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COMMUNISM

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see: "CAPITALISM"
see: "CHINA"
see: "COLD WAR"
see: "DEMOCRACY"
see: "RONALD REAGAN"
see: "RUSSIA"
see: "SOCIALISM"
see: "VIETNAM WAR"
see "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links


Now a man talks frankly only with his wife,
at night, with the blanket over his head.
--Isaac Babel (1894—1940)
Russian short-story writer.
Remark, c.1937, in Solomon Volkov _St Petersburg_ [1996].

-

Capitalism, it is said, is a system
wherein man exploits man. And
communism--is vice versa.
--Daniel Bell (1919— )
American journalist and sociologist.
Quoting 'a Polish intellectual' in
_The End of Ideology_ [1960].

& see:

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began,
the contest between capitalism and socialism is over:
capitalism has won.
"Reflections: The Triumph of Capitalism"
in _New Yorker_ [23 January 1989].

-

Christian love, which applies to all, even to one's
enemies, is the worst adversary of Communism.
--Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888—1938)
Russian Communist leader and theoretician.
_Pravda_ [30 March 1934]

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across
the Continent.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
Speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri
[5 March 1946] {others had used the term 'iron
curtain' previously.}

One thing about Ronald Reagan that struck me time and again
was his obvious, visceral loathing of communism. For him it
wasn't just a difference of opinion about economics or
governance: he saw through the whole thing to its essentially
anti-human nature. And this was at a time, we all too easily
forget, when plenty of people in the West — I think a majority
of the intellectual classes even as late as the 1980s — didn't
mind communism at all, thought in fact that it was just the
ticket, if perhaps not for the USA, at least for poor counties
like Nicaragua. Reagan had the firmest, clearest, truest
moral compass of any modern President. May he rest in peace.
--John Derbyshire,
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_30_corner-archive.asp#033228

I have studied communism long and carefully in
lands where they are practiced and in conversation
with their adherents, and with wide reading. I now
state my conclusion frankly and clearly: I believe
in communism. I shall therefore hereafter help the
triumph of communism in every honest way that I
can...I know well that the triumph of communism
will be a slow and difficult task, involving
mistakes of every sort. It will call for
progressive change in human nature and a
better type of manhood than is common today.
I believe this possible, or otherwise we will
continue to lie, steal and kill as we are
doing today.
--W. E. B. Dubois (1868—1963)
American civil rights leader.
_Autobiography_

^

...[A]sk almost anyone how many people died under communism in the
90 years since the Bolshevik Revolution. Few can provide anything close
to an accurate answer. They don't know that Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev
and the other rulers of the Soviet Union murdered 20 million people
through purges, famines, forced relocations and the infamous Gulag.

They don't know that Mao Zedong and the other Chinese Communist
leaders slaughtered 50 million to 60 million people during the "Great
Leap Forward," the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square
massacre and in the Chinese version of the Gulag--the Laogai.

They don't know that Fidel Castro and the other Cuban Communist
leaders have executed thousands of political dissidents since 1959
and continue to imprison those who dare to propose political reform.

They don't know that the communist plague has exacted a death toll
of more than 100 million men, women and children, a number
documented in "The Black Book of Communism," published by the
Harvard University Press. That number surpasses the death tolls of
all the wars of the 20th century combined.

--Lee Edwards
"Communist regimes killed at least 100 million"
[22 June 2007]
{Mr. Edwards is a Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.}

^

What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings.
Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his copper and pocket a shilling.
--Ebenezer Elliott (1781—1849)
English poet.

When searching for examples of state-sponsored
barbarities, intellectuals are quick to point
to the Spanish Inquisition or its Protestant
imitation, the Witchhunt. How could anyone,
modern academics wonder, persecute another for
their beliefs? These same intellectuals,
ironically, are often the very people who served
as cheerleaders for political persecution and mass
murder on a scale unmatched in human history. The
Spanish Inquisition claimed slightly more than 2,000
lives during its 25-year apex between 1480 and 1505.
One would be hard pressed to find any 25-day period
in Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, or Cambodia
under Pol Pot in which the killing was that slight.
Yet it is a Torquemada or Salem that is equated with
homicidal intolerance. The crimes of Communism are
ignored. Being generous, one might suppose that
intellectuals are simply blinded by the prejudices
of our age and are unable to detach themselves and
see the killing that has occurred right under their
noses. A more cynical perspective might view their
amnesia as a self-induced condition brought on as
a method to absolve themselves of their own role
in supporting murder.
--Daniel J Flynn,
"Ideas Have Consequences...Like Murder, Tyranny, and Repression"
http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/March_2000_4.html

