philosophy emphasized his “hatred of all the gods.” He grew to perceive belief in God as a narcotic. His criticism and elimination of religion formed the foundation for all other criticisms; that is, Marx felt that atheism in practice consisted of the “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Frederick Engels and V. I. Lenin agreed that religion was a drug or “spiritual booze” and must be combated. “Every idea of God,” insisted Lenin, “is unutterable vileness.” The Marxist/Leninist movement has not deviated from its founding fathers’ attitude toward God specifically nor toward religion in general. The Atheist’s Handbook declares, “The Communist Party has always taken and continues to take a position of militant atheism and of an implacable aggressive ideological struggle against religious befuddlement.” Under the direction of the Council of Religious Affairs, the Central House of Scientific Atheism, the Institute for Scientific Atheism and its publication Science and Religion, the doctrine of atheism has maintained its foundational role in Communist ideology. Only in the sixth era of glasnost and perestroika did the Soviet Union take a less aggressive stance toward religion, but these concessions are in no way a rejection of the basic tenets of Marxist/Leninist theology, which is still unapologetically atheistic.
      “We Communists are atheists,”  declared Chou En-lai at the Bandung Conference in April, 1955. This Chinese Communist leader captured the fundamental theological ingredient of Marxism/Leninism in one word: atheism. Today, Marxist/Leninists prefer two words: scientific atheism.
      From the university days of Karl Marx to the present, official spokesmen for Marxism have been consistent about the content of their theology—God, a Supreme Being, a Creator, a Ruler, does not, cannot, and must not exist.
      God is considered an impediment, even an enemy, to a scientific, materialistic, socialistic world outlook. The idea of God, insists Lenin, encourages the working class (the proletariat) to drown its terrible economic plight of slavery and misery “in a sort of spiritual booze” of some mythical heaven (“pie in the sky by and by”). Even a single sip of this intoxicant decreases the revolutionary fervor necessary to exterminate the oppressing class (the bourgeois) and its perpetuation of inhuman miseries, thus causing the working class to forfeit their only chance of creating a truly human heaven on earth: global Communism.

Influences Affecting Marx’s Theology

Religion as the opium of the masses, however, was a later development in the mind of Karl Marx. His atheism was conceived in the heady arena of philosophy, not economics or sociology. When Marx became an atheist at the University of Berlin, he was not thinking about surplus value or the dictatorship of the proletariat. He was thinking about the philosophies of Prometheus, Georg W. F. Hegel, and Ludwig Feuerbach.
      “Philosophy makes no secret of it,” said Marx. “Prometheus’s admission: ‘In sooth all gods I hate’ is its own admission, its own motto against all gods, heavenly and earthly, who do not acknowledge the consciousness of man as the supreme divinity. There must be no god on a level with it.” 
      In a circle of radical Young Hegelians that included Ludwig Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge, Max Stirner, Moses Hess, and eventually Frederick Engels, Marx became an atheist. Atheism was embraced by the group, with Feuerbach proclaiming, “It is clear as the sun and evident as the day that there is no God; and still more, that there can be no God.” 
      “My atheism,” Feuerbach further declared, “[is] merely the unconscious and actual atheism of modern humanity and science, made conscious, untwisted and openly declared.”  Marx accepted Feuerbach’s thesis: that the turning point of history will be the moment man realizes that the only god of man is man himself.
      Feuerbach believed that the notion of God emerges from man’s projection of his human attributes (consciousness, intelligence, love) into an imaginary heaven and wrapping such attributes around a nonexistent heavenly figure. For example, the concept of spirit emerges by projecting human intelligence or understanding into an imaginary heaven. The idea of God as spirit, therefore, is merely man’s intelligence in abstract form. Projecting human love into the heavens creates the concept of God as love. According to Catholic theologian Hans Küng, this view implies that “God appears as a projected, hypostatized reflection of man, behind which nothing exists in reality.” 

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The Fall of China
by Dr. Fred C. Schwarz

The Communist conquest of China is a classical manifestation of the five steps of Communist conquest:

1. The conquest of the student mind
2. The organization of the students into the Communist Party
3. The scientific exploitation of group self- interest to bring that party to popularity and power
4. Revolutionary conquest of power
5. Communist dictatorship and universal slavery.

1.   The Conquest of the Student Mind
The students in China were a very special class.  The scholar was always an object of veneration to the Chinese and the influence of the students was very considerable.  The Communists were highly successful in recruiting students into the ranks of the Communist Party.  Almost the entire leadership of the Chinese Communist Party joined that Party as students.  The arguments used to recruit the student intellectual have already been discussed (in previous issues).

