Former Top Biden Adviser Endorses Famous Marxist Tenet

In 2009, Jared Bernstein helped craft President Obama’s economic stimulus law in the White House, directing over $800 billion in taxpayer funds to various liberal priorities.

On Tuesday, he endorsed a famous and important tenet of Marxism in an open congressional hearing.

“Dr. Bernstein, if I utter the phrase to you ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,’ do you look upon that generally favorably or generally unfavorably?” Rep. Mick Mulvaney asked the former top economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden at Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing.

“Generally favorably,” Bernstein answered, to which Mulvaney replied: “Thank you, sir, I have no further questions.”

The phrase “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is a socialist phrase, made famous by Karl Marx himself–though socialists before him like Louis Blanc had used it.

In Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” a late 1800s work in which Marx detailed how he envisioned transitioning from capitalism to communism would work.

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” Marx wrote.

The phrase is infamously known as a Marxist phrase, one of the thinker’s most well-known quotes.

Bernstein is now a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-wing think tank. But he served as Biden’s chief economist and economic adviser from 2009 until 2011, the first two years of the administration.

In response to his support for Marx’s thoughts during Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing, Mulvaney’s congressional office blasted out a press release on Wednesday slamming him. “VP Economic Advisor Admits to Being Marxist,” the release said.

The context of the point Mulvaney was trying to make was that with committed left-wing ideologues in the White House, does having hearings on financial matters “really make any difference?”

“Are we really accomplishing anything?” Mulvaney asked. “We’re sitting here today trying to make our points, the other side is trying to make their points. We’re not going to fix this. We’re not going to fix this. We have a leader in the White House who refuses to engage. Many members of this committee don’t even know who the White House liaison is. You’re not going to solve this problem without leadership.

“They are not going to convince us that Mr. Bernstein is right. We are not going to convince them that Dr. [Doug] Holtz-Eakin is right. That takes leadership and the type of leadership that traditionally in this country has come from the White House. Whether it be Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, we’ve had a president who has been willing to engage on the difficult issues to try and drive some sort of resolution to these very, very complicated issues.

“If we don’t get that, then the really important thing is something we haven’t discussed here, if we don’t fix it, all that really matters is who’s in charge when it breaks? Us? Or them? That’s what it really comes down to. That was the issue in 2008 when we had the great recession and the other side was entirely in charge and we had stimulus and bailouts and monetary policy that makes many of us pull our hair out. So the question becomes: Who’s going to be in charge the next time the system breaks? Who gets to fix it? Us or them? I think it’s important everybody knows who we are and what we stand for and who they are and what they stand for.”

WATCH VIDEO OF BIDEN’S EX-ECONOMIC ADVISER ENDORSING MARXIST TENET: