If you\u2019re a Millennial who loves bread lines, prison camps, forced famines, and abject human misery, then you\u2019ll love the latest offering from Rolling Stone. Over the weekend, Jesse Myerson, a twenty-something former Occupy organizer, finally stumbled upon a foolproof recipe for success for today\u2019s struggling Millennials. The recipe? Communism, naturally.<\/p>\n
Myerson, whose Twitter bio includes the hashtag #FULLCOMMUNISM (for when fractional communism just can\u2019t murder people quickly enough), listed five economic reforms that he thinks every Millennial should demand: Guaranteed jobs, guaranteed income, no more private real estate, no more private assets at all, and a public bank in every state (a great place to store all those financial assets you no longer own). If that sounds eerily similar to a Yoko Ono-infused brainstorming session by John Lennon, it\u2019s because it is eerily similar to a Yoko Ono-infused brainstorming session by John Lennon.<\/p>\n
Imagine there\u2019s no possessions? Check. No need for greed or hunger? Check. All the people sharing all the world? Check. The only standard communist tenet missing from Myerson\u2019s Communism For Dummies listicle was a call to abolish religion.<\/p>\n
Look, lots of people think everybody else\u2019s stuff should be their stuff. Unfortunately for Myerson, most of those people drink juice out of a box and think Cookie Monster and Dora the Explorer are real people. There\u2019s a time and a place to brag that you\u2019ve finally figured out how to make communism work, and it\u2019s your college dorm room at 3:00 a.m. If you publish a serious call for the reconstruction of several core pillars of communism barely two decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (this is the point at which Myerson would almost certainly interject that the USSR wasn\u2019t practicing real communism, maaan), you\u2019re pretty much begging to be mocked.<\/p>\n
But what makes Myerson\u2019s article so precious is that either he\u2019s too dumb to know what the Soviet Union stood for (or too lazy to have done a quick Google search prior to clicking \u201cPublish\u201d), or he thinks his readers are too dumb to discern that he\u2019s actually pushing for a return to Soviet-style communism. In his defense, he published his Marxist mash note at Rolling Stone \u2014 a site run by a seemingly drug-addled 23-year-old nepot \u2014 so maybe he has a point about the collective IQ of his readers.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a quick selection of his Soviet Trutherism from Twitter:<\/p>\n
The Right seems to think that history (I assume they mean the USSR) refutes the five non-Soviet reforms I proposed earlier today. Odd.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As Andrew McCoy noted shortly after Myerson\u2019s piece was published, Myerson\u2019s ideas aren\u2019t just similar to Soviet ideas. They are Soviet ideas, which should come as no surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Soviet Union. According to McCoy\u2019s research, each of Myerson\u2019s five reforms was contained in the USSR\u2019s Constitution. Guaranteed jobs are in Article 40. Social insurance for everybody is in Article 43. Abolition of private real estate is in Article 6. Complete abolition of all other private property is in Articles 4 and 5. And government-owned banks \u2014 the only banks allowed in the Soviet Union \u2014 were a natural byproduct of a system that says only the government can own things.<\/p>\n
But other than that, Myerson\u2019s ideas are all totally original and completely untested by mankind. Have no fear, though. Historical ignorance is not Myerson\u2019s only specialty. He\u2019s also a master of cognitive dissonance:<\/p>\n
I think you\u2019ll find the history of the reforms I\u2019m proposing is successful, in the main. Or are you blaming me for the gulag?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Did you get that? The history of the reforms he is proposing is \u201csuccessful\u201d even though, according to Myerson\u2019s implied assertion, no civilization has tried more than one of his ideas. Those two tweets were literally eight minutes apart.<\/p>\n