Communism: A Noble Sentiment Used as a Facade for Power-Hungry Dictators

People disagree often about communism: some are for it, and some are against it.

But even among people who are all communists, there are many disagreements about communism. One of them is about what communism is: How is the word ‘communism’ defined?

There are a number of definitions of ‘communism’ — some focus on economics, others focus on politics, and some include both. Even though people use this word often, they may not be entirely clear about what it means.

If even major communist leaders can’t agree on what communism is, then how can people decide if they want communism or not? As historian Gary Allen writes:

In keeping with the fact that almost everybody seems to have his own definition of Communism, we are going to give you ours.

Economic definitions of communism usually mention communal ownership of the means of production and the abolition of any form of inheritance. “Communal ownership” means that everyone owns it together, and that means that the government owns and controls it. The “means of production” refers to factories, offices, and workshops — where the real work of the economy occurs.

Political definitions of communism often describe a command economy: an economy in which the government determines who produces which products, in which quantity, the price of those products, and how much people are paid to produce those products. There are no choices for people in a command economy. Communism calls for a form of government called the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ — the end of free debate and discussion, the end of freely elected representatives.

Gary Allen defines communism as a relentless drive to obtain and maintain power:

Communism: an international, conspiratorial drive for power on the part of men in high places willing to use any means to bring about their desired aim — global conquest.

You will notice that we did not mention Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, bourgeois, proletariat or dialectical materialism. We said nothing of the pseudo-economics or political philosophy of the Communists. These are the techniques of Communism and should not be confused with the Communist conspiracy itself. We did call it an international conspiratorial drive for power. Unless we understand the conspiratorial nature of Communism, we don’t understand it at all. We will be eternally fixated at the Gus Hall level of Communism. And that’s not where it’s at, baby!

Gary Allen’s definition points out that the economic hypotheses of communism simply provide a cover or facade for a small group of people to control government and nations.

While some followers of communism sincerely believe that the communism system would make a more fair and equitable world, the leaders of communist revolutions and political parties simply use communist ideologies as a way to get people to obey them.

Luther’s Reformation Grows: The Fast and Slow Spread of Ideas

When Luther wrote his famous 95 Theses in 1517 — as opposed to his 97 Theses Against Scholastic Theology earlier in the same year — it was beginning of the Reformation as a historical and ecclesiastical series of events, but it had been preceded by months and years of reflection and meditation on Luther’s part.

The public Reformation began in 1517, but Luther’s private Reformation had been underway for nearly a decade by that time.

The 95 Theses, unveiled at the end of October 1517, struggled at first to gain attention. They were composed in Latin, and by the end of the year, had been printed, and enjoyed at least a limited distribution within Germany.

News about Luther spread quickly by the standards of his time, but slowly by the standards of the twenty-first century.

There were two audiences for the 95 Theses. On the one hand, there were academics: scholars who studied and analyzed theology. On the other hand, there were church officials, who would be concerned about the practical impact which the 95 Theses might have on the organizational operation of the institution.

Significant response to the 95 Theses didn’t start until more than six months after their appearance. By the second half of 1518, Luther was getting some attention.

When one considers that mass communication in Luther’s era consisted of printing a document, and giving copies of it to someone who’d take them to other towns by means of a horse-drawn wagon, then the speed, or lack thereof, becomes apparent. A trip from the university in Wittenberg, to which Luther had moved in 1508, to Rome would take three to four weeks. The shorter trip to Mainz from Wittenberg would take a little over a week.

Jonathan Kay suggests that the slower communication not only allowed Luther’s thought to reach maturity before it captured the attention of all Europe, but it may also have spared Luther’s life and protected the fledgling Reformation movement:

News still traveled by horse and cart in the 16th century, and this fact was critical for Luther. Indeed, it probably saved his life and his ideas — because it meant that he could win over the town before the district, his fellow monks before strangers, Germans before Italians.