^^

[T]here was McCarthyism before McCarthy. The House Un-American
Activities Committee had been established in 1938. The Smith Act - a
strong anticommunist law - was passed in 1940. The Second World War
had hardly ended when the cold war began. Truman instituted a federal
loyalty program in 1946, and strengthened it in 1947. [. . . ]

Now an epidemic of witch-hunting, paranoia, and political grandstanding
infected the whole country. States and local governments got into the act.
Fifteen states passed laws in 1949 against subversive activities; forty-four
jurisdictions had laws by 1955 to punish sedition, criminal anarchy, criminal
syndicalism, advocating the overthrow of the government, and so on. Some
of these laws were incredibly draconian: in Michigan subversives could be
imprisoned for life; in Tennessee the death penalty was theoretically possible
for anybody who dared advocate the violent overthrow of the United States
government. Many states outlawed the Communist Party. New Hampshire's
attorney general, Louis C. Wyman, was a particularly notorious zealot, out
to get Marxists, fellow travelers, "dupes," and "apologists" for the communists.
A number of states created committees and commissions to carry out
investigations (essentially witch-hunts), searching for radicals secreted in
the nodes of business, government, and academia. Washington State,
Illinois, California, and Maryland had legislative committees especially
keen on ferreting out reds. Ohio was another state with an Un-American
Activities Commission. After all, as a congressman from Ohio warned,
there were 1,300 actual Communists in Ohio; and consequently there
"can be no real peace or security ... for Communism is the devil's own
instrument of hatred, war, chaos and ruin."

--Lawrence M. Friedman (1930— )
_American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002]
Ch. 10 "Race Relations and Civil Rights" pp. 331-332.

^^

...you look at Soviet history and see the Gulag, the
executions of the Terror, the pervasive oppression,
and the economic failure. Psychologically, the leftists
... see little of that. They see a Communist state that
articulated their vision of the future and which sought
to destroy the societies and institutions they hated.
They cannot see the horror that communism actually
created. They look on that horror and see something
else because they cannot admit to themselves that
their vision is beyond human grasp. ... The idealized
future that has not happened is more real and more
important to them than the past that really did happen.
... You will get few mea culpas from hard left academics
because they feel no guilt. You think theyshould regret
getting the facts of history wrong. They care not at
all about the facts of history, only about the politics
of the future. They feel they got the politics right
and so no mea culpa is due.
--John Earl Haynes, interview, "In Denial",
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10932

Communism possesses a language which every people
can understand. Its elements are hunger, envy, death.
--Heinrich Heine (1797—1856)
German poet.

I consider your crime worse than murder...I believe
your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians
the A-Bomb years before our best scientists
predicted Ruissia would perfect the bomb has already
caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in
Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000
and who knows but that millions more of innocent
people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by
your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course
of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one
can say that we do not live in a constant state of
tension. We have evidence of your treachery all
around us every day for the civilian defense activities
throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for
an atom bomb attack.
--Judge Irving R. Kaufman (1910—1992)
Presided over Rosenberg trial;
sentencing the Rosenbergs to death for espionage [5 April 1951].

If anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment
of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin, he deceives
himself. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp
learns to whistle.
--Nikita Khrushchev (1894—1971)
Soviet statesman, Premier [1958—1964].
(On the likelihood of the Soviet Union rejecting communism,
speech in Moscow [17 September 1955].)

-

Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice. We repudiate all morality which
proceeds from supernatural ideas or ideas which are outside the
class conception. In our opinion, morality is entirely subordinate
to the interests of the class war. Everything is moral which is
necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting order and for
uniting the proletariat. Our morality consists solely in close
discipline and conscious warfare against the exploiters.
--V.I. Lenin (1870—1924)
Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (1917—1924).


All educational work in the Soviet Republic of workers
and peasants, in the field of political education in
general and in the field of art in particular, should be
imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being
waged by the proletariat for the successful
achievement of the aims of its dictatorship.
--V.I. Lenin (1870—1924)
Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (1917—1924).
[8 October 1920]


You must ... *instantly* introduce mass terror, *shoot and transport*
hundreds of prostitutes who get the soldiers drunk, ex-officers, etc.
Not a minute to be wasted ... You must act at full stretch: mass
searches. Executions for possession of weapons. Mass
deportations of Mensheviks and unreliable elements.
--V.I. Lenin (1870—1924)
Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (1917—1924).
[Telegram of 9 August 1918.]

