social, and from the social to the paradise of a communist society—and then call off the dialectical process because the end has been accomplished—is a problem of major proportions.
      The whole process of human history is the working of dialectical matter through biological evolution, economics, and the social order. The struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat on the economic-social level is basically the same struggle involved in the atom and in the evolutionary process of living matter. Historical materialism is dialectical materialism wrought in history. It is historical determinism with a vengeance. While Marxists seek to make man significant in some ways, impersonal, dialectical matter is the only critical aspect of the equation. Life, man, mind, love, ideas, and consciousness are all secondary to the great forces determining nature and history.
      Marxism has developed its interpretation of history much more completely than has Humanism. Indeed, the Marxist view of history is central to the entire theory of Marxism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were so confident of the power of their approach to history that they believed it would lead mankind into a classless, perfectly democratic society. Engels, in a preface to The Communist Manifesto, declares that the pamphlet’s central proposition "is destined to do for history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology. . . ."
      Marxists believe their historical perspective is based strictly on a scientific view of the world, and that this scientific approach makes their view better suited than any other to interpret history. Naturally, the Marxist works to integrate other conclusions of science with his own approach, including evolutionary theory. V. I. Lenin provides a fine example of the Marxist faith in evolution when he declares, ". . . Darwin put an end to the view of animal and plant species being unconnected, fortuitous, ‘created by God’ and immutable, and was the first to put biology on an absolutely scientific basis by establishing the mutability and the succession of species. . . ."
      This belief in evolution shapes the Marxist view of history in much the same way it shaped Secular Humanism’s view. The Marxist sees evolution as continuously encouraging development and progress in living things; therefore he assumes that man has been constantly improving himself and will continue to progress in the future. This attitude is summed up in The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy: "Human history has not been a continuous and straight ascent, always and everywhere expressing the march of progress. It has known reverses, zigzags, disasters such as wars, barbarian invasions, the decline and fall of powerful states, the disappearance of entire nations. But taken as a 

whole it has been an ascent, from one social-economic formation to another, from lower to higher forms."
      In this sense, the Marxist/Leninist and Secular Humanist views of history are identical. However, as will become clear, Marxism creates a much stronger framework for its historical perspective.
      For now, it is important to note that Marxism’s "scientific" approach to biology leaves no room in its worldview for God, especially a God who might influence history. Maurice Cornforth proclaims, "The whole conception of an external influence at work in human affairs—whether it is called the Absolute Spirit, God, Fate, or merely the influence of the stars, makes very little difference—is an idealist conception, totally foreign to science and therefore to Marxism." The scientific approach to history, according to the Marxist, leaves no room for God, or indeed any supernatural entities. For this reason, the Marxist view of history is termed Historical Materialism. In an effort to be consistent with their philosophy, Marxists cling to the "scientific" assumption that only matter exists and only it can influence world events. Stalin writes, ". . . Marx’s philosophical materialism holds that the world is by its very nature material, that the multifold phenomena of the world constitute different forms of matter in motion, that interconnection and interdependence of phenomena, as established by the dialectical method, are a law of the development of moving matter, and that the world develops in accordance with the laws of movement of matter and stands in no need of a ‘universal spirit.’"
      This is the crucial proposition for the Marxist view of history and, indeed, for the Marxist worldview. Neither God, nor angels, nor men’s souls act as the actual basis for the workings of history; rather, matter obeying specific laws drives the progress of the world. For the Marxist, matter is primary, and anything else (if there is anything else) is but a pale reflection. The questions arise, then: What specific material things form the foundation on which man’s societies are based? And do any of the institutions or people in society play any role in charting the course of history?

Matter as the Basis For the Social Superstructure
The central flaw of other worldviews’ perceptions of history, according to the Marxist, is that these views do not recognize the root material cause behind all historical movement. Frederick Engels declares, "The inconsistency [in other approaches to history] does not lie in the fact that ideal driving forces are recognized, but in the investigation not being carried further back behind these into their motive causes."  That is, the Marxist will admit that sometimes the workings of men’s minds influence history, but these 

