(thanks to the progressive forces of evolution and the dialectic). Slavery was imperfect, so the dialectical process led society into feudalism, which in turn has formed the new synthesis of capitalism. Unfortunately, capitalism, too, has inherent flaws and contradictions that have led to the oppression of the working class by the bourgeois.
      Marxists believe that the proletariat (those without property) and the bourgeois (those who own private property and/or the tools of production) are clashing within the framework of dialectical materialism and that their clash eventually will result in a new, more highly evolved synthesis. This synthesis, which has already been achieved in the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (among other countries), is known as socialism. With the advent of socialism, a whole new society evolves. Marxists argue that all other social institutions follow the economic institution. Socialism removes the means of production from the hands of the minority (the bourgeois) and puts it in the hands of the State, the Party, or the people. Reports revealed that the East German Communist Party, for example, was worth billions of dollars. Thus, in a socialist society, all private property will gradually be abolished and man no longer will oppress his fellow man in an effort to protect his private property. When all private property and, consequently, all class distinctions have withered away, the slow transition from socialism to the highest economic form, communism, will be complete. What economic form will follow communism will be determined by the eternal workings of the dialectic, but Marxists are hoping that once communism finally arrives it will remain for many, many years—some Marxists place the figure at millions of years.
      For now, communism is the ultimate economic system because it adheres to the maxim, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."  Whereas socialism is tainted by capitalism and thus will still reward resources to workers according to their labor, communism will create a society in which work becomes "life’s prime want,"  thereby doing away with the need for incentives to work. Man will produce abundantly because he will be freed from coercion, and scarcity will become a distant memory.
      The ultimate aim of Marxism/Leninism is the creation of a political world order based on communism that will solve the economic problem of scarcity so efficiently that each individual will see his every need and most of his wants fulfilled. Once communist man evolves, he will not want more than he knows is best for the new world order. Marx pictured the perfect communist society as one that would require a few hours of work each morning, with afternoons free for 

recreation, and evenings set aside for cultural activities.
      Economics plays a much larger role in the Marxist worldview than in either Christianity or Secular Humanism. In fact, economics acts as a major portion of the foundation for Marxist sociological, legal, political, and historical views, according to Marx: "The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, continued to serve as the leading thread in my studies, may be briefly summed up as follows: In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life." 
      For the Marxist, a society’s economic system affects the laws enacted, the type of government, and the whole role of society in day-to-day life and throughout history. While every individual would grant that economics affects these realms to some extent, the Marxist claims that economics dictates their precise character. Marxism believes that a nation’s economic system controls the direction of every other institution in that society.
      Working with this premise, Marxists naturally draw the conclusion that one economic system is superior to all others, because one system must direct society in a more positive manner than any others. They point to the evils in capitalist society and conclude that capitalism is an economic system with inherent problems that poison all of society. Thus, for the Marxist, capitalism must be replaced with a more humane economic system.
      According to Marx, the key problem with capitalism is that it breeds exploitation. He says that in capitalist society the bourgeoisie has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and "in one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."  We will examine Marx’s explanation for capitalism’s inherent tendency to exploit later, but what is important to understand now is that every Marxist perceives capitalism as having outlived its usefulness.
      In modern times, L. Leontyev echoes Marx: "In reality 

continued on page 7

The Dialectic Faith
by Dr. Fred C. Schwarz

Features of the Dialectic
The first feature of the dialectic is the axiom that progress is inherent in change. The dialectic is a dynamic philosophy. It says that nothing is, that everything is in a state of flux or development. The dialectic would teach, for example, that no man can stand twice on the bank of the same river, for the second time it is a totally different river. In a similar way, everything is in process of development and change. Around us is a vast panorama of changing circumstances and conditions. Within the vastness of this change, there is a principle of developing organization, there is movement from lower to higher. Hidden within the diversity and apparent purposelessness of change there is a principle of progress.
      The Communists make no attempt to prove that progress is at the heart of change. It is one of their axioms. They accept it by faith. In this sense, it is a pseudo-religious belief.
      The word "progressive" has become one of their basic words. The Communist bookstore in Los Angeles is called the "Progressive" Bookstore. The last major political assault the Communists made on the presidency of the United States was through the "Progressive" Party. The Communists in labor unions always refer to themselves either as the "Militants" or the "Progressives."
      The Communists apply this principle of progress in change to their own status within society. Liu Shao-chi writes: " . . . the question arises: Can Communist society be brought about? Our answer is ‘yes.’ About this the whole theory of Marxism-Leninism offers a scientific explanation that leaves no room for doubt. It further explains that as the ultimate result of the class struggle of mankind, such a society will inevitably be brought about."
      They are the wave of the future. Their victory is as certain as the rising of the sun because the same material law that causes the sun to rise in the morning has ordained that they shall conquer and rule the world. Of this they have no vestige of doubt.
      Because they believe this completely, their convictions are undisturbed by any evidence to the contrary that may appear day by day. They stand above the changing scene of daily ebb and flow and see the currents and tides of history. The idea that their faith can be shattered by anything they see at present is naive to the point of imbalance. Just how widespread the ignorance of this is was revealed by many of the reasons advanced in support of Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in September, 1959. An argument frequently put forward was: Let us show Khrushchev how the people of 

