world more transparent, just, democratic, sustainable, balanced, and safe.”

Let us oppose war. Let us oppose state repression and the attacks on our civil liberties. Let us demand a government of action that fights for working families. Let us work to build greater abundance and greater freedom than has ever been imagined.

“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.” Acts 4:32

“The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse.” Revelations 22:2-3