Crusading against Moscow
CRUSADING AGAINST MOSCOW TN A sense the borderland which separates Bolshevist -*¦ Russia from other countries has narrowed down as if through some curious process of erosion. The attitude now...
...We come back again to the Catholic analysis of the Bolshevist method and system...
...It requires complete liquidation of the 'God-idea' whether expressed by Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism or, in short, by any form of belief which admits the existence of a Supreme Being...
...As such it is dangerous not primarily because of its negative aspects (expropriation of property, wholesale executions and so forth) but because of its constructive purposes— the generation of revolutionary current and the application of nihilistic theory...
...Now recognizing the Soviet system virtually means financial underwriting of the Soviet system...
...The French, who banked their money on the czar's ability to fight the Germans to a finish, were not merely mistaken...
...The attitude now prevailing in important circles is astonishingly different from the point of view generally sponsored by public opinion ten years ago...
...and that (3) the point which matters to a nation like the United States —which is proof against Communism—is, after all, simply the query, how can horse sense be applied to our business relations with the U.S.S.R...
...A Catholic journalist can only say as much again and again, in the interests of his country and of mankind...
...Yet short-sighted indifference to the more spiritual aspects of a given situation is dangerous even from a political and commercial point of view...
...One concludes, therefore, that Bolshevist Communism is what it professes to be—a revolutionary movement which seeks to wrest control from the ruling classes by appealing to the proletariat, not because this last has essentially anything to gain but simply because it has nothing to lose...
...And it would be expedient to do business with Russia if—if the three beliefs outlined earlier in these remarks are sound...
...If words mean anything, the Bolsheviki have gone on record as earnest students of Karl Marx and Georges Sorel who intend to make the world safe for Communism...
...The hold of the bourgeoisie can be broken only by ruthless violence...
...it is also the life of the family and the individual which succumbs...
...One way out of our quandary would accordingly be not to take it seriously...
...that (2) it is at all events the theory of a stable government, which has now rooted itself so deeply that waiting for something else to take its place is futile...
...Here were gathered publicists of many countries for whom the Holy Father's plea of February 2 was no idle matter...
...It means pumping into the stiff corpus of a repressive dictatorship the economic lifeblood which may guarantee its vitality indefinitely...
...which hopes to organize the proletariat into an army behind which the new form of government will be safe and settled...
...These things are too important to be ignored for the sake of a monetary advantage of, perhaps, the most temporary character...
...This is based upon purely religious values and interests...
...The Soviet constitution, abolishing nationality and the modern concept of the state, provides for the extension of its political jurisdiction over all lands and peoples...
...One ventures to suggest that the source of the change is this: having grown steadily more conscious of "international economic solidarity"—the manifest if utterly mysterious fact that currents of life-giving trade can seep through even the stoutest national barriers—we also realize that Russia's isolation is of the most momentous importance...
...Modern sociologists, baffled by the needs and aspirations of masses of peoples nurtured by the industrial order, are whole-hog believers in expediency...
...Unfortunately Moscow is the seat of a revolutionary movement which, if taken seriously, threatens to undermine the world's social and economic structure...
...and which, realizing the psychological value of quasi-religious fervor, instils its own creed by persuasion where possible and by force where necessary...
...Industry can believe, if it tries a little, that (i) Sovietism is not so bad as it has been painted, and that some of its more cultural activities (for instance, the war upon religion) can be explained on grounds of political expediency...
...and the offense at which criticism is directed is the suppression of freedom of conscience...
...For, after all, sound reconstruction of a world order in which life will be decently possible for great populations does depend upon other things besides money and resources...
...and granted the new orientation which has been one result of the war, opportunities ought to be still more favorable...
...Now obviously all three attitudes are plausible, and the economic stake is large...
...Times, moreover, have changed...
...They also lost their money...
...And as it is not permissible to separate the religious from the political and economic content of Communism, which must be accepted as an indivisible system, consequently the anti-religious program, considered as a prime tenet of Communism, has been executed consistently within Russia since the revolution as a prelude to its imposition on the entire non-Communist world...
...Father Walsh declares: "Communism, which is the controlling political philosophy of the present Soviet government, demands the abolition of all religious belief and practice in every territory wherein it obtains the mastery...
...The gain of government power by the proletariat is by no means a peaceful 'conquest' of the existing bourgeois government through parliamentary majorities...
...The conquest of power by the proletariat consists in an actual annihilation of the existing capitalistic state machine—the army, the police, the bureaucracy, the courts, parliaments, etc.— and putting in their place new organs of proletarian powers, intended in the first place to serve as tools to suppress the exploiters...
...This is the point of view adopted by the Catholic journalists of Brussels and it is likewise our own...
...This read in part as follows: "The Communists consider it unnecessary to disguise their views and purposes...
...They openly declare that their aims can be accomplished only through an overthrow by force of the whole existing social order...
...And surely there is enough evidence to convince even the stubborn that thought and desire, as manipulated by the Russian Communist intelligentsia, bear calamitous fruit...
...Can this Catholic attitude be in any way reconciled with the industrial considerations now widely advanced and tending, if one is not mistaken, to effect recognition of the Soviet government by the United States...
...It would be futile to expect that the Catholic position, expounded only half-heartedly at best, should be politically efficacious...
...But in case they are not sound...
...It is the way people think and the trend of people's desires which must ultimately determine the future...
...The sacredness of this stand has been emphasized since by all individuals and groups competent to speak for Moscow...
...Here is a vast country and great population which urgently needs to change its vast resources in raw materials for manufactured products...
...It is not merely the institution...
...Nevertheless if it is a correct analysis, recognition of the Moscow government by the United States would be a disaster...
...Business and financial leaders are, therefore, more and more certain that Russia simply must be brought back into normal commerce with other countries...
...Notice, for instance, how entirely different the outlook becomes if one adopts the point of view which dominated the International Congress of the Catholic Press, recently convened in Brussels...
...His argument ran something like this: Sovietism is an international movement, the essential purposes and methods of which were summarized in the program adopted at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International (Moscow, 1928...
...The issue at stake is the apostolate of Christendom...
...If it got no farther along the route of development than it had come under the czars, it would offer a potential market of incredible dimensions...
...This cannot be done, however, as long as religion, "the opium of the people," continues to be influential...
...Among the addresses to which they listened was one by Father Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., summarizing a great deal of the evidence upon which the papal statement had been based...
...The older American ideals, among which freedom and respect for Christianity were prominent, have largely retired from the foreground in favor of "sane economic engineering...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 22
