Obama's team 'socialists with communist background' Prof with ties to radical White House associates says president understands socialism

By Aaron Klein

Manning Marable

NEW YORK – Many of the people working with President Obama are Marxists or socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party, according to a socialist Columbia University professor with strong ties to Obama's radical associates, including Weathermen terrorist Bill Ayers.

"What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organizer. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is," wrote Manning Marable, professor and founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University.

"A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists," Marable wrote in a December 2008 piece published in the Socialist Review.

In the article, Marable contends "Obama is not a Marxist or a socialist – he is a progressive liberal." .....