To further illustrate the whole change in Stalin's attitude, he adopted a series of "reforms" which were purely capitalistic in nature. These included payment of interest on savings, the issuing of bonds to which premiums were attached and the legalizing of a wider disparity in wages. A laborer, for example, might receive only one hundred rubles a month while a member of the official class could now get as high as six thousand rubles per month!
All of this clearly illustrated one simple fact concerning developments in Russia. The "have nots" of yesterday had taken possession of the realm. Their policy was likewise simple: to stay in power permanently and enjoy the spoils of their conquest.
By 1938 Stalin was supremely confident of his position. He announced that the regime had no enemies left inside of Russia, and there was no longer a need for terrorism or suppression. He made it clear, however, that there must be undeviating prosecution of the Communist program abroad and that the acts of terrorism against the outer world of capitalism should be accepted as necessary and unavoidable.
Russia was now asserting herself as a world power. Stalin was clearly manifesting a determination to enter the next phase of his dictatorship -- the expansion of world Communism.
Chapter Seven
Communism in the United States
We have now traced the history of Russian Communism up to 1938. In order to appreciate what happened after 1938 it is necessary to understand the historical development of Communism in the United States.
The conquest of the United States by Marxist forces has been an important part of the plan of Communist leaders for many years: "First we will take Eastern Europe; then the masses of Asia. Then we will encircle the United States of America which will be the last bastion of Capitalism. We will not have to attack it; it will fail like an over-ripe fruit into our hands." This clearly reflects the Marxist intent to overthrow the United States by internal subversion.
It is sometimes difficult for us to realize how enthusiastically encouraged the Communist leaders have frequently felt toward the progress of their program in the United States. The answers to the following questions will indicate why:
Have Americans who embraced Communism overlooked a vigorous warning from the Pilgrim Fathers? Why are the Pilgrim Fathers described as having practiced Communism under "the most favorable circumstances"? What were the results?
How soon after the Russian Revolution was Communism launched in the United States? How extensive was the first wave of Communist violence?
What was William Z. Foster's testimony under oath concerning a Communist revolution in the United States?
Why was Whittaker Chambers able to furnish so many details concerning Communism in the United States? In June, 1932, Chambers was asked to pay the full price of being a Communist -- what was it? How did Chambers' small daughter influence him to abandon Communism?
What was the background of Elizabeth Bentley? How did she happen to become the Communist "wife" of a man she did not even know?
How did Communists who were employed as Russian spies successfully clear themselves?
How would you expect the Communist leaders in Russia to react as they reviewed the U.S. list of top-level government employees who were risking imprisonment and disgrace to commit espionage and otherwise carry out the orders of the Soviet leaders?
American Founding Fathers Try Communism
One of the forgotten lessons of U.S. history is the fact that the American founding fathers tried Communism before they tried capitalistic free enterprise.
In 1620 when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, they had already determined to establish a Communist colony. In many ways this communal society was set up under the most favorable circumstances. First of all, they were isolated from outside help and were desperately motivated to make the plan work in order to survive. Secondly, they had a select group of religious men and women who enjoyed a cooperative, fraternal feeling toward one another. The Pilgrims launched their Communist community with the most hopeful expectations. Governor William Bradford has left us a remarkable account of what happened. The Governor reports:
"This community ... was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong ... had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought an injustice ... and for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc, they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it." (Note that even in a Christian brotherhood, Communism cannot be practiced without setting up a dictatorship.)
But the colonists would have continued to endure Communism if it had only been productive. The thing which worried Governor Bradford was the fact that the total amount of production under this communal arrangement was so low that the colonists were faced with starvation. Therefore, he says:
"At length, after much debate ... the governor gave way that they should set corn every man for his own purpose, and in that regard trust to themselves ... and so assigned to every family a parcel of land according to the proportion of their number."
Once a family was given land and corn they had to plant, cultivate and harvest it or suffer the consequences. The Governor wanted the people to continue living together as a society of friends but communal production was to be replaced by private, free enterprise production. After one year the Governor was able to say:
"This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.... The women now went willing into the fields, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability; who to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression."
