OHNE MICH'
Mayer, Milton
'Ohne Mich' By MILTON MAYER THERE IS something right about Communism. There is something terribly right about it, in spite of its terrible wrongs. There is something so terribly right about it,...
...It is the sixth home I have had, each of them smaller than the one before...
...It does not mean—Prof...
...Is it liberty that Tommy Manville needs, or the Stock Exchange needs, or you need, or 1? I think not...
...Reduce taxes, rents, interest...
...Nobody wants in his heart to stop Communism because men need to live for one another, and when the Communists say, whether or not they mean it, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," they are saying, whether or not they mean it, that they want to establish a Christian society everywhere...
...Lutzspiel Schimmelhimmel to the contrary notwithstanding—"without me...
...He sows tares, which so closely resemble the wheat that it is not until the time of the harvest that the one can be distinguished from the other...
...Ohne Mich" may be translated freely as "uh-uh," "some other time, perhaps," or "thanks just the same," but for a literal translation we must' turn to the classics, in this case the...
...What about' the people who have never known any liberty, but only all kinds of oppression, and who, therefore, value security and interdependence as highly as we value liberty and independence...
...Their slogan is the slogan of love, and ours is "Liberty," which, translated into life, means every man for himself...
...Do not misunderstand me...
...Because they—my friends—have something to say, and they would not be allowed to say it under Communism, they think that Communism is the worst of evils...
...Not Satan...
...But what about the three-fourths— nay, the nine-tenths—of the people of the world who have nothing to say but "Bread," and, maybe wheat they have had a slice of bread, "Land," and "Peace...
...all want to get out of Korea, where, by way of doing something about Communism, they are shooting Gooks whose idea of Communism is something to eat for a change...
...We are saying that we are a Christian society, but nobody believes us because our slogans are as un-Christian as our practices...
...And the very worst would be a perversion of the very best...
...Besides, capitalism, even if it were a good form of anything, which it is not, is a form of economy, and we are talking about forms of government...
...No bars of caste or religion . . . Honest, frugal, industrious, cheerful, independent, tolerant, friendly, courteous...
...The state literally bursts with freedom," says Socrates, "and the Communists," says Lenin, "will pick up the power as it lies in the streets...
...Many Americans, some of my friends among them, are transfixed by the fact of Communist terror...
...and recent reduction of taxation to benefit the peasants...
...downward leveling of essential commodity prices...
...And, O my capitalistic countrymen, if you will but turn to the fifth chapter of The Acts of the Apostles, which is Holy Writ, you will read there what became of Ananias and his wife Sapphira—the first Christians who tried to practice a little capitalism on the side...
...It is very nice, too, when you consider how much less than this so many have, but you will forgive me if I say that I do not care any more about government...
...Patrick Henry and Thoreau are wrong, and Jefferson is misunderstood...
...So we are not persuasive abroad, and we are not even entirely persuaded at home...
...Communist program...
...Communism is the worst form of government we know...
...Communism, wrong as Communism is...
...We must remind ourselves here of the meaning of "perversion...
...Nothing can stop Communism because nobody wants to stop it, and nobody wants to because Communism is a perversion of Christianity and everybody wants to be a Christian...
...Liberty," you say...
...Practice what they preach...
...IV Liberty, unrestrained, irresponsible liberty, the liberty to cheat, to steal, to exploit, and to deprive one's fellow-men of both their rights and their needs, is the toboggan to tyranny...
...Terror...
...And the present Marines, according to newspapers like the Chicago Daily News...
...And K. Marx's theory of labor value—with all its flaws—is closer to the government of Christ's congregation than J. P. Morgan's is...
...If liberty was what a man needed, he would not lay down his life for his friend...
...This is the fifty billion dollar question, and to this question, as to all the others, Socrates has the first half of the answer and Holy Writ the second...
...There is nothing wronger, now that Nazism is in temporary retirement, than Communism...
...In the Biblical parable of the tares, the Son of Man has sown the wheat and Satan decides to do a little sowing himself...
...But what is the best form of government, which Communism resembles and counterfeits...
...It is not a departure from the true, but a "turning inside out" of the true...
...Hoarding, black market, trading with enemy...
...Communism must be a perversion of the best form of government...
...And for them it is...
...Douglas Steere, "you pass through the Pofz-dammer Platz in Berlin, where the sectors come together, and see on the Western side an electric newspaper that can be read from the East sector side and that carries propaganda against their regime, and then see the powerful searchlights on the Eastern side which are so flashed on the moving words that one cannot read it after all, and see the big banners with peace invitations and Ami Go Home, and see the East Zone paper peace-doves that are floated out of the upper windows of a large East Zone department store so that they will float across to the West side of the street, you feel the hopelessness of Germany recovering her soul when she is whipped and flagellated into contrary positions by two great world powers who are lobbying for her support...
