Kirk Emmert: Winston S. Churchill on Empire. Durham: Carolina Academic Press and the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1989.

 

Winston Churchill claimed, “There is no halfway house for Britain between greatness and ruin” (3). In fact there is; its current proprietor is Margaret Thatcher. Britain has lost and gained: markets replaced colonies; Englishness replaced ‘civilization’; corporations replaced viceroys. If household management or economics has not quite replaced politics, the mold that shaped Churchill has broken. There is no halfway house for a Churchill between greatness and ruin.

Americans think of Churchill as a wartime ally against rightist tyranny and a peacetime ally against leftist tyranny—as a courageous prophet of liberty honored, finally, in his native land. Churchill’s defense of the British Empire strikes Americans as contradictory to this spirit, something to be deplored or at best apologized for. Professor Emmert’s study has the merit of recognizing that Churchill’s “commitment to empire was central” to his political career (xi). Emmert shows that Churchill commitment arose not from mere traditionalism or even from ambition, simply, but from an “aristocratic or Aristotelian” understanding of the demands and responsibilities of political life (xvi).

“True” imperialism develops both “manhood” and commerce in the imperial nation (1)—two qualities not easy to combine. By renouncing its Continental ambitions and building the strongest navy in the world, Britain increased its own security and encouraged limited government in England while freeing the army for overseas conquests. Continental nations expended substantial public revenues on self-defense; the British navy defended the island nation inexpensively, leaving money available for private investment and international commerce. The navy protected British shipping and forcibly opened new markets. Military ‘necessity’ refocused, from national defense to imperial defense. Imperial defense requires expansion, as increased territory increases the scope of security needs. “[W]ar and change, not peace and permanence, are the constant companions of empire” (8). A moderate, civilized empire must “pursue a policy which is difficult to distinguish from that of an aggressive, intentionally expansive nation.” Even a civilized empire “must act in much the same manner as a tyrant” (9). Nor did Churchill try to hide under the cloak of ‘necessity’; he freely observed that the natural desire “to be predominant” fans imperialist ambitions. Civilization “restrains and rechannels these instincts into more pacific activities, but it cannot eliminate or fully control them” (10).

Churchill parted from Machiavelli in upholding an “eternal standard of right and wrong independent of and superior to climate, custom, and caprice” (11), a standard beckoning citizens to honor. Honor is a mean between “narrow self-interest and moralistic excess” (12). “Churchill proposed civilizing empire as the cure to the disease of tyrannizing empire” (13), of which he saw three kinds during his career: the “scientific barbarism” of the Kaiser’s Germany; the “animal form of barbarism” of Bolshevik Russia; and the racist barbarism of Nazi Germany (15). Barbarism begins with human life itself. A pre-political war of “all against all” reflects mankind’s “strong aboriginal propensity to kill” (16). Primitive peoples lack shame and moral indignation, engage in treachery and violence, and cannot reason. They emerge from the most primitive barbarism when, tiring of perpetual insecurity, they establish tyrannies In their credulity, primitive men also give way to “religious fanaticism grounded in a claim of prophetic revelation” (17); this religion impedes civilization’s development by encouraging “degraded sensualism” and by retarding the mental faculties (17). As civilization develops, however, intelligence usually outruns morality, leading once again to barbarism.

Churchill considers courage to be the foundation of civilized or fully human life. Courage is “the first of all human qualities” because it “guarantees all the others” (19). The courage of barbarians is reckless or “wild courage”—passionate, unruly, rash (20). Civilized courage is calm, a sign of self-mastery and endurance. “In the civilized man, Churchill suggests, reason rules the bodily desires and man’s spiritedness. Thus, under stress, the civilized man is persevering, serene, deliberate, self-controlled and proudly self-sufficient” (22). Habituation forms civilized courage; the force of discipline and of circumstances supplement habit. Habit should be reinforced by vanity, the desire to establish a good reputation, but this must not be overemphasized, as it will promote timidity in the face of public disapproval. The sentiment of nobility, whereby “vanity is transformed into justifiable pride” (25), best anchors habitual courage. The moral importance of habituation figures largely in Aristotle, as does the definition of virtue as the mean between two extremes, two vices; and of course the distinction between civilization and barbarism runs through ancient Greece generally.

