Why They Became True Believers:

...These factors, and the pattern of defection itself in its various phases, are well described and illustrated...

...The failure of Communism is understood by those who have most profoundly experienced it as the collapse of "the god that failed...

...The data presented in this book show clearly that this process is actually a confused and contradictory one...

...each of us is deprived and alienated, insecure and defensively aggressive, by virtue of his being a human being in history...

...The Italian party, with a large, newly-recruited membership, seems furthest from the "true" Communist model...

...Here, in addition to the depth interviews with the 221 respondents, the author employs psychoanalytic material dealing with 35 cases made available by 22 analysts in various parts of the country...

...The patterns of susceptibility that grow out of these interests are considerably affected by the differentiating factors already mentioned...

...I do not refer to obvious methodological shortcomings...

...I mean something more fundamental...

...The book is basically a study of 221 ex-Communists??64 Americans, 50 Britishers, 56 Frenchmen and 51 Italians...

...The real trouble with this part of the book, however, is that the author's ideological biases and shortcomings operate to confuse his categories and distort his findings in a serious way...

...Communism knows how to relate this faith to the ambitions, interests and ideals of men so as to win their total allegiance and incorporate them into its vast machinery of subversion...

...Man's ambiguous position in the world??in nature, yet transcending it by virtue of his freedom and self-awareness??engenders strains, tensions and anxieties that manifest themselves on all levels of actual life, in every variety of situational and neurotic complex...

...The first of these categories is "convert or return to religion...

...In this case, it helps point up the important fact that "a person who has simply assimilated the pattern of political action represented in the American Daily Worker has no conception whatever of what the Communist movement really is...

...Again, it seems to me that it is ideological bias that is responsible for this lack of insight...

...Reviewed by Will Herberg Author of "Judaism and Modern Man...

...The presentation of the case material in statistical summary with extensive commentary is preceded by a section which aims to provide a systematic view of what the author calls the esoteric and exoteric "models" of the party??how the party pictures itself to itself and how it pictures itself to the outside world ??and by another describing how the party is perceived and experienced by people who have been through it...

...The fourth part of the book deals with the process of defection...

...Again, there are differences among the four parties and among the respondents according to social class, period of joining, and party rank achieved...

...Some of us believe that only a revitalization of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, in its relevance to the historical life of man, can meet our need in this hour of crisis...

...For, in the last analysis, the appeal of Communism is a religious appeal...

...There are those who want to turn democracy into a religion as our answer to the demonic religion of Communism...

...His findings enable him to approach the central problem of the book: the "appeals of Communism...

...only in France did as many as a third have any exposure to the party's esoteric goals at the time of joining, although everywhere "early joiners" (those who joined before 1935, before the Popular Front and the "Stalinization" of the parties) and those who managed to reach high rank in the party apparently possessed a clearer picture of Communist reality than the "late joiners" and those who remained in the lower echelons...

...Once inside the parly, members are indoctrinated in various ways so that they will assimilate the esoteric image of the party and thus become full-fledged Communists...

...Sociological methods, however ingenious, can go so far and no further...

...A special chapter is devoted to "Types of Neurotic Susceptibility...

...in the end, sociology is forced to ask questions it is no longer able to answer...

...We are all "strangers and afraid, in a world we never made...

...middle-class members more than working-class...

...The analysis is detailed, with constant references not only to the group as a whole but to the significant differences that emerge when the defectors are classified according to nationality, social class, party rank, and period of joining...

...For, unless Communism is understood in its religious dimension, no real understanding of its appeal is possible...

...In short, what Communism offers its devotees is its own perverse vision of the absolute...

...It does not always succeed, of course, as the evidence in this book abundantly proves...

...The rupture, it appears, may take place because of "career-related" dissatisfactions, because of pressures on personality and personal relations, because of other group loyalties felt to be endangered, or because of a conflict of moral standards...

...On the military, economic and political levels, we have our answer to Communism...

...The present volume, based on a series of research monographs by Dr...

...he does not even direct us to it to the degree that social science could and should...

...Until recently, the social scientist, himself only too often deceived by appearances, could offer no real help...