workings are ultimately influenced by material forces outside of man. Thus, Marx postulates, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness." If one wants to get at the real driving force behind history, he must look beyond the ideas of men to the true reality of the material world.
      Specifically, he must examine mankind’s means of production and exchange to understand the basis for all historical progress. Marxists believe this material, concrete aspect of man’s culture determines the historical development of the species of man. Engels states, "The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production, and with production the exchange of its products, is the basis of every social order." Put more simply, economics is the driving force of history—as Marx says, "With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed." Engels elaborates: "The economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period."
      The Marxist believes that economics acts as the foundation for man’s whole social superstructure. Judging from Engels’s last statement, as well as Marx’s prediction that social consciousness is determined by social existence, it would also seem that Marxists believe man’s ideas are shaped by the particular economic system extant in his society. A careful reading of Marxist leaders proves this assumption true. Marx and Engels proclaim, "Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness . . . no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking."
      Elsewhere Engels declares that "in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch. . . ."
      This attitude is maintained in modern Marxist thought, as well. Cornforth says that "circumstances not only limit what men can do, but condition what in practice they want to do; people’s desires, aims and ideals are conditioned by their circumstances; what one effectively wants to do, or would 

like to see done, takes its start from the circumstances in which the wish is born. . . . men’s ways of thinking—the scope of their ideas, the ways they conceive of themselves and of the world about them—are conditioned by circumstances." The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy sums up: "In complete accord with the materialist world outlook, historical materialism proceeds from the proposition that social existence is primary in relation to social consciousness. Social consciousness is a reflection of social existence. It may be a more or less correct reflection or it may be false. It is not social consciousness or the ideas of some political leader that determine the system of social life and the direction of social development, as the idealists assume. On the contrary, it is social existence that ultimately determines social consciousness, the ideas, aspirations and aims of individuals and social classes.
      For Marxism, the economic structure of society proves to be the driving force of history. Governments, courts, philosophies, and religions all are based on this foundation and therefore affect history only to the extent that economics shapes their ability to guide man’s development. Thus it appears that, for the Marxist, economics is the only dynamic force in history, and all other aspects of mankind and his society are determined by it. The Marxist, however, attempts to evade this conclusion by claiming that economics, in shaping society’s superstructure and man’s ideas, does not leave these secondary forces predetermined and powerless. Engels writes, "According to the materialist conception of history the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure . . . also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form."
      Obviously, Marxists refuse to draw the logically necessary conclusion from historical materialism: that man has no say in the progress of society and thought. Why? Because this conclusion would destroy the need for a Marxist worldview, because (if it were true) it would mean that man is powerless to change the course of history and therefore need not act or adhere to any ideology. But can the Marxist escape this conclusion after placing such an emphasis on the economic basis for history? 

Of Putin’s frequent words of commitment to maintaining freedom of the press and opposition to government censorship, Berezovsky says: "Forget the words, watch the actions."Sometimes even the words of Putin and his key people are contradictory. German Gref, the head of the Center of Strategic Research, the Moscow-based think tank which developed Putin’s economic program in double-speak characteristic of old line communists, said in a radio interview: "We must end an omnipresent state control of businesses—but the state’s role must be increased."
      In spite of the goal of "ending omnipresent state control of business," the state’s role in businesses has been increased with, for example, a move to take over vodka production. In a Moscow dispatch, the London Observer reported: "A shakeup of Russia’s alcohol industry is provoking fears among Moscow vodka magnates that President Vladimir Putin is determined to bring their industry back under state control."
      Among Putin’s moves were establishment of Rosspirtprom as the state "watchdog" overseeing vodka production with authority to make key alcohol industry appointments and clamp down on manufacturers not making adequate profits. In the process one of the most powerful vodka merchants was ousted in a boardroom coup and "hospitalized," threats to another vodka businessman sent him into hiding and a third faced criminal proceedings after his offices were raided by special economic crimes police.
      In spite of the cautions that should have developed from heeding Berezovsky’s warning to "forget his words—watch his actions" President Clinton expressed high hopes for the career of the new Russian leader. Columnist Mona Charen raised an important question, writing: "Is Russia heading for dictatorship? Arguably, it trembles on the brink. And the Clinton administration has done everything possible to give it a careless shove. How else to interpret President Clinton’s gushing praise of Vladimir Putin, Russian’s acting president? In Mr. Putin, the president said, ‘Russia has someone being capable of being a very strong, and effective, and straightforward leader.’ "
      Charen commented on Clinton’s remarks, saying, "Straightforward? Even accepting that Mr. Clinton is the last person on Earth to judge honesty, one might have expected a bit more restraint."
      Few would be surprised that Clinton and his people might show approval for a budding dictator. However, the support of others is surprising. Columnist William Rusher, a 

