General Motors And Barack Obama’s Plan To Create A Marxist Dictatorship

Conservatives thrive in twisting facts to support their world view primarily because any honest look at the world shows they are living in a fantasy world. One aspect of the conservative fantasy world is to claim that Barack Obama is a socialist despite the strong influence of the University of Chicago on his moderate economic views.

Conservatives were assisted in such distortions by the fact that Obama came into office when we were on the verge of a depression which required him to take a more activist role in the economy than he normally would have. Conservatives try to twist the facts surrounding the bail out of General Motors to claim that Obama is a Marxist out to nationalize private industry. I often hear conservatives site the “nationalization” of General Motors as an example of how Barack Obama is moving us towards a Communist dictatorship.

Of course if Obama was a true socialist he would be seeking to nationalize not only more companies but entire industries. Conservatives making this argument ignore the fact that it was General Motors who came to Washington seeking assistance, and that the assistance plan was based upon ultimately restoring GM to private ownership (hardly the goal of true socialists).

Conspiracy theories are also very common in the conservative movement. Many conservatives have claimed that the real goal of the Obama administration is to maintain permanent ownership and that General Motors will never pay off their government loans.

As happens so often, reality is interfering with conservative fantasies. General Motors is now planning to repay their government loans by June–five years ahead of schedule.

Repaying $6.7 billion in government loans has been a top priority for CEO Ed Whitacre. The government’s autos task force set a repayment deadline of 2015 as a condition of giving GM the loans last year. As of the end of March, GM has paid back $2.4 billion and Liddell said GM plans to pay the rest by June at the latest.

This doesn’t rid General Motors of government ownership but is a big step in that direction. The next step is a  public stock offering, “when the markets and the company are ready.” A business strategy of offering a public stock offering is not the usual plan for a nationalized company taken over by socialists.

This is not to say that General Motors doesn’t still have  serious problems, or that there are aspects of the bail-out which economic conservatives have legitimate ground to criticize. However what we are seeing is far more a case of Republican-like crony capitalism, for better for worse, than an example of Marxism.

1 Comment

  1. 1
    Dominic D'Adamo says:

    RT @ronchusid: Another right wing conspiracy theory doesn't hold up: GM And Obama's Plan To Create A Marxist Dictatorship http://is.gd/bj86A #p2

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