The Naked Communist (12 page)

"
Any man who wishes to make use of a nationalized woman must hold a certificate
issued by the administrative Council of a professional union, or by the Soviet of workers, soldiers or peasants, attesting that he belongs to the working class.... Every worker is required to turn in 2% of his salary to the fund.... Male citizens not belonging to the working class may enjoy the same rights provided they pay a sum equivalent to 250 French francs, which will be turned over to the public fund.... Any women who by virtue of the present decree will be declared national property will receive from the public fund a salary equivalent to 575 French francs a month....

"Any pregnant woman will be dispensed of her duties for four months before and three months after the birth of the child.... One month after birth, children will be placed in an institution entrusted with their care and education. They will remain there to complete their instruction and education at the expense of the national fund until they reach the age of seventeen.... All those who refuse to recognize the present decree and to cooperate with the authorities shall be declared enemies of the people, anti-anarchists, and shall suffer the consequences."
¹⁰

Another document which illustrates the kind of "liberation" which women received under the Communist version of morality is contained in a decision handed down by a Soviet official in whom he said: "There is no such thing as a woman being violated by a man; he who says that a violation is wrong denies the October Communist Revolution. To defend a violated woman is to reveal oneself as a bourgeois and a partisan of private property."
¹¹

Only one other thought need be added concerning the Communist allegation that Judaic-Christian morals represent a "class" morality. That is the fact that not only is it quite simple to illustrate that such an allegation is untrue but it is also quite simple to illustrate that the most perfect example of "class" morality on the face of the earth today is Communism. Of the 180,000,000 people in Russia, only about 3,000,000 are members of the Communist party. This small ruling minority ruthlessly compels the remainder of the people to accept its decision as to what is good and what is bad.

Communist morals follow a simple formula. Anything which Promotes the communist cause is good; anything which hinders it is bad. Upon examination, that philosophy turns out to be a code of opportunism and expediency, or a code of no morals at all. Anyone who does not conform to the dictates of the Party as to what is good for Communism and what is not, is subjected to the most severe penalties under Articles 131 and 133 of the Soviet Constitution. Thus, the perfect example of "class" morality, which the Marxists attribute to the Judaic-Christian code, is to be found right in the Communist plan of action itself.

Fallacy 9
-- The next fallacy is the claim of Marx and Engels that they had discovered the secret of human progress. This was identified by them as "class struggle."

As the student will recall, they said that when men became aware that slavery was a satisfactory mode of production, they built a society designed to protect the rights of the slave owner. They further believed that if this state of affairs had never been challenged the mode of production by slavery would have become a permanent fixture and society likewise would have been fixed. But Marx and Engels found, as do all students of history, that the economic order passed from slavery to feudalism and then from feudalism to capitalism. What caused this? They decided it was class struggle. They decided the slaves overthrew their masters and created a new mode of production based on feudalism. A society was then developed to protect this mode of production until the serfs overthrew their lords and set up a mode of production characterized by free-enterprise capitalism. Modern society, they said, is to protect capitalism.

Critics declare that Marx and Engels apparently ignored some of the most obvious facts of history. For example, the decay and overthrow of ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece and Rome had nothing to do with slaves rising up against their masters:

"The slaves of those days were for the most part subservient, abject, and helpless creatures, whose occasional murmurings and rebellions were suppressed with horrible cruelty. Those were not class struggles of the imaginary Marxian type and did not bring the transition to feudalism. Engels himself says that toward the end of the Roman Empire slaves were scarce and dear; that the
latifundia
, which were great agricultural estates based on slave labor, were no longer profitable; that small-scale farming by colonists and tenants was relatively lucrative; and that, in short, 'slavery died because it did not pay any longer.' Then came the barbarian invasion, the downfall of Rome, and the establishment of feudalism as the result of the conquest of a higher civilization by a lower and not through the alleged driving force of a class struggle."
¹²

Similar historical problems exist for Marx and Engels in connection with the transition of society from feudalism to capitalism.

Fallacy 10
-- Not only does Communism fail in its attempt to account for past progress on the basis of class struggle, but it also fails in its prediction that class antagonism would increase under capitalism in the future. One hundred years have failed to develop the two violently antagonistic classes which Marx and Engels said were inevitable.

Communist agitators have done everything in their power to fan the flame of artificial class-consciousness in the minds of the workers, but the basic struggle between labor and capital has not been to overthrow capitalism but to get the workers a more equitable share of the fruits of capitalism. For example, during the past twenty years labor has attained a higher status in the United States than ever before. The Communists tried to seize leadership in this reform trend, but the more the workers earned the more independent they became -- not only by asserting their rights in relation to their employers but also in discharging the
Communist agitators from labor union leadership
. Workers did not respond to the Communist call to overthrow capitalism, and Communist writers have admitted this with some bitterness.

At the same time, both governmental and industrial leaders generally developed the philosophy that strong buying power in labor is essential to keep the wheels of industry moving. Labor therefore came closer to assuming its proper role as an integral part of capitalism than ever before. This trend leaves Communism completely undone because such a development makes labor an indispensable part of capitalism rather than its class-conscious enemy.

