To Communism...Via Majority Vote; B. Moreell

Ten Points Of Communism Like most Americans, I began by hating communism be cause of its methods. I linked communism with outright lying, subtle deception, treason, allegiance to a foreign state, hatred of religion, and contempt for the God-given rights of individuals. Wherever the Communists achieved power, there followed murder, slave labor, concentration camps, and despotic control of every phase of human life. But I found that these are only the methods and by products of communism. I then asked myself these ques tions: "What is communism its'eff, as distinguished from its methods? Are not these cruel methods the inevitable result of autocratic rule? Can any good end ever be achieved by evil meansr' If a person intends to fight something, he should know his enemy in order to plan his strategy. Otherwise, he may do more harm than good. I had heard of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the founders of communism. And I had been told that their book, The Communist Manifesto, pub lished in 1848, is the "bible" of the communist faith. So I bought the book and read it. And I have been greatly dis turbed ever since. You will understand the reason for this when I read to you the ten steps of the communist pro gram as set forth by Marx. They appear on pages 32, 33, and 34 of the One Hundredth Anniversary edition of The Communist Manifesto. I shall now read to you from that [219 ] book; I assure you that I am not reading out of context: "We have seen ... that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class; to win the battle of democracy.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie [i.e., the property owners]; to centralize all instruments of pro duction in the hands of the State ... "Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected ex cept by means of despotic inroads on the rights of prop erty and on the conditions of bourgeois production . . . "These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. "Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the fol lowing will be pretty generally applicable: "1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. "2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. "3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. "4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. "5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclu sive monopoly.