There are some elementary historical data about the communist movement which are ignored by most people and less known or well forgotten by the leading cultivated minorities, but without which it is literally impossible to understand anything whatsoever about recent world history. If you try to inform yourself and to take these data into account, you’ll realize how many obscure issues become automatically transparent, with little interpretative effort.
 

1. Communism has been, throughout human history, the only – I repeat: the only – globally organized political movement, with ramifications and agents in the most remote places of the Earth, all disciplined and prepared to immediately, coordinately and simultaneously spring into action upon the first call issued from their command centers.
    
2. Although it has at its disposal a huge number of organizations and mass parties, Communism is substantially a clandestine movement, whose command and action plans must remain invisible to the masses, even in such periods of lawfulness when many communist organizations can move publicly without being persecuted. The primacy of the clandestine elite over the visible leadership has been, at least since Lenin’s time, a keystone clause of the communist strategy. It is impossible to understand this strategy and the tactics that implement it by taking into account only the undisguised role of the most visible communist leaders in each country, and without having access to the internal discussions and the international connections of each organization.
    
3. Communism has been, throughout the world and throughout the ages, the only political movement that has at its disposal unlimited financial resources, far superior to the West’s biggest known fortunes and to the combined budgets of many governments. Its potentials of action must be measured according to the level of its resources.
    
4. Only a tiny part of the communist activity consists of directly or indirectly recognizable doctrinarian propaganda. The main and most significant part consists of infiltrating and blending into all sorts of organizations – political parties (liberals and conservatives alike), media, unions, government and private enterprises, cultural, educational and charitable institutions, the armed forces, Freemasonry and so on – it is an endless list – in order to turn them into useful tools for the communist strategy, through which it is possible to control the entire society, making the Party an “omniscient and invisible power” (the phrasing comes from Antonio Gramsci, but the idea itself existed much earlier). It is infantile to believe that, once implanted in those entities, the Communists will then turn to indoctrination or proselytism, as if they were protestant shepherds preaching the Gospel among infidels. Co-opting all forces that may serve the communist strategy is an extremely subtle and complex mechanism, which requires massive doses of camouflage and deceptiveness, with many contradictory moments on its way.
    
5. It is foolish to imagine communism as a “doctrine” or an “ideal”, particularly when it purports overtly preaching the abolition of private property. The communist movement has never had nor needed any doctrinal unity, and has proved one thousand times its capacity to tactically adapt to the most disparate ideological formulas, either sequentially or simultaneously, thus leaving the uninformed observer (including politicians in general and the near entirety of liberal and conservative intellectuals) completely bewildered. The most aggressive atheistic campaigns, for instance, coexist pacifically, in the midst of the communist movement, with the practice of taking advantage of the religious discourse to reach the heart of the masses. Mutatis mutandis, exploring radical nationalistic feelings goes side by side with the effort to dilute national sovereignties into bigger, regional or world unities, so that, behind the scenes, the communist movement benefits from the patriotic resistance as well as from the ascendant global power. The unity of the communist movement is strategic and organizational, not ideological. Communism is not a set of theses: it is a power scheme, the most flexible, vast, integrated and efficient one that ever existed. Even Islamic radicalism, which is so quickly expanding nowadays, would be powerless without the support of the world network of communist organizations.
    
6. An even more egregious form of foolishness is to believe that the logical-formal opposition between the abstract concepts of capitalism and communism can be translated, in the field, into a mortal conflict between capitalists and communists. To the multiple local and temporal situations corresponds a countless number of shades and transitions, which leaves much room for the apparently strangest arrangements and complicities (but only apparently so). No one will understand anything whatsoever about the historical world we live in without taking into consideration the enduring collaboration between the communist movement and some of the West’s greatest fortunes, Rothschild’s and Rockefellers’s for instance. The classic books on this matter are those from the English economist Anthony Sutton, but already in 1956 the US House of Representative’s Reece Committee gathered substantial proof that some billionaire foundations were using their huge resources “to destroy or discredit the same free market system that gave rise to them.” Today these foundations rank among the most solid pillars supporting the socialist government of Barack Obama.

Ignoring or misunderstanding these facts lies at the root of liberals’ and conservatives’ incapacity to resist the triumphant march of communists in Latin America. Many still believe, for example, that democracy will win a big victory by forcing the FARC to abandon the armed struggle and to constitute a legal party. They can’t understand that to create a recognized political force is the final purpose of any armed struggle – in Colombia or anywhere else. Guerrillas don’t win wars: all they want is a politically advantageous defeat. That’s the reason why they open fire on the government forces, in the jungle and in the city, and, at the same time, place their agents in key posts of the legal leftist parties, where they protest the blood shed and appeal dramatically for a return to lawfulness. They did it in Brazil, and they are doing it now in Colombia.

While liberals and conservatives can’t attain a clear vision of the whole and complex phenomenon of communism, while they insist on fighting the most immediate and repugnant aspects of this movement, if not only communist doctrines in abstract, they are doomed to defeat even as they claim victory.

The fact that no international anti-communist movement has emerged makes it difficult for many people to put together this whole picture, which communists themselves so easily get. But the absence of social support cannot work as a pretext for intellectual laziness. There will always be some individual minds capable of thinking above group prospects, when they exist, or without them, when they don’t exist. Nothing justifies that these minds be kept aside from the public discussions, while the ignorant hold the monopoly of the microphones. In this as in all other human affairs, those who have studied nothing are full of simplistic certainties and proclaim them with a huge sense of superiority, totally unaware of their ridiculous role. Those who have studied the issues may look deranged or eccentric, but after all, why do we study if not to learn something that most do not know?





Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian writer and philosopher presently living in the United States as a correspondent for Brazilian newspapers. He taught Political Philosophy at the Catholic University of Parana (South of Brazil) from 2001 to 2005 and is the author of a dozen successful books, besides being a lecturer and media columnist with a large audience in his native country and a growing one in the United States. Website: www.olavodecarvalho.org.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (6)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Pat Henry said:

	Marx and Satan Breathtakingly well stated. Thanks for running this column. If I may add one remark, a further covert aspect of communism is its true spiritual root. Pastor Richard Wurmbrand was "Tortured for Christ" because he exposed this mainspring (which explains their seemingly counter-intuitive destructiveness) in his slim volume, Marx and Satan. Please get it and read it.
	report abuse vote down vote up

April 03, 2009
Votes: +1

Thomas Paine said:

conceptually on target but way to abstract Its more simple that the article. It is extremely powerful people that want to remain in power and gain in power which includes financail power. Since the Military Industrial establishment, which is the driving force to the NWO, is not a productive part of an economic system, they must kill in silent to maintain control. Its no more than the Mob on steroids. Call it communism if you like. It is actually pure, unadulterated, atheistic, satanic greed. The Godfather would be very impressed.

report abuse vote down vote up

April 04, 2009
Votes: +1

Lal Wynstrom said:

Solid intellectual commentary... for we can't ignore the essential, P1 I don't want to make this too long, but I'd like to particularly comment on points 2,4,5, and 6. Firstly, concerning point 2, the movement known as Communism has, and continues to splinter into thousands of tiny pieces, all with the same direction of purpose. What comes to mind immediately on this subject is the Democratic Socialists in the United States, who, by their history, continue to act as an organized force under the discipline of the CPUSA and from the Kremlin in Moscow. And this is only one example, a better known and upfront organization who, though not openly calling themselves communists (deliberately), which would be unpopular in the States, still act with the notion of establishing socialist-communist power in this country. Secondly, on this point, the necessity of undercover agents for this purpose, at all levels, and in all organizations is essential. Without seriously thinking many names come to mind who have been active agents, sympathizers, or financiers of the communist movement- in government, academe, industry, etc. Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, Armond Hammer, Whitaker Chambers, Diana DeGette (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America), and the list could go on.

report abuse vote down vote up

April 06, 2009
Votes: +1

Lal Wynstrom said:

Solid intellectual commentary, P2 Tying into my observation, on points 4 and 5: This is why we observe so much of what appears to be the “one side cuts while the other shreds,” “one step forward, two steps back,” “long march through the institutions” philosophy of the communist movement. Its schizophrenic actions only begin to make sense when understood from the perspective of hiding agents within organizations and institutions, for the very purposes of cultivating and activating influence when the time is right for that particular individual to be of use. Moreover, such schizophrenia is perfectly obvious and sane to the dialectical communist for they are trained to compartmentalize contradictory philosophies and to use any and all means to achieve the communist objective. While most non-communists only look at the more radical forms, such as Stalin’s purges or Mao’s mass murders, the real radical communist sees these as aberrations, tactical blunders only needful in the very last instance if at all, unsubtle and unsophisticated actions giving Communism a bad image. The Americanist outlook particularly is to openly declare allegiance or opposition to a cause. Strategic deception is not part of a free and open society’s thinking and thus the lack of comprehension and ability to effectively combat such mindset becomes obvious, except at higher levels where a professional understanding of this mentality becomes needful- as in national security for example. And, as an aside, and leaving the treasonous aspects out- which versed readers of JBS literature will understand easily- even our national security forces seem unable to grasp this mentality in its full implications.

report abuse vote down vote up

April 06, 2009
Votes: +1

Lal Wynstrom said:

Solid intellectual commentary, P3 On point 6: Communism most certainly has taken on a life of its own on the international stage- with our agents vs. their agents in the Cold War, our political system vs. theirs in terms of government, economics, etc. It is, without question, a degenerate, dangerous, and devious force bent on world power and control. To underestimate this thirst for domination by simply referring to it as an ideology is a clear mistake. But let's remember that Communism, like Nazism before it, was created and suckled by Western Insiders and financial powerbrokers behind the scenes for the very purposes of steppingstoning toward a unified world under their absolute control. Thus the pretext of creating a fearsome grandiose enemy capable of destroying the West became absolutely necessary if western peoples were going to take the plunge into any form of world government superstructure. If we take our eyes off this central understanding, we leave ourselves vulnerable to the notion that international communism is the real enemy when we know that the private banking families of Europe and America, supported by the Military Industrial Complex, and led by such frontpuppets such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and lately Barack Obama- or what Carroll Quigley referred to as the Anglo-American Establishment- is the real force behind the current drive for World Order. In that view, international communism becomes little more than a force of well-organized street thugs bent on controlling localized turf rather than an entire planet.

report abuse vote down vote up

April 06, 2009
Votes: +1

LTC Leonard Mandel USA (RETIRED) said:

Attorney At Law,LTC USA(RETIRED) Why do you state that Communism has infiltrated Freemasonry? I am a FreeMason and this is utter nonsense.General Douglas Mac Arthur, John Edgar Hoover and George Washington were FreeMasons.. In the past the Vatican has defamed Freemasonry...Check your facts bfeore denouncing an organization which has members of outstanding character and many more leaders in this country and others.. LTC Leonard Mandel USA(Retired)

report abuse vote down vote up

April 06, 2009
Votes: +2