Virtually every individual professing to be a Marxist/Leninist believes dialectical materialism is the proper philosophy for understanding and changing the world. Indeed, what dialectical materialism is to the Marxist, God is to the Christian. Virtually all the ways Christians describe God—eternal, infinite, uncreated, indestructible, lawgiver, life, mind, etc.—Marxists assign to dialectical matter. Making matter the essence of all things is called metaphysical materialism. This philosophy affirms matter as ultimately real and denies the reality of God. It is a "sort of godless theology."
      All true Marxists, therefore, affirm their faith in materialism as the only true reality. Karl Marx, in a letter to Frederick Engels, wrote, "as long as we actually observe and think, we cannot possibly get away from materialism."  Along this same epistemological line, Engels wrote, "The materialist world outlook is simply the conception of nature as it is. . . ."  In other words, what you see of nature is all there is, and because nature appears to be made up of matter of some sort, that is all there is to the real world. This perspective has been maintained by Marxists throughout their history, and, as we shall see, it is imperative that one believe in the materialistic interpretation of the world if he is to be a Marxist/Leninist in the true sense of the word.
      The Political Dictionary, published in Moscow in 1940, defines materialism as a "philosophical trend which correctly maintains that at the basis of the entire world lies matter—nature, existing independently of the consciousness of man. Materialism is opposed to [metaphysical] idealism which erroneously views idea, spirit, consciousness as the basis of life and all nature. Materialism, said Vladimir Lenin, views nature as primary, spirit as secondary; existence is in the first place, thinking is second. . . . The highest stage of the development of materialism is dialectical materialism."  Of course, putting the choice this way ignores the Christian alternative, metaphysical dualism, which affirms the reality of both matter and spirit (mind), thus avoiding the pitfalls of both materialism and idealism.
      The belief that matter is the basic ingredient of reality—indeed, the only ingredient—underlies all Marxist philosophy. Maurice Cornforth, a noted Marxist philosopher, reaffirms this idea:

However much particular materialist theories may be falsified by events, we can remain sure

that the right explanation is along materialist lines; and however well particular idealist theories may evade falsification, we can remain sure that they are nevertheless mere fancies. That is why Marxism rejects every idealist theory about human affairs. 

Metaphysical materialism is the supreme test of orthodoxy in Marxist philosophy. "Matter is," wrote Lenin "primary nature. Sensation, thought, consciousness, are the highest products of matter organized in a certain way. This is the doctrine of materialism, in general, and Marx and Engels, in particular."  Elsewhere, Lenin contended that matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality—i.e., people, plants, animals, stars, etc. "Matter is the objective reality given to us in sensation."  Our seeing the physical world, the material world, was proof enough for Lenin that only matter existed, that it was eternal, uncreated, indestructible, and dialectical. Being eternal and uncreated, and obeying dialectical law, however, is not exactly obvious to everyday sense perception. In this case, presumption determines and even takes precedence over observation.
      Engels clarifies the significance of choosing between materialism and supernaturalism by writing, "Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally? The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature, and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other . . . comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded Nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism." 
      Before we turn to Marxist epistemology, we need to comprehend the full significance of what is at stake between a materialist and a dualist (e.g., Christian supernaturalist) cosmology. When Lenin says that matter is primary, he is saying that matter is eternal and uncreated and that billions of years into this eternity life spontaneously emerged from non-living, non-conscious matter. He is also stating that not only life but also mind, thinking, and consciousness developed or evolved out of this matter. In other words, out of this material universe evolved the mental; out of the unconscious material universe emerged the conscious; out of the non-living evolved the living and ultimately man himself.