As the Reformation movement developed over the following years, Luther was simultaneously addressing many different audiences — well beyond the two sets of readers who were the initial targets of his 1517 set of theses. Luther was both the most prolific and the most popular author of his time. His books were printed in greater quantities than other authors. He wrote more books than other authors. Even his enemies were eager to read his publications as soon as they appeared.

Among the various audiences for his books were different factions within the church, different academic and scholarly movements, and various political and economic groups. The fact that communication proceeded more slowly in Luther’s era allowed him to respond to each of these audiences, and tailor his messages to their concerns.

Jonathan Kay writes:

Even within the Roman Catholic Church, the faith was then divided between feuding orders: Carthusians, Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans. Luther had no hope of taking on all of these at once. What sympathy he attracted in his early days was owed, in part, to the intellectual and social capital he’d earned from those who knew him personally and had heard him preach. Many of these friends and admirers took extraordinary risks to defend him, which in turn gave others courage to do the same — a cycle that gradually expanded his sphere of support outward from Wittenberg.

The slow-motion communication of the era was matched by slow-motion responses and slow-motion decision-making. Roman Catholic opposition to Luther, which would eventually become fierce, took a while to go into motion.

This was another factor which allowed Luther more time, not only to refine his views, but to gain support for the movement.

By the time the church took serious action against Luther — when it handed the matter off to the secular government of the emperor at the Diet of Worms in 1521 — Luther already had a group of supporters and a reputation among the people. His opponents had waited too long, and his movement had gained momentum.

It wasn’t until early 1518 that Pope Leo X looked at the 95 theses. Having limited access to timely German news, he seriously underestimated their significance and passed off the matter to the Augustinians for resolution at their next annual meeting. Even after Luther finally received a summons from the pope, it took months for anything to come of it. Following a complex series of long-distance negotiations involving Prince Frederick III and the pontiff, papal legate Cardinal Cajetan formally examined Luther at Augsburg. But that was not done until mid-October, more than a year after Luther published his theses.

The long pauses, of months or weeks, between Luther’s publications and the responses of his opponents, gave Luther time to think, strategize, gain allies, and formulate reasoned responses to written attacks.

Many historians rightly point to the printing press, and Luther’s use of it, as the mass communication tool that allowed the Reformation to succeed. It is also true that Luther benefited from the not-too-fast pace of communication in his era. In the end, as Jonathan Kay proposes, “Nobody listened to Luther at first. That’s why he succeeded.”

Central Europe in Pre-Medieval Times: What Is Germany, Anyway?

Modern people are used to using the word ‘Germany,’ but many do not know that Germany, at least as it is known today, is much younger than the United States. The modern nation-state of Germany was founded in 1871.

But the region of Germany — the area of people who speak the German language, share the German culture, and have a German civilization and society — is much older. Germany as a political nation-state is only a little bit more than a hundred year old, but Germany as a people is several thousand years old.

When the Romans began to explore central Europe, they found a German civilization which was already well established, as historian Mary Fullbrook writes:

The area now known as Germany shows evidence of settlement since prehistoric times: Neanderthal man is a well-known archaeological find, and there are traces of stone, bronze and iron-age settlements right across central Europe. The Roman Empire extended across the western and southern parts of what is now known as Germany, and there are Roman foundations and remains in many German towns, such as Trier, Augsburg, Mainz, Cologne, Regensburg and Passau.

By the last years of the Roman Republic and the first years of the Roman Empire, the German tribes were a well-established presence in Europe. They spoke a variety of Germanic languages; the German language would appear a millennium later. These tribes were independent of each other, and there was nothing like a German or Germanic nation.

At times, however a few tribes might form a mutually beneficial alliance against a common enemy, as seems to have been the case in the Cimbrian War, around 100 B.C., in which approximately four Germanic tribes faced and defeated the Romans. A much larger number of Germanic tribes collaborated in 9 A.D. in the defeat of the Romans at Teutoburg Forest.

