Article
On the Communist Question
Added: 2017-10-30
Added: 2017-10-30
Dr.Lidia Sudyka

 

 

 

The selected fragments are from W kwestii komunizmu (On the Communist Question”), reprinted from the underground press Głosy: Poznań 1984, pp. 2-5 and 8-15.

 

The most outstanding political phenomenon of the twentieth century, sharply distinguishing it from the previous one, is communist activity. […]

It is true that communism owes its victory in Russia to the specific conditions of this country and the particular circumstances in which it launched its assault; it is true that communist propaganda in other parts of the world is carried out almost exclusively by the Soviet State, making use of the resources afforded by political power and control of the treasury; it is true that even in western states communist organizations to a large extent rely on the financial support of the Soviets. But communism in the West draws its strength largely from the current crisis of European civilization – from the breakdown of economic life, the political disintegration, and the collapse of the ability to govern, and last but not least, from the moral chaos pervading the Western world.

When the countries of our civilization make desperate efforts to avoid slipping into ruin, and societies cling to every hope for the return of recent prosperity, communism predicts the inevitable bankruptcy of capitalism and announces that it will save the nations through the collectivist system. It looks with disdain at the political impotence, on the convulsions and absurdities of contemporary democracy (read: Freemasonry), having up its sleeve an infallible method of strong government – the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Communism understands that breaking away from moral chaos is not so simple, that it cannot be done in one fell swoop, but it sees the way out in educating the masses in the spirit of its ideals: collective ownership and collective action, easy sexual mores, godlessness, and so on.

When I say that communism draws its strength from the decay that is advancing fast in our world, from the ever more pervading chaos, from the mounting sum of human misery and general disaffection, I do not mean that people are attracted to it solely because it is a negation of the unpleasant reality of today, that they adopt it blindly, without reflecting upon whether the reality offered by communism is any better. One could say that about the sheep, but the shepherds invariably attach positive values to communism. This is true not only of the leaders of communist organizations, but also and above all of spiritual guides, as well as all those – much more numerous than we think – who have a more or less articulated, more or less pronounced affection for communism. […]

Communism in contemporary Europe is not a minor force, but one of the protagonists in today’s historical drama. To understand its role, to realize what impact it has on the plot development in this drama, is one of the foremost needs of the moment.

Communism is no longer just a theory, a program for the future. Because of the Russian Revolution and the creation of the Soviet State, it is already an experiment, with almost fifteen years of existence. Although this experiment is taking place on a terrain somewhat exotic for a European, it provides an abundance of eloquent and instructive facts, and knowing these facts, the human imagination can envisage in quite concrete detail what would happen if the communist program were to be effected in Europe. […]

Many people tenaciously work for communism, relentlessly fight for it, and eagerly await its victory. Moreover, if so, it cannot be entirely a phantom, a lie, it must contain something that represents a value for these people, a value surpassing everything that might come to them from different quarters. […]

If communism is a serious force, if this force is growing, it is not because faith in Marxist economic theory, in the salutary effects of the collectivist system, is also growing. The ascendancy of communism can only be explained by the fact that its program contains other values – speaking more persuasively to the real people of today – values which in our times are not less, but more relevant.

Karl Marx, the father of today’s communism, was more than just an economist. He was also a politician, and if we look closer, he was above all else a politician. He was preoccupied with the idea of seizing power, and he did not conceive power in nineteenth-century terms. Neither Marx, nor his friends and followers were inebriated with the wafts of the “Springtime of Nations”, they were not intoxicated with ideas of freedom. The Communist Manifesto is neither an academic treatise, nor the diatribe of a people’s champion; the ingeniously conceived and promising idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” should not leave us in any doubt as to how power will be exercised once it is taken. Long before the twentieth-century Russian experiment, the manifesto was capable of being correctly understood.