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The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
by Dr. Fred C. Schwarz

When once the Communists have come to power, whether it be in Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, or America, the next step is to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin defined this as "the rule–unrestricted by law and based on force–of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, a rule enjoying the sympathy and support of the laboring and exploited masses." This rule is theoretically exercised by the proletariat, or, in other words, by the toiling masses of the people. But since the Communist Party considers itself the executive of the proletariat, this rule is exercised in practice by the Communist Party. The definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, then, is "the rule, based on force and unrestricted by law, of the Communist Party over everybody else."
      Since this rule is based on force, the first act of Communist power is invariably to disarm the people as was done in China. Since this rule is based on force, and since it inevitably generates revolt, a second precaution taken by the Communists is to destroy the potential leadership of a counter revolution before such a revolution can occur. Any individual with qualities of leadership who is not subject to Communist discipline is arrested and executed. Whether he is pro-Communist or anti-Communist is immaterial. If he has qualities of leadership which may be used when the people awaken and desire to end Communist rule, he is a danger and must be destroyed.
      The dictatorship of the proletariat is accompanied by a monopoly of the means of communication by the Communist Party. Every medium of mass communication is taken over. Every newspaper is a Communist newspaper. Every radio station, every television channel, every publishing house, every book, every magazine, every school class is completely controlled by the Communist Party.
      Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, an economic monopoly is gradually established whereby the Communist Party becomes the sole employer. A man then has but one choice–he works for the Communist Party where he is told to work, or he starves to death. He may not leave his job and go to another, for there is only one employer–the Communist Party.
      Yet another feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the establishment of a vast, internal espionage network. This espionage system is patterned on the human body. The body is made up of billions of cells. The body preserves itself against the external forces which threaten it by a vast grouping of espionage agents. Certain cells become

informers. Physiologically, they are called sensory receptors and are to be found in the skin, muscles and various organs. These sensory receptors perceive heat, cold, pain, and contact with other objects. In other words, they collect information from their environment and send it to the brain. The brain assembles this information and sends orders down another nerve pathway to the executive authority, the muscles, whereupon muscular reaction is taken in relation to the information collected by those sensory nerve cells in the environment. The simple act of blinking which closes the eyelids to protect the sensitive eye against an advancing foreign body is a good example of such a mechanism.
      The Communists see the State, not as a mass of individuals, but as an organic unity, a higher form of being. Just as the body has sensory receptors, so throughout the State there are informers who collect information in their environment and send it back to the central nervous system–the secret police. Children are set to spy on their parents, wives on their husbands, employees on employers, pastors on their congregations, parishioners on their pastors. Every group, large or small, would have in its midst a number of informers. None of these informers would know who the others were. If one informed and the others did not, those failing to report would automatically be discovered. Thus a stream of information from every segment of the community flows back to the central authority.
      With such a system in existence, it is inevitable that a revolt that has any organization whatsoever will be discovered at birth and strangled in infancy.
      In the days of the Czar, a thousand men armed with sticks and stones were quite a formidable force. If revolution broke out somewhere in Siberia, it took three months for the news to reach Moscow and six months for troops to get there and quell the uprising. With modern means of communication, however, the news is back in seconds, and an air force detachment is there in minutes to deal with the trouble. The people are helpless against machine guns and bombs. The question is frequently asked: "Is it likely that the people of Russia will revolt?" Of course they will. They have already revolted a thousand times! But the revolts are spasmodic and unorganized, and they are wiped out almost casually. Ten miles away it is not even known that the revolt has taken place because of the power of the Communist dictatorship.
      The steps by which the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in China show the situation very clearly. The Communists came to power in China behind the seductive promises of land ownership and debt abolition. Immediately after seizing power, they kept these promises. The landlords were wiped out and their land was divided and given to the peasants whose debts were simultaneously canceled. For a 

brief period happiness flooded the land. The peasants set to work to till the land which was now theirs.
      Meanwhile, the Communists consolidated their power in anticipation of the day when they could take away the land from the peasants. They knew that when they did this, resistance would develop, and that such resistance would require leadership. They surveyed the community to discover those with potentials of leadership. If these people were not subject to Communist discipline, they were arrested on some pretext or another and destroyed.
      The Communists set about to disarm the people completely. Great rewards were given to those who could tell where weapons were hidden, and the rush to deliver concealed weapons began. They introduced a system of universal espionage in which everyone spied on everyone else. This had special reference to the children who were encouraged to spy and report on their own parents.
      They stopped freedom of movement and introduced internal passports. No one could travel from village to village without official permission. Upon arriving at the village, the visitor was not free to go and stay with friends, but had to stay at an inn set aside by the Communists and closely scrutinized by them. They stopped freedom of association. No group could gather except under official Communist sponsorship and control.
      Every individual was compelled to write or give a life confession detailing all the crimes committed throughout his entire life and naming all other persons implicated in these crimes. This provided the Communist government with a vast hoard of information to be used against any individual as they desired.
      A major assault was made on the child mind. They were filled with pride. Their affections were turned from their parents towards the State. They were given guns and appointed sentries with orders to challenge and, if necessary, to shoot adults. The school children would be marched out and given the task of searching all shops in an area for weapons and currency, and of accosting and searching all adults in the area.
      Finally there came the day of the mass trials and executions. A band would march through the streets of the 