The Pilgrim Fathers had discovered the great human secret that a man will compel himself to go ever so much farther than he will permit anyone else to compel him to go. As Governor Bradford thought about their efforts to live in a Communist society, he wrote down this conclusion:
"The experience that was had in this common cause and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato and other ancients -- applauded by some in later times -- that the taking away of property, and bringing it into a commonwealth, would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God."1
It becomes apparent that Governor Bradford concluded that Communism is not only inefficient but that it is unnatural and in violation of the laws of God. This may raise a question in the minds of some students who have heard that Communism provides the most ideal means of practicing the basic principles of Christianity. Elsewhere, we have considered the historical background of this problem."2
It is interesting that after the pilgrim fathers tried communism they abandoned it in favor of a free enterprise type of capitalism which, over the centuries, has become more highly developed in the united states than in any other nation. In its earliest stages this system was described as a heartless, selfish institution, but economists have pointed out that after a slow and painful evolution it has finally developed into a social-economic tool which has thus far produced more wealth and distributed it more uniformly among the people of this land than any system modern men have tried.3 The evolutionary process of further improving and further adapting capitalism to the needs of a highly industrialized society is still going on.
Marxism Comes to the United States
When the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia in 1917, it held a particular interest for a certain group of Americans. This was the left wing faction of the Socialist Party. For years, the Socialists had been trying to get the Federal Government to take over all major industries and socialize the c
ountry, but this attempt at peaceful legislative reform had failed. Then suddenly, in November, 1917, these people heard that the Russian Bolsheviks had used revolutionary violence to seize power and had thereafter socialized their country overnight.
This was promptly accepted by the left wing Socialists as the formula for America. They immediately determined to form a Communist party and use violent revolutionary activity to sovietize America at the earliest possible date. They were greatly encouraged in this venture by a man named John Reed, a journalist, who had recently returned from Russia with glowing enthusiasm for the revolution and world Communism.
This group made contact with Moscow and was invited to send delegates to Russia in March, 1919, to help form the Third International (copied after Marx's First International to promote world revolution). When they returned home they started their campaign. John Reed used the columns of the "New York Communist" to agitate the workers to revolt. The Communist ranks were swelled by members of the old I.W.W. (International Workers of the World) who gravitated to the new movement with suggestions that the party members learn to use the techniques of sabotage and violence which the I.W.W. had employed during World War I.
Further encouragement came to the movement when the Russian Communist Party sent over an official representative of the Soviet Government to help organize a full-fledged Bolshevik program. His name was C.A. Martens. He brought along substantial quantities of money to spend in building cells inside the American labor unions and the U.S. armed forces. It was not enough that the Communists should save the proletariat of Russia; Comrade Martens assured all who heard him that his mission from Moscow was to free the down-trodden workers of capitalistic America. As the movement progressed, American representatives were sent to Russia to get permission to set up the "Communist Labor Party of the United States" as a branch of the Russian-sponsored Communist International (organization for world revolution). Later the word "Labor" was dropped.
The officers of the new Communist Party signed the "Twenty-one Conditions of Admission" which were to embarrass them many years later when the Party was ordered to register in 1952 as an agency under the control of the Soviet Union.
Here are typical commitments from the "Twenty-one Conditions of Admission":
"The Communist Party (of the USA) must carry on a clear-cut program of propaganda for the hindering of the transportation of munitions of war to the enemies of the Soviet Republic."
"The program (of the U.S. Communist Party) must be sanctioned by the regular congress of the Communist International."
"All decisions of the Communist International ... are binding upon all parties belonging to the Communist International (which would include the U.S. Communist Party)."
"The duty of spreading Communist ideas includes the special obligation to carry on a vigorous and systematic propaganda in the Army. Where this agitation is forbidden by exceptional laws, it is to be carried on illegally."
"Every party wishing to belong to the Communist International must systematically and persistently develop a Communist agitation within the trade-unions."
It was basic commitments such as these which led the U.S. Subversive Activities Control Board to make the following statement in 1953 after extended hearings:
"We find upon the whole record that the evidence preponderantly establishes that Respondent's leaders (leaders of the Communist Party, USA) and its members consider the allegiance they owe to the United States as subordinate to their loyalty and obligations to the Soviet Union."4
The First Wave of Communist Violence Strikes the United States
Beginning April 28, 1919, a series of 36 bombs were discovered in the mails addressed to such persons as the Attorney General, Justice Holmes of the Supreme Court, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and similar persons of prominence. One of the bombs got through to the home of Senator Hardwick who had been trying to shut off the migration of Bolsheviks to the U.S. A servant opened the package and the bomb exploded, blowing off her hands.
