“One can be right only with the Party and through the Party, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one’s rightness.”
Leon Trotsky, Thirteenth Conference of the Communist Party (1924)*
We are often reminded that antibiotics tend, over time, to select for pathogens that are invulnerable to those antibiotics. Our present compulsive use of hand sanitizers has, for instance, created an antiseptic environment in which pathogens indurate to alcohol are fruitful and multiplying. Anticommunism works in much the same way, eliminating certain forms and aspects of communism, but also breeding new forms that the old anticommunism can neither combat nor detect.
Long before a species is hunted to extinction, the very fact of its being hunted causes the species to fade before the eyes of its hunters. Hunting a species changes that species because hunting selects for wariness and camouflage. Anticommunism causes communism to disappear in just the same way.
As I wrote the other day, the anticommunism of the 1930s led to the evolution of communist “fronts” in which the connection to the Communist Party was camouflaged. The anticommunism of the 1950s led to the evolution of so-called “Trotskyite” communism, in which there is no formal Communist Party. As my epigram shows, Leon Trotsky was himself an extremely loyal party man, but so-called “Trotskyite” communism evolved when old-style anticommunism made a formal Communist Party into a liability.
There is something exceedingly quaint in Joseph McCarthy’s old-style anticommunist question, “are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?” It is a question from a bygone era when America was a nation of “joiners.” Membership was in those days a formal relationship, and members of all sorts of organizations were, quite literally, “card carrying” members. They paid dues, went to regular meetings, and sometimes even wore uniforms. As Robert Putnam has so strikingly demonstrated, this America of formal voluntary organizations has largely disappeared, and most of us nowadays are “bowling alone.”
The image of “bowling alone” is misleading, however, since it exaggerates our social atomization. Voluntary organizations still exist, but they have evolved into informal voluntary organizations. BLM has, for instance, a great many “supporters,” but no real “members.” A supporter might post a sign in his yard, or sport a slogan on his tee shirt, but he does not pay dues, attend meetings, or carry anything like a “card” in his wallet. In the extremely unlikely event that a U.S. Senator asked him an updated version of Joseph McCarthy’s question under oath, he could answer “no” without risk of perjury.
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The competitive advantage of informal organization is clear if we compare contemporary communism to the lumbering dinosaur that is called the Catholic Church. The fact that it is called by that hoary old name is one thing that makes it a lumbering dinosaur. Communists dropped the name communist as soon as it became a liability, and they became, albeit in a purely nominal sense, something altogether different. They became “neo-Marxists,” for instance, or “Radicals,” or “Progressives,” or, best of all, an anonymous cohort of people who were interested in “social change.”
Communists left their bloody past behind when they assumed these aliases or disappeared behind the veil of complete anonymity. Catholics on the other hand openly identify with everything the Church has done, or is said to have done, since the Nicene Creed was drafted. Catholics thereby stain themselves with the blood, real and imaginary, of two thousand tempestuous years.
We are told that one of the men killed in Kenosha had previously raped several boys. This pederast was also, evidently, part of the anonymous cohort of people interested in “social change.” But it is very hard to tar that anonymous cohort with his pederastic sins, and quite impossible to sue them, because the anonymous cohort does not exist so far as American law is concerned. The Catholic Church meanwhile gives its officer class formal titles, decks them out in uniforms, and then posts an address where aggrieved and injured parties can file for reparations when one of those officers decides to act on a wild hair.
The Catholic Church is like a lumbering dinosaur at the very end of the Cretaceous, when the sly and secretive mammals began to take over. If it wishes to survive, it will have to ditch its infamous name and discard the fat target of its ineffectual and scandal-prone officer class. If it wishes to survive, it must evolve into something much more like a bird.
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The anonymous cohort of people interested in “social change” functions without the fatal liability of an official name, a central Party, or even a very definite creed. Because it has no official name, it appears much more disorganized and ragtag than it actually is. Antifa is, for instance, the militant wing of this informal voluntary organization that has no name. Like the old IRA/Sinn Fein consortium, this large and anonymous organization also has political and educational wings, but these wings have no official connection, so they can appear to disintegrate into small and unthreatening parts whenever this is advantageous.
