The Communist Manifesto – The Pull Of The Land

Nothing New Under The Sun I

November 8, 2023November 8, 2023 Richard Barnes

Recent posts have cited verifiable examples of major early to mid-20th Century United States and England policy decisions that have had cataclysmic impacts on our lives, not to mention the lives of tens of millions of human beings across the earth.

For decades, the media, academia, and government had poo-poohed the nefarious birthings of these policies, even mocking high officials who sought to raise the alarms or sound the warnings. Such were characterized as “wild-eyed”, slanderers, conspiracy nuts, and worse.

When the evidence — in our own files and archives, in the released Venona transcripts, and much more — was finally widely available, the media exhibited curious disinterest at best, dishonest obfuscation at second best. Names long associated as unjustly tarred, turned out to have been Soviet agents or knowing facilitators or avid “believers” intent on doing as told by their Soviet heroes.

For example, Elizabeth Bentley’s revelations, all corroborated, amounted to over 50,000 pages in the FBI files alone. And this was only a fraction of the Communist infiltration in the executive branch of the federal government, which was known at the time but loudly denied by the executive branch, the media, and others who knew better.

To cite just one FBI memo from December, 1945:

“It has become increasingly clear in the investigation of this case that there are a tremendous number of persons employed in the United States government who are Communists and strive daily to advance the cause of Communism and destroy the foundations of this government … Today nearly every department or agency of this government is infiltrated with them in varying degree. To aggravate the situation they appear to have concentrated most heavily in those departments which make policy … or carry it into effect … There has emerged already a picture of a large, energetic, and capable number of Communists who operate daily in the legislative field, as well as in the executive branch of government ….”

The raw files are unbelievably extensive; they indicate a vast network throughout our agencies and, later, as our appointees in the founding of international bodies such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, and much, much more. We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of individuals, at the very least. Plus the thousands who were trained and who worked under their aegises.

Again, as noted here and here, just a fraction of these not only effectuated our wartime alliances but also the destinies of Eastern Europe and China.

This was a big deal. And it continues to be downplayed to this day.

For example, Maurice Halperin, a United States diplomat, was a Soviet agent who provided Moscow sensitive information on governments in exile, such as Poland. This enabled Stalin to maneuver in a way that ensured only his henchmen were installed, post war in Poland, while murdering those opposed to him. After the war, Halperin moved over to the State Department where he advised the head of the department on policy towards Latin America. To avoid having to testify, he eventually fled to Moscow in the early 50s, and then to Havana, and finally absconded to Canada where he died. His actions were deadly to millions.

How does Wikipedia document his treason to his fellow countrymen?

“After Halperin’s death, the release of the Venona project decryptions of coded Soviet cables, as well as information gleaned from Soviet KGB archives, revealed [sic!] that Halperin was involved in espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union while serving in an official capacity with the United States government.”

So, basically, we have a conflict of interest case and not much more with this fellow, who was finally found out with the public release of Venona after his death.

However, the aforementioned archives from the 40s and 50s are voluminous in their record of attempts to warn the executive branch that Halperin was a Communist agent doing immeasurable harm, with the real life blood of millions on the line. These warnings were ignored, to put it charitably.

Multiply Halperin by at least hundreds if not thousands and you get the picture.

Why is this important today, when the Soviet Union no longer exists?

Because those policies, primarily foreign but with very real domestic implications, were set in concrete and are followed, with emendations or amendments to this very day. We continue to be haunted by the Halperins of Christmases past.

But that is not the most important reason for us to care about these matters.

I hinted at the critical reason in the last post. What is the “Guide” that those who love liberty follow? In my prior post we quoted Philip Jaffe as he openly admitted that his guide was Communism.

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1948. Its authors, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx acknowledged that Communism was not new. For example, it was embodied by the French revolutionaries.

Ideas and demands such as:

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.”

“Communists desire to introduce … an openly legalized community of women …..”

