There is little worthy of note in Lenin's life before 1917. He was the son of a district school inspector in Simbirsk, one of six children. His father was a member of the minor nobility. When he was 16, his older brother Alexander was executed for taking part in a conspiracy against the Tsar. At this time, according to Lenin's later testimony, he "ceased to believe in God." In 1887, he entered Kazan University from which he was soon expelled for student disorders. He took his law degree at the University of St. Petersburg in 1891. In 1893 he once more returned to that city and joined an underground Social Democratic circle. A few years later, on a trip abroad, he met Plekhanov. Back in Russia, he was arrested in 1895 and sent to exile in Siberia. After the end of his punishment, he left Russia in 1900 and joined Plekhanov's group in Geneva.22

Together with the Marxian emigres around Plekhanov, who later became his most bitter enemy, Lenin, as co-editor of the Iskra (Spark) (1900-1903), fought all reformist or revisionist Russian socialists. . . .

From 1903 to 1917 Lenin appeared to be only a more or less isolated leader of a political sect which needed not to be taken too seriously. His demand for an armed uprising did not play an important role during the revolution of 1905–1906; the uprising in Moscow remained a local affair. Such men as Bogdanov, with whom he cooperated for a time, were soon repudiated; he explained all conflicts with his friends and followers in terms of their defection from true Marxism. Any interpretation of Marxism that differed from his was denounced with the utmost bitterness. In numerous conferences and congresses he continued his struggle with the Mensheviks, who formed various groups in opposition to him.

After 1903 Lenin openly established a group of his own, though it was not until 1912 that the Bolsheviks officially established a separate organization. However, the factions of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks claimed even afterwards that they belonged to one party. . .

After a brief stay in Russia during the Revolution of 1905 he lived abroad, but, although an emigre, he remained leader of the party. From Western Galicia, which at this time belonged to Austria, he determined the policies of the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma of 1912 and directed the editors of the Bolshevik party organ, Pravda. . . . After the outbreak of World War I Lenin moved into Switzerland. . . .

While in Switzerland Lenin participated in the Socialist international conferences at Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916). . . .

After he heard about the end of Tsarism, Lenin . . . succeeded, despite all the difficulties created by the Allies, in returning to Russia; .. The events after his return-the seizure of power by the followers of Lenin in the fall of 1917, their suppression of all other parties, and the

beginnings of dictatorial rule by Lenin and his colleagues—are treated in the appropriate sections of the present work. Lenin died in 1924, and control of the world Communist movement then passed into the hands of Stalin, whose present successor is Khrushchev.

The sharp division between Communists and social-democratic Marxists which had its roots in the debates of 1903 was perpetuated by the foundation of the Third International (Comintern) as a rival organization to the Second International which had survived the World War.

The Third International, founded in Moscow in 1919, aimed to prepare and organize revolution outside Russia by unifying the various proCommunist groups and directing the development of the various Communist parties. The Comintern imposed 21 points upon parties wishing to join; it kept authority in its own hands and excluded socialist leaders it regarded as untrustworthy.24

With the help of this international authority, Leninism and the leadership of the Soviet Union became the elements that unified the Communist movement all over the world. With all the complexity of political, personal, and organizational factors, communism henceforth constituted a unified whole in which Marxist-Leninist ideology, the power of Soviet Russia, the organization of the Communist Party, and the specific and typical attitudes and operations of Communists combine to constitute a movement with a single aggressive purpose. It is to the various aspects of this unified whole that the different volumes of Facts on Communism are devoted.

Volume I is meant to present a survey of the entire body of ideas that make up Communist ideology. A systematic presentation of this kind cannot be made except in the form of an interpretation of the Communist "classical" authorities. This interpretation of Communist doctrines also includes criticism of at least the fundamental ideas. The system and the interconnection of the various parts of Communist ideology have been analyzed and interpreted by Dr. Gerhart Niemeyer, and extensive quotations from Communist "scriptures" are provided to document the analysis.

A professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Niemeyer's competence in the field of Communist doctrine is attested by the fact that he teaches graduate courses on Communist ideology. Dr. Niemeyer was born in Germany but left that country on the advent of Hitler to power. Educated in England and Germany, he has taught in the United States at Princeton, Oglethorpe, Yale, and Columbia Universities. He has served as Planning Adviser in the Department of State, research analyst in the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the resident faculty of the National War College. He is co-editor of the Handbook on Communism, published in a German edition in 1958 and about to appear in its English edition.