longtime conservative anti-communist and one-time publisher of conservative William Buckley’s National Review quickly wrote: "I’ll admit I’m sticking my neck out but I think it is possible, bordering on likely, that Vladimir Putin has been getting a bum rap. Before we pull the plug on him, let’s see what this newly elected president of the Russian Federation can do."
      Rusher detailed some of Putin’s real "shortcomings" and his KGB background but added, "I must say, however, that these supposed misdeeds don’t impress me greatly." He added: "My guess is that, with Vladimir Putin, what you see is pretty much what you get: a serious, no-nonsense kind of person, who at 47 is old enough to know that Soviet-style ruthlessness is out, and young enough to try to replace it with something more attractive and viable."
      Shortly after Yeltsin resigned and appointed the top KGB official Putin as acting president, the usually conservative Georgie Anne Geyer wrote: "The problem until now in the West with understanding a Vladimir Putin is found in a basic misunderstanding of how countries develop. We want to think that a leader can be either a hard liner or a reformer, a man of rigid power or a man of flexibility and change. But this is not true. Why can he not be a hard liner and a reformer?
      "Historically, the great reformers were almost always men of autocratic means and mien, if only because they had to hold sufficient power to be able to restructure the country. Think of Kemal Attaturk in Turkey. Think of Lee Kwan Yu in Singapore. Think, too (whether we particularly like him personally or not) of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
      "Almost all of the countries that have develop rapidly in our era—and that have moved on to a genuinely representative democracy—have gone through this kind of a house cleaning authoritarian period....If this is what Russia is facing after the disintegration of the last nine years, that might not be such a bad thing."
      President Bush, like President Clinton, Secretary of State Madelaine Albright, and various media pundits, appears to have been bedazzled by Putin as well. After the two met on Bush’s recent trip to Europe, Bush invited Putin to visist his ranch in Texas and gushed over the Russian leader, saying, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
      Is the Bush statement the expected words of "diplomacy" or has Putin succeeded in a deception like Stalin worked on President Roosevelt who said, "I like old Joe, I can work with him." Bush’s Secretary of State Colin Powell appears to show a blindness toward communism. On a recent Sunday morning network interview, he discussed Russia and said, "We have to realize that after centuries of dictatorship 

under the Czars they are now moving toward democracy." What about the 70 years of brutal communist dictatorships? No mention of that.
      Could those who hope for the best be right? Or are we succumbing again to that circumstance former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick described which resulted in the mass murders of Adolf Hitler’s Nazism and the murderous communism of Marx and Lenin brought to the world? Mrs. Kirkpatrick pointed out that both movements stated clearly what they planned to do to the Jews and the world. We suffered because "we made conscious decisions to disbelieve the horrible."
      The difference, of course, between Putin and the other strong man reformers Geyer cited, like Attaturk and Pinochet, was that they were not communists. They had the goal of real reform. Putin has never repudiated his communist background and his actions since becoming president indicate that the early hopes expressed by even those with an anti-communist background have no basis in fact.
      Putin, for example, with the support of the communists and Soviet-era officials, revived the old Soviet national anthem with new words written by the composer of the original anthem, which praised Stalin. Liberal politicians and some cultural figures assailed reinstatement of the Soviet music saying it invokes the memory of totalitarian rule and political repression.
      In addition to consolidating power at home, Putin has moved to strengthen ties with other Communist nations, hardly the action of a real reformer. During his first year as president, Putin visited such old-line communist allies as Libya, Vietnam, North Korea and China, stepped up arms sales to China, Iraq, Iran and India.
      The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and as a result of Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika communism supposedly died and the Soviet Union was supposedly disbanded in 1991. Almost four years before it all happened, from my study of Gorbachev’s speeches and writings, the pronouncements of Communist congresses and meetings with Communist leaders and some "reformers," I spelled out in speeches and newsletters what I felt were the five goals of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost programs. My analysis was published in early 1989 in the introduction to the paperback None Dare Call It Treason—25 Years Later in 1991. Those five goals of the KGB/Gorbachev/Yeltsin/Communist Party combine were (and are):

(1) Easing some of the mounting tensions among hungry, freedom-starved people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and giving them and Communist Party members hope that the system could be improving (while at the same time identifying real dissidents for possible future elimination). The communists were repeating a technique used at least five times since they seized power in 1917.
(2) Obtaining desperately needed Western economic aid and technology for the collapsing socialist economies of the Red bloc nations—again, a practice they repeated successfully under Lenin and Stalin during the 1920s, 1930s and since.

(3) Give the United States and the west the confidence to disarm, which has been done.
(4) Communists are great magicians and masters of deceit. Dramatic events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have drawn attention (like the magician’s hand in the air) while communism’s "other hand" continues to advance and solidify. Central and South America, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Korea and the Philippines. (While headlines were announcing that the Berlin Wall was cracking, Gorbachev-supplied Communist guerillas in El Salvador launched a new wave of terrorism which killed 800 in five days.)
(5) Encouraging liberal intellectuals who believe that Marx’s dream of a one-world socialist government can be achieved without a bloody Communist revolution if the West moves to the Left while Soviets evolve and mellow and move toward the "center"—to achieve a New World Order.

