B. The Struggle Against Communism
We will now consider organizations whose main purpose is not the construction of a proper social order but rather the struggle against communism. For reasons already expounded in this work, we deem this kind of organization to be legitimate and often even indispensable. Of course, in saying this, we are not identifying the Counter-Revolution with abuses that organizations of this kind may have committed in one country or another.
Pro abortionists at Defund Planned Parenthood March; D.C., Feb. 11, 2017.
Nevertheless, we believe that the counter-revolutionary efficacy of such organizations can be greatly increased if their members, while remaining within the sphere of their specialized activities, keep certain essential truths in mind:
• Only an intelligent refutation of communism is efficacious. The mere repetition of catch phrases, even when clever and apt, is insufficient.
“So-called scientific communism is unknown by the multitudes, and the doctrine of Marx does not attract the masses.”
• This refutation, when made in cultured circles, must be aimed at the ultimate doctrinal foundations of communism. It is important to point out its essential character as a philosophical sect that deduces from its principles a particular concept of man, society, the State, history, culture, and so on, just as the Church deduces from Revelation and Moral Law all the principles of Catholic civilization and culture. Accordingly, no conciliation is possible between communism — a sect that contains the plenitude of the Revolution — and the Church.
• So-called scientific communism is unknown by the multitudes, and the doctrine of Marx does not attract the masses. An ideological anticommunist action among the general public must be aimed at a very widespread state of spirit that often makes anticommunists ashamed to oppose communism. This state of spirit springs from the more or less conscious idea that all inequality is unjust and that not only great fortunes but even medium-sized ones must be eliminated, for if there were no rich there would be no poor. This reveals vestiges of certain socialist schools of thought of the nineteenth century, perfumed with romantic sentimentalism. It gives rise to a mentality that claims to be anticommunist but, nevertheless, frequently calls itself socialist.
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“This state of spirit springs from the more or less conscious idea that all inequality is unjust and that not only great fortunes but even medium-sized ones must be eliminated, for if there were no rich there would be no poor.”
This mentality, which is becoming more and more powerful in the West, is a much greater danger than Marxist indoctrination itself. It leads us slowly down a slope of concessions that may reach the extreme point where nations on this side of the Iron Curtain will have become communist republics. Such concessions, which show a tendency to economic egalitarianism and state control, can be noted in every sphere. Private enterprise is more and more limited. Inheritance taxes are so onerous that in certain cases the federal treasury is the principal heir. Government interference in such things as exchange, export, and import makes industry, commerce, and banking dependent on the State. The State intervenes in wages, rents, prices, in everything. It has industries, banks, universities, newspapers, radio stations, television channels, and more. And while egalitarian statism transforms the economy in this way, immorality and liberalism are tearing the family apart and paving the way for so-called free love.
Chicago Pride Parade. Photo by nathanmac87.
“…immorality and liberalism are tearing the family apart and paving the way for so-called free love.”
Unless this mentality is specifically fought, the West will be communist in fifty or one hundred years, even should a cataclysm engulf Russia and China.
• The right of property is so sacred that, even if a regime were to give the Church full liberty and even full support, she could not accept as licit a social organization in which all property were held collectively.
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“Government interference in such things as exchange, export, and import makes industry, commerce, and banking dependent on the State.”
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Part II, Chapter XI, pg. 110 -112.