The Romans, bitter about losing to the Germanic tribes, sometimes wrote derogatory descriptions of them. Other Roman authors, intent on issuing a veiled critique of Roman society, praised the Germanic tribes as having virtues which the Romans lacked. In any case, Roman descriptions of them are not entirely reliable, as Mary Fullbrook notes:

A frontier fortification (essentially a ditch and bank) known as the limes can still be seen between the rivers Main and Danube. The Roman Empire had considerable impact on those parts which it occupied. Beyond it lay what the Romans called ‘barbarians’ (meaning foreigners). The Roman author Tacitus (c. AD 55–116) gives us an intriguing, if not entirely reliable, glimpse of the Germanic tribes in his Germania. He describes their social and political organisation, their modes of warfare, concepts of crime and punishment, styles of housing, dress and hairstyle, their marriage practices, funerals, agricultural techniques, and habits of drinking, banqueting, quarrelling and sloth. Apart from praise for the chastity of German women, Tacitus’ description of Germany and the Germans is not entirely flattering: the Germans must be a native people, not immigrants from elsewhere, for ‘who would … [want] to visit Germany, with its unlovely scenery, its bitter climate, its general dreariness to sense and eye, unless it were his home?’ There are more qualified descriptions of differences among the individual Germanic tribes, ranging from the Swabians with their intricate hairdos, through the relatively civilised Hermunduri who traded with the Romans, to the far-flung Fenni (living in what became Lithuania) who are characterised as ‘astonishingly wild and horribly poor. They eat grass, dress in skins, and sleep on the ground.’

Although both Tacitus and Julius Caesar were less than complimentary in their descriptions of Germanic life, both men eventually praised the tribes for their ethics, justice, courage, and common sense.

Tacitus in particular gave a surreptitious analysis of Roman society without ever mentioning Roman society. He knew that his readers would automatically compare his description of Germanic tribes to their own Roman culture, when he, e.g., wrote that among the Germanic tribes it was customary for the bride and groom to be of approximately the same age. Tacitus was pointing to the pattern in which some wealthy older Roman men were in the habit of marrying significantly younger women — after those men had divorced a previous wife.

Although sometimes described as wild and barbaric, the Germanic tribes were literate. A variety of Germanic writings, dating between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D., display a proficient use of a runic alphabet.

By the 300s, the Goths, one of the tribes, had developed an advanced literary civilization, including written commentaries on various texts.

Up until around 600 to 800 A.D., many of these tribes were semi-nomadic. After that time, they became more settled. Some of these tribes are associated with the names and customs of regions within modern Germany: Saxons and Bavarians, for example. Others are associated with dialects of the German language, e.g., Swabians and Alemannians. Some tribes founded Germanic nations which are not connected to modern Germany: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc.

Of the many Germanic tribes, perhaps the most influential was the Franks.

Before it finally fell, the Roman Empire receded from much of Europe back into its original territory in Italy. The result was a power vacuum. Various regions were in disorder and lacked management.

The Franks saw that some organizing principle was needed if civilization was to maintain itself at a high level. In the mid-400s, the Franks moved from the east into Gaul, the piece of land which is roughly the same as present-day France. A Frankish dynasty, or royal family, called the Merovingians established order in Gaul and saved it from a decline into chaos. Eventually, the Merovingians gave way to the Carolingians, and under leadership of this second Frankish dynasty, the Franks established stable social structures in much of Europe, enabling progress in education, science, and the arts.

While there was no Germany until 1871, the Germanic tribes played a vital role in creating, organizing, and maintaining European civilization for the two millennia before that year.

Islam and France: The Appearance of ‘Islamophobia’ in the Francophone World

In maintaining its global network of territories, colonies, and protectorates, the French Empire encountered, and learned to deal with, Islam. Tasked with supervising local societies, French administrators developed various attitudes toward Muslim populations.

One French bureaucrat, Andre Quellien, is credited with inventing the word ‘Islamophobia’ in his writings about how to manage the locals in Africa and in the Middle East. Quellien sees Islam as a benign force in local societies, a force with colonial administrators can harness to keep the peace, as historian Pascal Bruckner writes:

In 1910, Andre Quellien, a writer working for the French minister of the colonies, published a work entitled Muslim Politics in French West Africa. Addressed to specialists and imperial officials, it offers moderate praise for the religion of the Quran as “practical and indulgent,” and better adapted to the “natives,” whereas Christianity is “too complicated, too abstract, too austere for the rudimentary, materialistic mentality of the negro.”