      Gorbachev set the program in place and stepped aside to be a senior world statesman with headquaters for his Gorbachev Foundation in the former U.S. Army headquarters in the San Francisco Presidio. His Moscow offices are in the former quarter of the Lenin School of Political Warfare.
      With Gorbachev moved aside, the five point program has been continued very successfully by Boris Yeltsin and now by Vladimir Putin with the help and applause of the west.
      Some would say Russia is a "paper tiger," but this tiger has nukes which can be targeted on us in minutes. Russia and Putin also control Caspian Sea oil and the pipelines through which it comes to the west. The Caspian basin may hold the world’s largest petroleum reserves. They are being developed with billions of U.S. and European dollars. What if the communists and the Islamic states with whom they are developing close ties shut down our gas pumps?
      What should we do?

1. Realize that Communism is not dead in Russia or the world.
2. Realize that Communism can’t survive in Russia, China or elsewhere in the world without regular transfers of aid and technology and/or profits from trade with the west.
3. Return to the Reagan policy of "trust but verify" and make no agreements on which our future survival depends.
4. Reverse the ten-year U.S. policy of unilateral disarmament and rebuild military strength and morale.
5. Develop and deploy defenses against missile attacks by "rogue" nations AND Russia and China.
6. Proceed to become more energy independent.
7. See God’s protection through personal and national revival.

"Several days before the attacks on the World Trade Center, I was in Miami interviewing, among other hemispheric officials, Francisco Flores, the president of El Salvador. We soon were discussing a possible resurgence of the left in Latin America."

—Georgie Ann Geyer, The Washington Times, September 21, 2001

"Marxism still rules in the most populous nation on earth—China—and is being reinvigorated in the West; with old-style campus radicals."

—Gene Edward Veith, World, September 1, 2001, p. 17

"East Germany’s renamed and resurgent communists are poised to return to power in Berlin, just 12 years after the wall was demolished."

—The Washington Times, August 31, 2001, A15

The Resurgence of Communism
by J. Michael Walker

Just over a decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the old East German Communist Party shares power in the once-divided capital’s coalition government. The European Union’s (EU’s) defense-policy chief is a former professional Marxist agitator from Spain. The prime minister of France recently was unmasked as a Trotskyite mole within the Socialist Party. Last winter, former comrades exposed Germany’s foreign minister as a 1970s collaborator with the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang. Even Germany’s Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, admitted recently that he had sympathized with the terrorist groups that tried to overthrow the system he now leads.
      The world appears to be shaking off its post-Soviet repudiation of Marxism and left-wing extremism. In Genoa, the revanchist branch of the Italian Communist Party—their red banners and Che Guevara flags heralding the reemergence of a militance not seen since the 1960s—led the bloody vanguard of violent protest against the industrialized democracies.
      From its seedy Soviet-built headquarters in Budapest, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), created half a century ago as an international Soviet-front organization under the control of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and the KGB, and somehow still alive, goaded the protestors on with inflammatory statements of support. When the Genoa violence subsided, WFDY issued a 

release saluting the protestors and condemning vehemently "the brutal and cruel attack and treatment of the demonstrators by the Italian security forces: and the "cold blooded killing" of a masked protestor who was trying to slam a fire extinguisher through a police-car window.
      "In the 1980s we observed that Marxist-Leninist antidemocratic groups were consistently supported and helped by misguided members of the left wing of the Social Democratic parties in Europe and a number of other regions," says Constantine C. Menges, a former national intelligence officer at the CIA who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. "Regrettably, they seem to have learned little from the revelations that followed the unraveling of communism in Eastern Europe, and it appears that many of these misguided groups and individuals are back supporting antidemocratic, radical causes. As examples, they are supporting the [Hugo] Chavez regime in Venezuela and the communist guerillas in Colombia."
      Inspired by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, military strongman Chavez is turning oil-rich Venezuela into a populist, anti-U.S. dictatorship, say U.S. intelligence sources. They tell Insight that Chavez is providing a safe haven for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) narcoguerillas, an 18,000-man insurgency that began decades ago as an offshoot of the local Communist Party and still clings to Marxist-Leninist ideology.
      U.S. policy during the Clinton administration provided Colombia, a country twice as large as France, with the means to combat drug producers and traffickers but deliberately restricted the use of U.S.-supplied military equipment to prevent Bogotá from effectively fighting the FARC. A U.S.-brokered "peace" process helped give the FARC a protected sanctuary the size of Switzerland in the heart of the country. Now, Colombia faces the prospect of disintegration as the cocaine- and heroin-financed FARC gains military ground.
      Economic hard times and the difficult transitions from populist welfare-state regimes to market-based systems are creating hardship and malaise across much of Latin America, including Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member Ecuador and industrial powerhouses Argentina and Brazil. Far-left politicians now run the Western Hemisphere’s most populous cities: Mexico City and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Masked Zapatista gunmen spouting Marxist rhetoric gained political legitimacy last year in Mexico, entering into negotiations with the government and even dictating terms in the name of an oppressed Indian minority in the southern part of the country. Across Mexico, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos, a swaggering figure in a black ski mask who smokes a pipe, enjoys a cult following of sorts. Tourists even can buy chic Marcos postcards at airport gift shops.

