3. Review of Frank S. Meyer, The Moulding of Communists

3. Review of Frank S. Meyer, The Moulding of Communists

October 28, 1961

Mr. H. George Resch

William Volker Fund

Dear George:

One reason why a rather detailed report on Frank S. Meyer’s The Moulding of Communists: The Training of the Communist Cadre is important is that it starkly raises a crucial issue that has, in recent years, been dividing proponents of individual liberty.⁹⁷ That issue concerns the nature of “the enemy” the advocates of liberty face in the modern world.

One school of thought identifies that “enemy” as socialism or statism in all its forms. To this school, Communism is simply one wing of socialism, and a wing that, certainly in the United States, is of almost zero political importance. Since socialism and statism, in numerous forms, has been greatly on the rise in this century and is indeed dominant in the modern world, this school of thought tends to regard the “battle” as being largely if not wholly ideological: as an effort to turn men’s minds from an acceptance of statism to one of liberty. For purposes of simplification, though a negative is not sufficient description, we may call this school “anti-socialist.”

The second school of thought, on the contrary, believes that in addition to and over and above the problem of socialism is the problem of Communism, that the world Communist movement (or “conspiracy” as they like to call it) poses a uniquely diabolic threat which must be met, and which must be given even greater priority than the problem of socialism. It is important to realize that this school shifts the priority of focus from ideas to persons, for the persons of Communists now take on a Luciferian quality which must be combated in a physical more than an ideological way. This school, which we may call “anti-Communist,” concentrates, then, on a specific group of persons, and therefore on a physical rather than an ideological battle. The solution tends to be not ideological education for men’s minds, but taking up arms and liquidating Communists wherever they may be found, at home and abroad.

Note the problem that the “anti-Communist” faces. He cannot, like the anti-socialist, simply concentrate on the ends toward which the Communists are aspiring, for these ends are simply socialism, and the Communist variety of socialism is obviously of negligible importance in the United States as compared to, say, the Americans for Democratic Action or “modern Republican” variety. Any concentration on ends would, for Americans, virtually eliminate concern about Communism per se. To establish his thesis of unique diabolism, then, the anti-Communist must concentrate on the means or the persons or the structure of the Communist movement itself. For if he concentrates only on ends, the Communist wing of socialism would sink into insignificance. The importance of Frank’s book is that he specifically focuses not on the Communists’ ends—socialism—but on the means that they use: on them as persons, on the Communist Party as uniquely diabolic people, etc. In doing so, Frank is, perhaps unwittingly, putting his finger on the nub of the central issue.⁹⁸

Before going further, it must be clear that there is no hope of “reconciling” the anti-Communist and the anti-socialist positions as I have described them. The emphasis, the outlook, the conclusions are totally incompatible.

The central and almost total thesis of Frank’s book, in fact, is precisely the unique diabolism of the Communist movement and the Communists as persons: this is reiterated time and again. We read of the “profoundly different character of Communist consciousness—different from anything with which we are acquainted”; “for the Communist is different. He thinks differently. Reality looks different to him.”

The personality of the Communist is, says Frank, totally transformed, transformed by the “training process that moulds the Communist cadre.” He becomes a new man—a “Bolshevik”—and this new type is the same throughout the Communist movement, regardless of the country involved. (This transcendence of any national or cultural boundaries is important for Frank to establish, for otherwise he would have to admit that not all Communists are uniquely diabolic “Bolshevik” types). As a result of this training, he declares, “they acquire a strength and confidence which, like the fearful evil they bring into being, can only be described as Luciferian.”

“Luciferian” is the operative word, because the thesis of Frank’s book is the radical difference between Communists and all other men, a difference that makes them nonhuman, in effect, that makes them agents of the Devil—cunning, almost always successful in the pursuit of their ends—and against which force and violence are called upon by Frank to extirpate them root and branch: “Against this vision... of Communist man, there is no recourse in compromise, reasonableness, peaceful coexistence.... Communist man poses two stark alternatives for us: victory or defeat”—kill or be killed. Except, of course, that modern weapons are such that killing and being killed are likely to occur together—a highly important fact that Frank, in his peroration for total war, neglects somehow to mention.

Frank’s book, then, stands or falls on whether or not he establishes this thesis of unique diabolism, of the radical “difference” between Communists and other men. It is my firm conviction that he has established nothing of the sort.