In short, Quellien is advising the French Empire to let the locals keep their Islamic traditions and beliefs. The French, in Quellien’s opinion, should not bother introducing the locals to Christianity.

He advises the French to avoid Islamophobia, and rather to see Islam as an ally. Islam will help the French with their task of keeping order in the colonies. Was Quellien correct in his assessment? Arguments can be made on both sides: on the one hand, Islam’s authoritarian bent seems to support civil authorities; on the other hand, Islam would eventually be a part of overthrowing those civil authorities, dismantling the French Empire, and instituting local autocrats.

Pascal Bruckner reminds the reader that the word ‘Islamophobia’ was first introduced in the context of managing the colonies which were parts of a global empire:

The author of this report thought it important to emphasize that so long as it was treated tactfully, Islam would become French colonialism’s best ally and favor European influence and control.

The indigenous religions of Africa were, in many places, eradicated by Islamic invaders. Prior to the Muslim conquests of the late 600s and early 700s, Africa hosted a variety of religions, including local anamistic traditions, as well as Judaism and Christianity. These belief systems coexisted peacefully.

As a colonial administrator, Quellien saw Islam as a useful force because it kept a potential anamistic revival at bay.

Because the religion of the Prophet “wrests these peoples away from fetishism and its degrading practices,” Quellien argued that it was imperative to stop seeing Islam as fanaticism and to treat it instead with a benevolent neutrality, thus foreshadowing the great Arabist Louis Massignon (1883 - 1962), a left-wing Catholic who specialized in Muslim mysticism and advocated dialogue between Islam and the Roman Catholic Church.

While he perhaps didn’t foresee the danger which Islam would be to the French Empire, Quellien did see the need for a balanced view of Islam. Some European authors had developed idealized and naive images of Islam, overlooking the brutality of Islamic civil law.

European universities had highly developed studies of Semitic Philology and Orientalism, but the academic nature of the these studies centered on ancient texts, and were unaware of the practical realities of Muslim society in the Near East and in Africa.

Thus Quellien denounced the “Islamophobia” that was rampant among colonial officials, but he was just as opposed to the “Islamophilia” peculiar to Romantic orientalism: “singing the praises of Islam is just as biased as describing it unjustly.”

In his analysis of Islam, Quellien is less concerned with truth and justice, and more concerned with keeping the peace. The primary task of an imperial administrator — and this is true, whether in the French Empire, the Russian Empire, the Roman Empire, or any other empire — is keeping the domestic peace and producing revenue. It is in this context that Quellien sees Islam as useful.

Islam must be objectively considered as a tool for governing. Here, Quellien writes as an administrator concerned about social peace: he deplores the temptation to demonize a religion that keeps the peace in the empire, no matter what abuses — minor ones, in his view — it may commit, such as the continuing practices of slavery and polygamy.

While some accounts of imperialism include the notion that empires impose, or attempt to impose, their own religious culture onto their colonies, Quellien here advises the opposite: he urges the French Empire to resist the urge to introduce Christianity into the colonies.

He argues that it is better to leave the locals under the rule of Islam. This will make the colony more manageable for the French.

Since Islam is colonialism’s best ally, its followers must be protected from the harmful influence of modern ideas and their ways of life must be respectded (an attitude found today on the far left and in English-speaking countries).

Quellien is unsentimental and almost machiavellian in his clear-eyed assessment of Islam as a tool for controlling local populations. He is mercenary in regard to concepts like truth or justice, seeing rather that Islam will be useful for managing locals. He does not address the question of whether Islam will bring truth and justice.

Quellien can be seen as either brilliant in his insight, or as foolishly naive. Only a few decades after he wrote, a destructive wave of uprisings would take away the order which the French had been able to establish in their various colonies.

