People in free capitalist countries like America often have false security regarding the threat of Marxism. Two ideas feed this false security. First, they believe that Marxism can never get the needed majority of support to be a threat in America. Second, they believe the evidence for the superiority of capitalism is so strong that Marxism does not have a chance of growing strong enough to take over. Unfortunately, both ideas are historically and philosophically in error. The reality is that countries have fallen where communism was never the majority party or was never adopted by the majority of people. This thinking also underestimates the draw of the Marxist paradigm of oppressor and oppressed.
Marxist rhetoric presents the plight of the have-nots as solely the result of capitalism and those who have. It teaches that the haves gained their wealth, status, or privilege through corruption and exploiting the have-nots. These campaigns are coupled with the propaganda that the have-nots deserve much of what the haves possess, which can only be accomplished by a transfer of authority, power, and prosperity. This transfer may happen peacefully or by force–revolution–but it must happen to have a just world. Capitalism, with its value of private property, is the fountain from which the evils of the world flow.
This Marxist method of oppressor vs. oppressed (also known as critical theory or conflict theory) and their mantra of the evil of capitalism and the justness of Marxian-socialism have been modified to the conflict between the majorities and minorities. While this includes segments of oppressor vs. oppressed, such as heterosexual vs. homosexual and cisgender vs. transgender, it is dominated by whites vs. blacks, wherein white people are the oppressors and blacks (including other racial minorities to increase their numbers) are the oppressed. This ideology may be best described as Black Marxism, which is rampant in our country through critical race theory and its offspring. See other blogs by searching CRT and Marxism.
Regarding the false idea that Marxism needs a majority to accomplish its evil agenda, Joseph Stalin clarified that Marxism does not require a majority to achieve its goals. Here is a quote from historian Stephen Kotkin, including part of a speech by Stalin just after Lenin’s death.
“For Stalin, Lenin’s death presented a different kind of opportunity, and he seized it. With more than 2,000 delegates inside the Bolshoi [theater in Moscow] on January 26, the Second USSR Congress of Soviets opened, devoting its first day to Lenin’s memory . . . Next up Stalin, who evoked a mystical calling, [saying], ‘Comrades, we Communists are people of a special mold,’ he stated, in his first known remarks on Lenin’s passing. ‘We are made of special stuff. We are those who constitute the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honor of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the party whose founder and leader was comrade Lenin. It is not given to everyone to be a member of such a party.‘ Now those afforded such an honor would be tested. ‘Departing from us, comrade Lenin enjoined us to hold high and safeguard the purity of the great title of member of the party. We vow to thee, comrade Lenin, we shall fulfill thy behest with honor!’ Stalin said. ‘Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to safeguard the unity of the party as the apple of our eye. We vow to thee, comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we shall fulfill with honor!”‘[1] (emphasis added).
Marxism’s common thread in governing or control is that it never requires a majority of people in the communist party. For example, “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the sole governing party of the People’s Republic of China. At the end of 2022, its membership reached 98 million, representing about 6.9 percent of the Chinese population. The CCP permeates all parts of the Chinese society. In 2022, the number of CCP organizations at the grass-roots level, established in nearly all government institutions, state-owned and private companies, and social organizations, exceeded five million.”[2]
In 1937, Stalin stated that the Communist Party had 2,000,000 members.[3] At that time, the population was approximately 162,000,000 to 167,000,000,[4] which makes the Communist Party no more than 1.1976% of the total population. And the 1917 October Revolution in the Soviet Union is also known as the Bolshevik Revolution. Bolshevik is the name adopted by Lenin for his group, who lost the vote on what kind of revolution to have (led by intellectuals and leaders or the proletariat), and it means majority. But the fact is that they were not the majority party. That honor belonged to the ones Lenin called Mensheviks, which means minority. I think part of Lenin’s strategy was to say they were the majority so often that people would eventually accept it as fact, which apparently worked. “In keeping with the Marxist axiom that communism would inevitably replace capitalism by means of socialism, the Bolshevik Party rebranded as the Communist Party.”[5] My point is that neither the Bolsheviks nor the Communists needed to be the majority to topple the country.