-

-

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer
which we use to crush the enemy.
--Mao Zedong (1893—1976)
Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who
led his nation's communist revolution.
_Time_ [December 18, 1950], "United Nations: Petition to Peking"


Every Communist must grasp the truth: 'Political
power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'
--Mao Zedong (1893—1976)
Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who
led his nation's communist revolution.
Speech [6 November 1938]
"Problems of War and Strategy"
in _Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung_, v. II [1961].

-

Communism will probably disappear altogether
when the Russian experiment comes to a climax,
and Bolshevism either converts itself into a
sickly imitation of capitalism or blows itself
up with a bang. The former issue seems much
more likely.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
Baltimore _Evening Sun_ [14 July 1930]

...Stalinism was thus aided, as Paul Johnson writes, "not only by
superb public relations but by the naivete, gullibility and, it must
also be said, the mendacity and corruption of Western intellectuals,
especially their willingness to overlook what W.H. Auden called ‘the
necessary murder.'"
--Ronald Radosh,
"But Today The Struggle: Spain and the Intellectuals",
_The New Criterion_ [October 1986]

It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if you ever hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself---that will be the man who's not after your soul.
--Ayn Rand (1905—1982)
Russian-born American writer.
_The Fountainhead_ [1943]

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment
of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the
wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs
become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it
cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall
cannot withstand freedom.
--Ronald Reagan (1911—2004)
American President [1981—1989] and former Hollywood actor.
"Tear Down This Wall" speech, West Berlin [12 June 1987].

The economy of communism is an economy which grows
in an atmosphere of misery and want.
--Eleanor Roosevelt (1884—1962)
American human rights activist, diplomat, and
wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is
descending on Russian history.
--Vasilii Rozanov (1856—1919)
Russian writer and philosopher.
_Apochalypse of Our Time_ [1918]

-

Nearly 20 years ago, confined to an 8-by-10 cell in a prison
on the border of Siberia, I was granted by my Soviet jailers
the 'privilege' of reading the latest copy of Pravda, the official
mouthpiece of the Communist regime. Splashed across the
front page was a condemnation of Ronald Reagan for having
the temerity to call the Soviet Union an 'evil empire.'

Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, prisoners quickly
spread the word of Reagan's 'provocation' throughout the
prison. The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of
the free world had spoken the truth—a truth that burned
inside the heart of each and every one of us.

--Natan Sharansky (1948— )
Ukranian-born anti-Communist and
Israeli politician and writer.
"Afraid of the Truth",
_The Washington Post_ [12 October 2000]

-

The opening of Soviet archives in recent years has confirmed
that the Communist Party in the United States was financed and
controlled from Moscow. It was never about a set of beliefs or
values for the benefit of Americans. It was an organization of
traitors serving a foreign dictatorship that murdered millions. ...

Would [Hollywood protestors against Elia Kazan] denounce an
"informer" from inside the Ku Klux Klan who revealed the names of
other KKK members? What about an informer from inside the right-
wing militia movement? As in so many other areas, it is not the
principle that the left is concerned about. It is the question of
whose ox is gored.

--Thomas Sowell (1930— )
American economist and author.

-

Class is a communist concept. It groups people in
bundles, and sets them against one another.
--Margaret Thatcher (1925— )
British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [1979-1990].
In Brenda Maddox, _Maggie the First Lady_.

-

[On Lillian Hellman (1905—1984) American dramatist
and Dashiell Hammett (1894—1961) American author of detective novels]

In the end, Hellman was no more loyal to her art than she
was to anything or anyone else, except for Stalin, whom
she revered to the bitter end. Much the same could just
as easily be said of Dashiell Hammett, of course; once he
stopped writing, he became a spiritual corpse responsive
only to the call of Johnny Walker Red, prostitutes, and
Communism. Perhaps that is the best explanation of why
these two coldhearted creatures cleaved to each other
through thick and (mostly) thin: they had their love of
power politics to keep them warm.
--Terry Treachout (1956— )
American critic.
_A Terry Treachout Reader_ [2004]

-

-

No one has the intention of building a wall.
--Walter Ulbricht (1893—1973)
German Communist leader and after WW II head of
the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
[17 June 1961]

& see

It's not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of
a lot better than a war.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917—1963)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1961—1963].
Commenting on the building of the Berlin Wall on 13 Aug. 1961,
in Kenneth P. O'Donnell and David F. Powers
_Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye [1972] p.350.