Perhaps the most famous passage includes the following prescriptions for all modern societies:

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax [the United States had no income tax until 1916]
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of all property of all emigrants.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
Free education for all children in public schools [elsewhere in the Manifesto the authors make clear that parents must not be allowed to educate their children].

Prior generations were rightfully aghast at these demands and were naturally opposed to anyone proposing them. Hence the deceitful, undercover approach to such matters by politicians, bureaucrats, academics and educators, entertainment mavens, “public servants”, and more.

But they have all — without exception — to some degree or other — worked their way into our policy prescriptions, politics, education, and even religious denominations.

The opponents are right in their observations. However, they are wrong in thinking this is something new under the sun.

It is not new. And by not seeing its origins, we fail in our battles against it.

For there is indeed nothing new under the sun.

Originally published in 1848, continues to have avid followers

Elizabeth Bentley (1905-1963). Communist agent who defected, at great risk to her life. Her revelations were astounding back in 1945 and are astounding even today. She was denounced as a traitor, a liar, and a criminal by her old comrades and their enablers. The president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, denigrated her testimony as a “red herring”.

Maurice Halperin (1906-1995)

It Has To Be Earned

July 24, 2023July 24, 2023 Richard Barnes

“A republic, if you can keep it.”
Benjamin Franklin, upon being asked what sort of government the delegates to the Constitutional Convetion had created.

“A tradition cannot be inherited — it has to be earned.”
Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Societies that are growing or strengthening are characterized by populations who not only believe in such growth and strengthening, but act upon it.

And a critical component of “acting upon our tradition” is to know it. And to know it requires that we study it.

Professor Harold Berman, in his magisterial Law and Revolution, provides the following analogy:

“From the eleventh and twelfth centuries on, monophonic music, reflected chiefly in the Gregorian chant, was gradually supplanted by polyphonic styles. Two-part, three-part, and eventually four-part music developed. The contrapuntal style exemplified in the thirteenth-century motet evolved into the harmonic style of the fourteenth century ars nova, exemplified in the ballade. Eventually, counterpoint and harmony were combined. The sixteenth century witnessed the development of the great German Protestant chorales, and these, together with Italian and English madrigals and other forms, provided a basis for opera …. Eventually Renaissance music gave way to Baroque, Baroque to Classical …. etc. No good contemporary musician, regardless of how off-beat he may be, can afford not to know this story….”

Not too long ago, American citizens, and certainly lawyers, judges, and justices were required, in a similar way, to know the story of the development of our institutions and their great debt to Christianity.

For example, about a century ago, in the early 20th Century, just about everyone in the United States understood that [church] canon law constituted the first modern Western legal system. Eventually, canon law and royal law complemented each other and formed a basis for the Western legal tradition. It was understood, at least inchoately, that rejecting the religious heritage of the West has always led to tyranny.

However, today, the above is not only generally unknown but should it be even mentioned it is only to have it dismissed outright, even by clergy who delight in writing books or preaching sermons denying our Christian legacy. In so doing, we greatly err and worse: we join forces with those who would destroy our legal and social foundations.

It is no mystery that many who most despise the American heritage have an undisguised hatred for the Christian religion because that religion places man and his institutions under an eternal, Triune God and His law. And this is unacceptable.

Once we understand this philosophical enmity, much of the violence and chaos in our era becomes intelligible.

But no need to take my word for it. I’ll conclude this post by quoting the heroes of so many of today’s usual suspects.

Engels: “We … reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatever as eternal, ultimate, and forever immutable moral law ….”

Lenin: “We repudiate all morality derived from non-human and non-class concepts. We say it is a deception, a fraud in the interest of the landlords and the capitalists … We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the toilers around the proletariat … We do not believe in an eternal morality.”

Marx: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man … The abolition of religion as an illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness….

Anyone who has read the execrable Communist Manifesto will recognize the above sentiments, and more.