The locals would be left under the arbitrary and authoritarian rule of various dictatorships. Civil order would decline, as would the standards of living. Islam would be a part of the uprisings and of the regimes which were established in the vacuum created by the French exit from the colonies. No longer moderated by the presence of French colonial administrators, Islam would become more powerful in society, fanning the flames of militant political fanaticism, and establishing intolerant social structures.

The Hidden Influences Controlling World Events: A Bigger Version of The Big Picture

The networks of power and influence which shape world events are often hidden, composed not of famous political leaders, but rather of financial administrators. These networks have large umbrellas of effect, including liberals and conservatives, right-wingers and left-wingers, and wide spectrum of political parties.

In this context, it becomes clear that political conflicts presented as important to the general public by the news media are in fact diversions, secondary and tertiary events, removed from the real power brokers who control large parts of the world economy. Financial machinations are primary; political intrigues are at most shadows of the more foundational monetary blocs.

The public is misled into following elections and legislative disputes, while the real impacts are generated by boards of governors who manage large banks. The officers of the major private banks around the world, as historian Gary Allen writes, have more control over governments than presidents, prime ministers, senators, or judges:

Eventually these international bankers actually owned as private corporations the central banks of the various European nations. The Bank of England, Bank of France and Bank of Germany were not owned by their respective governments, as almost everyone imagines, but were privately owned monopolies granted by the heads of state, usually in return for loans. Under this system, observed Reginald McKenna, President of the Midlands Bank of England: “Those that create and issue the money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in their hands the destiny of the people.” Once the government is in debt to the bankers it is at their mercy. A frightening example was cited by the London Financial Times of September 26, 1921, which revealed that even at that time: “Half a dozen men at the top of the Big Five Banks could upset the whole fabric of government finance by refraining from renewing Treasury Bills.”

Major international crises, and their resolutions, are often navigated, not by politicians or diplomats or military officers, but rather by bankers. This was the case, e.g., in the creation of the Dawes Plan, and the global tensions which caused the plan to be created.

By the early 1920s, it had become clear that the terms of the Versailles Treaty were unrealistic. The treaty obligated Germany to make large reparation payments to the nations which had won the First World War. The payments were so large, in fact, that they were impossible.

Europe was simultaneously on the brink of an economic collapse and on the brink of war. The solution would not be the result of prime ministers and presidents practicing diplomacy; nor would it be the result of military leaders and their battle plans. Peace would be preserved by financial arrangements.

Charles Dawes, who orchestrated this resolution, was not a sinister figure in some international conspiracy. To the contrary, he was an Ohio-born lawyer, who practiced law first in Omaha, Nebraska, and then later in Chicago. Aside from law, his passion was music, and he composed a song which became a number one pop hit. No, Charles Dawes was not a member of some nefarious conspiracy. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in avoiding war and avoiding economic collapse in Europe.

The dynamics of the situation in Europe in the early 1920s reveals, however, how a global conspiracy could wield immense power through the banking system. Financial operatives can bypass a nation’s official or elected leadership and have significant power.

Had Charles Dawes not been a benevolent and decent man, he could have exploited the situation to gain personal influence in multiple nations simultaneously.

The example of the Dawes Plan shows that there are opportunities for an international conspiracy to gain significant power by using the financial system and bypassing both civilian and military leadership. The same is true for a domestic conspiracy within any one nation. The question to be posed is not whether such a thing is possible. Rather, it must be asked whether such a thing has already happened.

A Brief History of Slavery: Its Origins, and How It Invaded America

How did slavery arrive in America? It seems to have come primarily from Asia. When people from northeast Asia invaded America across what is now the Bering Strait, they brought with them the cultures which would take root in South America, Central America, and North America.

After occupying the Americas, these conquerors set up their own civilization, which included a robust program of slavery, as historian Matt Walsh writes:

The institution goes back 10,000 years or more to the Neolithic Revolution. As long as human society has had agriculture, it has had slaves to do the work. The soil on every continent on Earth, save Antarctica, has been tilled by slaves. Slavery was a common and almost unquestioned practice everywhere, all over the world, among nearly all people, for many thousands of years.

