Obama's marxism a bit dated

It's no wonder I recognized it from my college courses--he's apparently stuck back in the 1960s and 1970s with Bill Ayers and friends, while Europe and Asia struggle to release themselves from his type of chains. Here's a summary about marxism in Asia at the Irish Left Review.

From Marx to the Market
Not so long ago, there seemed to be a very different light shining from the East. It’s barely thirty years since the final defeat of the South Vietnamese regime set the seal on the most humiliating defeat the USA has suffered since appointing itself as the world’s policeman after 1945. The victory of the Vietnamese Communists was one by-product of a curious fact: the Communist International, founded by the Bolsheviks with the primary goal of spreading revolution in Western Europe, had its greatest impact in East Asia. Nobody would have found that more surprising than the Bolsheviks themselves.

Communist parties were able to take power under their own steam in China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Korean Communists had the benefit of support from the Red Army but still had a strong domestic base when they took over the north of their country. There were also long-running Communist insurgencies in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, while Indonesia was once home to the largest non-ruling Communist party in the world.

A quick glance at the regional scene will tell you that the challenge once posed by Asian Communism to the capitalist order has been almost entirely eclipsed. The Indonesia CP was smashed by Suharto’s bloody coup in the 1960s, while the Communist guerrillas in Thailand and Malaysia have long since been defeated. The Filipino CPP/NPA survives, but is a much diminished force. The turnaround is most striking, though, in the states where Communist parties or their descendents are still in power.

China’s great leap forward has grounded itself on the embrace of private enterprise (although not, it should be said, the dogma of the Washington Consensus). . . and much more."

The author neglects to mention the millions of deaths of our South Vietnamese allies caused by the shameful exit of the U.S. at the end of the war; or the millions and millions of Chinese who met their early deaths on the road to restoring the economy of China before it scambled on their bodies to capitalism. Oh well.