2.        Organization of Students into the Communist Party
The Communist Party of China was formed on typical Leninist lines.  The inner core came from the ranks of the intellectuals.  The bulk of the general membership came from the peasants.  The members derived from the working class were few indeed.  This is a peculiar structure for a party claiming to be proletarian.  The Party was formed with a single leader, Mao Tse-tung.  With complete discipline the entire Party membership absorbed the thought and obeyed the orders of Mao Tse-tung.

3.        Scientific Exploitation of Group Self-Interest
The disciplined, fanatical Communist cadres worked feverishly among the masses of the people.  Their objective was not to convert them to the theories of Communism, but to exploit their desires and grievances.  Many of the Chinese people were landless tenant farmers.  A great burden of debt hung round their shoulders.  Their burning desires were centered round the ownership of the land on which they labored, and freedom from their burden of debt.
      The Communist approach was therefore very simple.  They promised the people the ownership of the land on which they worked and the abolition of all debt.  In addition, China had known the oppression of foreign power, so the Communists exploited Chinese nationalism with a program to exclude the white man from Asia.  With such a program so closely tuned to the deep-seated desires of the masses of the people, it is easy to understand why the Communists

achieved a certain popularity.  From the peasants attracted by the Communist promises, Mao Tse-tung gathered the youth, trained them with great efficiency, and built the Chinese Communist Army.

4.        Revolutionary Conquest of Power
The conquest of China was successfully accomplished through the strategy of the brilliant Chinese Communist leader, Mao Tse-tung.  He developed two new techniques that were in large measure responsible for Communist success in the face of great odds.  The first of these was the principle of political warfare in association with military conflict.  The war was waged not only by the armed forces, but by political agents as well who always preceded the Communist soldiers into any given area.  Their task was to infiltrate and to undermine the will of the people to resist.  They spread rumor and utilized blackmail and terror.  They took advantage of civil liberty to destroy civil liberty.  They combined assassination with sabotage so effectively that many communities were neutralized and fell easy prey to the Communist military advance.  No advance was made by Communist troops until the way had been prepared by the Communist political agents.
      The second technique developed by Mao Tse-tung was that of guerilla warfare.  By means of this art, he was able to transform strategic inferiority into tactical superiority.  Although his army was outnumbered for many years, he was able to manipulate his troops with such skill that he never engaged in pitched battle unless he outnumbered the enemy by three to one.  He was able to achieve this because of the superior mobility of his troops and by the technique of guerilla warfare that he perfected.  He would gather together a considerable number of his soldiers in a given area, launch a lightning offensive against the enemy at a point where they were gathered in smaller number, and disappear with his troops before the enemy could rally.  His soldiers would hide their uniforms, adopt the character of the surrounding peasantry, and mingle with the people.  By the time the superior forces of the enemy had gathered, the Communist army was nowhere to be found.  By this dual offensive of political warfare and guerilla mobility, the Chinese Communist forces advanced to victory, conquering the vast land mass of China.
      In addition to the internal forces operating within China, the International Communist machine worked ceaselessly on their behalf.  Russia provided military instructors and weapons.  Throughout the world the Chinese Communists were pictured as benign agrarian reformers and the Chiang Kai-Shek government as the epitome of corruption.  The America government endeavored to achieve the impossible, establish a permanent, peaceful co-existence between Communism and the Chinese government.  This played right into Communist hands and after the defeat of Japan, Russia delivered the vast weapon hoard of the Japanese Manchurian Army to the Chinese Communists, and their successful southward march began.

5.        Communist Dictatorship and Universal Slavery
Once in power the Communist Party systematically set about the process of securing a monopoly over the lives of all Chinese citizens so that the Party could remain all-powerful permanently while the people were reduced to the impotence of isolated slaves.  Every vestige of alternative authority was smashed.  The Communist Party secured a monopoly of all police power, all economic power, all military and educational power.  It became the universal policeman, employer, administrator, judge, newsman, entertainer and teacher.  It imposed the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

CZECHOSLOVAKIA
The means adopted by the Communists for the conquest of Czechoslovakia differ somewhat from those used in Russia and China.  Since it is closer to the method that they probably envisage for the conquest of America, it merits some attention.  They came to power in Czechoslovakia by utilizing an internal Communist minority, which operated in the blackmailing shadow of massive external Russian military power.  Hanging like a threatening cloud over Czechoslovakia was the Red Army.
      At the conclusion of the second World War, Czechoslovakia was the most industrialized, the most prosperous, and the most democratic of the Eastern European states.  Communism was an insignificant force.  Three years later Czechoslovakia was bound hand and foot as a Communist slave.  This was brought to pass by a series of small concessions to Communism, each relatively insignificant in itself, each presented as an alternative to attack by the Red Army, and obviously to be preferred to such an attack.  The cumulative effect, however, was the surrender of Czechoslovakia to Communism.  This is the program for America.  The concessions are to be obtained because they are preferable to an atomic war.  Each in itself may appear indecisive, but each will be a step to surrender.