Churchill recognized that the increasing egalitarianism of modern civilization threatened these Aristotelian virtues. He therefore “stressed increasingly in his speeches and more popular writings the kinship of civilization and freedom or self-government” (25). Attempting to preserve as much of the older moral order as possible, he traced British rights, liberties, and constitutional safeguards to “ancient Greece and Rome” (26); he represented the Roman Empire in Britain as “a golden age for Britain” (9), a time when the British themselves benefited morally and politically from rule by civilized imperialists. The virtues of justice, prudence, moderation or self-government, and goodwill or toleration, along with civilized courage, make individual and political freedom possible; most of these are classical virtues. Christianity too has its place, because “philosophy”—these are Churchill’s words—”cannot convince the bullet” (129, n. 81). Praying and belief in providence may not convince the bullet, either, but they serve as helps to steady the man facing the bullet. “Churchill understood that the morality that guided the [British] Empire and the rest of the civilized West had both classical and Christian roots” (29); although the statesman will conduct himself according to the classical standard of gentlemanly honor, he will also nourish Christianity as “the most politically salutary religion available to modern civilized statesmen” (30). Modern science also needs cultivation; even more it needs restraint. “The first civilization that has indissolvably married human excellence and physical power rather than leaving them to come together occasionally and by chance” (31) must take care that scientific or intellectual development does not overwhelm moral virtues, destroying the conditions of its own existence.”

Emmert discusses Churchill’s view of civilizing empire’s effect on rulers and the ruled. “[A]ll human  beings have an obligation to improve themselves which takes precedence over any rights they might claim to liberty or self-government” (33); primitive contentment is no more fully human than is primitive strife, and both prevent or retard the development of civilization. “The precariousness of [the] natural way to civilization, its long duration, and the likelihood it might miscarry led Churchill to reject it in principle as an alternative to imperial rule” (34). Empire as it were assists nature by “rapidly increasing capital wealth and by expanding human desires” (36), first by encouraging small entrepreneurs, then larger scale commercial projects. At the same time modern civilization’s technology goes beyond assistance to the subjugation of nature for use by man. Capital investment should be limited to avoid exploitation; Churchill preferred a limited state socialism, limited because an excessively powerful local government would overawe the native population and demand independence from the Empire—break the civilizational bonds that alone justify empire. Christian missionaries posed an especially difficult problem; Churchill applauded them only in such places as Uganda, where they cooperated fully with the imperial government.

Altruism and philanthropy should not move imperial rulers. Nor should selfishness. “At its best, empire is not a burden to be endured,” or a tyranny to be exploited, “but an opportunity for individual and national self-improvement” (53). Barbarians have no intrinsic rights; rather, civilized nations owe it to themselves to treat barbarians justly. In this, Churchill found himself opposed by the democrats and state socialists who gained power after the First World War. Democrats reduced politics to economics, “denied that man was a political animal” (55). Socialists sought to politicize the private. Churchill defined politics in two distinct, complementary ways: as a means of collective action to satisfy the individual’s need for security and well-being; as an effort to realize the distinctively human potential for reasoning and reasoned speech. Imperialism satisfied man’s political nature in both senses, immediately for the rulers and ruled with respect to ‘low’ politics, and immediately for rulers, eventually for the ruled with respect to ‘high’ politics. Empire “calls forth certain virtues, and ths a specific type of human being” (63). Its ordinary citizens strengthen their self-respect; its extraordinary citizens fulfill their magnanimity, their great-souledness in the Aristotelian sense. Empire counterbalanced the leveling effects of mass democracy. “[S]ince the maintenance [of Empire] necessitated a considerably greater degree of moral and political virtue from the nation’s foremost citizens, in looking up to these leaders the British citizenry was taught to admire the considerable virtue they embodied” (64). For the foremost citizens themselves, “ruling imperially” afforded the chance to achieve the fullest humanity by engaging in “the fully civilizing activity” (64).

“By the late 1920s, Churchill had concluded that the coming of mass democracy had transformed and degraded British politics” (70). Majoritarianism replaced deliberation and consent, and “the advent of political equality undermined [the] conventional acknowledgements of political authority which in the best cases were indications of natural preeminence and in most cases made mediocrity more serviceable” (71). As technology purveyed mass tastes, politics itself became more ‘technical’ or technocrat; middle and lower classes improved their standard of living but declined in the exercise of civic liberty, prudence, and initiative. In Churchill’s metaphor, the British political system liquefied. Institutions, hierarchy, structure weakened against the ebb and flow of public passions. Churchill attempted to use imperialism as a bulwark against this tide, but as the spirit of party triumphed over the spirit of Parliament, the Empire itself became a bone of political contention. A politics of individual rights and self-interest overcame the politics of honor and “noble self-regard” (81). “[I]t was not possible for long to rule according to ‘new principles’ at home but ‘old principles’ abroad” (85). Churchill gradually came to hope for a British Empire of self-governing dominions, a “voluntary association of like-minded nations” or “English-speaking peoples” (99)—less a political than a cultural empire modeled on Demosthenes’ pan-Hellenism.

