3.0-COMMUNISM
AS AN ACTIVE FORCE
3.1-Russia
has scattered her errors
The
Reds, they ain’t dead – they are just playing dead!
To
advance their agenda, Communists resort to the use of disguises
and deceit. This tactic has been confirmed by Pope Pius
XI in his encyclical on Atheistic Communism:
“In
the beginning communism showed itself for what it was in
all its perversity but very soon realized that it was thus
alienating the people. It has therefore changed its tactics,
and strives to entice the multitudes by trickery of various
forms . . .”19
Two
personalities, both of whom who have lived under the haunting
spectre of Communism, confirm this tactic employed by Communist.
The first, Father Vladimir Kozina, author of the booklet,
Communism As I Know It, wrote:
“Communists
know that the best way to achieve world revolution is not
to talk about it but to work secretly
for it.”20
Renowned
author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, provided a similar insight,
in a work appropriately titled, Warning to the West:
“All
of the Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become
completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve
power, it is necessary to use disguises.”21
Master
trickster, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the
former U.S.S.R., for instance, resided in the West, the
imperialistic U.S.A., for a period of time after the fall
of the Berlin Wall; but, he has reassured the West that
his doctrinaire abode will always remain left of center:
“Perestroika
is closely connected with socialism as a system . . . There
are people in the West who would like to tell us that socialism
is in deep crisis and has brought our society to a dead
end . . . To put an end to all the rumors and speculations
that abound in the West about this, I
would like to point out once again that we are conducting
all our reforms in accordance with the socialist choice.
We are looking within socialism, rather than outside it,
for the answers to all the questions that arise. We
assess our successes and errors alike by socialist standards.
Those who hope that we shall move
away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed
. . . We will proceed toward better socialism rather
than away from it.”22
As
a point of reference regarding the distinction between the
terms Socialism and Communism, the following explanation
should provide clarification: “According to Marx, socialism
is a stage on the way to communism . . . under socialism
we have a dictatorship of the proletariat which is a government
organized for the defence of survival rights.”23
| |
 |
| |
Vitali
Vitaliev |
Testimony
to the exaggerated rumors of the demise of Communism has
been penned by an investigative journalist, Mr. Vitali Vitaliev,
who was hounded out of the USSR by the KGB. After
the fall of the Berlin Wall, he returned to Eastern Europe
as a travel journalist. This provided him with an opportunity
to make some remarkable observations that he was able to
relay through his travel literature, published in 1999,
as follows:
“In
an amazing twist of history, many post-communist countries
are now again ruled by the communists, who have been voted
back into power by the very people who overthrew them .
. . And although the communists, who used to call themselves
‘communists’, now call themselves democrats and champions
of the free market, their mentality remains unaltered.”24
 |
|
Andrei
Lukanov |
|
Mr.
Vitaliev continues later in the same book:
“.
. . Andrei Lukanov, Bulgaria’s former prime minister and
one of the country’s leading reformist politicians was assassinated
. . . Some time before his death, he claimed publicly that
he had evidence pointing to a ‘return to Stalinist methods’
to be introduced by Bulgaria’s ruling Socialist Party.”25
Democratic
systems do not serve as a deterrent to communists; in fact,
democracies can aid the advancement of Communism by allowing
them to be ‘put on the ballot’. The spokeswoman for the
Communist Party of Canada, Liz Rowley, related her continued
optimism to have Communist Party members elected in Canada:
“There
have been dry runs, or historical experiences, and we draw
lessons, and will make corrections and do better.”26
Tenacity
does appear to pay dividends, even for Socialism; especially
when approximately 1,000 leaders, representing more
than 130 countries, were able to materialize in
Paris in the latter part of the 20th century,
1999, to be precise, to participate in the 21st
Socialist International conference. In the BBC NEWS on-line
article, Socialists outline future vision, the following
was reported:
“The
centre-left is now in power in counties across
the globe, including 11 of the 15 European Union
states.”27
In
2006, a list of Socialist countries, based upon nations
that have substantial amounts of state-run industry,
numerous government social programs, or other traits (that)
make them actually Socialist, included the following:
“Cuba,
North Korea, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Syria, Belarus,
Sweden, Laos, Zambia, Turkmenistan.”28
Other
countries that could be considered Socialist include: Norway,
Libya, Namibia, Algeria and Russia?
