Book Reviews

473 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK Basic Communism by John Chamberlain T o be confronted with the task of reviewing Clarence B. Carson's monumental Basic Communism(American Textbook Com mittee, ~O. Box 8, Wadley,AL 36276,570 pages, $29.95 cloth) for a fixed deadline certainly causes mixed feelings. Each section provides pleasurable reading. But to be forced to gulp everything down in a few days is a cruel and unusual punishment. This book should be taken advisedly as a year's project. It is the only way to assure fairness. As the author of innumerable Cold War period columns, I felt while reading it that I was livingmy life all over again at a tremendous clip. Carson tells his story from fragmentary beginnings. There was no real Communism until the 20th century. What we had were socialistic Brook Farms, descriptions of "voyages to Icarie," and Fabian Society lecture groups. We had also had the spec ulations of Marx and Engels, and we had· a Rus sian named Lenin who, in his Swiss hideout, nur tured the idea that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would necessarily involve seizure of the government of a whole state. Modern Com munism, which he and his group of "profession als" imposed on Russia, had perforce to be a one man show. Otherwise it would deteriorate (Carson uses the word "debacle") into regional enclaves very much as is happening now.

The modern Communists have been doing their best to disguisethe mess they have made of Russia. But calculated disinformation can't hide what is happening. Carson doesn't fall for the idea that Stalin (whom Lenin feared for his "rudeness") perverted the course of Marxist-Leninist history. Like Max Eastman, Carson thinks one-man rule was inherent in the Marx-Engels philosophy from the beginning. It could have been Trotsky or Bukharin in Soviet Russia, or somebody besides Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh in Indochina, or Che Guevera instead of Fidel Castro in Cuba. Carson offers good biographical sketches of all his main characters. Before Marx, there were Robespierre and other totalitarians of the French Revolution. They lasted only a few months until Napoleon with his "whiff of grapeshot" stopped the guillotines. Carson stresses the contrasting vis tas of the French and Russian revolutions. What Robespierre represented for a few months went on for some 27 years in the Russia of Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev.

Under the heading of "The Origin of Commu nism" Carson deals with dialectical materialism, the class struggle, the labor theory of value, and the idea of revolution itself. Then there is a diver sion to explore utopianism, anarchism, and syndi calism. And there is a lengthy section on the histo ry of Russia, its land and people. We get the full gruesome story of the murder of the Tsar and the whole Romanov family. Lenin had his bursts of common sense. When starvation threatened in 1920 and 1921 he back tracked and proclaimed the New Economic Policy (NEP). Farmers had their own plots. There was a multiplicity of small businesses. With help from the United States, Russians began to eat again. But when Lenin died, ~talin, the clever infiltrator, decided that NEP-men would never be good Com munists. After exiling the internationalist Trotsky, and taking over the slogan of "socialism in one country," Stalin instituted his series of five-year plans. Rich farmers. (meaning those who could perhaps hire one or two helpers) were p~rsued as 474 THE FREEMAN • DECEMBER 1990 "kulaks."For the secondtime in 10 years Russia had a man-madefamine on its hands as farming expertisedisappeared.

News of the Ukrainefaminewas suppressedby WalterDuranty of The New York Times"who de nied there was anything amiss in the Ukraine countryside.But two courageousand able corre spondents, William Henry Chamberlin and Eugene Lyons,left Russiain order to write about the faminethey had seen with their own eyes. Carsonthinksthe murderofKirovin Leningrad was connivedat by Stalin,who neededreasonsfor his purges and the show trials that shocked the .world. Carson mentions "four stages of terror." His authority is Solzhenitsyn,who has made the concept of the Gulag Archipelagoknown to the Westin his remarkablebooks. Anyordinarywriterwouldhavebrokenoffwith the Sovietsectionofa jam-packedbookandcalled it a day. But Carson has to deal with the whole internationalthrust of Communism,with its "two faces."We learn about the creationof front orga nizations,the provokingof civil wars. There are sub-sectionson Fascismin Italy, Nazismin Ger many, and anarcho-syndicalismand "republican ism" in Spain. Finally, Carson has to tell us all about Fidel Castro, North Korea, and the whole Third World.

The danger in America, Carson says, comes from "secularhumanism.""From the perspective ofthe riseandspreadofCommunismin the Twen tieth Century,"Carsonwrites,"secularhumanism ... is the undergirdingdoctrineof an international movementwhichhas had as its objectthe conver sionor conquestof the wholeworld." But the worsthasn'thappened.Gorbachevmay not be our friend,but he obviouslydoesn'twantto go down in historyas another Stalin. D BASIC COMMUNISM Its Rise, Spread and Debacle in the 20th Century by Clarence B. Carson BasicCommunismis the first major attempt to capture the Communist movement whole and place it in historical perspective. It is a book for reading, for reference, and for grasping what has happened to and is happening to our world in the 20th century. 570pages in length, BasicCommunismfeatures: • Author's Preface • Chronology of major events in Communism from the late 18th century to the present • Biographical sketches of major characters • Notes for all citations • Glossary • Bibliography • Index Published by The American Textbook Committee, and availablefrom FEE.

Mail, phone,or FAXyourorderto: The Foundationfor EconomicEducation 30 SouthBroadway Irvington-an-Hudson,NewYork 10533 (914)591-7230 FAX: (914)591-8910 $29.95cloth INDEX THE FREEMAN Volume 40 January-December 1990 Prepared by Bettina Bien Greaves NOTE: In page references, the number preceding the colon designates the month, the numbers following refer to pages. All articles have at least three entries - author, title, and subject except in a few cases when the title and the appropriate subject coincide. Books reviewed are listed alphabetically by their author(s) on page 480; the names of their reviewers are included in the master index. A ACADEMIC freedom at a public university (Lott) 3:112-115 ADVANCE guard of freedom (Barniskis) 4:124-125 AFFIRMATIVE action: the new road to serfdom (Yates) 12:461-472 AGRICULTURE America needs organic farming and pesticides (J. Hood) 2:57-58 Building a barn (Lapp) 5:172-175 Crop controls and Indian raids in colonial Virginia (Pecquet) 2:59-60 The grapes of opportunity (Lapp) 3:84-87 AIR bags - more government hot air?