Such sentiments, so fashionable today, are the polar opposite of those of our colonial and early republic era; i. e., our founding era. Put another way, engaging and promoting the convictions of those who hate Christianity will accelerate the undermining of our foundations, increase the overt despising of ordered liberty, and openly promote a topsy turvy view of humanity and society, which further dismantles our bedrock.

It is a vicious cycle, a circling of the drain that can only be stopped by refusing to live by lies and insisting on speaking the truth.

With God’s help we can do so.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Chávez Rode the Cult of Bolivar

February 10, 2022February 10, 2022 Richard Barnes

“Nowhere was this cult more apparent and abundant than in the armed forces who were taught to consider themselves the heirs of the Libertador.” (Bolivar’s Endiosamiento)

If you were to visit the tombs of past Venezuelan dictators, all anti-Communist men, kneel and put your ear to the ground. You will hear their spinning.

Their hagiography of Bolivar was used by men such as Douglas Bravo to enable the infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces with men committed to the Bolivar mystique, under which they indoctrinated and recruited men who would readily obey orders to impose a Communist dictatorship.

Douglas Bravo understood the veneration that Venezuelans had for Bolivar. He used the image of Bolivar as a lure. He knew that the meaning of “Bolivarianism”, as preached and indoctrinated by infiltrators like Chávez, meant, to the minds of the soldiers, nationalism and anti-imperialism. And, importantly, the anti-imperialism was focused on the United States and the United States alone.

As “Bolivarianism” continued to be inculcated in the Armed Forces, it denied it had anything to do with Marxist theory and that it was only a description of the Libertador‘s dream of a united South America, free of the clutches of the dreaded yanquis, and focused on the prosperity and freedoms of the Venezuelan peoples.

So, Bravo and his acolytes acted like offended damsels whenever anyone asserted that their preaching sounded Marxist or Communist. Their usual riposte was that they were nationalists, meaning that they rejected all internationalism — which, of course, meant that they rejected Communist internationalism.

Which of course was a lie.

As a child, I would hear — remember, this was a time of children-can-be-seen-but-not-heard — adults express concerns about university student diatribes against the United States while loudly professing their love for Venezuela. To these adults, something sounded off key in the protestations. It was all-too-clear that the supposed love for Venezuela was drowned by their hatred towards the United States.

Why the hatred?

When asked one on one, the rioters would deny they hated Americans; however, at the mitínes (rallies), the hatred was palpable. Why?

The facile answers taught by American college professors and other usual suspects, did not hold water: Monroe Doctrine backlash, imperialist America, uninvited American missionary activities, Ugly American tourists, and more.

When I was about 13 or 14 a childhood friend visited the United States for the first time, accompanying her family on a long-expected vacation. On her return, she reported to us how she purposefully dropped trash in American parks and “I was not arrested, and no policeman saw me”.

What causes someone to hate another country so much that upon her first visit to said country — a country she had never travelled to before — she would throw trash and brag about getting away with it?

“Monroe Doctrine” backlash doesn’t cut it.

After the riots and violent attacks on Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife in 1958 (see Nixon), the United States National Security Council’s minutes recorded comments by John Foster Dulles:

“Secretary Dulles went on to say that there was one more very important factor in the Latin American problem which the United States faced. This was the collapse of religion generally in Latin America. We all believe in this country that religion, with its emphasis on the rights and freedoms of the individual under God, is the very core of our democratic system and that it is also the greatest bulwark against atheistic communism. Unhappily … organized religion had practically no influence on the mass of the people as opposed to the aristocracy. Admittedly, said Secretary Dulles, he did not know what we could do about correcting this very grave situation, but it was certainly at the heart of our problem in Latin America.“

I doubt anyone can imagine a member of today’s National Security Council, or any major college faculty lounge or school board, expressing thoughts remotely similar to those of Secretary Dulles. Even back in the 50s it was becoming somewhat rare albeit not surprising.

And that, in my opinion, helps explain the hatred.