The tension in Churchill’s thought between “his acceptance of human equality” and “his admiration for excellence and for the accomplishments of the unequal few” would have disappeared had he “fully embraced on principle or the other.” “This Churchill would not do, probably because he thought that neither in itself reflected the full truth about human nature” (107). The limitations of imperial rule reflect the contradictions of politics itself, limitations and contradiction of politics itself, limitations and contradictions suggesting that political life is not the human life, at least not simply or comprehensively. For Churchill this truth led to an appreciation of the powers of observation and memory called for by painting. Churchill also “noted a certain similarity between a philosopher and the uncivilized” man (37)—both of whom enjoy their leisure and want few things. He called the uncivilized man an “unconscious philosopher” (37). Philosophers might well be grateful to Churchill, and in their own way return his admiration. In opposing tyrannies masquerading as final knowledge about human things, Churchill protected philosophy from lapsing into a state of unconsciousness, that is to say barbarism, perhaps even from a death that would have killed the soul instead of liberating it from the body. And there may be more. Professor Harry V. Jaffa, who contributes an illuminating Foreword to this volume, has spoken of the way the example of Churchill’s statesmanship could inspirit a philosopher’s soul in dark times, leading the philosopher to reconsider the classical philosophers who distinguish political from philosophic life without segregating them. Professor Emmert’s thoughtful scholarship, so profoundly at odds with current academic passions and prejudices, brings Churchill’s example to view, not vividly and partially as his own writings did, but wholly or essentially, delivered from the partisan distortions of his time and ours.

By the end of 1989, reunification of the two German regimes—the Federal Republic of Germany (‘West Germany’) and the German Democratic Republic (‘East Germany’) had become both highly probable and controversial. At the end of World War II, Soviet-occupied East Germany was ruled by Stalin, through an especially brutal and efficient local Communist Party, whereas West Germany became a commercial republic, albeit with a strong presence of American, French, and British military forces on the ground—the nucleus of the NATO alliance. Although the former capital city, Berlin, was located entirely within the East German sector, it was itself divided between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ section; eventually, the Communist regime built the Berlin Wall as a means of preventing their subjects from escaping to the West.

As the Soviet empire began to collapse in 1989, it became clear that divided Germany was no longer tenable. However, memories of the Nazi tyranny and two world wars died hard, and several heads of state opposed reunification. These included Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir, who raised fears of another Holocaust, and, more realistically, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterand, who could not bring themselves to relish the prospect of a newly-empowered Germany in the heart of Europe. Thatcher and Mitterand also worried that German reunification would damage Russian political support for Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom they had established a comfortable working relationship. This proved not at all unrealistic, as the loss of the Soviet empire did indeed tend to undermine Gorbachev, who would not survive German reunification for very long.

In December 1989, I wrote the following essay on reunification, which was distributed by Dawn Publishing Company, a firm in Quebec, Canada, to a network of readers interested in international politics.

 

With respect to German reunification, whatever our opinions may be, things will proceed regardless of what non-Germans think. If the Germans want reunification, they will have it. The only power on earth that can stop them is the Soviet Union.. German reunification, at the price of German neutrality in the Cold War, has been a Soviet goal all along. Why should the Kremlin intervene now? I expect them to bargain hard for concessions with respect not only to neutrality but NATO troops.

If he can accomplish that, Gorbachev will thereby consolidate his power. He will be able to say to his critics: ‘My honey caught more flies in a few years than your vinegar did in nearly four decades. Now, if you want to oust me and eliminate my reforms, do you really intend to reconquer eastern Europe? Because if you do not reconquer eastern Europe, reinstating the old system here at home will only serve to impoverish us still further, as we will lack colonies to exploit.’

Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir opposes German reunification. But should he?