      In Central America, where the Reagan Doctrine stopped Soviet expansionism in the 1980s, the extreme left is working within the political system to take power. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the former communist guerilla army in El Salvador that tried to shoot its way into power and murdered U.S. servicemen in the process, is now the second-strongest political force in the country. It controls the capital city and dominates the national Legislature, and is favored to oust the ruling conservative party. Next door in Nicaragua, polls show former Sandinista comandante Daniel Ortega with a plurality of popular support for the November presidential elections.
      Even in Chile, arguably the most prosperous country in South America after the economic reforms of the Pinochet military regime, the far left is ascendant. "The Chilean Socialist Party, which won the presidency, is the most radical of all the mainline socialist parties in the world," notes Wallace H. Spaulding, a Virginia-based researcher who writes annual reports on the status of the world’s far-left movements. "The president was elected with Communist Party support. In the 1990s the Chilean Socialists signed a declaration in Pyongyang [North Korea] that even half the world’s Communist parties wouldn’t sign. More recently, they attended the Belgrade Forum, the broadest and most successful leftist event going, in support of [ousted Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan] Milosevic."
      And so on around the world. Hardcore Maoist guerillas are poised to take over the Himalayan Mountain kingdom of Nepal. Jungle fighters who unabashedly call themselves communists are waging war on the Philippines. In parts of the former Soviet Union, the Communists also are ascendant. Moldovans recently elected a Communist as their new president. Russian voters have given the Communists dominance of the federal parliament and in many of the country’s 89 regions. And then there are all of those "former" Communists who have shed the C-word and class-struggle rhetoric to form the oligarch classes ruling most of the former U.S.S.R.
      Some of the main Soviet international front organizations that coordinated anti-U.S. "active-measures" campaigns around the world during the Cold War still are around, no longer controlled by Moscow but as independent entities with murky funding sources. The World Peace Council (WPC), which coordinated much of the international "peace" 

movement against President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup in the 1980s, was nothing more than a near-vacant set of offices staffed by a demoralized skeleton crew when Insight visited its Helsinki headquarters in the weeks following the Soviet collapse in 1991. But, no more.
      Absent the Soviet-enforced cohesion, the fractious left has developed into a free-for-all among rival factions. "After the Soviet collapse, the North Korean and French Communist parties competed for leadership of the formerly Soviet-backed international communist movement, sponsoring competing systems of conferences and festivals," says Spaulding. In his annual report on the globally organized far left, titled Is the Comintern Coming Back?, Spaulding found that Pyongyang "emerged as the more aggressive purveyor of a Left-Stalinist party line. The French Communist Party is the most conspicuous promoter of international conferences within a parliamentary-democratic framework."
      Spaulding says, "Shorn of its Kremlin subsidies, the World Peace Council shut its doors and began using the facilities of the French peace movement." But squabbling forced the WPC to close again when the French Communist Party sided with the Kosovar Albanians in the late 1990s, prompting the Greek Communist Party to take over the organization and move its headquarters to Athens where it is going strong.
      "Many of the international communist-front organizations are continuing to operate, but they now are hiding behind one level of cover—groups that are in the antiglobalism coalition," a veteran U.S. intelligence officer explains. "A lot of funding has come from the Communist Party of India. The North Korean Communist Party has taken over some coordination in recent years." Some analysts hypothesize that the People’s Republic of China might be trying to jump-start the machinery of the old Soviet front groups, using North Korea as a "funding cutout." But the fronts have changed their terminology: Marxist-Leninist rhetoric is gone, replaced by antiglobalism themes. "It doesn’t arouse the concern of Western governments or get stereotyped as being antidemocratic," says a longtime observer. "Though there is a considerable organizational structure behind the antiglobalist movement, it isn’t totally coordinated. Much is spontaneous." Spaulding notes, "These rallies have been organized by a combination of Marxists, anarchists, ecologists, feminists and gay-rights activists. And nobody has been able to get control."