Let us remember that, in judging Frank’s success or failure, we must largely abstract from the end Communism wishes to pursue (socialism) and consider the Communist from the point of view of the type of man, the type of organization this is. The important point is this: Frank loads the dice throughout by speaking only of Communists and thus implying that their training and organization are unique. This is totally false, for most of the characteristics Frank mentions can be found in almost any organization (or, sometimes, even profession) of dedicated men, regardless of what that dedication is.

The major characteristic of the “Bolshevik” is absolute dedication and loyalty to the decision of the Communist Party, a party that takes on the right to run the members’ lives for its benefit. And yet, this is not at all unique with Communists. This phenomenon exists in numerous organizations of any sort. We see much of this process, for example, in the typical Organization Man of our time. Take a rising young middle-rank executive at General Motors or IBM. He begins as an ordinary quasi-independent human being, an individual. As he works and goes up the rungs in IBM, his values begin to be transformed and molded into the Organization Man. He begins to believe that his own subjective values and pursuits must be subordinated to “loyalty to the company.” And, as for his private affairs, he submits to the right of his boss to dictate his personal affairs: “this woman will never do as the wife of a rising and important executive”; “surely, you must move to a bigger house so that you can entertain important industry men in style,” etc. Frank’s assumption that only the Communist Party tends to dictate to its members and reduce them to “loyal” ciphers is total nonsense.

This phenomenon can be seen even more starkly in another organization—one that Frank is quite fond of—the Army, or, more specifically the CIA, Army Intelligence, or the FBI. Frank expresses shock that the Communist, through process of training, holds the good of the party above the good of his family, his friends, his private life, etc. And what of the “good CIA man”? Is he not taught the same thing? Is he not taught to lie, to cheat, even to kill, if the “interests of his country” as interpreted by his government bosses so demand? Isn’t he taught to disregard his own interests, or his family’s, in relation to these “larger” interests? Is he not taught to keep secrets from his own family, to lie to them for his “country’s sake”? How does this differ from the Communist?

At one or two points, Frank comes close to this truth by pointing to the Communist as a sort of soldier in the ranks. Granted, but then what of all the other soldiers in this world? What of the American soldier? If Frank answers that the ends of the two are different, this would concede my total attack on the thesis of his book, for that thesis deals not with the Communist’s end (socialism) but with his means and his personality and the structure of his organization. It is the latter that is supposed to make him “Luciferian” and peaceful coexistence with him impossible—while, apparently, peaceful coexistence with Walter Reuther or the ADA is eminently possible.⁹⁹

If the Communist is taught that his end justifies any means to attain it, so is the American or British or German soldier, so is the intelligence officer—and so, after all, is the politician. Are we not told, again and again, that the State and its politicians cannot be bound by ordinary rules of individual morality? That “reasons of State” compel them to lie, to cheat, to kill, for the sake of the “national interest”? Every State, every government follows such a path. How does this differ from the Communist?¹⁰⁰

The objection might be raised: if we say that Communists are not uniquely monsters, how can they justify such brutalities as Soviet slave labor camps, as the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, etc.? Doesn’t such justification make the Communists diabolic and uniquely inhuman, as Frank claims—and as Frank bolsters his claim with support from Whittaker Chambers, and his and Chambers’s depictions of the “crises” faced by Communists as they wrestle with the problem of the “screams in the night,” of those butchered by the Soviet government, etc.

Well, let us investigate this “screams in the night” problem. Here again, we shall see that the justification by Communists is not only not unique, but is almost universal and is engaged in by the supporters of all States, everywhere and at all times. For example, Harry S. Truman, Henry Stimson, et al. gave an order that deliberately and wantonly annihilated something like 400,000 Japanese civilians, including women and children, in A-bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many Americans have listened to their screams in the night? How many Americans have failed to “justify”—in the name of the “national interest” or whatever—this barbarous act? How many “cadre Americans”—either in the government or out—jumped off the American-State bandwagon because of this action? How many have even expressed remorse or indignation? And the same can be said of numerous American actions, including the bombing of hundreds of thousands of German refugees at Dresden, the sending of hundreds of thousands of refugees back to the Soviet zone, etc.

