Essay: COMMUNISM TODAY: A Refresher Course

UNDERGROUND and in open combat, by subversion, terrorism, blackmail, riot and rhetoric, faithful Communists the world over have for decades waged a holy war against the rest of humanity. The tempo and techniques vary from era to era, from continent to continent. And the nature of Communism changes. Whereas Moscow now shuns the perilous confrontations that so often brought the cold war to boiling point, Peking grows ever more militant. For both capitals of world Communism, the focal points of conflict have shifted from Europe to Africa, Latin America and—most notably—Southeast Asia, where the Johnson Administration last week solemnly committed the U.S. to what could be a prolonged and painful war.

Thus the Marxist dream of world domination is palpably no McCarthyist mirage. From Indonesia, where government-sanctioned mobs howled for the ouster of a newly arrived U.S. ambassador, to Cuba, where Fidel Castro proclaimed that “the imperialists” will not prevent Red regimes from taking over throughout the hemisphere, it was also becoming clear last week that the U.S. would have to stand increasingly alone against the free world’s enemies.

Nonetheless, to a world grown weary of cold-war fulmination, the thunder out of Hanoi or Havana often has a curiously chimerical ring; the Iron Curtain itself seems less an instrument of terror and repression than a gigantic cobweb of cliche. Particularly to the generation that has reached voting (or at least debating) age since the early coups and crises of the postwar era, the sounds of struggle appear almost as irrelevant and unreal as fragments of a horror tale recollected from childhood. Many of their elders see Communism in the confused, self-doubting terms that have characterized the recent wave of academic protest over Viet Nam and Santo Domingo. “Is it up to us to say who is a Communist and who is not?” asks Anatol Rapoport, 54, of the University of Michigan, a leading organizer of teach-ins. Shrugging off the Red infiltrators in Santo Domingo, a Stanford professor of Latin American history allows: “You can find 58 Communists in New York, or San Francisco, or anywhere.” Political Scientist Stanley Millet, 48, formerly of Briarcliff College, goes so far as to argue that “terror on our side accounts for all that has happened in Viet Nam.”

Since the U.S.-Soviet detente that developed after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, more venerable and more qualified commentators also have begun to sound as if Communism had quietly buried itself. Not long ago, the Manchester Guardian pronounced: “The Russians and the Americans no longer have any reason to quarrel.” And there is a widespread school of chop logic that maintains simultaneously: 1) Russia can no longer be seriously regarded as a threat to the West, and 2) by its firm stand in Southeast Asia, the U.S. is inviting Russian retaliation. Both premises are debatable at best; together, they are not an argument but a plea for passivity. The danger of such wishful thinking, as the State Department’s Walt Rostow has warned, is that “out of a false sense that the cold war is coming to an end, out of boredom or domestic preoccupations, or a desire to get on with purely national objectives, we will open up new opportunities for the Communists to advance.”

The Polycentric Era

Communism has itself made wrenching readjustments. One of the more striking has been the post-Stalin push for respectability. True, the spectacle of Khrushchev banging a shoe at the U.N. did little to convince the world that Communism had suddenly become couth. Even then, however, Soviet diplomacy had come a long way from the era in which Soviet agents pushed Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk from a window of Prague’s Czernin Palace.

A far more significant development is what Munich

Kremlinologist Christian Duvael diagnoses as “the fatigue of ideology” in the Soviet bloc. As Marxism proved less and less relevant to the economic and social problems of contemporary society, Soviet ideologues came to realize that they could no longer be solved in class-war terms. As the old terror abates but never entirely vanishes, as the old dogmas die but never get buried, intellectuals in Russia and Eastern Europe increasingly feel as “alienated” from their own societies as some of their Western counterparts. When British Poet Stephen Spender recently told a gathering of Polish writers that what he wanted to see most of all was a Communist, a voice from the back of the hall called out: “You have come too late for that.” Soviet-bloc Communism has become a weird conglomeration of Marxist remnants, state socialism with tentative injections of free enterprise, and above all, nationalism. In today’s polycentric Eastern Europe, once tightly controlled satellites have developed what De Gaulle might call a Communisme des patries. All this has only exacerbated Sino-Soviet antagonisms. Red China’s rulers, fiercely determined to preserve ideological purity against Muscovite “revisionism,” are bound to remain cruel and spartan. Contemptuous of Soviet policies, obdurate in its distrust of anything resembling capitalist methods, insistent on violence, China is irreversibly committed to the notion of central direction for the whole Communist movement—as long as Peking can do the directing.

