Oleg Atbashian - Shakedown Socialism: Unions, Pitchforks, Collective Greed, the Fallacy of Economic Equality, and other Optical Illusions of Redistributive Justice

It's failed in the USSR... Now it's moved to the USA

Unions, Pitchforks, Collective Greed,
The Fallacy of Economic Equality,
and other Optical Illusions of "Redistributive Justice"

who saw the worst of both worlds and lived to tell the tale.

***

Second edition, improved and expanded

First edition published by Greenleaf Press, 2010

Copyright Oleg Atbashian 2009, 2010, 2016

All Rights Reserved

Oleg Atbashian is a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR. Born and raised in Ukraine, he grew up believing in Communism and at one time worked as a propaganda artist, creating visual agitprop for the local Party committee in a Siberian town. He became disillusioned with the corruption and the hypocrisy of the socialist system and emigrated to the United States in 1994. His writings present a view of America and the world through the prism of his Soviet experience. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, which Rush Limbaugh described on his show as "a Stalinist version of The Onion." His essays and satires have been translated into many languages and his graphics reproduced in various publications around the world.

"Oleg Atbashian has written a timely warning for Americans about the collectivists among us and their plans for the future. I hope everyone reads this book."
- David Horowitz,the Author of Uncivil Wars (2003); The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006); Indoctrination U. (2008); and most recently One Party Classroom (2009)

"Brightly written and filled with entertaining and illuminating illustrations, Oleg Atbashian's Shakedown Socialism is a clear and eye-opening guide to exactly what is wrong with socialism and state control of the means of production, and how it kills both the economy and human initiative. Atbashian saw it all up close in the Soviet Union, and now he sees Barack Obama making the same mistakes - and sounds this clarion call for economic sanity, before it's too late. Shakedown Socialism is an essential and inspiring guide to the virtues of the free market."
Robert Spencer, the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad

Pamela Geller: "Ayn Rand saw it coming: 'When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create economic dislocations, hardships and problems, which - if the controls are not repealed - necessitate further controls, which necessitate still further controls, etc.' In his brilliant, witty, and wonderfully illustrated Shakedown Socialism, Oleg Atbashian - who grew up in the Soviet Union, shows how that process is happening in Obama's America today, and explains why that is putting us on the road to ruin. Shakedown Socialism is an enlightening, sobering, and wonderfully clear explanation of why statism kills - and thus also of why and how Barack Obama is killing the American economy. Oleg quotes Putin saying that when the Soviets made the state's role absolute, the U.S.S.R. became completely economically uncompetitive, and no one wants to see that repeated. No one except Obama, that is. This book shows why Obama's statist economic policies are a looming disaster for America and for the spirit of the free human individual."

Pamela Geller,the author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War On America, as well as a prominent blogger at Atlas Shrugs

FOREWORD By Scott Wheeler
PREFACE by the author
INTRODUCTION: The six contradictions of socialism in America
Chapter 1. Lenin: Trade Unions are the School of Communism
Chapter 2. Incoming: Forced Inequality and Economic Injustice
Chapter 3. Unions: A Study in Collective Greedand Selfishness
Chapter 4. Rigging the Economy in the Name of "Justice"
Chapter 5. Want a Crisis? Impose "Fairness"
Chapter 6. The Fallacy of "Economic Equality"
Chapter 7. Joyriding the Gravy Train of Inequality
SUMMARY: Reclaiming the Moral High Ground
APPENDIX. Obama the Pitchfork Operator: Remake of the Soviet Classic
About "Shakedown Socialism"

Is socialism coming to a municipality near you? Before you answer, consider that in 2016, nearly sixty percent of voters in the U.S. who identify as Democrats have a favorable opinion of socialism. Fortunately, author Oleg Atbashian has written a very timely antidote.

Shakedown Socialism is a look at the past failures of socialism as seen and experienced by Mr. Atbashian himself, and a look into what he sees as Americas future if President Obamas plans succeed.

Socialism always looks far more glamorous from a distance. Indeed, many academicians in the U.S. have flirted with socialism by saying something like, socialism is good in theory; the reason it has failed is that it hasnt been implemented correctly. Those are dangerous words to Mr. Atbashian, who fled to the United States to escape the imposition of those good ideas.

Mr. Atbashian takes readers through the details that led to his awakening and realization that the state must change truth frequently to maintain order, and must use coercive tactics to keep up the image of devotion to the state. Shakedown Socialism should be required reading on every college campus.

Growing up in the USSR, where the only permitted sources of information were textbooks and the official media, I believed that the Soviet Union was the most advanced society, while all other countries lived in poverty and oppression, devoid of the sun of Marxism-Leninism. I wanted them to become more like the USSR for their own good, and couldn't wait to grow up and live in the communist future, not worrying about money.

With years, as I began to encounter boundaries to intellectual inquiry, coupled with rampant hypocrisy and corruption, I initially attributed it to the wrong, dogmatic interpretation of Marxism by the ruling elites. Next came the realization that Marxism was not the solution, but the cause of the dysfunctional system, and that the communist utopia was only a dead-end exit in humanity's long and stressful journey towards progress. I took on activism, joined political underground, collected signatures in defense of dissidents, and wrote articles and short stories that satirized socialism and the self-delusional Soviet regime. Most of it was never published.

I moved to the United States in 1994, hoping to forget about politics and enjoy life in a country that was ruled by reason and common sense, whose citizens were appreciative of constitutional rights, the rule of law, and the prosperity of free market capitalism. But what I found was a society deeply infected by the leftist disease of "progressivism" that was jeopardizing real societal progress. So I started writing again, this time in English.