Communism- How did it happen?

Author: Richard R. Tryon

Chapter two
Returning to the history...part two

While the U.S. Marshall plan was rebuilding the devastation of WWII in Europe, the Russians were busy rebuilding not only their nation that was largely destroyed, but not nearly as well developed beforehand. At the same time they rebuilt the party's ability to export their ideology into Eastern European countries, taking care to make it look not like empire building- just working to see that the neighbors were also led by communist governments. The targets behind the 'iron curtain' never had a chance. Efforts to foment communist style governments in Italy, France and England failed although all three still look to be socialistic in many ways. Slowly we have seen nationalized industries be 'privatized' in the last twenty years as governments have come to accept that they can't be asked to run business in any risk taking way and this causes loss of economic competitiveness.

Consistent with the Lenin precept of a class struggle, Stalin built the 'iron curtain' and thus began without a lot of external bloodshed, at least of Russian fighters, a ‘cold war’ that lasted almost 50 years before the lies of his ideology became known to those who tried to sell them and had been deceived by them! The rest of the world did not win the cold war as much as the Russians finally lost it because of their own failing. A failure generated by the very nature of man, not by the failure of man to build an infallible state that could not fail, for by definition, it ruled in the name of the common man! But, in the actual circumstance, it was individual men of great power, who gained power through intrigue, force, murder, and any means needed to keep themselves in power. A great body of intellectual effort was constructed to give this powerful system an evidence of legitimacy. But it took lies and continuous rewriting of history to keep up the false image of communist progress when, in fact, all was failing.

One of the first to recognize the inevitable failure of the communist system was Chiang Kai Shek, (as noted in the first chapter) who went to study the system along with a man name Mao Tse-tung back in the late twenties. He returned and told Sun Yat-Sen that the communist ideology was a sham- an idealistic concept that could only play into the hands of dishonest rulers who would be dictators in the name of the people, so that they could rule and be treated as a special class of privilege.

It was not until 1957 that Milovan Djilas first told his story in English entitled “The New Class” that we had the first confessional of a devoted communist. He had been the V.P. to Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia until his mind demanded his resignation and his effort then turned to revealing to the world how and why communism can’t work. He remained convinced that some form of democratic socialism should prevail, but he knew that the tyranny of communism could only fail. He never learned the truth about an alternative that required a sensitive form of individualism rather than a “dog-eat-dog” mentality of unabashed capitalism without any sense of Christian love of man.

It was about the same time that another renown communist also reached a vital turning point in his thinking. As an intellectual leader from the U.S., David Horowitz, son of a devout communist couple from NYC, NY, this man learned to be a highly respected party comrade who wrote many books and articles to espouse the communist Ideal- a utopian dream. It took the Khrushchev presentation to the secret party Congress of 1956 to move this man to question his faith in communism as the replacement for the failed Jewish religion of his ancestors.

By the time of his father's death in 1987, an event attended by many of his life-long communist friends, Horowitz had discovered how the empty words of praise for his father's devotion to the party reflected not a single word of praise for his effort as a human being to bring love to his family and friends. This set the stage for his most poignant letter to a woman known since his childhood. Her letter to him, as a lapsed communist, generated a long response from him that represents one of the most telling explanations as to why the communist idea can not work. Written by a former leader of the intellectual forces that served the dictators of the party like Stalin and all the others, Horowitz reveals why the system can only destroy what is in place and kill millions of innocent people in the process, without ever having anything to take its place that works! Not even in a materialistic sense can central planning replace the dynamism of free enterprise and freedom to think without fear of government reprisal. The needs of the party to suppress dissent are paramount and the results are always catastrophic.

The words of this man's eloquence are found in his book entitled "The Politics of Bad Faith" by David Horowitz published by the Free Press division of Simon & Schuster. In this book, Horowitz tells us that we need to know that not all of the intellectual leaders of the communist Ideal have' seen the light'! Most of the people in the western world today want to think that communism died in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed of its own failure. But this is not true! Many communists are still in love with the ideal that socialism can be forced upon all mankind for its own good! (4)

Horowitz figured out that the Marxist's know that they must destroy the system of the past before they can build a better one for the future- but, they can't build a better one! Statism always leads to stagnation as well as dictatorship and loss of human freedom to all including the New Class of leaders, who get a few perks in shopping but no mental freedom- only slavery to the state.

It is in the name of 'humanism', that Godless concept of thought that man can be instilled with a free-will choice for good without paying allegiance to a higher authority than man. There is only one higher authority to be considered and that is God. But, we have made it very hard for a lot of people to accept God and the motivations for love and goodness to our fellow man that follow. We will come back to this question later to consider how a vastly larger proportion of society can accept God.