Let’s step back for a moment and consider what the disintegration of communism in eastern Europe may mean, in terms of political principles. By now it is clear that thinkers of the twentieth century have yet to discover a single new political principle, although some modern tyrannies have invented the institutional and technological means to enhance the power of tyranny so much as to merit a new term, ‘totalitarian,’ to describe them. (Twentieth-century political thinkers have discovered, or, more precisely, systematized one new political method: Gandhiism or nonviolent resistance, as distinguished from Christian nonresistance. But this method has been used entirely at the service of principles or ideas that predated it—e.g., nationalism in India, the extension of full citizenship to African-Americans, and so on.) This century has instead served as a sort of laboratory in which two rival sets of political hypotheses were tested. ‘Laboratory’ is a metaphor that misses the absence of any control, scientific or other, over the various experiments that have occurred, but let it stand.

The great commercial-republican political philosophers (Locke, Montesquieu, Smith) sought to end the religious strife that had wracked Christian Europe. They formulated new institutions designed to re-channel religio-military spiritedness into business affairs and representative government. The solution works, generally speaking; commercial republics still have wars, but never with one another. As a by-product, commercial republicanism diluted anti-Jewish hatred, legitimizing the financial and commercial function Jews had been more or less forced into by the Christian churches by effectually repealing strict laws against ‘usury.’ Jewish people know this; since the Enlightenment, many of them have adopted some form of ‘liberalism.’

Hegel and other nineteenth-century Germans despised this ‘philosophy of shopkeepers.’ In this they followed but also radicalized Kant, who followed Rousseau, that great modern anti-bourgeois. The German ideologies of nationalism, communism, and racism are little more than vulgarized versions of Hegelianism. Sometimes they compete with one another, accusing each other of ‘bourgeois reaction’ (Bolshevism’s critique of fascism) or ‘Jewishness’ (Nazism’s counter-charge against Bolshevism). At least as often, they cooperate, as in the Soviet Union, where Jew-hatred and anti-‘capitalism’ mix quite easily, as indeed they also do in Marx’s essay, “On the Jewish Question.” According to the Germans and their disciples worldwide, the concept of ‘History’—said to be profound, comprehensive, and dynamic—must replace the concept of modern natural right—based upon the ‘state of nature,’ which ideologists of the ‘German’ schools condemn as ‘ahistorical’ in two senses: it is fiction, and it is static, unable to account for change.

Historicists have looked forward to the confirmation of their hypothesis (where else?) in history. This is precisely what history has denied them. Real history, that is, experience, vindicates the allegedly superficial ‘eighteenth-century thought’ and proves the deep-thinking ‘nineteenth-century’ profoundly wrong. Experience, not theory, shows that there really is a state of nature, a place of war and scarcity which reappears whenever tyrants seize power in the name of some grand idea-scheme. Experience, not theory, shows that real economic dynamism comes from commercial republicanism, not from the destructive dynamics of the Nazis or the Byzantine immobility of the very ‘progressive’ U. S. S. R., whose only capacity to effect change has been as midwife to subversion in poverty-stricken despotisms. ‘Midwife’ again is the wrong metaphor; after all, the offspring bears the genetic traits of the Soviet system as much as the less indecent traits of the unfortunate mother country.

A united, commercial-republican Germany, surrounded by other commercial republics, signifies the practical refutation of ‘Germanism.’ Friends of freedom should work to ensure that ‘Germans’ the world over understand this, and do not forget it. Commercial-republic Europe will face to potential threats, one external, the other internal. Gorbachev recently reaffirmed his adherence to communism. His giant empire may rest its ambitions; it will not abandon them until it ceases to be an empire. Unless and until the Soviets become commercial republicans, Europe will be at hazard. In the meantime, if NATO and the Warsaw Pact both dissolve, the Soviets will increase their relative power, given their obvious geopolitical advantage over the United States: access to Europe by land.

Internally, the religious toleration commercial republicanism enforces often leads to a flaccid toleration of anti-republican political movements; moral relativism and spirited nihilism unwittingly collaborate. To some extent, ‘Germanism’ arose because commercial republicanism could not offer the intense spiritual satisfactions found in the religiously-buttressed despotisms and constitutional monarchies it replaced. These satisfactions were perverted or ‘secularized’ by the anti-religious ideologies that partially replaced Christianity and Judaism in the West. To a certain degree, this is inevitable. The United States houses all manner of bizarre cults; the best that can be said is, none of them gets very far. Therefore, strong religious institutions will remain indispensable as shields against both moral indifferentism and fanaticism. Easter Europe, as in the United States of 1787, has seen churches that fight for commercial republicanism, in the knowledge that it will lead them in peace. They must also learn better to guard themselves against the temptations inherent in the commercial-republican way of life.