The Berlin Wall

-

Practically no one is a 'communist' today. What
happened? Fundamental attitudes don't disappear
into thin air. People might die, but ideas rarely
do, especially when the idea is one of only two
major strains of political thought that excite
the people, dominate the minds, and determine
the affairs of man for centuries. It must count
among the most amazing spectacles of history to
be inundated with the rhetoric, theory, and
practice of communism, and see not one communist
around. We read and hear daily about class warfare,
redistribution of wealth, the 'dispossessed'
masses, the disadvantaged, universal health care,
speech codes, sensitivity training, restrictions
on parents' rights, school-to-work --the list
goes on and on. The agenda is with us, the Party
is not.
--Balint Vazsonyi (1936—2003)
Hungarian-born American concert pianist and political philosopher.
_America's 30 Years War_

-

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began,
the contest between capitalism and socialism is over:
capitalism has won.
"Reflections: The Triumph of Capitalism"
in _New Yorker_ [23 January 1989].

---

"In Solidarity"
By Lech Walesa [(1943— ) Polish trade unionist and statesman]
June 11, 2004
_The Wall Street Journal_

GDANSK, Poland — When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.

I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let's remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy? Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.

I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They're convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for. Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them.

The 1980s were a curious time -- a time of realization that a new age was upon us. Communism was coming to an end. It had used up its means and possibilities. The ground was set for change. But this change needed the cooperation, or unspoken understanding, of different political players. Now, from the perspective of our time, it is obvious that like the pieces of a global chain of events, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev helped bring about this new age in Europe. We at Solidarity like to claim more than a little credit, too, for bringing about the end of the Cold War.

In the Europe of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan presented a vision. For us in Central and Eastern Europe, that meant freedom from the Soviets. Mr. Reagan was no ostrich who hoped that problems might just go away. He thought that problems are there to be faced. This is exactly what he did.

Every time I met President Reagan, at his private estate in California or at the Lenin shipyard here in Gdansk, I was amazed by his modesty and even temper. He didn't fit the stereotype of the world leader that he was. Privately, we were like opposite sides of a magnet: He was always composed; I was a raging tower of emotions eager to act. We were so different yet we never had a problem with understanding one another. I respected his honesty and good humor. It gave me confidence in his policies and his resolve. He supported my struggle, but what unified us, unmistakably, were our similar values and shared goals.

* * *

I have often been asked in the United States to sign the poster that many Americans consider very significant. Prepared for the first almost-free parliamentary elections in Poland in 1989, the poster shows Gary Cooper as the lonely sheriff in the American Western, "High Noon." Under the headline "At High Noon" runs the red Solidarity banner and the date -- June 4, 1989 -- of the poll. It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S.

But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland. It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together.

As I say repeatedly, we owe so much to all those who supported us. Perhaps in the early years, we didn't express enough gratitude. We were so busy introducing all the necessary economic and political reforms in our reborn country. Yet President Ronald Reagan must have realized what remarkable changes he brought to Poland, and indeed the rest of the world. And I hope he felt gratified. He should have.

Mr. Walesa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, was president of Poland from 1990 to 1995

-

Members and front organizations must continually
embarrass, discredit and degrade our critics. When
obstructionists become too irritating, label them
as fascist, or Nazi or anti-Semitic .... The
association will, after enough repetition, become
"fact" in the public mind.
--Communist Party,
Moscow Central Committee [1943]

-

The sad fact is that Edmund Wilson was a political simpleton who, in writing "To the Finland Station," produced a book that often degenerated into Stalinist apologetics. Like many intellectuals of his generation, he was for a time an eager convert to the Marxist faith, going so far as to laud Moscow as "the moral top of the world, where the light never really goes out" and describing Lenin as a kind of secular saint:

"If he gravitated into the role of dictator, it was because the social physics of Russia made it inevitable that he should do so. In his drive toward personal domination there was nothing either of the egotism of genius or of the craving for honor of the statesman. Lenin was one of the most selfless of great men. He did not care about seeing his name in print, he did not want people to pay him homage; he did not care about how he looked, he had no pose of not caring about it. He regarded his political opponents not as competitors who had to be crushed, but as colleagues he had regrettably lost or collaborators he had failed to recruit. Unlike certain of the other great revolutionists, Marx or Bakunin, for example, he is imaginable as a statesman of the West, developing in a different tradition."

--Hilton Kramer, in "The Wall Street Journal" [26 August 2005],
reviewing _Edmund Wilson: A Life In Literature_ by Lewis M. Dabney


end page



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