Letter to the Editor

Dear Socialist Viewpoint,

Defund the police! It’s a start. Defund the prison industrial complex as well as the military industrial complex to account for reparations for Black and all oppressed people. This is what the beginning of redistribution of the wealth looks like.

The problem with being satisfied with just defunding is we still live in the capitalist system where production for profit holds the value of material wealth over the value of life. That’s how and why capitalism is so oppressive, and will weaponize everything it can, from race to food to music even natural disasters. We need a socialist revolution to spread globally. A socialist society produces not for profit of few. Socialism produces for the people according to need or want, with contributions to production from people according to ones abilities.

MLK told the truth when he said about the system, “capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources.” He also said, “We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

The labor keeps society going, not money and definitely not the ultra-rich. Why should we work ourselves to death so the less than .01 of the world can accumulate more wealth than could be spent of 20 lifetimes? We work and pay taxes, on top of that, capitalists take the majority of what we earn. And the so-called middle-class lives in an illusionary bubble while the working poor who work even harder has to choose between new pants or shoes. While the actual minority class gets to choose the mansion and the island. This shit ass backwards. We foot the bill for the wealthy to be wastefully rich. We don’t need a capitalist class siphoning the wealth out of the hands that create it.

We are essential—the people who create the wealth—they are not.

Johnny Gould, June 2020

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