...This, O my democratic countrymen, is the best form of government, and the worst is the perversion of it which we see in Russian Communism...
...If liberty was what Aeneas needed, he would not have carried his aged father away on his shoulders when Troy was burning...
...Ten years ago Gen...
...They need restraint and responsibility...
...The worst is a perversion of the best...
...Or, if you don't like Protestant vicars, I give you Pius XII: "If we would explain the blind acceptance of Communism by so many thousands of workmen, we must remember that the way had already been prepared for it by the religious and moral destitution in which wage-earners had been left by liberal economics...
...Jeremiah quotes Satan, whose purpose, according to Paul, was to pervert the Gospel of Christ, as saying: "I will be like the most High...
...intellectual starvation of the people...
...Corruption, Neglect, chaos, economy, taxes, words and deeds...
...Liberty is over-sold...
...virtual elimination of official corruption...
...He wrote, in a hasty note: "[I have] faith in Chinese soldiers and Chinese people: fundamentally great, democratic, misgoverned...
...We neither have nor give security...
...What...
...Vinegar Joe Stilwell, who knew China better than any American statesman then or since, predicted that Communism would supplant the U. S.-supported regime of Chiang K'ai-shek...
...But this is impossible, because liberty, like capitalism, which claims it for its own, has no likeness to Communism, and, therefore, Communism is not a perversion of liberty, which, therefore, is not the best...
...His articles have appeared in Commonweal, Harper's, Fellowship, Negro Digest, and Life...
...Does he sow thorns or thistles...
...The body is present and accounted for, but the soul is absent without leave...
...Samuel Goldwyn: "Include me out...
...Participate in government...
...Ohne Mich" is the new slogan of the Germans, whose slogan, during the Thousand-Year Reich of Adolf Hitler, used to be, "Deutsch-land erwache," and, before that, "Deutschland uber Alles...
...It means a likeness, an imitation, a counterfeit...
...Apparently the phrase "words and deeds" is to be understood alongside the phrase "practice what they preach...
...Nobody outside its orbit likes it, but nobody is fighting mad enough to do anything about it, such as join the Marines...
...VI A correspondent for Reuters, the British press service, reported on his return after three months as the only non-Communist correspondent in Peiping: "The majority of Chinese outside the Communist Party appear to consider the new regime as a mixed blessing...
...But this is impossible, because capitalism sets each man against every other, while the Communism we see in Russia sets one against all...
...We practice better than we preach and better than the Russian Communists practice—but what we preach is no good, and what we practice is not good enough to inspire either the Chinese or, in the end, ourselves...
...the land reform program...
...Men, by their nature, need liberty governed by self-restraint and self-shouldered responsibility, and the reason for this is that men by their nature need one another, and the reason for this is that men by their nature need to love and be loved, and this, O my liberty-loving countrymen, is why the best form of government, of which Russian Communism is the perversion, is Communism...
...Neither we nor the Communists are Christians—they, understandably, less so even than we—but they have a rhetorical bulge on us...
...And that is why nothing can stop MILTON MAYER, a regular contributor to The Progressive, lectures throughout the country lor the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Jewish Peace Foundation, and the Great Books Foundation...
...I found," says the Vicar of Wakefield, "that riches in general were in every country another name for freedom...
...But this is impossible, if Socrates is right, because democracy is, if it is anything in particular, rule by many, and the Communism we see in Russia is rule by one...
...They would be the best and worst of all forms of government because they would both be unified and, therefore, the most effective of all forms of government in achieving their good and bad ends respectively...
...What tyrant is more terrible than hunger, cold, and malnutrition...
...Robespierre wanted liberty, too...
...Is liberty not the best form of government...
...As the very best form of government would be absolute rule by One who was absolutely good, so the very worst would be absolute rule by one who was absolutely bad...
...Every enormity ever committed is committed in the name of liberty, and to define liberty, which is no government at all, as the absence of restraint or responsibility is to justify the cannibalism of the corner grocer or the steel monopoly...
...and control of thought and speech calculated to 'poison' —the quotation marks are the correspondent's—"the minds of youth...
...We are the descendants of Ananias and Sapphira, who pretended to be Christians and kept back part of the price—free enterprisers making a fair profit—while the Communists, who call themselves godless and behave godlessly, have taken for their world revolutionary slogan the doctrine of Christ's apostles and the government of Christ's congregation...