Coming closer to home, Frank Meyer’s friend Dr. Medford Evans went so far as to write an article recently justifying the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Justifications, rationalizations, for butchery and murder have been served up by every State and adopted by the overwhelming majority of their citizens. The United States has not lagged behind in this activity. One amusingly ironic example: the U.S. went to war against Spain ostensibly to free the Cuban people from the activities of such as “Butcher Weyler,” the Spanish general who inaugurated the policy of the “concentration camp” for the native civilian population. Yet, only a few years later, in direct consequence of our conquest of the Philippines in the war with Spain, the American Army used the exact same tactics—to which were added the burning of native villages, along with all of their inhabitants—against the Filipinos who were fighting for their independence against our occupying forces. Who remonstrated? Who jumped off the cadre-American bandwagon?

The Russian suppression of the Hungarian Revolution needed no special justification by Communists; for every State in history, with no exception that I know of, has ruthlessly fought to suppress any revolution against its rule. The United States Army ruthlessly suppressed rioters and rebels a few years ago in the U.S. colony of Okinawa. The size of the revolt and its suppression may have been different from the Hungarian case; the principle was exactly the same. And, on a larger scale, the British, in their ruthless war against Malayans fighting for their independence, razed and burned whole villages to the ground, using the very principle of “collective guilt” for which Americans and British had denounced the Nazis at Lidice.

Who protested in the West? Did Frank Meyer? On the contrary—for Frank Meyer himself has an enormous number of anti-Communist “screams in the night” to account for and justify before the bar of morality. Frank for example, supports the French in the war to suppress the Algerian national revolution. In the course of this war, the French have used every barbarism of which the Soviet government can be accused: collective guilt, mass slaughter, torture of prisoners, etc. And yet, Frank S. Meyer, in the name of “Western Civilization” and “anti-Communism,” wholeheartedly supports these moves.

Do not Frank Meyer and his fellow “anti-Communist men” have as many screams in the night to justify and alibi for, as have the Communist men? We can say, as a matter of fact, that they may have more: for Frank S. Meyer and his fellow anti-Communists look forward almost with enthusiasm to a nuclear holocaust against the Communist nations which would annihilate millions, if not hundreds of millions, of human beings. The devastation and suffering caused by nuclear war would bring about so many more “screams in the night” than Communism has ever done as to defy comparison. And yet Frank justifies such a war. Are Communists then, unique monsters, unique justifiers of criminality?

(And just as every State suppresses revolutions against its power, so do they jail enemies or suspected “subversives.” The Soviets send anti-Communists to prison; the United States sends not only Communists to prison, but other enemies, including for example, giving life sentences to a whole group of Puerto Rican nationalists whose crime was conspiracy to agitate and work for Puerto Rican independence from the United States.)

If, then, Communists are dehumanized or brutalized by their fealty to their organization, or their justification of its actions, the same is true—even more so—for other groups and especially other States: for the soldier who is deliberately brutalized by his training to kill unquestioningly at the command of his officers, for the paratroopers who are especially brutalized by their army training, for CIA men and espionage agents, etc. The “anti-Communist man” and his organization can be—and is—just as brutal, just as inhuman as the Communist, if not more so.

And let us remember also that the typical “conservative” is usually to be found justifying, even glorifying (even apart from the problem of anti-Communism) military training and its brutalization as a good in itself: it “makes men out of men.” Frank Meyer himself seems singularly unaware of the brutalization or inhumanity of military training or the military life.

Another favorite indictment of the Communists and a favorite indictment used by Frank Meyer in this book, to demonstrate their unique diabolism, is that Communism is a “conspiracy.” How often have we read of the “international Communist conspiracy”! Other socialists are not so bad, the cry runs, because they are not “conspirators,” whereas Communists are.

Meyer maintains that the world Communist movement is a monolith run by the Soviet Politburo, yet we have seen increasingly in recent years that this certainly is not true. That his statements are pure assertion unbacked by convincing evidence is shown, further, by his failure to cite any sources dealing with the Russian or Asian or other non-Western European parties. And there is another important consideration vis-à-vis the “Communist man” that Meyer fails to consider. In countries where the Communist movement is out of power, we can be sure that its members are eager, dedicated ideologues. But in countries where Communism is in power, the situation inevitably changes. For this means that the only way to rise in society, to rise above the level of ditch digger, is to join the Communist Party.

