How many people who claim they are opposed to Communism are fully informed on the political and economic policies which the Communist leaders advocate as necessary for the creation of the Communist State? Comparatively few. This helps explain why Communist policies are being increasingly introduced in all non-Communist countries without many people realising what is happening.
The basic Communist doctrines were outlined by the Communist leader, Karl Marx, in association with Engels in The Communist Manifesto, first issued in 1848. In this basic Communist document, Karl Marx outlined the following ten measures necessary for the communising of a State, which he claimed would "be pretty generally applicable... in the most advanced countries":
"1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."
"2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
"3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
"4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.,
"5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
"6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state,
"7. Extension of the number of State factories and instruments of production; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
"8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
"9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.
"10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc."
It is significant that Marx, in introducing his ten steps, made it clear that they were only means to an end, not an end in themselves. He said that while these measures "appear economically insufficient and provisional," they will "in the course of the movement... necessitate further inroads upon the old social order...".
Marx, unlike many today who think it is possible to compromise about centralised controls, was well aware that centralised controls like high taxation inevitably produce results which can then be used to justify the imposition of still more controls. John Hládun, a former Canadian Communist Party Member who had been sent to Moscow for special training, stated on November 26, 1948, that
"...one control tends to cause another, until, as a logical result, the State controls and finally owns everything.""
A close study of Marx's programme reveals that centralised control is the basic feature. Every supporter, either active or passive, of the centralisation of power, is therefore helping further the Communist doctrine. This is why Socialists who claim, the majority of them probably sincerely, that they are opposing Communist conspiracies directed from Moscow, are deluding themselves and others. The very policies they advocate are those of the same Karl Marx whose works are considered basic by the Moscow Communists.
The late Professor Harold Laski, probably the most influential Socialist writer and lecturer of this century, in his Appreciation of the Communist Manifesto for the Labour Party, published in 1948, asked “who, remembering that these (policies of high taxation and centralisation of credit) were the demands of the (Communist) Manifesto, can doubt our common inspiration." It was Laski who, after visiting Stalin in 1946, said that British Socialists and Russian Socialists were approaching the same Socialist objective by different roads.
Many Socialists bitterly attack the Moscow Communists because they claim that Stalin and his associates have betrayed Marx! These misled idealists appear to ignore the fact that centralisation of power eventually leads to a complete tyranny in which the individual is prevented by force from revolting.
In our booklet, The Fountainhead of the Socialist Conspiracy, we exposed in detail how the Fabian Socialists started their programme of "Sovietisation by Stealth” in the English-speaking world because it was realised that the AngloSaxon peoples would never accept a violent revolution. The Fabians have followed a subtle policy of infiltrating all political organisations and encouraging a policy of 'gradualness'. They suggest that central planning is "inevitable," "modern," and "progressive." Speaking at the Fabian International Bureau's Conference on March 15, 1942, the chief speaker said: "There is not much difference between the basic economic techniques of Socialism and Nazism."
A brief examination of the policies of most modern Governments, irrespective of their labels, will convince any unbiased person that they are all implementing at least a portion of Karl Marx's programme of centralising power. And every new step to centralise power, irrespective of the reason advanced — it is generally one which seems rather harmless to most people — inevitably results in the further expansion fo the bureaucracy which is the natural environment for the production of Communists.
To define a Communist merely as one who loves Soviet Russia is most misleading. Communism is the transference of power from the individual to the State. Anyone, no matter what his reason may be, who advocates this weakening of the power of the individual, is to that extent helping the Communist programme. Many will violently reject this view and claim that it is possible to increase the State's powder without danger; that this power can be strictly limited. This claim is contrary to commonsense and history. The State is an anti-social organisation whose primary concern is power. And the more power it gets, the more it wants. The bureaucracy grows bigger and bigger as its members strive to increase the size of their various departments and “sell” them to the public. These members inevitably develop a Communist mentality, while the new recruits to the bureaucracy, mostly from the Universities where in recent times students have learnt from their Socialist tutors how Governments can do all sorts of wonderful things — if they have adequate power and taxes! — readily accept the idea of a governing elite who believe that because of their "superior" training they are qualified to control "selfish" business men, farmers, and others who are engaged in essential economic activities.
Those who would fight Communism effectively must first clarify their own understanding of what the Communist programme really advocates. They can then give a lead in advocating a reversal of the Communist policy of transferring power from the individual to the State. The power of the State must be drastically reduced and the power of the individual increased. Unless this is done, the Communist programme will continue to succeed even if it is not called Communism.
-Reprinted from the HOW TO DEFEAT COMMUNISM SERIES, published by the Victorian League of Rights, Australia.
NOTE: The extent of Marxist influence in the United Nations is evident from the fact that the Declaration of Human rights, as drafted by the UN, does not recognize the inalienable right of the individual to own property.
"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid." Micha IV