WASHINGTON REPORT: 1517 And All That

...Hoover and Heims--and Nixon, of course---probably have been the principal effects of Communism on America, at least in personal terms, but meanwhile Communism also exists out there in various places as a thing-in-itself, without relation to Hoover and Helms...

...Whichever of these two rather grotesque American political figures we accept as our focusing glass for Communism, the result is the same: we do not see Communism as a thing in itself, which it manifestly is, but only as a force creating some very curious effects on our own political scene...

...FRANK GETLEIN 30 September 1977:614...

...Because of the impossibility of reaching agreement on the new form of government to replace the powersharing Northern Ireland executive which collapsed in May, 1974, the British government has taken over direct rule of the province from Westminster...

...Like Hoover, Helms was forced by the dread Communists to commit burglary and murder against his fellow-Americans in order to save them, quite possibly to create the whole drug scene of the 1960s and at least to join it enthusiastically, to destroy, apparently beyond salvage, Commonweal: 613 the United States mail service to indulge his taste for reading other people's letters...

...If we are to believe John Ehrlichman--an act of faith not to be undertaken lightly --Helms may also be the only political operative able to out-slink Richard Nixon, extracting from that criminal the posh job of ambassador to Iran while at the same time allowing the criminal to crumble into the consequences of his crimes...

...The trouble with temporary solutions to apparently intractable problems is that no one wants to abandon them in case the alternative is even worse...

...Ideally, he is seeking a British statement of long-term intention to withdraw from Northern Ireland...

...Obviously, the whole movement is traumatic for Soviet Communism and its claims of primacy...

...President Carter's statement, which will certainly figure in the discussions, may provide the impetus which is needed for a new British move...

...Similarly, we, like Communists, regard Communism as an international movement, unified and either centrally directed or at least animated with the same, universal spirit of Marxism to such a degree as to amount to central direction...

...So temporary solutions---like the 1922 partition of Ireland--tend to become more and more permanent...

...WASHINGTON REPORT 1517 AND ALL THAT After a quick flurry of interest a few months ago, discussion, even casual conversation, about the phenomenon known as "Euro-Communism" has just vanished here...

...The principal "NATO secret," of course, is an extremely open one, namely that that organization, not entirely inappropriately, has become the last refuge of Nixonism, a gift from one Nixon today, Gerald Ford, to another, A1 Haig, the military Sammy Glick...

...Jim Callaghan...

...In one way that's not bad, since what discussion there had been was mostly on the level of Henry Kissinger's fears and forebodings about NATO and "NATO secrets" should a Communist politician get a cabinet seat in Italy or France...

...Yugoslavia is interesting in this context for quite a few departures from Kremlin orthodoxy...

...And a permanent situation of direct rule of Northern Ireland from Westminster could have only one long-term outcome: the complete integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, making it as much a part of the U.K...

...Communism in Eastern Europe was installed by and is maintained by Russian arms and only by Russian arms...

...It exists, in fact, as several things-in-themselves, of which Euro-Communism is the l~test and arguably, in the long run, the most important...

...In practice, of course, Communist governments have come into power not as post-capitalist but for the most part in pre-capitalist societies and not so much as an alternative to as a rather primitive form of capitalism...

...It is the fear that such a process of "creeping integration" may be setting in which has pushed Mr...

...While this satisfies no one, it appears to be the temporary solution which is least objectionable all round...

...But no one will take a bet on that...

...for one, Yugoslavs have consistently traveled more freely than citizens of any other Communist country, including thousands who went off to work in Germany and Scandinavia, a development unthinkable in Russia, or even East Germany, because if they were let ou, t they'd not come back...

...Lynch will undoubtedly press for a new British government initiative on Northern Ireland...

...Its emergence, if .that is what is now taking place, is comparable to the departure of the legions from Britain, the fall of Constantinople, the nailing of the 95 theses ,to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg...

...Since we are widely believed to have given up foreign policy by assassination, those agents are probably not in place, but it is surely time we began giving serious attention to the challenges and opportunities presented by the most critical moment in Communist history since the train left Zurich...

...It is not at all fanciful to compare this crisis in Communism with the t6th century crisis in Christianity, to see Dubeck, for example, in a role similar to that of his countryman, Jan Hus, a premature nee-Communist actually inside the Soviet empire instead of, like Tito and the French and Italian parties, outside...