...There is something so terribly right about Communism, in spite of its terrible wrongs, that nowhere in the world is anybody, outside the governments and the press (always including the radio) heard saying, "Let me at it...
...We are not even saying that we want to establish a Christian society everywhere or anywhere, not even in America...
...you say...
...Why doesn't anybody want to stop it...
...Eisenhower says, so plaintively, that all we need to win is the spirit of Valley Forge, he ought to add that the spirit of Valley Forge was the spirit of world revolution for the equality of all men everywhere and the rights of all, including the right to life, and to the staff of life, as well as the right to liberty...
...Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, "And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need...
...If Socrates was right—and when was he wrong...
...On the credit side of the Communist government they list: The apparent sincerity of purpose, verging on fanaticism of the new leaders...
...strict maintenance of law and order...
...Liberty is our dish...
...far from it...
...And yet Communism is wrong...
...There is no evidence that Russian Communism is Christian...
...The professed godless are on the right side of the world revolution, and the professed Godly are on the wrong side, and that is all that is wrong with both sides of the world revolution...
...strangulation of private enterprise and initiative...
...Yes," he said, "this is my home now...
...Three-fourths of the people of the world, never having had either security or liberty, will settle for security any old day, and so will three-quarters of those Americans who have lived out their lives in the dread of unemployment and uninsured illness...
...Capitalism," you say...
...On the debit side they place: conversion of China into a police state...
...The Devil would, as Paul wrote Timothy, "have a form of godliness" and thus "deceive the whole world...
...There is something so terribly right about it, in spite of its terrible wrongs, that nothing can stop it, least of all saying that its adherents "do not believe in ethics, morals, and right and have no idea of honor or truth...
...If liberty was what a man needed, he would not stay home nights, or catch the 8:17 every morning...
...and that no man is so fond of liberty himself, as not to be desirous of subjecting the will of some individuals in society to his own...
...Liberty is not the best form of government if the Communism we see in Russia is the worst, because Communism is not the perversion of liberty...
...When Gen...
...II Some foreign phrases are untranslatable, but "ohne Mich" is not one of them...
...These Norman Thomases, these William Henry Chamberlins, these Morris Rubins, these Milton Mayers, they say, "The terror of the police state is worse," but three-fourths of the people of the world have never known anything but the police state plus starvation...
...Democracy," you say...
...All that the Nazis wanted was liberty to overrun the world, and what more does Stalin want than liberty...
...The spirit of Valley Forge may not have been the spirit of Christian Communism, either, but we were closer to it at Valley Forge than we are in Korea, Formosa, Indo-China, Japan, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Puerto Rico, and everywhere else...
...It does not mean a difference or a deviation or a digression...
...With their whole souls they would embrace—and they do embrace—a police state which gives them a slice of bread for their children who are starving with them...
...It goes from mouth to mouth and from town to town, from East to West, and from West to East...
...still less that it is as Christian as American capitalism, nationalism, and racism, which are not Christian at all...
...Or do my ears deceive me...
...V And what are we saying...
...We must continue to remind ourselves, if we want to know why nobody wants to stop Communism, that "perversion" means likeness, and, by its likeness to the best, deceives the whole world...
...drastic dislocation of the Chinese family and social structure...
...Your ears do not deceive you...
...The author of that statement is a man whose devotion to ethics, morals, and right inspires him to kick a music critic in the crotch...
...When," says Prof...
...Raise production, and standard of living...
...Do not misunderstand - me, I implore you...
...III Bad government, says Socrates, is always a perversion of good government...
...classical expression of Dr...
...Nothing can stop Communism because nobody is fighting mad enough to want to stop it...
...Liberty is not the best form of government anyway, because it is no form of government at all...
...There is a current account of an actual interview with an Italian workman...
...Each of them was burned down in wars and revolutions, and my children were killed, and this is what I have now...
...I judge Kuomintang [Chiang's party and government] and Kung-chantang [the Communist Party] by what I saw: "[Kuomintang...
...Besides a modicum of liberty, men need other things, which inhibit liberty...
...Nobody knows how "ohne Mich" started, and nobody knows how to stop it...
...It was a one-room shack...
...This, O my Christian countrymen, is the form of government established by the only Christian society that ever existed...
...There is considerable evidence that the Russian Communists do not mean what they say, and there is even considerable evidence that we mean what we do not say...
...Let God judge between those craven millions who would and those half dozen heroes who wouldn't...
Vol. 15 • March 1951 • No. 3