Every time the Communists can persuade Americans the false alternative to atomic or thermo-nuclear war, they win a great victory.
      Within Czechoslovakia, government was administered by various departments of executive authority, each department being headed by a cabinet minister.  Authority in each department of government was thus largely centralized in the hands of one man.  Police power, for example, was in the hands of the Minister of Internal Security. This applied in education, communications, transportation, agriculture, justice and defense.
      The first step taken by the Communist minority was to establish themselves in a coalition government with democratic and socialist parties.  They then proceeded to infiltrate Communists into the top positions in all branches of government.  Once the top position in each department of government was filled by a communist, non-Communist and anti-Communists within the organization were powerless to withstand his total authority and power.  When, for example, the Communists took over the police force, they used the power so gained to arrest and destroy all those who differed from them politically, including those to whom they had temporarily showed friendship.  Thus did Communism take over the most democratic nation in Eastern Europe.  It is to be noted that it was not done by the use of the Red Army, but simply by the threat of its use.
      It is a program of this nature which the Communists probably envisage for America.  When America is encircled economically, and militarily, when foreign markets are disrupted and foreign trade destroyed, when America is an island in a Communist sea, and lies under the shadows of military annihilation, the Communists believe that America will make concessions as did Czechoslovakia.  Authority will be centralized and a few Communists will wield great power.  At the chosen moment the final Communist assault will take place and resistance will be token and half-hearted.

Stalin’s Agents
by Robert D. Novak

The president’s most trusted adviser is a Soviet agent.  The nation’s leading nuclear scientist is turning secrets over to the Kremlin.  The entire federal government is honeycombed with Communists.  American intelligence agencies are infested with Russian spies.  Soviet agents are working in the offices of renowned American columnists, and one beloved journalist is actually on Moscow’s payroll.
      This isn’t the plot of a second-rate spy thriller.  This is the actual truth about the astounding Soviet penetration of the United States during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, as carefully researched and dispassionately presented by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel in The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors.

      The book was nearly completed when Breindel, who had served more than a decade as the editorial page editor of the New York Post, died in 1998 at the age of forty-two.  Romerstein, an expert for the United States Information Agency and congressional committees on Soviet espionage and disinformation, finished the book.
      Getting it published, however, proved no easy task.  A mainstream publishing firm voided its contract–on the pretext of Breindel’s death, but in reality because it could not deal with the exposure as traitors of such icons of the “greatest generation” as Harry Hopkins and J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The conservative publisher Regnery stepped in to prevent The Venona Secrets from being spiked, but what is still in question is whether this work will get the attention it deserves.
      The inspiration of this book was the release by the National Security Agency of intercepted and decrypted communications between Soviet spies and their spymasters.

Given the code name “Venona,” these messages, Romerstein and Breindel write, “are the mortar that holds together information from Soviet archives and U.S. government investigations.  Together, they give a clear picture of Soviet World War II espionage against the United States.”  The impact of Moscow’s effort was pro-found.  Soviet influence in the Roosevelt administration is shown killing any chance for an early Nazi surrender to the Western allies.  It hastened the Kremlin’s development of the atom bomb, permitting Stalin to give the green light to the Communist invasion of South Korea.  The result in each instance was heavy loss of life by American soldiers.
      The Venona files have settled many arguments once and for all, silencing liberal claims that had persisted for half a century.  The decrypted messages prove that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenburg genuinely were spies.  The first 1995 Venona release “sent shock waves through the ranks of the Rosenberg defenders.”  It also vindicates the two early sources about Communist espionage, Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley.  These former spies had become government witnesses after years of soul-searching, “only to be called liars by the Left and vilified in numerous books and articles.”  The Venona Secrets also demolishes the old liberal saw that the Communist Party USA was just another political party.  “Venona shows that most of the agents working for the NKVD during World War II were members of the Communist party; some were Party officials.”  That included party leaders Earl Browder and Eugene Dennis.
      But Romerstein and Breindel combine the Venona files with other sources to make bold assertions. None is bolder than their treatment of Roosevelt’s confidant Harry Hopkins, who has been canonized by mainstream historians as a hero gallantly battling chronic illness in the cause of winning the war.
      In a section headed “Harry Hopkins–Soviet Spy,” the