Fallacy 11
-- Another Communist premise which has failed is the assumption that under capitalism all wealth would be gradually monopolized until a handful of men would own everything and the exploited, propertyless class would be the overwhelming majority of mankind. Instead of growing, however, the propertyless proletariats actually have been decreasing under capitalism. Marx wrote his massive tome on Capital while he was living in the most abject poverty. He looked upon the proletariat as those who were living under conditions similar to his own -- people who had absolutely no property and no capital interests.

Today, in the highly-developed capitalistic nation of the United States, the only people who could be classed as proletariat under Marx's definition would be those who own no land, have no savings deposits, no social security, no retirement benefits, no life insurance, no corporate securities and no government bonds, for all these represent the ownership of productive wealth or of money, funds over and beyond the immediate needs of consumption. Such a class of propertyless proletariat does exist in the United States just as there has been one in all nations and in all ages, but the significant thing is that the proletariat in the United States is such a small minority that Marx would scarcely want to claim it. Under American capitalism wealth has been more widely distributed among the people than in any large nation in secular history. This has reduced the property-less class which Marx had in mind to little more than a fringe of the population.

In contrast to this we find that the country which really does have the majority of its population in a class of property-less proletariat is the Motherland of Communism where the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been in force for over thirty-five years!

Fallacy 12
-- Marx's theory on wages also collapsed with the passing of time. He assumed that technological developments would make machines more and more efficient and therefore throw so many men out of work that they would compete for jobs until wages would become more and more meager. Technological development has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed and, except during intervals of depression, the long-range trend in capitalism has been to get closer and closer to the economic dream of "full-employment."

Fallacy 13
-- Since Marx believed that wages would become smaller and smaller he assumed that the only possible way to attain an adequate living would be by owning property. That is why he said the possession of property was the one thing which distinguished the proletariat from the exploiting class. This conclusion was another major error. Today some individuals may readily receive $10,000 a year for the sale of their labor services while others live on incomes of $2,500 derived from the ownership of property. In such cases it would certainly seem ludicrous to call the first group proletariat and the second group exploiting bourgeoisie. Under capitalism the ownership of property is certainly not the only means of gaining adequate economic independence.

Fallacy 14
-- Marx and Engels also failed in trying to predict what would happen to the middle class under capitalism. They said the middle class would be forced to follow the dismal process of sinking back into the propertyless class so that ultimately there would be just two violently antagonistic classes -- the capitalists and the propertyless proletariat. The very opposite happened. Economists have made studies which show that the middle class (consisting of people who are neither extremely prosperous nor exceptionally poor) has been rapidly growing. As a group the members of the middle class have increased in number, in wealth and in proportion to the rest of the population.
¹³

Fallacy 15
-- Another fallacy in Communism is the theory that class struggle leads to "necessary progress." In this theory Marx and Engels attempted to apply the dialectics of their philosophy which say that out of struggle between two opposing forces an inescapable new evolutionary advancement is made. This fails to explain the unprogressiveness which has characterized many nations for centuries -- nations such as India, China, Egypt, Arabia and the populations in East Asia.

It also fails to explain one of the most obvious facts of history, namely, the retrogression of civilizations. The whole pattern of human experience shows that nations rise to a summit of power and then pass through moral and intellectual decay to lose their cultural standing and economic predominance. This is vastly easier to demonstrate in history than the theory that class struggle has lifted man through an ever-ascending series of stages called "necessary progress."

Fallacy 16
-- Finally, the failure of class struggle to explain the past also failed Marx and Engels when they tried to predict what would happen in their own lifetime. They said that Communism would come first in those countries which were most highly capitalistic because the class struggle would become more sharply defined as capitalism increased. On this basis they thought Communism would come first in Germany.
¹⁴
A few years later Marx shifted his prediction to England.
¹⁵

It was ironical that Communism (at least the Dictatorship of the proletariat) should first come to Russia -- a nation which in economic matters was one of the least developed among all the countries in Europe. Furthermore, Communism came as a coup in Russia, not through any class struggle on the part of the workers. It came through the conspiratorial intrigue of V.I. Lenin, who was encouraged by the German High Command to go into Russia during the closing months of World War I and use a small, hard core of revolutionaries to seize the provisional government which had but recently forced the Tzar to abdicate and was at the moment representing the working class, as much as anyone else, in setting up a democratic constitution.

Communism therefore did not come to Russia as the natural outcome of class struggle but like any other dictatorship -- by the military might of a small minority. This brings us to the fallacy of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

Fallacy 17
-- This proposed monopoly of political and economic power was designed to do many things for the good of humanity, but experience has proven them to be false dreams. For example, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was designed to spread the enjoyment of wealth among the people by abolishing private property and putting all means of production in the hands of the government. Why did they want to do this? They said it was to prevent all property and wealth from falling into the hands of private capitalists.