THE COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY

Chapter I. The Communist View of History

Communist ideology was originally derived from a philosophy of history. And a view of history is still the very core of communism. What Marx took over from the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and made the center of his own ideology is not a set of mere observations about historical events, but a complete theory about how history moves, why it moves, and the direction in which it moves. Since history is the entire field of human activities, such a theory of history supplies an explanation of the meaning of all human efforts (the direction of history), instruction on what people should be doing next (the "laws" of historical development), and a yardstick by which the value of men and things should be judged (forward—good; backward—bad). It can be readily seen that a comprehensive theory of history like that offers guidance similar to that provided by religion, and thus can be used as a substitute for religion by people who no longer believe in God.

1. Classes and Class Struggle

The centerpiece of the Communist view of history is the doctrine which says that all societies above the primitive level are split into classes engaged in an unceasing and irreconcilable struggle: the doctrine of the class struggle. This is the concept that serves as a guiding criterion to all Communist thinking about society and politics. Communist ideology assumes that the basic reality of anything social is the class struggle. It thus explains in terms of the class struggle all salient events of history, the evils of human life, politics and the state, revolutions, ideas and religions, and many other phenomena. In presenting here the details of this doctrine, it will be pointed out that the doctrine consists of a characteristic mixture of scientific analysis, myth and prophesy, a mixture which enables it to impress men with the appeals of science along with those of religion.

Property as the basis of class struggle

If some men are able to wield oppressive power over others, Communists say, it is private property, and property alone, which enables them to do so. Property is what has brought about the division of society into classes. Property gives people exclusive control over things.

Those who have exclusive control of the means of economic production can use their ownership as power over their fellow beings who do not own means of production. Thus we have classes, and power, both explained in terms of property.

Classes as conscious agents in bistory

Marx analyzed society by distinguishing in it several classes of people, according to the type of relationship which linked people with the process of production. As a mere observation, this is, of course, a valid method of scientific classification, just as scientists group plants and animals according to certain characteristics. But Marx went beyond mere observation. He claimed that the classes into which he had grouped people are real social and political forces which can and do act in history-nay, which are the chief actors in history. This is a bold thesis. Since classes have no external organization to act on their behalf, they can "act" as a unit only if the people grouped together in a class are themselves conscious of being parts of a "class." Classes can be actors in history only if people's minds are fully aware of their class interests and determined to promote them. This is indeed what communism claims. It asserts that people form different classes not only by virtue of the fact of their economic existence, but also because people living in similar circumstances also think alike. In a similar way, Hitler alleged that people with the same kind of physical build had the same kind of soul. Hitler believed men belonging to different races to be essentially different creatures. Marx taught that men belonging to different classes had no common values or ideas; that they had essentially differing consciousnesses. Let us note here that to classify phenomena-including people for the purpose of observation, is one thing; to attribute to such classes will, purpose, and a common consciousness is quite another. To say that the classes into which one has divided people are authors of action, is an assertion which requires elaborate and hard-to-obtain proof.

Facts, analysis, and dogma

Marx went beyond scientific methods in another respect. He described property as a source of power in society. But then he went beyond this analysis and claimed that property is, has been, and forever will be the sole root of oppressive power. In order to maintain this, he must, of course, discount such sources of power as bureaucracies, police machineries, military forces, taxation, or else he must claim that all these are merely derived from the power that flows from property. This indeed is the claim of Communists. It is another assertion that requires proof, a proof which no Communist thinker has ever attempted to offer.

In the following quotations, it will be possible to trace both the elements of scientific observations and the elements of dogma in the Marxist doctrine of class division. First, a dogmatic assertion:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Next, a mixture of historical fact and dogma:

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.1

Then, based on dogma, a diagnosis and a prediction:

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.2

Back to sober historical reporting, but tied into the myth:

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces: they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

A purely factual statement follows:

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.3

From here we move on to a piece of sociological analysis designed to arouse the reader's sympathy and indignation:

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.*

'Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Manifesto of the Communist Party" (December 1847-January 1848), Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), vol. I, p. 34.

'Ibid., pp. 34 and 35.

'Ibid., p. 39.

'Ibid., p. 40.