What Has Become of Communism?
Frank Chodorov
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom,
January-February 1939]
Thomas Jefferson said, "When once a man has cast a longing eye
on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct."
The soundness of this observation is brought home in the present
character of the communist movement. Whatever one thinks of the
ideology, one must recognize the essential honesty of purpose
displayed by its devotees in years past previous to the incrustation
in office of the Stalinites. In Czarist days, and during the uncertain
years of the revolution, up to the time that successful office-holding
warranted the exile of Trotsky, the communist was always a sincere
zealot. Today the movement has lost its idealism in a riot of
careerism. There are dupes who still make sacrifice for "the
cause." But their leaders are just plain job-hunters, using a
hunting technique that is a peculiar combination of Tammany politics
and soap-box demagoguery. With the "party line" as the lash,
and the promise of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" as
the lure, they drive their mobs into a perfect political machine more
effectively than any boss.
This is very evident in America; in every country where communists
have secured a hold zealous idealism has been replaced by sordid
expediency. The recent "platform" of the American Communist
party, with its lip-service to democracy, the United States
Constitution, and other erstwhile "bourgeois banalities,"
is, while it fools nobody, the straw that shows which way the
communistic wind is blowing.
The American system of indirectly dispensing doles to the unemployed
through a hierarchy of petty officials has given the communists here a
main chance By sliding into a key position in the WPA it is a simple
matter for a communist office-holder to dispense jobs among the
faithful. This infiltration grows fan-like. The net result is an
increasingly large number of "comrades" germinating in an
area of dissatisfied dole-receivers. The party warchest grows alike.
In other ways the depression has fed the maws of this careerist
movement. Planned economy is so akin to communist thought that it was
not surprising when our government decided upon this perilous course
the sailors hired for the cruise must come from those who could read
its charts. From labor unions famous for Marxist tendencies, from
college halls where the Marxist jargon has been refined to almost a
meaningful thing, came the men to handle the rudder of regimentation.
Surely, one could not expect from the business man trained in a
competitive field advice on how to plan a non-competitive (or more
regulated) order. It is a fact that radicals In office become quite
respectable which means that once ensconced in the jobs the
continuance of that personally pleasurable condition becomes more
desirable than any general economic change. Therefore, revolution is
something to be talked about, not to be done. Not now, anyhow. Of
course, these counselors of state need many secretaries and field
workers. More jobs for "comrades," more sinews of war for
the party.
Considerations of technique required the organization of groups like
the Organized Unemployed, American Labor Party, American Workers'
Alliance, and various college peace and youth movements, with labels
not so odious to the American mind as "communism." The
dissatisfaction of the American people with both the brutality of
conservatism and the futility of planned economy, (and the continuing
poverty), makes them easy prey for these millennium-promising
movements with innocuous names. So they have been "joining up"
in large numbers. Large organizations not only provide jobs in
themselves, but they are in strategic position to demand jobs from
vote-seeking politicians. The communists have learned the art of
political horse-trading.
And so from a revolutionary movement communism has become purely a
careerist movement. To be sure, there is the soul-satisfying
explanation that all this is in preparation for the ultimate fight
world revolution. But fighters are not trained on cream puffs. The
revolutionist in a soft job loses his zeal for revolution, and soon
learns that the only thing worth fighting for is the job.
What we now have to fear from the communists is not a sudden upset of
our social and political order, but an increasingly burdensome bill
for the support of these careerist jobbers. Eventually, of course,
this drain on our production will depress the returns to labor and
capital, further increase our national debit, further reduce our
recuperative powers. There will be revolution, but not the communistic
kind It will probably be a gradual economic attrition, an adjustment
that will make it possible for production to continue, and for
producers, by some Hitlerian compromise with economic fate, to
continue to live, however unhappily. It may even be necessary to erase
the national debt or most of it, by fiat and start all over building a
new national debt and another Sisyphean crisis.
THE land question ... means hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to
quit, labor spent in vain, the toil of years seized upon, the breaking
up of homes, the miseries, sicknesses, deaths of parents, children,
wives; the despair and wildness which spring up in the hearts of the
poor, when legal force, like a sharp harrow, goes over the most
sensitive and vital right of mankind. All this is contained in the
land question.
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