The fear associated with German reunification is that Christian religious revival can include Jew-hatred. This is where Israel can seize what Herr Hegel would call a world-historical opportunity. As the only commercial republic in the Mideast with unique historical links to Germany, to Eastern Europe, and to Russia, Israel should reverse Shamir’s position and endorse German reunification. In doing so, however, it must make clear that Jews and Christians can flourish within commercial-republican regimes. ‘Never again’ must Jews or Christians entertain ideologies that subvert this regime. Such ideologies cause holocausts.

As it happens, Muslims do not seem nearly so ‘compatible’ with commercial republicanism. The only other commercial republic in the Mideast was Lebanon, ruled by a Christian minority; it disintegrated under pressure from Muslims. This raises questions about the capacity of the PLO to bring genuine self-government anywhere. What, exactly, does the PLO intend to establish in ‘Palestine’? A ‘democratic,’ secular state, they say, but given the abuses the word ‘democracy’ suffers (as in ‘German Democratic Republic’), it is impossible to view this rhetorical smoke with anything other than suspicion. The intifada, which is nothing less than an attempt to ‘Lebanonize’ Israel, can and must be suppressed as part of a comprehensive plan to defend not merely ‘the Jewish state’ (a concept many non-Jews will quite understandably view with indifference) but commercial republicanism, and therefore peace, in the Mideast.

A strong statement of support for German national aspirations under a commercial-republican regime can win friends in Germany and the United States, so long as that statement intelligently clarifies the character of those aspirations. Far more important, it would provide a chance to set forth a standard or a framework for a genuine political settlement, by establishing the point that Israel is the model for Mideast politics. Israeli officials never say what would need to happen in the surrounding states in order to establish a just and lasting peace. The lesson of North America, the lesson of Europe, is, ‘If you want peace, surround yourself with commercial republics.’ This puts the pressure on the Muslim regimes, where it belongs. It enables statesmen, journalists, clergy, and other interested persons to ask the Muslims, ‘What are you doing, concretely, to promote peace in the one proven and lasting way, the way of commercial republicanism?’ In such an atmosphere, an Israeli proposal to partition both Lebanon and Jordan so as to produce four commercial republics in those two countries, would be quite reasonable. Realistic? Of course not. But why not? Because too many Muslims want theocracy more than they want peace. Indeed, the define ‘peace,’ Islam, as theocracy. The world does not yet sufficiently appreciate this. But now that the world does finally acknowledge the benefits of commercial republicanism, it can begin to appreciate it.

Unfortunately, Israel’s social-democratic founders were themselves too ‘German,’ and many of its leading politicians continue to be. Socialism and/or nationalism has preoccupied them. For this reason, Israelis today tend to obscure the issues in their own minds. They worry about a reunified Germany on nationalist grounds, instead of seeing the opportunities it presents politically. They tend to think more in terms of ‘Germans-versus-Jews’ than in terms of tyranny versus commercial republicanism. The example of the Weimar Republic—the ill-conceived product of a punitive war settlement—should not be taken as decisive. When Israelis do appeal to ‘fellow democrats’ around the world they are too sentimental, too vulnerable to the claim that they contradict themselves by opposing a ‘Palestinian’ state. Luckily for them, Muslims are even more muddled, and send even more violently mixed signals.

Thomas G. West and Sanderson Schaub: Marx and the Gulag. Montclair: The Claremont Institute, 1988.

Originally published in the New York City Tribune, July 28, 1988.

 

Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev calls for the “opening” and “restructuring” of the Soviet Union. His wife, a professor of Marxism-Leninism, gives every evidence of endorsing such plans, accompanied as they are by a military buildup largely uninterrupted by the planned dismantling of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

These seemingly contradictory doings raise the questions, ‘What is Marxism-Leninism?’ ‘Can it animate Stalin and Gorbachev, violent purges and small-potatoes reform?’ ‘If so, how so?’ This brief and closely-reasoned pair of essays shows how the Soviet ideology can bend so easily while enduring so tenaciously.

