Neither John Kasich nor, certainly, Simon Peter will be nominated by the Republicans
Republicans remain almost united in their utter rejection of the communist doctrines of one Simon Peter fisherman and trouble maker.
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig explains in Salon
I comment
I don’t want to exaggerate. It is certainly not true that Kasich’s proposed policy is from “each according to his ability” and “to each as anyone had need”
However, that was the policy of his post mortum interlocutor. Marx did not coing the phrase in “The Critique of the Gotha Program” nor is it found in Gotha program. Marx was quoting from The Acts of the Apostles accusing his ex-followers of being eccessively egalitarian just as St Peter had been.
The Bible, New King James Version
Acts Chapter 4 Verse 35
“…; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.”
Acts Chapter 11 verse 29
“Then the apostles, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.”
It is interesting how few Christians are familiar with the contents of the New Testament (I’m an atheist by the way). But then again the fact that self declared Constitutional Conservatives tend to mix up The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution should be a tip off.
By the way, I am not a Christian and I frankly disagree with Simon Peter’s approach to policy, or at least I don’t consider it a good model for US policy. It is possible that, if one has the reliable assistance of the holy Spirit, one may ignore incentive problems. But we don’t and had better pay attention to them.
Of course Simon Peter won’t be the Democratic nominee either, partly because he was way too far left for the party and also because he was never a natural born citizen of the United States.
In contrast, I agree with Kasich about the ethics of Medicaid expansion.
Robert:
Did you mean to use the word “coing?”
If all employees were paid according to the maximum price their products could command from consumers – instead of too many by how little (how few rungs) above subsistence the boss can skin them – the working rubric would be: from each consumer according to their needs; to each employee according to their abilities. (You had it all backwards, Vladimir Ilyich. :-])
There is only one modality — introduced by legal mandate in late 1940s continental Europe, since picked up elsewhere in the world and established by the Teamsters Union National Master Freight Agreement in 1964 in the US — that ownership cannot work its ratcheting-down, subsistence-plus ways around: centralized bargaining – where all employees doing the same category of work in the same locale (nationwide where applicable) work under a single collectively bargained contract with all employers. (This should eliminate the use of scabs who don’t have a legal contract – I’ve never heard of scabs in Europe.)
My old Teamsters local 804 (left in 1970, age 26) recently won (as they like to phrase it) a 30-and-out retirement benefit of $3900 a month.
http://teamsterslocal804.org/story/biggest-pension-increases-country
Sound a little (a whole lot!) different from the typical American labor going down the crapper story? Check out a recent tome by whom many think to be America’s top labor lawyer: Thomas Geoghegan: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life.
Today’s Dems are far closer to Marx than to St. Peter. Prime example is Dems’ belief than the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to regulate the economic decisions of each person, in other words to compel commerce. They confuse the communist manifesto with the US Constitution, which seems to me a much greater gaffe than confusing the Declaration and Constitution.
Some of us still hold those truths to be self-evident and continue to read the Constitution in light of that Declaration. Some do not, and though they call themselves progressives, they long ago ceased to promote progress and have become counter-revolutionaries seeking to return the individual to the status of fodder for the State. Doing so in the name of the poor does not make worship of the State a Christian ideal.