Similarly, Adolph Hitler came to power with a minority. “The Nazi party was still a minority in the parliament, but now Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree suspending the governments of German’s federal states and most civil liberties, ‘as a defensive measure against the communists.’ Dissolution of parliament and snap elections, which were scheduled for March 5 . . . afforded Hitler a campaign of intense hysteria about communist subversion. The Nazis still won only 43.9 percent (288 of 647 seats), but with their partners, the German National People’s Party, who won 8 percent, they had a governing majority. Hitler had been handed power, but now he seized it, proposing an Enabling Act to promulgate laws on his authority as chancellor without the Reichstag for four years.[6] It required a two-thirds vote. Only the Social Democrats, twelve of whose deputies had been imprisoned, voted against the measure, which passed 441 to 94. Soon the Nazis were the sole legal party in Germany. Hitler–who had become a German citizen only in 1932–was dictator of the country, upending the traditional conservatives.”[7]
German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933.[8] Then, through political measures and some strong arming, parliament passed the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933.[9] The Enabling Act provided Hitler the authority to govern and enact laws without the approval of parliament, and this was when Hitler became the dictator of Germany. Hitler became a German citizen on February 25, 1932, and in one short year, he became the dictator of Germany, taking Germany and the world into World War II. It can happen with a minority and quicker than you might think possible.
A second element of this false security is that capitalists often think Marxists must prove they are totally better than capitalism for people to adopt Marxism. But that is not the case; all Marxists need to do is to make people think Marxism, with its promised utopia, is a better option. For example, in an interview in 1926 with Yale Professor Jerome Davis, Stalin spoke of how they planned to win over the peasants from capitalism. He said, “We hope we’ll attract the peasants because we will create the conditions for pushing the peasants onto the Bolshevik side. I would not say they are in ecstasy over the Bolsheviks. But . . . they come to the conclusion that it’s better with us. They do not take us for the ideal, but they consider us as better than the others”[10] (emphasis added). Consequently, all the disgruntled members of a capitalist society must believe is that Marxists’ promises of a better life are believable to the point that they are willing to try what communism offers.
As children in our schools are continually told that Marxian-socialism is fair, everyone has a good living, crime will be eliminated, rich people will have to share their wealth, and capitalism is unjust, racist, based on class warfare, and the source of all wars, evil, and crime, they become more convinced that capitalism is evil and must be replaced with Marxian-Socialism.
In that same interview, Davis asked Stalin, “How did you become a communist?” ‘Stalin responded,’ “That’s difficult to say. At first, people go over to the opposition, then they become revolutionaries, then they choose a party.”[11] All the leaders have to do is consistently compare evil capitalism to the proclaimed wonders of socialism, and young people and those who do not thrive in capitalism will be strongly drawn to join the opposition and then officially join one of the opposition parties, which is Marxian-socialism.
Whether liberals and progressives are aware that their disrespect, and even disdain, for patriotism and America’s success, coupled with their idyllic idea of a globalist society without borders, is promoting Marxism, they are. For example, Stalin said, “Nationalism is the fundamental idea obstacle on the path to growing Marxist cadres, a Marxist avant-garde, in the borderlands.”[12]
[1] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 539.
[2] C. Textor, “Chinese Communist Party – Statistics & Facts,” Statista.com, July 5, 2023, par. 1, https://www.statista.com/topics/1247/chinese-communist-party/ accessed 8/23/23.
[3] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 539.
[4] “Soviet Census (1937),” DBpedia, https://dbpedia.org/page/Soviet_Census_(1937), accessed 12/7/22; Since they suppressed the census results, the exact number of the population is difficult to ascertain with certainty. But it seems to be between 162 million or 167 million. James von Geldern, “The Lost Census,” https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1939-2/the-lost-census/ accessed 12/7/22.
[5] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/russian-bolshevik-party-becomes-the-communist-party accessed 8/24/23
[6] The lower house of the parliament during the period of the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic.
[7] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin Books, 2018), 121.
[8] “Hitler Comes to Power,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-comes-to-power, accessed 1/5/2023.
[9] “The Enabling Act,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-enabling-act accessed 1/5/2023
[10] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 611.
[11] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 610–11.
[12] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 503.
The False Security of Capitalism against Communism