...as the Home Counties or the Midlands...

...For another, some rather cumbersome but apparently genuine form of industrial democracy is in the works, so to speak, with the workers in factories not only participating in but actually making management decisions...

...The revelation of Communism as 20th century nationalism was something that went by us in the first, second and third instances and that a lot of us still haven't caught up with now the instances have doubled, almost tripled...

...On the other hand, when we haven't thought of Communism as chiefly an annoyance to Hoover, we thought of it as chiefly an opportunity for Richard "Killer" Helms and his gang of perpetual adolescents at the CIA to play schoolboy games all over the world and well into middle age and beyond...

...That very question of whether Communism should be international or national was the ideological heart of (or the transparent excuse for: choose one) the quarrel between Stalin and Trotsky, with Stalin winning as a Russian nationalist...

...Realistically, he will settle for a new bid to establish a power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland and some form of recognition of the Irish government's role...

...these activities forced Hoover to conduct what was apparently the most far-flung burglary operation in American history, to interfere with the American political process and in other ways .to trample on the Constitution in order to save it...

...And its promise of massive U.S...

...DESMOND FISHER (Desmond Fisher is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Ireland...

...Actually, in practice, capitalism itself is demonstrably more international in its present forms than Communism has ever been or is ever likely to be...

...Marxism fancies itself as a post-capitalist phase of human history, a delusion brought on by reading Marx, who was writing from the point of view of two highly vigorous capitalist states, Germany and Great Britain...

...investment which could dramatically reduce Northern Ireland's unemploymentmin July 1977, the figure was 68,893 or 13 percent---could be the bait which brings the jobless in both communities together in a new bid to end the economic hardship which is the lower part of the Northern Ireland iceberg...

...That one has a long way to go but the fact that it's started is a measure of the difference between what the Kremlin quite correctly used to denounce as "Titoism" and the Kremlin's own Communism as super-bureaucracy, derived, like so much in the Soviet Union at least as much from Czarism as from Marxism...

...Those first three, of course, were Yugoslavia, Albania and China, all of which became Communist states by force of native arms rather than Russian ones and all of which showed early and vigorous independence of, even hostility to, Moscow as the source from which all Marxist blessings flow...

...Jack Lynch, the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) into seeking an urgent meeting with his British counterpart, Mr...

...To understand that, however, first it is necessary to take Communism itself seriously, something it has always been difficult, if not impossible, for Americans to do...

...In Yugoslavia the country was actually geographically dismantled by the Nazis and fascists during World War H, would probably never have been put back together without the strongly unifying government Tito has provided: Communism as agent of nationalism...

...Euro-Communism is a logical continuation of Yugoslav Communism's experiments with freedom and democracy...

...Historically, we have regarded Communism in one or both of two ways: first, we have thought of it as something invented and practiced by a bunch of crazy foreigners to annoy J. Edgar Hoover by supporting the Bill of Rights, opposing lynching, assisting in union organizing and engaging in similar subversive activities...

...The enormous expansion of Communism into Eastern Europe was, of course, Russian nationalism continued by other means...

...One of the troubles we have in thinking about Communism as something more than the devil figure in the Punch-and-Judy show people like Hoover and Helms ran for so long, is a trouble we share with Communists themselves: we tend to take Communism on its own, i.e., Marxist, evaluation...

...They are due to meet at the end of September to discuss the Northern Ireland issue...

...Certainly, it cannot be ignored...

...On a more serious level, however, it is unfortunate that neither the citizens, the press, nor anyone much in government is thinking at all about Euro-Communism because sooner or later that phenomenon is going to be incalculably important to Europe, to the United States and in world history...

...If Kissinger were still Secretary of State and Helms still in command of his murderous Boy Scouts, there would presumably be CIA thugs on station in Paris and Rome waiting to solve the problem of Euro-Communism by knocking off the first Euro-Communists to attain national office...

...What Tito, Castro, Hoxha and Mao have brought into being in the Communist world is essentially the principle that finally brought religious peace to Europe: cuius regio, eius religio, the most profoundly nationalistic sentiment uttered 'till then in Christian Europe...