By the 18th century, Feudalism had effectively ended in Europe.  The very beginning of the industrial and agricultural revolution in England in the 1700’s as well as the social and political changes that came from the Age of Enlightenment made Feudalism obsolete.

No so much in Russia.  Russia was always seemed to lag behind Europe in social and technological advancements and the majority of Russian agriculture workers were still serfs in the 1800’s.

The first major reform in Russia was the Emancipation Reform of 1861, which officially ended serfdom under Tsar Alexander II.  Russian form workers were still not nearly as free as European farm workers, which led to unrest and an eventual peasants revolt, which was part of of the Russian Revolution in 1905.  That led to the Stolypin reforms which finally gave Russian peasants the ability to buy land, have private property rights, hire workers, and engage in some level of capitalism.

Some of the farmers who had been emancipated in 1861 were moderately successful at farming.  For the first time in Russian history, they were able to pass down their farms to their sons, who took advantage of the later reforms and  were able to amass a modest amount of wealth.  They may have owned a home that was more than a shack, had a small herd of cattle, owned a tractor, had a couple of hundred Rubles tucked away.

In 1929, this all fell apart.

The newly founded Soviet government decided that such successful farmers were an enemy of the people.  There were called Kulaks which means “tight fisted” as in stingy.  They were accused of hording the agricultural wealth of the Soviet people, and between 1929 and 1932, the process of dekulakiztion resulted in the the forcible relocation 1.8 million people and the deaths about 4 million.

I want this to really sink in.

A Russian farmer was essentially a slave in 1860, not much better off than a slave on an American plantation in the same year.  He owned nothing, and worked the land for his lord, being allowed to keep barely enough of the food he grew to feed himself.

That farmer was emancipated in 1861, and was allowed to own his land by a process of a 49 year debt bondage.  In 1906, the farmer’s son could borrow money to buy more land on a mortgage, maybe buy a tractor, and if he worked really hard pay that off loan and actually own something of value.  If that farmer was really hard working and very lucky, he could have been successful enough to have a plot of land large enough to hire a few people to work for him and maybe have some equipment or a mill or creamery to lease to other farmers.

All of this took place in the 68 years from 1861 to 1929.  The kulaks Lenin called “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine” were barely a generation or two away from slavery.  The kulak shot in the head by a Soviet solider was most likely the grandson of an emancipated Serf.

So enter the 116th of the United States of America.

Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez wants to implement a lot of reforms.

A few social media ideas for public servants looking to build an audience:
– Endorse Single-Payer Medicare for All
– Hold Wall Street Accountable
– Make Min Wage = Living Wage
– Cancel Puerto Rican Debt
– End For-Profit Prisons & ICE Detention
– Fight for a #GreenNewDeal

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 2, 2019

The center of her proposed policy, one that is gaining traction with the Democrats is the Green New Deal.  She managed to get a select committee put together for it and they have released a draft proposal.

You can go through it, but it is both economically and technologically infeasible to the point of being impossible in any reasonable timeline.

One of the points her draft makes sounds exactly like what the Soviets promised, with a little environmentalism mixed in.

The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that a national, industrial, economic mobilization of this scope and scale is a historic opportunity to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation. In furtherance of the foregoing, the Plan (and the draft legislation) shall:

[P]rovide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one;

She is also starting to talk about reparations, a subject that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is bringing back up again.  The Democrats have already announced their intentions to increase the taxes on some Americans to raise the wages for other Americans.

The Democrats are drawing lines through people’s incomes to decided were morality lies.  They will tax the rich and those they decide who are undeserving of their money.

And it all sounds like the dekualization of America to me.

My great grandparents were mud farmers driven out of Poland by the Tsar and Prussia by the Kaiser.

Neither of my grandfathers has so much as a high school education.  Both were born during WWI and started working as soon as they could to help put bread on the table during the depression.  My maternal grandfather served on a Coast Guard ship as a cook, patrolling the eastern seaboard for U-Boats.  My paternal grandfather was drafted as an artillery forward observer.

After the war my maternal grandfather took his wartime earnings and bought a butcher shop in Philadelphia.  My paternal grandfather joined the New York Bagel Baker’s Union started a bakery.

My mother was a nurse, my father was a lawyer.  I’m an engineer.

For all intents and purposes, I’m little more than two generations away from serfdom.

I’m not unique in that, that is normal for Americans.  I know people in Alabama, who are white and are only a couple of generations removed from being share croppers and subsistence farmers.

When you look at what the Democrats decide is an immoral level of wealth, it’s the combined mid-career income of an engineer and a RN, or a CPA and a dental hygienist, or an MD and a stay-at-home mom.

A family takes a couple of generations to crawl out of the mud and amass enough wealth to buy a house, a couple of cars, go on vacation once a year, and to listen to the Democrats they are bloodsuckers, vampires, and plunderers of the people.

The socio-economic class in America that is made up of people who have gone to college to study something useful and are professionals who work for a living, are the new American Kulaks.  The make too much to be virtuous by Leftist standards but lack the wealth and power of the investment or inheritance class Leftist elite.

The Democrats sworn in yesterday and doing their first business today are promising pie in the sky and are going to pay for it on the backs Americas Kulaks.  The more things change, the more 2019 is looking like 1929.