3.2-Kremlin
claw-back: Back in the USSR
| |
 |
| |
Vladimir
Putin |
A recent
Harris poll conducted within five western European countries,
Britain, France Italy, Spain and Germany, for the Financial
Times, reveals a lack of confidence, by citizens of these
countries, in the current President of Russia, Mr. Putin:
“Most
(44 per cent) are not sure if (Putin) can be trusted, and
the next largest group (36 per cent) is convinced that he
cannot. Only one in five is prepared to give him the benefit
of the doubt.”29
They
may have reason to distrust Mr. Putin. Prior to the G8 summit
this summer, some in the Western media railed against the
co-operation of Western leaders with Mr. Putin, indicating
that:
“By
doing so, they will establish the principle that authoritarian
governments can receive the imprimatur of the international
political establishment – as long as they are rich enough.”30
In
the same article, the litany of Mr. Putin’s undemocratic
actions was reiterated, as follows:
“.
. . President Putin destroyed independent Russian television,
which is now almost entirely state-controlled. He twisted
election results to ensure that he and his allies won by
landslides (not that, lacking media attention, his opponents
would have won anyway). He recently passed laws designed
to make existence close to impossible for Russia’s beleaguered
human rights groups, environmental groups and other independent
advocates . . . The blatant illegality that accompanied
the transfer of assets from Yukos to Rosneft – Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
the Yukos CEO, was arrested, put through a macabre, Soviet-style
show trial and sent to a prison camp where he suffers mysterious
‘accidents’ – put a permanent dent in national respect for
the rule of law . . . Fear
is back too: once again, my Russian friends are too nervous
to be honest on the telephone. Some of them report visits
– perfectly polite, it’s true – from agents of the FSB,
the agency formerly known as the KGB, who are very interested
in their foreign acquaintances and bank accounts . . . It
is tragic but true: once again, Russia is a place where
the blunt-speaking watch their backs.”31
It
is interesting to note the lack of condemnation of Mr. Putin
on the part of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of
the former U.S.S.R., in his commentary published in the
Financial Times on July 12, 2006:
“The
achievement of recent years is that a sense of order has
returned to Russia . . . The re-establishment of a proper
sense of governance has been key to that success, although
its importance is not properly understood outside Russia
. . .”32
In
September 2006, Mr. Gorbachev gave a potent statement, further
lending his support to the actions of Mr. Putin:
“I
now support Putin as far as resorting to tough measures
to maintain stability is concerned.”33
On
October 07, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a famous investigative
reporter in Russia and the author of the book, Putin’s Russia34,
which detailed the disorder and corruption under President
Putin, was shot dead. The Sunday Times on-line news
service provided the following report:
“A
fearless opponent of Russia’s wars in Chechnya who once
described President Vladimir Putin as a ‘KGB snoop’ and
compared him to Stalin, she was shot as she returned home
form a shopping trip . . . She was the most prominent of
dozens of Russian journalists murdered in the past 10 years
. . .”35
4.0-COMMUNISM
AS AN ACTIVE FORCE SEEKING WORLD CONTROL
4.1-The
Rule of Law as Source of Power
Mr.
Putin has resorted to the use of the rule of law to secure
his power and stifle his opposition. What, then, is the
rule of law? A definition for the rule of law reads as follows:
“The
rule of law is the principle that governmental authority
is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written,
publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance
with established procedure. The principle is intended to
be a safeguard against arbitrary governance.”36
But
this rule of law, safeguard against arbitrary governance,
is also the very tool that is capable of bringing about
arbitrary governance. In her book, The Case Against Lawyers,
Catherine Crier warns us:
“In
barely a generation, lawyers, politicians, and bureaucrats
have taken the palace without firing a shot. These groups
control the creation and enforcement of law. Their ability
to write rules and manipulate them at will has established
a new tyranny . . . the rule of law,
has become a source of power and influence, not liberty
and justice. . . . We have abdicated our freedom . . . to
the rule makers.” 37
In
the former Soviet Union, the rule of law has proved to be
an effective means of control for President Putin:
“.