city. Behind the band a group of prisoners would march with hands bound behind their backs. Into the bonds of each prisoner a stick would be struck with a placard on top telling the crimes of which he was allegedly guilty. Behind the prisoners the school children would march to observe the execution. Then came the general populace. Mothers were compelled to take their babies in arms to observe the hideous spectacle. Eye witness reports abound concerning these things. Multitudes of missionaries of impeccable character testify that these things really happened.
      Harvest day arrived and the peasants who had been so thrilled to become owners of their land were now forbidden to thresh their own grain except in the presence of an armed soldier.
      When the harvest was reaped, the government took far more than the landlords had ever taken.
      At this point hatred of Communism was the dominant emotion amongst the people, but they were so leaderless, so weaponless, so immobilized, so disassociated, so spied upon and so cowed that organized revolt appeared unattainable. The Communists had imposed their total tyranny.
      The period of peasant land ownership was brief indeed. Soon came the period of collective farms and then the great communes which have attacked the very fabric of the Chinese nation, the Chinese family and the character of the Chinese people. No Chinese individual now owns one acre of ground. He had been betrayed to a new serfdom more terrible than that of the past, a serfdom in which he is the helpless slave of the gargantuan Communist State.
      The dictatorship becomes ever more intense. The powers in the hands of the top few become greater and greater until finally there emerges the man of all power, the Joseph Stalin, who sits in the seat of the mighty while millions of slaves rush to and fro to do his bidding. Such is the reign of brutality, violence and tyranny which inevitably comes behind the beautiful promise with which Communism deceived its way to power. Only knowledge can enable us to stand against the intermediate seductive phase of limitless deception practiced by those whom J. Edgar Hoover defines as "Masters of Deceit."

The Bourgeois vs. the Proletariat
by Paul Craig Roberts

Few Americans realize it, but the Democratic Party adheres to the basic premise of Marxist political parties. The defining characteristic of a Marxist party is class warfare. The demonized class is "the rich," whether the rich are capitalists, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, California, California utility companies or upper income taxpayers. Like Marxists, Democrats frame policy issues in terms of "the rich" vs. the "little guy." Sometimes the "little guy" is a powerful environmental organization like the Sierra Club, which can lock up millions of square miles in a single stroke of a president’s pen. At other times the "little guy" is the American Association of Retired Persons, a powerful lobby group that blocks necessary Social Security reforms in the name of the elderly.
      The odd feature of class warfare is that the little guy, who is portrayed as being crushed under the heel of wealth, usually wins. The "little guy" is a propagandistic distraction that conceals the real power.
      For example, in California right now the "little guy" is electricity consumers; "the rich" are the utility companies. Environmentalists succeeded in forcing California utilities to generate electricity by burning clean natural gas. Environmentalists also succeeded in obstructing natural gas exploration and pipeline construction. Throw in an especially cold winter, which drives up the price of natural gas, and California regulations, which hold down the price that utilities can charge consumers for electricity.
      You don’t have to be an economist to know that this is a formula for bankrupting California’s utility companies. However, polls show 54 percent of Californians believe their state’s utility crisis is phony, merely a ploy for the utility companies to raise the price of electricity.
      This total disconnect from reality is the result of many decades of class warfare. The disconnect is in every policy arena and can be seen most clearly in tax policy.
      Bill Clinton, Al Gore and a jillion professors and media pundits claim President Bush’s plan to cut tax rates is unfair. "It would give the ‘people’s surplus’ to the rich" is the oft-repeated refrain.
      The fact of the matter is that 54 percent of the surplus belongs to the top 5 percent of taxpayers (those with incomes above $114,729) who pay 54 percent of the income tax revenues (see Special Report, Tax Foundation, November 2000). To be fair, Mr. Bush’s tax cut must hand the surplus revenues back to the people whose tax payments created the 

