What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[kandrathe]

As a true Marxist...

As a true Scotsman, I wear a kilt, wear no underwear and practice the bagpipe daily. Not really. I'm not a Scotsman.

Perhaps we should label your brand of communism, a Pollyanna Communism. And, I will agree to label my vision of a libertarian utopia "Galt Gulch" also a Pollyanna Objectivist fantasy. In reality land, we both need to deal with real people and real systems that are not ideal, but prone to failure, selfishness, corruption and entropy.

As for 'Totalitarianism' and democracy...

From Wikipedia, "Scholars such as Lawrence Aronsen, Richard Pipes, Leopold Labedz, Franz Borkenau, Walter Laqueur, Sir Karl Popper, Eckhard Jesse, Leonard Schapiro, Adam Ulam, Raymond Aron, Claude Lefort, Richard Löwenthal, Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Carl Joachim Friedrich and Juan Linz describe totalitarianism in slightly different ways. They all agree, however, that totalitarianism seeks to mobilize entire populations in support of an official state ideology, and is intolerant of activities which are not directed towards the goals of the state, entailing repression or state control of business, labour unions, churches or political parties."

Democracy is also a variable concept. If you asked a Communist party official if the Soviet Union had democracy, they would have claimed it was true. If you asked a Fascist official if the Italy had democracy under Mussolini, they would have claimed it was true. The key part is how equality of opinion is achieved, whether it is achieved by a one party system with no opposition, or whether it is achieved by a cult of personality which tramples the rights of the minority parties. But, our founders realized this problem with "pure democracy", and so we have a Bill of Rights which seeks to protect the rights of the minority voice.

You've alleged that money has an undo influence on politics in the USA, and I would agree with that. Just as I would agree that gun violence is a problem in urban gang environments. But, in either the case of the 1st amendment, or the 2nd amendment, I'm not in favor of restricting rights as a method of correcting wrongs. We might restrict money in politics by muzzling certain minority special interest opinion, and we might lessen gang gun violence by banning firearms, but in each case it was achieved by sacrificing personal liberty.