On September 16, 1920, a large bomb was carried in a horse-drawn carriage to the corner of Broad and Wall Streets in New York City -- the vortex of American capitalism. The vehicle was brought to a halt across the street from the un-ostentatious three-story limestone building occupied by the firm of J.P. Morgan and Company.
Suddenly a great roar went up from the carriage, and blue-white flame shot into the sky. The bomb exploded with tremendous violence, killing thirty people outright and injuring hundreds more. It wrecked the interior of the Morgan offices, smashed windows for blocks around and shot an iron slug through a window on the thirty-fourth floor of the Equitable Building.
These acts of murder and violence created a blistering resentment against the Bolsheviks in every part of the United States. Occasionally counter-violence was used by aroused citizens in retaliation. Numerous arrests were made by the Attorney General and finally a whole shipload of Bolshevik aliens and Communist leaders were deported to Russia via Finland on the S.S. Buford. Aboard the boat was the notorious Emma Goldman whose anarchist speeches a quarter of a century earlier had induced Leon Czolgosz to assassinate President McKinley. Little did she know that in twenty-four months she would not only repudiate Lenin and his Bolsheviks but that by 1940 her great last hope would be to die in the United States.
William Z. Foster Launches the Communist Labor Union Drive
Few names among Communist leaders today are better known to the American public than the name of William Z. Foster. He was a charter member of the party in the United States and was the person designated by the party to take over the U.S. labor unions. Most of the money for the campaign came from Moscow where the Profintern (Red International of Trade Unions) had received $1,000,000 from the Soviet Government to help spread Communism in the labor unions of other nations.
Foster's drive hit the labor front soon after the armistice, when the workers were already in a state of agitation resulting from wartime conditions. Foster found little difficulty in sparking strikes in several important industries and even where he had nothing to do with a strike he was often given the credit. As a result, many people began to identify their pro-labor sympathies with Communism without completely realizing it.
The coal miners were believed to have come under Foster's influence when they voted enthusiastically to have the coal industry nationalized and a similar label seemed to attach itself to the steel strike because Foster was very much in evidence as an agitator and promoter of the strike. Many people knew that both the coal miners and the steel workers had many legitimate reasons for striking and to them the fact that Foster and his Communist associates seized this opportunity to worm their way into the labor movement seemed of little importance.
But William Z. Foster never really concealed his fundamental ambition to overthrow the United States government by violence and subordinate the American laborer (as well as every other American) to the mandates of a Communist dictatorship copied after the Russian pattern. In fact, Mr. Foster visualized himself as the coming dictator. He was the Communist candidate for President on two occasions and wrote a book called Toward Soviet America, telling just how the Communists would take over.
When a Congressional committee placed him under oath and asked him about Communism, he was voluble and frank:
The Chairman: "Do the Communists in this country advocate world revolution?"
Mr. Foster: "Yes."
The Chairman: "Do they (the Communists) advocate revolution in this country?"
Mr. Foster: "I have stated that the Communists advocate abolition of the capitalist system in this country and every other country...."
The Chairman: "Now, are the Communists in this country opposed to our republican form of government?"
Mr. Foster: "The capitalist Democracy -- most assuredly."
The Chairman: "What you advocate is a change of our republican form of government and the substituting of the soviet form of government?
Mr. Foster: "I have stated that a num
ber of times."
The Chairman: "Now, if I understand you, the workers in this country look upon the Soviet Union as their country; is that right?"
Mr. Foster: "The more advanced workers do."
The Chairman: "They look upon the Soviet flag as their flag?"
Mr. Foster: "The workers of this country and the workers of every country have only one flag and that is the red flag."
The Chairman: "... If they had to choose between the red flag and the American flag, I take it from you that you would choose the red flag, is that correct?"
Mr. Foster: "I have stated my answer."
The Chairman: "I don't want to force you to answer if it embarrasses you, Mr. Foster."