[Marxism] Are bailouts Marxist?

[Louis Proyect]

Just after the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rightwing 
ideologues began to rail against this supposedly socialist measure.

One of the more agitated among them is a Houston based venture 
capitalist named Bill Perkins who has bought a couple of full-page N.Y. 
Times ads warning about the communist threat to American capitalism. 
Here’s the latest that includes a cartoon exploiting the famous (but 
bogus) photo of wartime troops planting the stars and stripes on Iwo Jima:

It took me a moment to figure out that the rightmost soldier was 
President Bush since the features were decidedly Semitic, especially the 
nose. Just a couple of days ago I told my wife to expect a spasm of 
anti-Semitism around the bailout since so many of the hated Wall Street 
firms have traditionally been Jewish-owned-like Bear-Stearns, Lehman 
Brothers and Goldman-Sachs. Furthermore, AIG’s past chairman was Maurice 
Greenberg, a Jew whose close ties to the Reagan administration (the 
Gipper offered him the job of Deputy Director of the CIA) would probably 
not compensate for having killed Jesus and destroying the livelihoods of 
good (Christian, in other words) Americans.

In a September 24th Guardian article, Perkins explains: “I think it’s a 
kind of trickle-down version of socialism or communism, when you say 
certain institutions can’t fail, when you have the government 
nationalising more institutions than Venezuela, I don’t see why you 
shouldn’t call a duck a duck.”

Ironically (although maybe not so ironically) Perkins hosted a 
fund-raiser for Barack Obama recently despite the Democratic candidate’s 
full-throated endorsement of the 700 billion dollar bailout.

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/are-bailouts-marxist/