The United States has long been identified with Christianity. Such identification is offensive, even to many Christians today. It may have been abused by some, but it cannot be honestly denied. From Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century and his marvel at the faithful church attendance of Americans and their reliance on their faith, themselves, and volunteer organizations, as opposed to reliance on the State, to an executive from Argentina, whom I had the privilege of entertaining when he visited Texas in the mid 90s, and hearing him express wonderment at seeing “so many churches! Practically one on every corner!”, the Christian influence on the United States is undeniable.

This is not to say that such Christianity has been watered down if not fully apostatized, but it is to say that our history has been greatly impacted by such, and such influence is readily discernible should one decide to look at primary sources — Mayflower Compact, Bradford’s journal, the constitutions of the 13 colonies, sermons from America’s founding era, letters and speeches by America’s founders, missionary activity, and more.

The maniacal, bitter hatred that Communism has against Christianity is real. This is blatantly reflected in The Communist Manifesto which frontally, unabashedly, and bitterly attacks the Christian faith: “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.“

And so, Douglas Bravo infiltrated the Venezuelan armed forces with Communists (others did the same with the universities) but ordered them to never mention Communism, only “nationalism and hatred of the yanquis“. The hatred of the yanquis was said to be because of their imperialism, but upon closer examination it was a proxy for Christianity.

(The identification of the United States with Christianity does not at all mean that my position is that America is a “Christian nation” or that we are the chosen people. Those are straw men about which too much ink has been needlessly spilled while we continue down our road of denying our history and embracing those who genuinely hate us and mean us ill.)

The rise of Chávez was not an overnight thing. Other Communist infiltrators in key positions enabled him to be promoted despite pedestrian academic achievements and even betrayals resulting in deaths of Venezuelan soldiers. The rise was long term, methodical, and successful.

We will be writing more about this.

A first edition of Tocqueville’s *Democracy In America* (published 1835 and 1840)

Chavez in grade school, military academy, and as a paratrooper in 1992, year of his failed military coup attempt

Douglas Bravo (center) with Venezuelan guerillas, circa 1960. Bravo’s dates are 1932 – 2021. We will be saying more of him in due course.

First edition of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in German in 1848

El Pao Society and Class Struggle

March 11, 2021March 11, 2021 Richard Barnes

“It began to dawn upon me uneasily that perhaps the right way to judge a movement was by the persons who made it up rather than by its rationalistic perfection and by the promises it held out. Perhaps, after all, the proof of social schemes was meant to be a posteriori rather than a priori. it would be a poor trade to give up a non-rational world in which you liked everybody, for a rational one in which you liked nobody.” — Richard Weaver, “Up From Liberalism” (1958)

“We must address broader issues, social boredom, wants, the mind, the heart — nothing to do with politics, or very little so.” — Russell Kirk

“The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.” — C. S. Lewis

“And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.” — I Kings 4:25

Earlier this year, I was asked whether social gears ground with difficulty living in El Pao, considering the differences between the Anglo and Spanish Americans not only in culture but, in some cases, also in class. The question forced me to pause and think back on my childhood in El Pao.

Upon reflection, and not meaning to be a Pollyanna about this, I must say that, in El Pao, I lived among the type of people I would ally myself with in the quest for the good life, that life of finding and pursuing your calling with all your might knowing that you will have the support, the criticism, and the encouragement you need to realize that life.

For those readers who grew up in small town America, I believe your experiences were most likely very similar to mine and to those of my childhood friends, especially early childhood.

Long before the television show, Cheers, gave us the refrain, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”, I knew this to be the case, not in a bar, but in El Pao. We could name every person, not only in our school, but in every house. We could not get away with dialing the telephone and hanging up unless we did this only once or at most twice. Beyond that, you were very likely to be caught. Doors were left unlocked, your teachers knew not only your parents but every sibling and cousin, and upon your return from a long vacation or from an even longer absence for school, everyone knew all about where you were and how you had been doing.