Professor Thomas G. West demonstrates the continuity—denied by superficial writers—between the teachings of Karl Marx and the practice of V. I. Lenin. Following and deepening the insight of Alfred G. Meyer, whose book Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice appeared almost thirty years ago, West observes that Marx calls for and predicts the material embodiment of rational thought by means of revolution. A small cadre of revolutionary, that is, acting intellectuals will lead a passive working class to overthrow the bourgeois order, establishing a ‘proletarian’ dictatorship (as defined by party leaders) which will reshape human and all other forms of nature and lead to the stateless utopia of pure communism.

Party dictators will use terror in the early stages of this series of revolutions—hence the purges of Lenin and Stalin, repeated by every other major Leninist revolutionary who has seized power. Marx explicitly mentioned “France in 1793,” with its Reign of Terror, as the precursor of the specifically communist reign of terror he did not live to see.

By 1881, two years before his death, Marx no longer assumed that a country—and he was thinking of Russia—needed to undergo a phase of capitalism before the socialist revolution. He regarded capitalism as historically necessary in much of western Europe, but not in the East. Although European and North American scholars often overlook this teaching, Russians from Lenin to the Gorbachevs have not. Even many Soviet scholars, who emphasize what they are pleased to call the scientific character of Marxism–its discussion of class ‘contradictions’ yielding a predictable pattern of historical events culminating in revolution–usually fail to understand this deep slash into the socio-economic Gordian Knot. Professor West, however, sees clearly: “For Marx, the core was always the revolution. Everything else in his theory was subject to revision.”

Lenin took this late development of Marx’s thought and used it to destroy czarism, seize power, and consolidate the first communist regime. In the face of conservative (‘reactionary’) working classes, Lenin and Stalin attacked: “The ‘proletarian vanguard,’ Lenin admits, is not even the party, but only the Politburo of the party, consisting of Lenin and a handful of close colleagues…. The stronger the bourgeois ‘force of habit,’ the smaller and more despotic must be the governing organization of revolutionaries.”

This is why “the despotism and wholesale violence of Marxism in practice arise not in spite of but because of the high ideals of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.” Men who demand the embodiment of the ideal in human society, not by divine grace but by human will and action, men who moreover treat nature as mere matter to be conquered not respected, will inevitably turn to violence, because they hate stubborn, ‘reactionary’ human nature and the very concept of God.

The hatred of Marxist-Leninists the world over for the regime dedicated, in its Declaration of Independence, to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, follows from their ideology. Tactical compromises? Of course. True accommodation? Never: not without the abandonment of the ideology itself, and of the patterns of mind it causes.

Hatred of the concept of God must yield anti-Judaism. Marx himself was the son of a Jew who had converted to Christianity. Almost predictably, one of the first major essays Marx wrote, “On the Jewish Question,” amounts to “a sustained and scathing attack on Jews and Judaism,” as Sanderson Schaub rightly sees. “One may even sum up the purpose of Marxist revolution in a word as the ’emancipation’ or reconstruction of the Jew.”

If this begins to sound like proto-Hitlerism, it is no accident. As Schaub sees, the attack on the kind of emancipation of Jews seen in commercial republicanism, and the substitution of a new ’emancipation’ consisting of the forceful abolition of Judaism itself, involves communists and Nazis alike in acts of repression, sometimes genocide. Fundamentally, both of these ideological parties seek to replace the Creator-God of Judaism and Christianity with “god-like creation ex nihilo by men, as guided and radically reshaped by revolutionary ‘vanguards.'”

Both ideologies equate ‘bourgeois’ with ‘Jew.’ “What Marx elsewhere calls capitalism, to be overthrown by violent revolution, Marx in his essay ‘On the Jewish Question’ calls Judaism.” The attack on commercial republicanism, Marxist or Hitlerite, begins to look increasingly like a return to a worse form of anti-Judaic, anti-‘capitalist’ European feudalism—a return to medievalism without the grace of God or the intelligence of scholasticism. The historical result of Marxism-Leninism, after the terror exhausted itself, turned out to be an all-consuming bureaucracy combining the worst of the medieval Church and State. “The Soviet Gulag is the agonizing hell of Marx’s utopian ecstasy.”

“What Marx calls the Jew in man… is ultimately his mind or spirit”—human nature and divine grace. These must be obliterated, Marxists insist, ‘overcome’ by the fusion of theory and practice that produces re-created ‘Communist Man.’ Tactical concessions, such as Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” in the 1920s and Gorbachev’s program today, in no way alter this ambition. Along with a substantial selection of writings by Marx and Lenin themselves, this short book deserves inclusion in every college course on socialism or on comparative regimes in the twentieth century.