It is then inevitable that Communist Parties in Communist regimes will become heavily infected with the virus of “careerism,” “opportunism,” etc., men who will of course spout the slogans, but do so only ritualistically, and who will act increasingly as Russian (or Yugoslavian or whatnot) bureaucrats rather than ideologues. And as time goes on, this process is bound to accelerate. Yet, by omitting this element, Meyer’s policy conclusions vis-à-vis Communist countries and their leaders become totally misleading.

We must conclude that Frank Meyer has not in the least established his thesis, that his discussion distorts the picture, and that one cannot concur in the special diabolism of the Communist organization. But if that is true, then the only thing really wrong about the Communists is their end: socialism, an end that is pursued by a great many more people, people who are far more influential in the direction of socialism or quasi-socialism than is the negligible and half-outlawed CPUSA. If the Communist is not uniquely diabolic, then what is he? I think we can pretty well summarize the Communist by saying that he is, in form, structure, and means an Intellectual Organization Man, and his end is socialism of the proletarian-Marxist variety. Like all other organization men, he is devotedly loyal to his organization, here his party. In the ranking of organizations, it is fair to say that he is more subservient than a General Motors executive, but far less brutalized than a soldier, a paratrooper, or a CIA man. If he rationalizes and justifies brutality, he does the same as the members or defenders of every State.

He is far more independent than the soldier, paratrooper, or CIA man, as witness the numerous schisms, defections, etc. that have occurred in the Communist Party, as compared to the scarcity of mutinies in the ranks of the armed forces. The Communist has many admirable qualities which other people would do well to emulate: the striving to be rational and objective, the striving to integrate all of man’s knowledge and social philosophy into one great philosophic system, the wish to be serious and responsible, the striving for an ideal which (he thinks) will bring about a paradise on earth for the human race.

He has two main errors and vices: one is that the philosophic system that he has picked out for himself, Marxism, is incorrect; and as a consequence, that his goal of socialism is a tragic error. But we have seen that the goal (socialism) must be ruled out of this discussion, because there are lots of socialists, and Communism becomes no worse than the rest. His second error is that he is an Organization Man: that he tends to place the locus of science, of reason, of reality, in other persons: i.e., the ones who constitute the leadership of his organization. But while this is a vice, we have seen that it is a vice that the Communist shares with many millions of others today, in innumerable organizations of all types throughout the world. What we see here is not the compulsory bondage of the individual to the State, but the voluntary bondage of an individual to some external organization. It is, I believe, incumbent on libertarians and individualists to begin to give some profound attention to this problem; we have thought and written a good deal about the State; we have done very little in considering the problem of the individual and organizations.

Since there are Organization Men everywhere, and since the Communists are far better individualists than Army officers, etc., we must conclude that Communists are not uniquely diabolic, and that the main thing wrong with them is their end.

So much for the Communist man and his movement. As for Meyer’s book, it should be noted that it is written in lively, even powerful fashion—but, again, that it is skimpy and ignores vast stretches of space and time in the record of the Communist movement. Finally, it is important to note a disquieting passage or two that indicate that one reason why Meyer is so fiercely opposed to Communism is that it, in turn, is opposed to the State (or, at least, the non-Communist state). Thus, Meyer, in the course of his anti-Communist philippic, says:

Previously, the policeman on the corner has been for him, as for most Americans or Englishmen, a neutral symbol at the worst, at the best a source of information and ultimate protection against robbers and other malefactors. Now he is transformed into an immediate symbol of danger, an agent of the enemy, the bourgeois state, with whom one’s only potential relations are those of warfare. An alienation from the mores of the society is being artificially created....

Through theory, through atmosphere, through interpreted experience in demonstration or picket line, the sense of community with the nation is shattered. Very concretely, the idea of a commonwealth within the established commonwealth, and in bitter battle with it, is instilled.¹⁰¹

Let us note this passage very carefully. For what Meyer is doing is identifying “the society,” “the nation,” and “the commonwealth,” with the State—with the “cop on the corner.” Now this is the grievous error that has been made by every writer who has opposed liberty: this identification of the public, of the citizenry, with the State apparatus. It does not salvage Meyer’s position to add his wish that the state be “the limited government of a constitutional republic”—the damage is done.¹⁰² It is disquieting, but perhaps not astonishing, that Frank Meyer should reveal a deep-rooted and fundamental statism in his political philosophy; it is almost impossible to agitate for the State to kill Communists throughout the world without adopting statism at the root of one’s social philosophy.