. . implicit legal threats are proving hugely successful
in intimidating and silencing the Kremlin’s few remaining
opponents in politics, business and the media. Because of
the ambiguities and contradictions in Russia’s newly drafted
laws, and arbitrariness of Russia’s police and prosecutors,
the Kremlin can find a legal pretext to investigate or interrogate
almost anyone … The President is trying to impose his control
over the mass media, with the goal of setting up a regime
of personal power ... He has turned the country over to
secret services and bureaucrats. Mr. Putin calls it ‘the
dictatorship of the law. He describes it as a hammer
that can crush any opposition. The state had a cudgel in
its hands that you use to hit just once, but on the
head,’ Mr. Putin said last month.”38
The
potential for the rule of law to be used to unjustly subjugate
a population on a global scale, appears to be a very real
scenario as indicated by Anne-Marie Slaughter in her book,
A New World Order:
“.
. . judges around the world are coming together in
various ways (often facilitated by technology) that are
achieving many of the goals of a formal
global legal system … the strengthening of a set
of universal norms regarding
judicial independence and the rule
of law …”39
4.2-Utopia:
The Worker’s Paradise
The
prophets of Communism often sway their audience with the
politics of paradise. They tell of the coming workers’ paradise;
a man-made Utopia, the perfect atheistic state. Alexander
Solzhenitsyn is a former Russian Communist, who was imprisoned
by his own party. Upon his release from the labors camps,
he provided testimony to the evils of Communism through
his many writings and speeches. In his biography, written
by Joseph Pearce, Mr. Solzhenitsyn related that while visiting
the Russian countryside as young man, still absorbed by
the lure of Communism, he and a companion,
“.
. . found only decay, desolation and neglect. Loudspeakers
blared trite propaganda jingles informing the villagers
how good life was under communism while the village consumer
co-operative displayed only row upon row of empty shelves.
They had arrived in one village looking for food to augment
their basic supply of dry biscuits and potatoes but there
was none to be found . . . The village, like thousands of
others throughout Russia, had been devastated by collectivization
yet the two young communists, returning disappointed to
their boat, were too naïve to understand how the reality
before their eyes belied their idealistic discussions of
Marxist dogma, the futility of their utopian theorizing.”40
The
concept of Utopia was first put forward by Saint Thomas
More, in 1516, in his book appropriately titled, Utopia.
In this book, Saint Thomas More parodied the “ideal commonwealth”
situated on an imaginary island known as Utopia. The word
Utopia is derived from two Greek words, which combined mean
‘no place’. An academic, Professor Chad Walsh, pondered
the motive of utopians in his book, From
Utopia to Nightmare, and put forward a theory to
explain the zeal of men to create the idealized Utopia in
this world:
'Utopia
. . . represents a further stage of that primal rebellion
of Adam and Eve. Like them, the utopian wants mankind to
have ‘a life of its own’, to shape its own destiny without
too much regard to any Creator and the fact of creaturehood.”41
The
attempt by man to envision a new Eden is not without precedent
in this world. This impulse can be evidenced from the various
ideas put forward throughout the history of man in philosophy,
literature, politics, economics, false religions as well
as the applications of the physical sciences. A more contemporary
concept of the coveted Utopia can be found in a novel by
the title of Ecotopia. In Ecotopia, population
growth is controlled through wide-spread use of contraceptives,
abortion on demand and ritual war games. There is a devotion
to trees bordering on worship, communal rearing of children,
absence of marriage vows, legalized marijuana usage and
a woman-dominated government. What is most spectacular about
this novel is the endorsement on the back cover by American
consumer advocate turned politician, Ralph Nader. He is
quite cheery about the ideas put forward in the book as
he states: “None of the happy conditions
in Ecotopia are beyond the technical or resource reach of
our society.”42
Then again, except for better air quality, does Ecotopia
really differ that much from our modern society? The
differences, if any, are more in degree. Our society, too,
with its fair share of tree-theists, amongst others, has
ousted the one true God. The waning of a Christian civilization
is obvious; the consequences of a brutal pagan society continue
to reach its depths of depravity, limited only by the consensus
of the public imagination. None-the-less, it is fortunate
that there is no place like Utopia and there will
never be such a place; except, of course, in the minds,
orations and writings of relentless and plotting dreamers.