If the main nineteenth-century descendant and representative of Marxist ideas, social democracy, struck a compromise with capitalism and its brother parliamentarism; if it focused its energy on the struggle for the present interests of workers and reached for power through legislative bodies, this happened under the pressure of the working masses, more concerned with improving their present lot than with the future “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Very important here was the Masonic takeover of the party and the inclination of its ruling bodies toward Masonic policies. Another important factor was the fact that such a transformation and such achievements of the socialist policy made the condition of socialist intellectuals much more bearable, if not quite comfortable.

However, both within social democracy and outside it, there remained strong forces faithful to Marxist assumptions, forces for which “social revolution” and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” were not empty agitative slogans. […] The soil where orthodox Marxism could sprout most profusely was offered by Russia, thanks to the characteristics of the Russian mind and to the large number of Jews in this country; furthermore, readiness to implement the communist program, to experiment, was greatest in Russia. Forces destined to become the first executors of the Marxist plan, pledging their complete orthodoxy, called themselves Bolsheviks.

In the mind of Marx and Marxists, was seizing power a means to introducing collectivism or was the collectivist program a means to winning and maintaining power?

If one could have doubts on that score in the last century, today, in the face of the Russian experiment and the behavior of the communist movement in Europe, these doubts should have been dispelled.

The principal, the essential point of the communist program is taking power and this point constitutes its main attraction. This point has nothing demonic about it. Incidentally, communists are too frequently demonized: they are flesh-and-blood, down-to-earth people, more down-to-earth than those who look at a communist as the devil incarnate. The pursuit of power has existed from the dawn of humanity and has been one of the driving forces behind its history. Strong individualities always aimed at gaining power over society, and strong nations at overpowering their neighbors.

In the nineteenth century, with the ascendancy of Freemasonry, euphemistically calling itself democracy, the meaning of the term “power” underwent rapid changes. It ceased to be genuine power. Its titular holder, often sporting a royal crown, had to obey some moron placed above him in the lodge, while the latter received his orders from his superiors, unknown to the general public. Democratic rulers, prime ministers, and other ministers could not enforce their own opinion and will in the most important matters. They had to make do with the trappings and appearances of power, which, however, hold a great appeal for ordinary people.

Yet if under democratic government power ceased to satisfy the ambitions of the strong, it acquired other attractions. With the extraordinary growth of the bureaucratic machine, it offered a large pool of offices, and when connections with financial spheres grew more intimate, income tied to power increased handsomely. Hence power in the democratic system became a stronger-than-ever economic attraction for individual people and for entire political parties. It does not matter that you have to do many things which in normal circumstances you would reject or which you do not always understand; in exchange you are in control of so many benefits, you can with such ease multiply the number of your adherents, and often you also have the opportunity of rapidly making a personal fortune.

Great individualities lusting after real power, and great ambitions desiring to govern over people and to pass on to posterity the memory of their actions do not occur very frequently. Even rarer are great consciences, wanting to use power not for themselves, not for their own advantage, ambition, or glory. People who are attracted by honors, trappings, great influence, and concrete advantages are legion. No wonder, then, that in the democratic system the pursuit of power, any power, has become almost endemic.

In this system people acquire power through parliamentary work, or take a shortcut and are directly planted in positions of power by Masonic lodges. However, there are those who for some reason or other can attain power through neither of these ways, although they fervently desire it. For them only one road remains: to stage a revolution. […]

The communist program is the program of a certain type of intelligentsia, having its own psychology, a mindset formed in specific a direction, to which it owes its integrity as a group. It has a program focused above all on seizing power and taking the position in society which in today’s Europe is occupied by, as the socialists call it, the “bourgeoisie”.

The most outstanding feature of the psychology of a Marxist, constituting the soil on which his mindset grows, is his hatred of the past and of everything which exists in us and in our life as a legacy of this past. The intensity of this hatred in some individuals has always astounded me.

