This article demonstrates that the Communist Party does not need a majority or even near a majority to maintain ruling power. I have similarly shown that Marxists do not need a majority to win. Resultantly, dismissing the significance of the small number of Communist Party members in the United States is a severe error. The party has always been small, but they work tirelessly toward their promised utopia, with the help of the naive, who may not belong to the party but favor and support many of communism’s promised goals and outcomes. The term Useful Idiots has often been applied to these naive supporters.
Here is a historical example. Stalin scheduled a Central Committee plenum[1] for the communist leaders to start on February 20, 1937. On about February 27, they were discussing the use of secret ballots for upcoming elections to party posts. They saw this as “a way to mobilize pressure from below against sitting officials, as well as elections to soviets.”[2] In other words, creating a way to get rid of some in positions of influence by using the votes of others.
Stalin was doubtful about such a plan. “Stalin pointed out that the class enemy could be elected, especially given that some collective farms had no Communist party members.”[3] “Keep in mind that our country has two million Communists and a ‘bit more’ non-party people’ Zhdanov noted of the scores of millions of non-party adults.’” [4] As you read their discussion of the idea of secret ballots or permitting the peasants to vote, “no one was forcing the monopoly regime to stage competitive elections by secret ballot.”[5]
A census was taken January 6, 1937. Stalin and the Communist Party anticipated a significant increase since the last census in 1926, but the census revealed the population to be much less. “Based on Stalin’s claims, there should have been 180 million people in 1937, for an increase of 35 million people since the 1926 census.”[6] Such an increase they believed would demonstrate how much better life was in Russia than in the past. Because with better working conditions such as collectivism, which they thought they had created according to communism’s ideology, would show life was better by people having more money and children.[7] But the collective farming they had promoted did not work well, and in addition to that the famine, regular executions, punishing the Kulaks, banishments by the party, and purges of the party.[8] Additionally, “throughout 1937 and 1938, there were on average nearly 2,200 arrests and more than 1,000 executions per day.”[9] Since the population came back much lower, which demonstrated the opposite of what the communists expected, the Party suppressed the results.
Resultantly it is difficult to determine the exact number of people in Russia in 1937. Based on information that we now have, I find some who state it to be 162,000,000[10] while others put the number at 167,000,000.[11] Some put it even lower.[12] Even if we use the numbers from the “the last reliable population figure [which] was that of the census of January 17, 1939, which showed a population of 170,500,000,”[13] the ratio of party members to the population is even smaller.
As noted above, in Stalin’s speech at the plenum, he stated that the Communist Party only had 2,000,000 members in 1937. If the total population was 167,000,000, that means the membership in the Communist Party was 1.1976% of the total population. But even if the total population was 162,000,000, that would still mean the Communist Party was only 1.2346% of the population. Or if we take the 1939 census it was only 1.1730%. In any case, proportionately, the ruling Communist Party was a scant inappreciable faction, if they were not the ruling party that is.
I find no historical evidence that demonstrates communism is about providing an environment to satisfy the needs and wants of the people. Instead, the consistent outcome is that the leaders live better than the people, and the leaders determine what the people’s needs and wants should be and provide for only that. It is a cruel system that produces poverty, servitude, and unbreachable control from the top.
Much of the same can be said about socialism, even Democratic Socialism in America. Vital to remember is that our corrupt public education system (K-academia) is producing Marxian-socialist every year, so that about twenty-five percent of young people claim to be socialist. We have Marxian-socialists in Congress and mayoral candidates such as Zohran Mamdani in New York. He claims to be a democratic socialist. While there are dissimilarities among the various forms of socialism and Marxism, they also share certain characteristics, including centralized production, the centrality of government in the economy, higher taxation, and a virtually unbridled exchange of personal responsibility for entitlement among the people. Regardless of the system of socialism or Marxism, the leaders still live opulent lifestyles while concomitantly controlling the people, which always reduces freedoms, such as exchanging a free market economy for centralized economic planning and private property for collectivism.
The unalterable truth is that the more the government controls, thereby limiting people’s freedom, personal responsibility, and true ownership of private property, the more it justifies taking a greater part of everyone’s wealth to finance the entitlements. Marxian-socialism always ends in less for the people and more for the leaders, and personal liberty always gives way to dependence on what the government provides.
Democratic socialists think their emphasis on democracy and socialism as both a means and an end provides a safe path for eliminating free market capitalism and avoiding communism. I find nothing in the communist utopian vision that indicates communism will be content to stop its pursuit of communism at the final state of socialism. A significant difference between socialists’ pursuit of socialism and Marxists’ pursuit of socialism is that in socialism, socialism is the destination, whereas in Marxism, socialism is a transitional state leading to their communist utopia.
By the time a country realizes that the Marxist-socialists used the socialists, as they do everyone else, to help them install their communist collectivism, it will be too late to reverse that outcome. If socialists make America a socialist state, which will include weakening America’s military power, who will stop communists from overrunning the socialists in the communists’ utopian quest for a state of communism? From what we know about communism and socialism, the only answer is no one!
[1] A plenum, or plenary session, is a meeting of any organization, group, association, etc., which all members are expected to attend. During the Soviet period, the term plenum referred specifically to a meeting of all members of a Communist Party committee at a national, regional, or local level. Julie K deGraffenried, “Plenum,” Encyclopedia of Russian History, Encyclopedia.com. (February 23, 2023), para. 1. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/russian-soviet-and-cis-history/plenum. Accessed 12/7/22.
[2] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2017), 388.
[3] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2017), 388.
[4] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2017), 388.
[5] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2017), 388.
[6] Gary Arndt, “The 1937 Soviet Census,” EverythingEverywhere podcast, para. 15, transcript found online at https://everything-everywhere.com/the-1937-soviet-census/ accessed 12/8/22.
[7] Gary Arndt, “The 1937 Soviet Census,” EverythingEverywhere podcast, transcript found online at https://everything-everywhere.com/the-1937-soviet-census/ accessed 12/8/22.
[8] The farmers and successful people who opposed collectivization and supported more free market. Kulaks were the capitalists that Stalin semi-tolerated because he had to in order for socialism to work.
[9] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin, 2017), 437.
[10] https://dbpedia.org/page/Soviet_Census_(1937) accessed 12/7/22
[11] 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. https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1939-2/the-lost-census/ accessed 12/7/22
[12] As I understand this, this information which was “Sealed for Half a Century: All-Union Population Census of 1937.” It seems to make the total population of 103,967,924. https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1937/census/distribution.htm accessed 12/8/22
[13] Eugene M. Kulischer, “The Russian Population Enigma,” April 1, 1949, foreignaffairs.com, para.2,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1949-04-01/russian-population-enigma accessed 12/7/22.