No one expressed concerns when you and your buddies, rifle in hand, explored the surrounding jungles, unless you stumbled upon the secret dynamite depository, which we did on one occasion. However, once the national guard ascertained who we were, they let us go with a mild admonition, but not before they requested us to demonstrate our shooting skills (which duly impressed them, I might add).

Our friends included Venezuelans, Americans, Chileans, Cubans, English, German, Spanish, and Russian. From all “classes.” This was in addition to relatives, friends, and acquaintances outside the camp, who lived in San Félix, Puerto Ordaz, and Ciudad Bolivar, along the Orinoco, Puerto de la Cruz on the northern coast, Caracas, and more.

I do not recall hearing the social gears grind, let alone bumping into them, until well into my adolescence.

Those gears ground so smoothly for all those years because we, in a very real sense, lived in a classless society.

I do not mean there were no distinctions, for that will simply never be. We had distinctions, whether fathers, mothers, and children, or priests, pastors, and laity, or teachers and students, or bosses and subordinates, or general managers and miners, or heads of households and gardeners. Distinctions abounded all around us. We respected them; we gave honor to whom honor was due. But, paradoxically, we didn’t notice, let alone dwell upon them. And skin color did not even come into our thinking.

Recently, many years later, I’ve come into contact with childhood friends who, invariably, tell me that El Pao was a paradise to them. I can relate.

Why was all that collaborative, dare I say, loving, spirit buried under class and race warfare? Like Steve McQueen asks at the end of The Sand Pebbles, “What happened? What the [expletive] happened?”

Well, the man whose most famous publication, The Communist Manifesto, that strident, profane booklet, which, in my opinion, everyone should read, alongside the Bible (that way you know what both sides are thinking) is part of what happened. The Manifesto states, “The Communists … openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Marx made it very clear that progress can only come by means of violence. For that to happen, the home and church must be destroyed. So, it calls the home a brothel, wives and mothers, whores, religion, an opiate, and more. UNESCO registered that insufferable screed to its “Memory of the World Programme”. Why am I not surprised?

The idea of class struggle was not new or original with Marx; what was unique was his re-writing of all of human history with class warfare at the center. The concepts in the Manifesto, published in February 1848, were reinforced with the publication, in 1859, of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

One would think that, with all the contemporary concern with racism, we would hear much more about Darwin’s contribution on “Favoured Races”. One would think so in vain.

As Engels said in his eulogy to Marx in 1883: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.” And each made organic nature and human history something ugly.

If you would like to see a contrast between pre and post-Darwinian/Marxist thinking, set aside some evenings to watch the BBC’s The Blue Planet. It is a strikingly beautiful production marred by its constant, almost unbearable allusions to death and sex time and time again. I watched every episode, but as each episode screened, something about it increasingly darkened the beauty that it supposedly intended to convey.

In contrast we have Gilbert White’s publication, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, published in 1789 and never out of print. This parish parson, Gilbert White, spent his entire life in Selborne parish serving his flock and observing and drawing the different plants and animals and natural history of his region. It is an achingly and evocatively beautiful record reflecting the harmony of creation and how everything in nature “fits” perfectly, a reflection of nature’s God.

Both the BBC and White observed the same creation, the same nature. But one saw only blood and sex in the struggle for food and species preservation; the other saw harmony and beauty, reflecting the glory of the Creator.

I would say that my early childhood in El Pao was more akin to White’s Selborne, whereas my later adolescence, for a shorter period of time, saw more of Marx’s Manifesto, although not exclusively. I believe that anyone with a sense of beauty and love and harmony would prefer the former. And, notice, there was no politics in the former. Or very little so.

“Everything was politics. Too much politics. That’s no way to live.” — Mr. Tuohy, my parents’ friend, who later became my friend also, speaking to me about Chile after Allende’s ascent.

“The trouble with Socialism is that it takes too many evenings” — Sounds like Yogi Berra, but is attributed to Oscar Wilde