Guerilla warfare is the model for this ability to assemble out of nothing, and then, just as quickly, disassemble into nothing. At the moment, the anonymous cohort of people interested in “social change” is assembled because it needs to turn Trump out of office. The militant wing is throwing Molotov cocktails in the streets, the political wing is promoting Biden and infiltrating Biden’s shadow cabinet, and the educational wing (in the schools and media) is “interpreting” this to the masses in the way most advantageous to the program of “social change.” If they fail to turn Trump out of office, I predict that the organization will appear to disassemble, and that the educational arm will be tasked with covering its tracks and telling us it never was.
A George Washington University professor was recently disgraced by the revelation that she had been living as a racial impostor, but the disgrace of her hoax is a personal disgrace because she is not a “card carrying” member of something called the American CultMarx Party, or an ordained priestess in something called the Hatewhitey Church. There are thus no newspaper headlines saying “Hatewhitey Church Rocked by Scandal,” or “CultMarx Party Scrambles to Limit Fallout.” When a Catholic priest tickles a choirboy, on the other hand, it becomes an expensive scandal for the lumbering and deep-pocketed organization of which that priest is officially part. When a Hatewhitey priestess gets sticky fingers and pinches some AA bennies, she’s just a crazy dame who needs to find a new job.
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The most famous manifesto of all time is, no doubt, the Communist Manifesto, a work remarkable for its candor, clarity and brevity. A reader may well cavil over many of its factual claims, but he cannot complain that it is dissembling, obscurant or prolix. Closing the pamphlet after a mercifully short read, he knows pretty clearly what Marx and Engles are all about.
All of these qualities are absent from the prose that is nowadays written to advance “social change,” since this is dissembling, obscurant and extremely prolix. Closing the last fat book in a long course of study, a reader is not at all sure what these enraged scribblers are all about. That they are enraged is clear enough, as is the fact that they scribble; but beyond that very little is definite or clear. And if the reader ventures to offer an unfavorable opinion of all the fat books he has read, the people interested in “social change” will laugh and tell him he has read the wrong books.
If a man wishes to examine the basic doctrines of Christianity, he can read the New Testament. If he wishes to accost a Christian, he can then demand that the Christian defend what is stated in those books. The Christian cannot laugh and tell his accoster that he read the wrong books.
Communism stopped writing manifestos when it became clear that manifestos had become a liability, and that dissembling, obscurantism and prolixity had become tactical assets. Very few outsiders will venture into a vast thicket of tangled and thorny “literature,” and those who emerge (scratched and bug-bitten) can always be told that they missed the good parts. I have not read the Talmud, but understand that it repels critics in this way. It is hard to find the vital passages in the Talmud, hard to say just what these vital passages mean, and easy to deny that these are, indeed, vital passages.
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An informal voluntary organization obviously faces a “coordination problem.” The parts must know when they should assemble and disassemble, and the people in those parts must have a reasonably clear understanding of the party line. Even when there is no formal Party, Trotsky’s line remains true.
“One can be right only with the Party and through the Party, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one’s rightness.”
I have come to believe that this line is correctly updated as follows:
“One can be right only with NPR and through NPR, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one’s rightness.”
Indeed, I would advise any young person who wishes to get ahead in the postmodern United States to make NPR their credo, and to make their perfect adherence to this credo evident at every opportunity. NPR is not the cutting edge of progressive thought, but it stands to the cutting edge of progressive thought very much as the clothing sold by Land’s End or L. L. Bean stands to haute couture.
You will not turn heads with those Land’s End khakis, but they are sufficiently respectable for you to be seated in a restaurant, and even to keep your job.
The NPR credo is the same. No one will think that you are brilliant or daring if you adhere to it like a center stripe adheres to a highway; but neither will anyone think that you are buffoonish or dangerous. It’s the party line of the party that has no name, no officers, no members, and no manifesto. In other word, it is the party line of the evolved party that has taken a form that allows it to control just about everything.
*) quoted in Thornton Anderson, Masters of Russian Marxism (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), p. 134.