The strength of customs, habits, and instincts inherited from past generations, their power over the human soul is so great as to have provoked the complaint that the dead rule over us. The history of nations knows of partial and gradual, generations-long emancipations from this power, the disintegration of traditional instincts, not only in some social groups, but in whole societies. It always been the result of contact with foreign societies, with foreign civilizations, and of surrendering to their influence.

But it would be impossible to give an example of such a sudden renunciation of the past spanning just one generation and approaching its complete abandonment; it would be impossible to give an example of the premeditation of this process being. Even the beginnings of Islam cannot compete with Marxism on that score. What force could have caused it? What did these people find support in for mounting such a radical challenge against the rule of the past, against the concepts and instincts of their community? […]

Such support could not have been provided in Europe by anything which was European, which originated in Europe, which lived by its tradition. Marxism, such as we know it, could appear and gain such force only because there existed in European countries a strong and well-organized element for which Europe’s past was not its past, Europe’s heritage was not its heritage, for which the social instincts, customs, concepts, and beliefs of European nations were alien. It had its own instincts, customs, concepts, and beliefs, which not only separated it from European societies, but also made it sharply at odds with them. Marxism in its entirety could be born only in a Jewish womb, as a Jewish progeny, and was thereby already a denial of everything that the European past created within us and within our lives.

The origin of Marxism also explains another of its intellectual features, connected with the first one. For an out-and-out Marxist the society in which he grew up and lives is alien. His moral attitude to society closely resembles the attitude which Israel always took towards foreign peoples. It divides men into those whom one can and should proselytize and those who should be annihilated. Unless they are Jews, Marxists are in a sense proselytes of Judaism.

We must leave at that the subject of Marx, the origin of his economics and, more importantly, his politics, although much remains to be clarified in this respect. It is a fact that Marx himself not only was a Jew, but also came from a rabbinical family; and if we make a list of the most eminent, leading representatives of Marxism since its beginnings, in their own countries, be they social democrats or communists – Jews will take up almost half of the list.

The ground for Marxism had been prepared by modern capitalism: not only by the changes which occurred in the economic system and in the social constitution of European nations, but also, and above all else, by the great ascendancy of Jews. Free competition gave a huge advantage to ruthless forces, not constrained by any “superstitions”, that is not subject to the moral precepts of Christianity, not bound by allegiance to society, not commanded by its tradition, and devoid of social instincts. The most classic force in this respect were Jews, for whom everything European was alien; in the system based on economic freedom, in which society as a whole had been almost entirely cut off from influence on the economic activity of the individual, they were destined to become the victors, the masters of the situation. Other factors of their ascendancy were Freemasonry and the political constitution of European states since the time of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man”. Hence in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the era when Marxism was born, they were already immensely powerful. Not only due to money they had accumulated, to their role in economic life, but also due to their positions in social life and the influence they had started to exert on the intellectual life of Europe. Only thanks to that position and to the great importance accorded to Jews in Europe by the system which they called capitalist, were the birth of the Marxist program and the proselytism it achieved possible.

The dominance of economic and political liberalism, as well as the influence of Jews on the European society based on that dominance, had another effect, of paramount importance for the purposes of Marxism. The human individual was becoming more and more emancipated from the rule of tradition, he loosened the moral bonds tying him to society, was freeing himself from the obligations towards society, was more and more in a position to oppose society in the area of politics, religion, morality, customs, etc. […] The number of individuals attempting to tear off all constraints, aiming at absolute anarchy, was growing rapidly.

This cast of mind does not furnish the substance from which the Marxist organization is molded, for Marxism is not aiming at anarchy, but at the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and we know how it conceives this term and what individual freedom looks like in its plans. However, this cast of mind was and still is very useful for Marxists, as it leads to the disintegration of European societies, and this constitutes the precondition of their victory. […]

The strength of communism, then, lies not only in the Marxists, with their separate mentality and the politics based on that mentality, and in the organizations of which they are the leaders. Apart from these, it is constituted by forces – numerous in European countries – spreading moral anarchy, antisocial forces, and finally Jews, often independently of their station and role in social life.

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