Wes Nester, in his quasi-autobiographical book, THE
BIG BANG, THE BUDDHA, AND THE BABY BOOM: The Spiritual Experiments
of My Generation, gave evidence of another Utopian
dream:
“During
my high school years, my parents began sending me to a Zionist
summer camp in the piney woods of Wisconsin, hoping that
I would meet other Jewish kids my age and discover my Jewish
identity. It worked. The first few times we gathered at
Camp Herzl’s flag circle, I felt a secret thrill at the
realization that everyone around me was Jewish. Not one
of these kids believed that Jesus was the messiah! . . .
The camp counselors told us that as Jews our true home was
in Israel, the land of milk and honey promised to our people
in the Bible. Every day at camp we raised the Israeli flag
and sang the Israeli national anthem . . . we learned about
the kibbutzim, the communal farms in Israel where people
shared everything and lived as one big family. On a kibbutz
there were theoretically no
rich or poor members and no competition for money or power;
everyone worked and played together, united in a common
goal. That sounded like a great idea to me at the time,
and, despite all the socialist experiments
that have since failed, it still sounds to me like
a good idea . . . Socialism is indeed a part of Jewish heritage,
being the brainchild of European Jewish intellectuals and
labor leaders, and I believe the socialist vision is a legacy
the Jewish people should be proud to own. We might someday
yet regard Karl Marx as highly as we do Groucho.”43
The
idea of Utopia is a political tool and it has the ability
to foment a revolution if comparisons between the idealized
world and the reality are vigorously propagated. Monsignor
Moses Coady acknowledged the tendency of mankind to resort
to revolution as a misguided solution to remedy their societal
ills.
“The
revolutionary attitude appeals to human nature. Man rationalizes
when he is too lazy or too ignorant . . . Thinking is difficult;
and the persistent effort required to carry out a program
(that) calls for the manipulation of the more subtle and
powerful forces, the economic, political, cultural and spiritual,
is more difficult still. Revolution seems to be the easy
way to solve the social problem, but that it can do so is
a myth and a delusion.” 44
Svetlana
Alliluyeva, daughter of Stalin, added her personal experience
about such delusions in her book, Twenty Letters to a Friend:
“No
country on earth wastes its own heritage, its ancient treasures
as we do, simply out of slothfulness. No revolution ever
destroyed so much of value for the people as our Russian
Revolution.”45
4.3-A Myth and a Delusion
The
left-wing lie:
“The
ultimate goal of Marxism, of socialism, and of the struggle
of the working class is freedom.”
46
The
left-wing reality:
“Communist
systems, though pretending to install classless societies,
have actually had the most pronounced system of stratification.
To begin with, those who are against the revolutionary process
are not even considered a part of the society; they are
enemies who should be either killed or cast aside. Among
those who support the revolutionary system . . . fill the
top of the social pyramid, and have all the privileges.
If and when they dare question the process, they are usually
jailed or sentenced to death as traitors.” 47
| |
 |
| |
Venezuela
President
Hugo Chávez |
The
above quote offered this observation based on the Communist
Party operations in Venezuela under the dictatorship of
President Hugo Chávez. This entrenchment of societal inequality,
based on patronage to the Communist Party, is not particular
to Venezuela, but to Communist societies in general. The
situation is very similar in China, today, as noted below:
“…Communist-controlled
China has become a nation with the most serious economic
inequalities in the world. Many CCP (Chinese Communist
Party) members have become extremely rich, while the country
has 800 million living in poverty.”48
Stalin’s
daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, reported that Stalin,
“…
let his salary pile up in packets every month on his desk
... He never spent any money – he had no place to spend
it and nothing to spend it on. Everything he needed – his
food, his clothing, his dachas and his servants – was paid
for by the government.”49
Communism
is not about altruism. The Black Book
of Communism, published in English in 1999, estimated
that Communism, world-wide, was responsible for the deaths
of 100 million50
individuals. This is hardly a political ideology that works
to better humanity, quite the opposite. Revolutions perpetuated
in the name of the people are but a ruse, a ruse to secure
power. George Orwell, in his land-mark novel on totalitarianism,
Nineteen Eighty-Four, penned
the following narrative spoken by O’Brien to Winston that
revealed a truth about revolutions:
“We
know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of
relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One
does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard
a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish
the dictatorship.”51
REFERENCES:
19.
Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI on Atheistic Communism,
St. Paul Editions, March 1937, p. 37
20.
Father Vladimir Kozina, Communism
As I Know It, C & W Press, 5th
Edition, 1985, p. 16
21.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning
to the West, The
Noonday Press, division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976,
p. 66
22.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika:
New Thinking for Our Country and the World,
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987, pp. 36-37
23.
What is the difference between communism and socialism?,
Maoist Internationalist Movement,
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/faq/commievssoc.html
24.
Vitali Vitaliev, Borders Up! Eastern
Europe through the bottom of a glass, Scribner,
1999, p. 5
25.
Vitali Vitaliev, Borders Up! Eastern
Europe through the bottom of a glass, Scribner,
1999, p. 266
26.
Andrea Mrozek, Remember, kids: Communism kills, Western
Standard, January 16, 2006, p. 10
27.
BBC News Staff, Socialists outline future vision,
November 08, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/509865.stm
28.
Z. Perry, List of Socialist Countries with Individual
Details, 2006, http://www.associatedcontent.com/pop_print.shtml?content_type=article&content_type_id=56207
29.
Quentin Peel, Putin has much to do to convince Europeans
that he can be trusted, Financial
Times, July 15-16, 2006, p. 3
30.
Anne Applebaum, How can you preach democracy and allow
Putin to host the G8?, The
Spectator, July 8, 2006, p 4
31.
Anne Applebaum, How can you preach democracy and allow
Putin to host the G8?, The
Spectator, July 8, 2006, pp 14-15
32.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Rosneft will reinforce Russian reform,
Financial Times, July
12, 2006, p. 11
33.
Reuters, I should have been as tough as Putin: Gorbachev,
September 19, 2006, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060919/wl_nm/russia_gorbachev_dc_1
34.
Robert Chandler, book review of Putin’s
Russia by Anna Politkovskaya, August 30, 2005,
http://www.readysteadybook.com/BookReview.aspx?isbn=1843430509
35.
Mark Franchetti, Death of the woman who shamed Moscow,
The Sunday Times online,
October 08, 2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2393752,00.html
36.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
37.
Catherine Crier, The Case Against
Lawyers, Broadway Books, 2002, pp. 4-5
38.
Geoffrey York, Kremlin tightens muzzle on media: Voices
critical of Putin face threat of legal persecution,
The Globe and Mail,
November 21, 2000, p. A14
39.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World
Order, Princeton University Press, 2004, p.
102
40.
Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn: A
Soul in Exile, Baker Books, 2001, p. 41
41.
Chad Walsh, From Utopia to Nightmare,
Geoffrey Bles Ltd., 1962, p. 22
42.
Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia: The
Notebooks and Reports of William Weston, Bantam
Books, 1975, back cover
43.
Nisker, Wes ‘Scoop’, THE BIG BANG,
THE BUDDHA, AND THE BABY BOOM: The Spiritual Experiments
of My Generation, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004,
pp. 8-9, ISBN: 0-06-251767-8 (paper)
44.
Monsignor Moses M. Coady, [Alexander F. Laidlaw (ed.)],
The Man from Margaree: Writings
and Speeches of M.M. Coady, McClelland and
Stewart Limited, 1971, p. 123
45.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, twenty letters
to a Friend, Harper & Row, 1967, 1st
edition, p. 119
46.
John Molyneux, The Future Socialist Society, Socialist
Workers Party, November 1997, p.35
47.
Sammy Eppel, Chávez and the 21st
Century Socialism, September 13, 2006, Wordlpress..org
http://www.worldpress.org/print_article.cfm?article_id=2610&dont=yes
48.
The Epoch Times, Nine Commentaries
on the Communist Party, Broad Press Inc., Draft
Translation Edition, February 2005, p. 9
49.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, twenty letters
to a Friend, Harper & Row, 1967, 1st
edition, p. 209
50.
Stéphane Courtois et al, The Black
Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,
President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1999, p. 4
51.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four,
Penguin Books, reprinted edition 1990, originally
published 1949, p. 276