Although the word ‘slavery’ is often used, it is still worth pausing to define it. The first element of this definition points to unremunerated labor: slaves work and do not get paid for working, or do not have the right to demand payment, even if they are paid.

A second element of the definition indicates that slaves are treated as property. The property rights which owners can normally exercise over possessions like land and houses are, in conditions of slavery, exercised over human beings.

Although there are variations and differences between, e.g., slavery as practiced by Aztec as compared to the Benin Empire, or as practiced by the Maya as compared to the Kongo, the points of the definition constitute a common thread among regional variations. ‘Kongo’ is the ancient predecessor of the modern Congo. Matt Walsh notes:

Slaves were traded as commodities as far back as Ancient Egypt.

Slavery in any form is dehumanizing. To buy and sell human beings, and to claim the right to treat them in any arbitrary way, even to kill them, — and to claim that right based on their status as property — is why many people find slavery to be a moral monstrosity.

The first recorded effort to undermine the institution of slavery is found in the Mosaic laws. In his legislation, Moses codified temporal limits to slavery — that it would not be a lifelong condition, but rather that slaves would be set free. He also decreed that slaves could not be treated with arbitrary harshness.

While incremental, the laws of Moses were the first significant effort to erode slavery. The effects were slow. Slavery would persist for a few more centuries his own society, and for a few more millennia in other societies.

The foundation of slavery, the reason for its institution and persistence, is primarily economic, as Matt Walsh points out:

Arab traders would conduct their own raids in Africa, capturing African villagers and shipping them back to the Arabian peninsula for sale.

At various times and various places, slavery has been a big business. Certain regional economies have not only allowed slavery, but rather depended on it. This was the case in the southern United States between 1790 and 1865; it was even more the case on other continents, as historian Matt Walsh notes:

In the Sub-Saharan slave trade, established about 1,000 years before the United States came into being, young boys were routinely castrated and then sold into forced labor in Asia, the Middle East, or within Africa. It’s worth noting that slavery was not fully abolished in Africa until 1981.

Slavery was practiced at some point in time or another in almost every part of the world. Europe was the first large region to eradicate slavery. The long-term ripple effects of the Mosaic innovation drove the Europeans to abolish slavery. The anti-slavery movements in North America, typified in individuals like Roger Williams, who led the movement which abolished slavery in Rhode Island in the 1650s, was a direct outgrowth of European culture, which was in turn an extension of Mosiac legal and ethical logic.

Although the forms and goals of slavery changed when European settlers arrived in the Americas, its basic nature did not. Because slavery de-humanizes and objectifies the slave, the slave is perceived as an “other” — the natives of the Americas, before the arrival of Europeans, treated people who were not of their own tribe as “other” and often enslaved them, as Matt Walsh explains:

Slavery was commonplace in the Americas well before European settlers showed up. Native American tribes enslaved each other, often by conquest and capture.

The civilizations of the Americas routinely practiced human sacrifice before the arrival of Europeans. The connection between slavery and the pre-religious superstitious phase of human sacrifice is clear: The slave would have no choice about being a vicitim of these rituals.

In Mesoamerica, a slave would often have his period of servitude ended when he was ritualistically butchered as a human sacrifice, which was a widespread practice in the region for hundreds of years.

Slavery has not been entirely eradicate from the world. It persists, even in places where it is technically illegal. There are still markets where human beings are bought and sold like animals.

While slavery persists in some remote areas, most modern nations have succeeded in erasing it from their societies, and most cultures have solidified an anti-slavery ethic among their people.

China had slavery for 3,000 years and only officially abolished it in the 20th century, though unofficially it still exists today.

Slavery existed in ancient times in nearly every part of the world. It came to the Americas many centuries prior to the first European settlers. The social and cultural forces which led to the end of slavery made themselves first felt in the Ancient Near East, next in Europe, and then in the Americas.

When the United States ended slavery between 1863 and 1865, other nations followed the example: Brazil ended its slavery sytem in 1888, Cuba in 1886, and Madegascar in 1896. Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, China, and Thailand followed suit in the twentieth century.