The Fronts

Obviously, it would be foolish for the West to pretend that Communism in 1965 is the same monolithic menace it once was; but it is equally nonsensical to regard Communism as a legitimate or benign form of government, or to suggest, as the London Times did recently, that Marxism may have “ceased to be an organized international movement.”

Communism may no longer have a single line or direction, but it remains highly organized, aggressively international, and more intensely competitive than ever as a result of Sino-Soviet rivalry. Though the Cominform (successor to the Comintern) was dissolved in 1956, control over the worldwide Communist movement is still vested in special departments of the Soviet and Chinese Central Committees. Of the world’s 105 Communist Parties, Moscow can count on 72, as against 21 for Peking. Twelve other Communist Parties—mostly in Western Europe—are vaguely independent. In 1964, foreign aid by Communist countries amounted to $1.7 billion, of which Soviet funds accounted for half, Eastern European funds for a quarter. Of 17,530 Communist technicians working in foreign countries—a sharp rise from the preceding year—only 15% were Chinese.

One of the most effective instruments of Communist subversion remains the front organization. In McCarthy’s heyday Communist terminology was tossed about too carelessly, and in many quarters today words and realities such as “infiltration” no longer seem entirely credible. Yet the leading fronts still reflect the reality and breadth of the Communist subversive effort. They range from pacifist groups such as the World Peace Council (headquartered in Prague) and the International Institute of Peace (Vienna) to various youth and professional outfits such as the International Union of Students and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (Prague and Brussels). Most of these organizations—many launched by non-Communists with the best intentions and then taken over—are dominated by Soviet-line Communism, although the Chinese are fighting hard to capture them and are setting up rival fronts of their own. Despite such duelling between the two Red giants, and to some extent in reply to it, Communist subversion proceeds apace, highly successful in some quarters, disastrously failing in others, but always at work.

Asia: Magic Hammer

By all odds, the threat is most serious in Asia, where Communism—predominantly Chinese Communism—exploits the vast turmoil of social disorder and political-economic discontent. Peking has chosen as its chief weapon “the war of national liberation,” an export version of the Chinese Communist revolution, which is based on the theory that through interminable guerrilla war a weaker force can wear out and finally overcome a stronger one. The Chinese work through nominally independent “nationalist” organizations such as the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front. It makes no difference to Peking if such fronts contain many nonCommunists; as in North Viet Nam when the French were forced out, Communists can always take over. As Yugoslavia’s Tito has expressed it: “The Chinese will fight to the last North Vietnamese.”

Peking also uses the “united front” stratagem elsewhere. Most effective example is in Indonesia, where the 2,000,000-member Partai Komunis Indonesia, the third largest Communist Party in the world (after China and Russia), dominates the streets and, through the streets, President Sukarno. Pro-Peking Communists also work hand in hand with Singapore’s Barisan Socialist Party, have long since captured Japan’s 10 million-member Gensuikyo, its Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (which nonetheless lost considerable support with the advent of Red China as a nuclear power). Though India’s 160,000-member Communist Party is split down the middle, the pro-Chinese wing holds the psychological whip hand, having won 40 seats in this year’s Kerala state election to only three for the Muscovite wing. The victory was doubly impressive, since there has been virulent anti-Chinese feeling in India since the 1962 invasion.

The Chinese are currently laying the foundations of insurgency in northeast Thailand. Among primitive hill tribes such as the Lahu, Peking has sent native cadres trained in China to spread the word of a new messiah. One savior is already at work among the Lahu, claiming to possess a “magic hammer, magic rope and magic knife” with which he can kill all enemies, even if they number “as many as the sesame seeds in three baskets.” Peking’s most formidable source of subversion is the 15 million “overseas” Chinese, who dominate much of the trade and commerce of non-Communist Asia. In Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, the Philippines and Burma, their hsiao-tzu (literally, “little groups”), of three to 22 members, perform subversive chores wherever possible.

Everywhere, Red China cynically exploits racism to the detriment not only of the Western powers, but also of the Russians, who are increasingly on the defensive in Asia. But racial feeling also works against China, for many Asians have a centuries-old fear of the Chinese and it is at least as strong as their anti-white prejudice. The greatest threat Peking holds over its Asian neighbors is its army—2,500,000 infantrymen, a 12-million-man militia—which could inundate the continent if all its subversive stratagems should fail. That is why Viet Nam is the ultimate test of Peking’s policies: if the U.S. backed away from the threat of Chinese intervention, it would lend powerful support to the untested notion that China is invincible.

