OPINION: The CDC’s Eviction Moratorium Is Textbook Communism

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended the federal government’s eviction moratorium this week — a move that will allow renters to continue squatting on their landlord’s property.

The order will allow up to 90% of renters in counties “experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels” of COVID-19 to remain in their rental properties in the name of public health. As the CDC claimed on Tuesday, “eviction moratoria — like quarantine, isolation, and social distancing — can be an effective public health measure utilized to prevent the spread of communicable disease.”

In other words — a government bureau is yet again leveraging “public health” concerns as a mechanism for quashing civil liberties.

Americans may be left wondering why the federal government — specifically, an executive agency with no constitutional foundation — is capable of unilaterally suspending private property rights. They may also wonder what constitutional checks and balances exist to combat an executive agency that exceeds its mandate.

The answer to the first question? It isn’t, and it doesn’t matter. Why? Because of the answer to the second question: there are no constitutionally-prescribed means for the people to hold unelected bureaucrats accountable. Such are important worries, but — as Anthony Fauci’s ascension to deity ought to have taught us by now — we are unlikely to receive any recourse for the trampling of our rights.

Nevertheless, a third question arises. Why are landlords — many of whom belong to the middle class — being transformed before our eyes into indentured servants? 

The answer to this question is not found in the constitution of the United States, but in the communism of Friedrich Engels. His Communist Confession of Faith — quite literally a catechism for people who hate God — notes that the elimination of private property is necessary for the establishment of communism:

Question 2: What is the aim of the Communists?

Answer: To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.

Question 3: How do you wish to achieve this aim?

Answer: By the elimination of private property and its replacement by community of property.

Later in the document — the entirety of which, to the discerning reader, is increasingly indistinguishable from the Democratic platform — Engels specifies that the gradual violation of private property rights by the state is a necessary precondition for doing away with such rights altogether:

Question 17: What will be your first measure once you have established democracy?

Answer: Guaranteeing the subsistence of the proletariat.

Question 18: How will you do this?

Answer: By limiting private property in such a way that it gradually prepares the way for its transformation into social property, e. g., by progressive taxation, limitation of the right of inheritance in favour of the state, etc.

Communists throughout the twentieth century have followed Engels’ counsel — even through its later stages.

Joseph Stalin once described the subjugation of the kulaks — a prosperous class of peasants responsible for much of the Soviet Union’s agricultural output — by boasting that his regime had “passed from the policy of restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulaks to the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class.” Many labeled as kulaks — which, by the way, is a pejorative derived from the Russian term for “tight-fisted” — eventually found themselves in his gulags.

Mao Zedong, who lamented that “there is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants,” presided over a “Land Reform Movement” which resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of landowners.

Is the United States approaching such levels of backlash against those exercising their property rights? Hopefully not. But when the Department of Education confiscates your car, the National Weather Service hacks your stock portfolio, or the Bureau of Labor Statistics kidnaps your dog, do not be surprised — they are doing no more than following the script.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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