surplus. Fairness requires 54 percent of the tax cut to go to 5 percent of the taxpayers.
      Not even Republicans will be this fair. The rich will get back far less of the surplus than they paid in, and the poor will get far more. Despite this fact, Democrats will demonize the rich even though Mr. Bush’s tax plan will shift more of the burden to their shoulders.
      The Democrats’ class warfare has been so successful that it rules Republican tax policy. The Bush plan will cut tax rates more in the lower brackets than in the higher, thus raising the relative share of the tax burden paid by the rich.
      It is unlikely that you will ever hear this fact from the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN or the television networks. But you will hear much class warfare rhetoric. That’s the Marxist way.
      In the United States, investors in general and especially the rich are forced to pay tax rates far higher than the statutory maximum. The top income tax rate is approximately 40 percent, but on April 15 rich people with investments in equity mutual funds and investment partnerships will pay a far higher rate.
      This is happening because of tax laws and the way the stock market behaved last year. The first couple of months stock prices rose considerably; then they declined, ending the year below their beginning values.
      Anticipating a decline, fund managers sold stocks that had appreciated in order to realize the gain before it evaporated. The IRS requires that gains realized by mutual funds be apportioned to fund holders for tax reasons even though the gains were more than wiped out for the fund holders by the general decline in the overall value of the mutual fund.
      In other words, investors are taxed on phantom income. Two examples: I know a teenager saving for college. He began the year with $9,210 in his mutual fund and ended the year with $7,928, a loss of $1,282. Despite this loss of 14 percent, he must report short-term capital gains income of $690 with a tax liability of $103.50, because the fund sold some appreciated stocks prior to the market decline.
      Now consider the case of a rich man with 1,000 times more money than the teenager. He starts the year with $9,210,000 and ends with $7,928,000–a loss of $1,282,000. Yet, he had $690,000 in phantom capital gains and owes $276,000 in taxes.
      A fair tax system would tax the investor on gains only when he actually realizes gains by withdrawing from the fund or exiting from the equity partnership. But a fair tax system is precluded by the ignorance and animosity that class warfare generates. Not even Republicans can escape from Karl Marx’s influence.
      The Washington Times, January 26, 2001, P. A17

As a young man, Frederick Engels came in contact with a radical group known as the Young Hegelians and became enchanted with their ideas, especially the materialist philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. Engels readily adopted this materialistic outlook, which caused him to be sympathetic toward another young radical, Karl Marx, and in 1844 they began a lifelong friendship. This friendship gave rise to Marxism, one of the twentieth century’s most dominant worldviews. Oddly enough, the vital role that Engels played in co-founding Marxism is often overlooked. Marx, looming larger than life, seems to overshadow Engels’ contributions. But the fact remains: Marxism would not have gained the

Russians Pick Lenin

Russians made Communist leader Vladimir Lenin their top choice as the nation’s "man of the century," followed by dictator Josef Stalin, the Interfax news agency reported yesterday.
      The poll asked 1,500 persons across Russia to name a choice without offering any suggestions.
      After the Soviet leaders, human rights advocate and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov came in third, Interfax said. The first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, took fourth place, and Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev was fifth, followed by actors and politicians from Russia’s past.
      Lenin won the most support, with 14 percent of respondents calling him the most important man of the 20th 

century, showing that many older Russians still revere him. Lenin’s lasting popularity among the older generation also has been explained by years of Soviet propaganda, which lionized him.
      Stalin received support from 9 percent of respondents despite a consensus among most Russians that he was a cruel dictator responsible for the deaths of millions in arbitrary executions and forced labor camps. Stalin is still respected by a small group of Russians.
      Mr. Sakharov, a renowned nuclear physicist who drew attention to the cruelty of the Soviet system and became a symbol of his country’s quest to shake off the legacy of communism, received support from 8 percent of respondents.
      The Public Opinion Foundation polling agency conducted the survey December 16.
      The Washington Times, December 27, 2001, P. 1