The history and impact of Marxist Leninist organizational theory

From The history and impact of Marxist Leninist organizational theory: "useful idiots," "innocents' clubs," and "transmission belts" The article written by Professor Roche who has read his way over the ground and actually understands what it is all about. Transmission belts presumably refer to propaganda systems which impose ideas on the peasant masses and command hierarchies which tax them and control them.


 

The History and Impact of Marxist-Leninist Organizational Theory:
"Useful Idiots," "Innocents' Clubs," and "Transmission Belts"

FORMER President Nixon has an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs in which he offers advice to President Reagan about how to deal with Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit. Mr. Nixon writes that in 1959 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan "told me that he sensed in his meetings with the Soviet leaders that, above all, they 'wanted to be admitted as members of the club.' This is a small price to pay for laying the foundations for a new structure of peace in the world."

There are two deductions one can make from Mr. Nixon's agreement with the Macmillan "psychoanalysis" of the Soviet leaders. First, Mr. Nixon has never read the canonical writings of V. I. Lenin--or, if he has, he never understood the operational meaning of Marxism-Leninism. Second, he hasn't read John Roche's slender volume The History and Impact of Marxist-Leninist Organizational Theory, which really explains why the Soviet Union behaves as it does and why there is little chance that the "new face" in the Kremlin will change Soviet behavior even of Gorbachev is "admitted to the club."

There are three distinct species of political animals in the non-Communist world today. First, there are those who want Soviet Communism to triumph worldwide. Second, there are those who think that the Soviet Union is merely one of two superpowers, morally equivalent to the United States, and that by summitry or other symbolic contrivances the difficulties between them can be ironed out.

Then there is the third type. It consists of people like John Roche who understand the operational significance of Marxism-Leninism and therefore know the depth of Soviet enmity for the United States, know that the irreconcilable differences between freedom and totalitarianism will not be bridged by Gorbachev's admission to a club, even Club Med. For the USSR there is only one club with a lot of sub-clubs: Comecon, the Warsaw Pact, Moscow's myriad international "peace" and labor fronts. In that club there are no equals and only one lawgiver. Once you're "admitted" to that club, you can't resign or join another, according to the Brezhnev Doctrine. The Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians, the East Germans, the Balts, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians--they know.

What most observers of foreign affairs refuse to realize is that, as Professor Roche puts it, Marxism-Leninism is not a corpus of ideas. It is, rather, an organizational theory "which the Mafia must envy. . . . It is a cynical rationale for gangsterism."

"In short," writes Roche,

We considered the Communists to be ideological whores, part of a highly articulated, worldwide criminal syndicate with its Godfather resident in the Kremlin. Its major objective was not to win the hearts and minds of mankind with the altruistic apophthegms of Marx and Lenin, but to achieve power at whatever levels in institutions that presented themselves as targets of opportunity.

The influence of Marxism-Leninism as an organizational theory is worldwide, whatever the substantive goals of its zealots may be. As, in Roche's phrase, "all Mafia 'families' worship the same household gods," so all versions of Marxism-Leninism follow the same organizational pattern. In other words, there is little difference between Fascism, Communism, Ayatollahism, African "socialism," or any other doctrine whose wellspring is Marxism-Leninism. They all have the same inner core: the cadre or vanguard party, a militarily organized, highly disciplined elite "purportedly endowed by history, race, ethnicity, or religion with doctrinal infallibility."

Professor Roche closes his study with this extract from the May 1983 issue of the Soviet journal Agitator of the Army and Navy, something that could have been published in Nazi Germany's Volkischer Beobachter half a century ago:

Acting in an organized way and purposefully, the Jewish bourgeoisie seized key positions in the U.S. and continues to gather into its hand ever greater spheres of influence. The leading banks, the largest financial establishments of the country are either the direct property of Jews-financiers, or subordinate to their manifold influence . . . Ninety-five per cent of the largest military-industrial monopolies not only in the U.S. but in general in the countries of the West belong to the Jewish bourgeoisie and capital linked to it.

What makes Professor Roche's monograph particularly valuable is that he illustrates the meaning of Marxism-Leninism with case studies, either historical or autobiographical. When he describes how he fought a Communist takeover of the American Veterans Committee after World War II, it could just as well be a description of how the Communists tried to take over the CIO, or a description of how the Communists have taken over whole countries.

I wish Professor Roche, with his longtime experience as university teacher and dean, had included some references to the metastasizing influence of Marxism-Leninism among American university faculties. That omission, and imposing upon an innocent public the wrong lyrics to the old sectarian Communist song, "Oh, the Cloakmakers Union Is a No-Good Union," are my only criticisms of a book that ought to be required reading for Presidents, Secretaries of State, and other policymakers.

And certainly for a British prime minister who said recently that Gorbachev is a man she could "do business" with. No more than you could "do business" with Hitler can you "do business" with Gorbachev. Professor Roche graphically explains why.

COPYRIGHT 1985 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

 

 

Arnold Beichman "The history and impact of Marzist Leninist organizational theory: "useful idiots," "innocents' clubs," and "transmission belts"". National Review. . FindArticles.com. 02 Nov. 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_v37/ai_4059216

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Articles in Sept 6, 1985, issue of National Review