president’s top adviser is shown lobbying relentlessly to
give tons of uranium to the Kremlin.  When Soviet official Victor Kravchenko defected in Washington in 1945, Hopkins pleaded with Roosevelt to send him back to Russia.  Instead of presenting to Stalin the American desire for a free Poland, Hopkins told the Soviet dictator “that the United States would desire a Poland friendly to the Soviet Union.”
      Hopkin’s role was truly remarkable.  Janet Ross, Moscow correspondent for the Communist Daily Worker, was an NKVD agent who in 1943 reported U.S. ambassador William Standley’s criticism of Soviet policy made to a small group of American journalists.  Only two days later, Hopkins “pressed for the removal of Ambassador Standley on the grounds that the ambassador had lost Stalin’s confidence.”  Hopkins earlier had insisted, over the objections of Army intelligence, on sending pro-Soviet military officer Philip Faymonville (called by his colleagues the “Red Colonel”) to Moscow as a lend-lease administrator.
      Could it have been, the authors ask, that Hopkins was “an unconscious agent” who did not realize that his left-wing ideology was drawing him toward treason?  Ishak Akhmerov, a Soviet spymaster during World War II, delivered a lecture to KGB officers during the 1960s in which he mentioned Alger Hiss but called Hopkins “the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States.”  The “Agent 19” described in Venona decrypts as meeting secretly with Churchill seems nobody but Harry Hopkins.
      Romerstein and Breindel are even bolder in their treatment of Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb who has been portrayed in books and films as a heroic figure and defended even by such staunch anti-Communist as the Alsop brothers.  The loss of Oppenheimer’s clearance as a security risk during the Eisenhower administration was widely condemned as McCarthyism.
      The Venona files suggest but do not definitely prove that

Oppenheimer collaborated with the NKVD.  But Romerstein and Breindel are convinced by the testimony of Pavel Sudoplatov, the Moscow-based chief of atomic-bomb espionage, who fingered Oppenheimer in 1994.  “We can say for certain,” the authors write, “that Oppenheimer did in fact knowingly supply classified information on the atom bomb to the Soviet Union.”
      Such penetration by Soviet espionage was pervasive.  Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, a middle-level bureaucrat who worked in several government agencies, ran a spy ring that included Chambers and Bentley–and that won him the Order of the Red Star and a place in the KGB Hall of Fame.  The FBI and U.S. Army counterintelligence were suspicious, but were brushed off by Roosevelt administration officials.  Robert Patterson, one of the celebrated wartime “wise men,” pressed for Silvermaster’s continued access to secret information.  Lauchlin Currie–administrative assistant to Roosevelt and deputy administrator of the Foreign Economic Administration–told suspicious FBI agents that he “did not believe” Silvermaster was a Communist.  But Currie was also a Soviet agent who reported to his Kremlin masters that the Americans were on the verge of breaking the Soviet code.
      When foreign service officer John Stewart Service was arrested in 1945 for passing secrets to the pro-Communist magazine Amerisia, Currie went into action.  He went to legendary Washington fixer Thomas Corcoran, who in turn went as high as Attorney General Tom Clark.  The result: Service was not indicted, and Amerasia owner Philip Jaffe (a friend of Earl Browder) got off with a small fine.  “The value to the Soviets of the Amerasia espionage operations, protected by corruption and special favors,” Romerstein and Breindel write, “was grasped only after the decryption of the Venona messages.”
      Perhaps the most startling revelation is the thorough Soviet penetration of Wild Bill Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA.  Maurice Halperin, chief of the Latin American division, was an NKVD agent.  So was Duncan Lee, Donovan’s assistant who kept his spymasters informed of secret missions.  The transmission of those secrets bore bitter fruit.  “Non-Communist wartime operatives who had been recruited by the Allies in target countries now behind the Iron Curtain were ruthlessly hunted down and exterminated,” Romerstein and Breindel write, adding that it gave the KGB a “crucial advantage” early during the Cold War.
      The Venona Secrets reveal successful efforts to infiltrate American journalism.  Joseph Barnes, foreign editor of the New York Herald-Tribune, had a “long relationship with

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      Accepting Feuerbach’s conclusion that God is a projection of man writ large, Marx boasted, “Man is the highest being for man.” Indeed, Marx explains that this view signals the demise of all religion: “The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man. . . .” 
      For Marx, then, man is God. Man created God in his own image. Man created religion in order to worship himself. The notion that God is merely a projection of man is contained in Marx’s assertion that man “looked for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing there but the reflection of himself.”
      In 1841, Marx completed his doctoral dissertation on atheistic philosophy among the ancient Greeks. He titled it The Difference between Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, prefacing it with a profession of atheism, a proclamation that human consciousness was the supreme deity.
      By 1844 Marx had published his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. The Critique opened with the assertion, “For Germany the criticism of religion is in the main complete, and criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism. The