...The British and American parties, though differing between themselves, seem to fall into the "middle range, the level at which the esoteric model is emotionally registered, though not explicitly perceived...

...In the past decade, however, spurred by the urgencies of the cold war, scholars have accumulated an impressive body of material in terms of which the problem can be realistically approached and dealt with...

...or "ideological" (social or political "causes...

...The picture that emerges is significant, though by no means startlingly new...

...Be that as it may, the question is one that cannot be evaded...

...In our own country, scores of young men and women, with promising careers before them, abandon the best the world has to offer in order to enter a factory as party agents to promote party purposes...

...The "policy" recommendations are trivial and little more than a parade of "liberal" cliches, particularly surprising in view of the author's sophistication as to the nature and goals of Communism...

...It is against this background that the social and psychological characteristics of party members are examined and the process of defection in its various aspects is studied...

...Then he demands in uncomprehending bewilderment: What is the secret of their appeal that they can bewitch and entrap so many who ought to know better...

...Neurotic hostility, isolation and self-rejection appear to be particularly prominent, as both the statistical material and the summarized case histories indicate...

...Seven categories, along with "other" and "unknown," are given...

...contributor to "Commentary," "Commonweal" THE APPEAL of Communism is one of the most perplexing problems of our time...

...But it is unfortunately very difficult to evaluate these findings, not only because the cases are so few but because we have no information as to neurotic patterns among the population at large to use for comparison...

...Each of us needs something ultimate to live by and to live for...

...He acknowledges that "in a crisis the church can be a most effective mobilizer of non-Communist and anti-Communist feeling," but he is here thinking of the church as a quasi-political institution, not of the ultimate religious problem of existence...

...Communism understands this problem well, for what it offers its devotees is a cause and a commitment, a promise of fulfilment, a "corpus mysticum" in which they can find "a larger identity and even a sense of immortality" (the words are Dr...

...the second is "extreme right," the third "conservative," the fourth "moderate left," the fifth "extreme left," the sixth "trade-union activity," the seventh "indifferent...

...But on the ultimate level, the religious level, what have we to say...

...Yet, it is on this level that we must meet the challenge of Communism, or we will, in the end, not be able to meet it at all...

...Throughout the book, there are comments and suggestions that point to this dimension of the problem, but there is no direct facing of it...

...every human being is to some degree neurotic, and in every neurotic case "normal" situational elements play their part??fusing and combining in the most unexpected ways...

...it is merely an indication of its inherent limits...

...Almond's...

...The sections on readjustment, together with the final chapter on "Conclusions and Implications," constitute the weakest part of the book and highlight the major weakness of the whole...

...In the United States and Britain, Dr...

...the French, in a way, closest...

...Apparently, to Dr...

...Dr.Almond himself recognizes that his data "fail to fulfil the canons of scientific method" and cannot sustain all the conclusions erected upon them...

...Almond not only does not help us answer this question, as of course it was not in the scope of his inquiry to do...

...Almond and his collaborators do not see this, or see it only sporadically and dimly...

...But what he does not see, which is even more important, is that beyond the situational and the neurotic, and in a sense underlying them, there is the existential, reflecting needs and pressures emerging out of the very conditions of human existence...

...in France and Italy, however, it takes on the proportions of a subculture...

...Each of us needs some comfort beyond the self in which to establish the meaning of his existence, from which to draw the spiritual resources to enable him to meet the disintegrative pressures of life...

...British and American Communists reveal a considerably higher incidence of neurotic susceptibility than do French or Italian...

...That these two types cannot be so simply discriminated Dr...

...This is the problem of human existence on the religious level...

...By and large, those who joined did so on other grounds than understanding and approval of what Communism really is according to its own inner representation...

...with many party members remaining fixated at various incomplete stages of assimilation...

...rank-and-file members and low-echelon functionaries more than those in the higher echelons...

...Here is a Moscow-directed world conspiracy, utterly ruthless and cynical, obviously intent upon nothing but gaining power and establishing a total dictatorship over men's bodies, minds and spirits, which nevertheless is able to win the undivided allegiance of dedicated people ready to offer up the whole of their lives on the altar of the party...