Latin America: Hiding Behind Ideologies

With the exception of Cuba, no Communist Party in Central or South America holds power, but all are well prepared to manipulate perpetual popular discontent. Castro’s Cuba is the prototype, the precedent, and to a large extent the preceptor of incipient Communist revolutions in the hemisphere. Since 1960, Castro has trained guerrillas from most Latin countries, including Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Propaganda and arms are readily available to potential revolutionaries throughout Latin America. Yet the only country where an operational subversive movement has really taken hold is Venezuela. As a result, Communist activists in Latin America have adopted new tactics. They are best exemplified by the Dominican Republic, where the Communists resorted to the old “popular front” strategy, muscling into a legitimate non-Communist rebel movement with hopes of duping its idealistic leader, Juan Bosch. Much the same technique was employed a year ago in Panama and in Goulart’s Brazil (1961-64), and in both countries it proved unsuccessful. Nonetheless, in Panama and the Dominican Republic, the Reds achieved a secondary objective, that of forcing the U.S. to intervene in a conflict that to the gullible could be made to resemble a valid internal revolution.

Africa: Money & Arms

“Revolution—the witch doctor in tiger skins,” wrote a Polish poet in praise of the Congo rebellion. In fact, Red witchcraft is doing poorly in Africa. The only African country under outright Communist domination is the former colony of Congo-Brazzaville. Through hamhanded diplomacy and sloppy technology, the Russians alienated two of their likeliest converts, Guinea’s Sekou Toure and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah. China, usually more subtle in its subversive techniques, has also managed to stomp on African toes. Peking’s men in Burundi were thrown out early this year after a Chinese subversion campaign that was climaxed by the assassination of Moderate Premier Pierre Ngendandumwe. During a recent visit to Tanzania, Chou Enlai ineptly pronounced Africa today was “exceedingly favorable” for revolution—which to incensed African leaders suggested that Peking was plotting their own downfall. Russia and China both had to write off major investments in Algeria’s Ahmed ben Bella, who managed to woo Moscow and Peking simultaneously before his precipitate ouster last June. Still, as the Russians proved when they sent arms to the Congo rebels, both Moscow and Peking continually attempt to influence students, intellectuals, officials.

Europe: A Problem of Prosperity

Except for the U.S., where Communism can claim only 10,000 party members, the Red cause has probably fared worst in Western Europe. Nonetheless, with a quarter of a million members, the French Communist Party pulls fully 20% of the vote, ranks as the second biggest political force in the nation (only De Gaulle stands taller). Italy’s 1.5 million Communists have gradually increased their share of the vote until it stands at 25%. Many such Communist votes amount to a ritualistic protest by citizens who simply oppose the existing order. Yet through sheer numbers, the national parties today exercise a potent veto power on Moscow’s line.

The U.S. in the past decade has become far more sophisticated about Communism, moving from frightened hostility to eagerly sought contacts ranging from the test ban treaty to trade. Washington has abandoned dreams of “rolling back” the Reds—and has learned in the process that Communists can fear coexistence more than the West.

For its part, Soviet Communism in the 1960s has mellowed considerably as its leaders have discovered that goulash is more palatable than gunpowder. Under Khrushchev and his successors, Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, the old, unbending creed of unconditional war against capitalism has yielded to the cautious dialogue of coexistence. It has had to, for the workers of the industrialized world today are not likely to be inveigled into violent assault on social systems that have given them so large a measure of prosperity.

As for hungry, underdeveloped Red China, the uncompromising letter and spirit of crusading Leninism dovetail neatly with economic necessity and Peking’s dreams of reasserting its ancient hegemony over Asia. The threat to peace lies between the extremes, between Russia’s evolutionary progress and China’s hard adherence to a fundamentalist philosophy. In the struggle for power and legitimacy throughout the Communist world, Moscow and Peking could in time be locked in a bitter internecine contest to re-establish the gospel of Lenin in all its belligerent purity. In appeal and purpose, Communism today is unquestionably a failing creed. Yet it is precisely in decline and decay that ideologies, like empires, can prove most dangerous.