...In the case of the present study, the author's ideological blind-spot adds confusion to these limitations of method and prevents him from even approaching Communism on the religious level...

...There is also a certain inadequacy of method...

...This is no argument against sociological investigation...

...Almond further suggests, "Communism may be viewed as a [cultural] aberration...

...The ordinary American simply cannot imagine people doing such things, and so, when he is not deluded into taking Communism on its own pretenses as merely a "left-wing" reform movement, he is generally inclined to dismiss the whole matter as an unintelligible and alien aberration??until he finds his own son or daughter unaccountably involved...

...Almond fails to see...

...But to do that would be to destroy democracy by totalitarianizing it...

...Types of dissatisfaction are analyzed and the problems of readjustment sympathetically examined...

...You can't," G. L. Arnold pointed out in The New Leader of November 8, "fight something with nothing...

...they are mutually exclusive, so that together they add up to 100 per cent...

...Moreover, the author repeatedly groups "religion"as a kind of super-"extreme right," with "extreme right" and "conservative" in contrast to what he calls "moderate left," which he approves...

...An English gentleman, high in the Foreign Office, repudiates his heritage and betrays his trust to serve the Kremlin...

...A Greek peasant guerrilla, though denounced by his comrades as a "deviator," goes to his death shouting, "Long live the Communist party...

...Perhaps the most shocking example??there are others??is to be found in the discussion of the defectors' "political attitude" after breaking with the party...

...This not only flies in the face of the most obvious facts of political life??most English Catholics are supporters of the Labor party...

...Almond's collaborators, Herbert E. Krugman, Elsbeth Lewin and Howard Wriggins, is probably the most useful and comprehensive of these works...

...Almond recognizes two types of susceptibility to Communism??the situational, or normal, and the neurotic...

...Non-neurotic susceptibility may be rooted in interests that are self-oriented (career, desire for "intellectual clarity," need to overcome "situational lonesomeness"), group-oriented (hope of promoting the purposes of groups with which one is identified, such as trade unions, ethnic minorities, etc...

...This, I think, is the most serious shortcoming of a work that otherwise constitutes a study of considerable distinction...

...Although this is obvious, the detailed elaboration of the obvious is not always useless or uninteresting...

...the French MRP is anything but right-wing...

...it can never be made into a religious absolute and yet remain democracy...

...the social position of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, of the Jesuit journal America, and of the outstanding Protestant and Jewish religious leaders in the United States is at least "moderate left"??but it also reveals an insensitivity to the meaning of religion in human life so gross that in itself it would be sufficient to prevent one from achieving a real understanding of Communism and its "religious" appeal...

...Its dynamic is a religious dynamic, the dynamic of an integral, all-absorbing faith??a demonic, destructive and idolatrous faith, it is true, but a faith nonetheless...

...Susceptibility to Communism, he suggests, is influenced by many factors, but is basically either situational or neurotic??that is, it is either a "normal" response to a particular external situation, or else it is a neurotic response to unconscious inner needs and pressures...

...The purpose is to ascertain how these people came to Communism, what they found in it to attract and repel them, and why and how they finally broke...

...The whole is supplemented by a final chapter on "Conclusions and Implications...

...Dr...

...The vast majority of the cases described in this book were in that position when they joined the party...

...But even where it fails the failure is instructive, for it is, at bottom, a religious failure and has profound religious implications...

...We are shown how the image of the Communist and the Communist movement in the pages of the Daily Worker differs markedly from that which one derives from a reading of the Communist classics: The exoteric image in the Daily Worker naturally suppresses those aspects of the esoteric ideal which would repel the non-Communist and emphasizes those that would appeal to him in his particular situation...

...His data would appear to bear out this important conclusion...

...Almond and his colleagues religion is a special kind of political attitude, so that one who "converts or returns to religion" is to be defined politically that way and cannot therefore be placed in any other political category...

...It is to answer these questions that Dr...

...Why did they join and what happened to them after they became party members...

...Here, too, the pattern shows significant differences according to nationality, social class and party rank...

...Almond undertakes his extensive analysis of the social and political background of the 221 former Communists...