America live; let him see their fine homes, their modern automobiles, their open churches. When he sees all this he will be impressed and will realize the error of his previous viewpoint. Such an argument as this displays gross ignorance of Khrushchev’s dialectical faith. In the first place, Khrushchev’s espionage system was such that he was able to discover the most intimate secrets of American atomic science. To imagine that he needed to come to America to discover how the American people lived, in what kind of houses they lived and how many cars they had is utterly infantile. He was equally well aware of the power and preparedness of America’s military might. But even if this were not so, even if Khrushchev’s tour of America had revealed to him many unsuspected facts about the American way of life, none of these could have changed him fundamentally. For present conditions and circumstances have little authority to him. Khrushchev is a Communist, not because of the present, but because of the future. His life is governed by a vision of the future. The future belongs to the Communists. They will inevitably conquer the world. You do not judge a building by the temporary scaffolding on which its builders walk. You see the vision in the mind of the architect.
      An analogy may be drawn from the production of steel. The manufacturer promises a beautiful, burnished steel. In order to obtain this end product, the metal must go through certain dirty unattractive stages. At one stage it is treated in the searing, flaming heat of the furnace. Were you to go to the manufacturer at this particular stage and say, "You have not kept your word. This is not steel. It is merely flame and heat. I can’t use this!" he would look at you in utter amazement.
      When the Communists listen to our arguments based on present circumstances and conditions, they must certainly be amazed, for their whole program rests on the future. Khrushchev was well aware of America’s present wealth and power. He is reported as having said, "Anyone who does not know that America is rich and strong is unbelievably stupid." This realization merely confirms his faith in the greater glory of the future Communist state.
      It is this future in which he is interested and in which he firmly believes. In the last analysis, he believes in the inevitable triumph of Communism not because of the evidence, but because of his faith in the dialectic. As a true believer he has lived and labored during forty years of sacrifice, danger and brutality.
      The second feature of the dialectic is the nature of progress. Dialectical progress takes place in a certain pattern. The Communist slogan is: "Nature acts dialectically." Wishing to advance dialectically in a room full of people, I do not walk through the aisle and straight toward my goal. Nor 

do I move slowly through the crowd shaking hands with friends and acquaintances, discussing points of interest, gradually nearing the objective. The dialectical pathway is different. It consists of a resolute forward advance followed by an abrupt turn and retreat. Having retreated a distance there is another turn and advance. Through a series of forward-backward steps the goal is approached. To advance thus is to advance dialectically.
      The Communist goal is fixed and changeless, but their direction of advance reverses itself from time to time. They approach their goal by going directly away from it a considerable portion of the time. Lenin wrote the textbook, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Chinese Communist schoolchildren are taught to do the dialectical march taking three steps forward and two steps back. If we judge where the Communists are going by the direction in which they are moving, we will obviously be deceived.
      The Communist method of advance may be likened to the hammering of a nail. It is a very foolish person who brings the hammer down with a crashing, resounding blow and then keeps pushing. When the first blow has spent itself, back must go the hammer in preparation for the next blow. A person seeing the reverse movement of the hammer as an isolated act in time and not understanding the process of which this was a part, might find it difficult to believe that this hammer was driving in the nail. When he sees the backward swing as portion of a complete process, he realizes that the withdrawal is as important as the downward thrust to the realization of the objective.
      For those not trained in dialectical thinking, it is very difficult to understand that the Communists have a fixed and changeless goal, but that their method of approach reverses itself all the time. The tendency is to judge where they are going by the direction in which they are moving. Many colleges taught, for example, that Communism as practised in Russia by Lenin and Stalin was a departure from Marx. They claimed that Marx’s teaching had many good features about it, but that Lenin and Stalin put into practice something entirely different. Superficially the argument is reasonable. Take, for example, Marx’s teaching concerning marriage and what is practiced in Russia with regard to marriage. Marx taught the abolition of marriage. The Communist Manifesto says:
      "On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely

developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
      "The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital."
      In the light of this teaching, it might be expected that in Russia they would be weakening the family prior to its abolition. The truth is that they are presently strengthening the family. Divorce is discouraged; puritanic morals are encouraged; rewards are offered to those who have large families. They are strengthening the family in every way. Logically it would seem that since they are strengthening the family in Russia, they must have forsaken Marxism. The Communists, however, think and act dialectically. They realize that it is dialectical to approach their goal by going directly away from it. Their ultimate goal is to abolish the family. But they cannot abolish the family until they have changed human nature; they cannot change human nature till they control completely the environment that generates human nature; they cannot totally control the environment until they have conquered the world and destroyed the present environment; and they cannot conquer the world unless they develop a more courageous, more patriotic, more nationalistic people than their enemy. They have found by experience that they cannot develop a strong, nationalistic, patriotic people without encouraging a firm family base. They must therefore strengthen the family to develop the patriotism and courage of the people to increase the power of the Communist State so that they may conquer the world, establish a Communist dictatorship, and regenerate mankind. They will then abolish the family. By strengthening the family, they are dialectically abolishing it. There is no inconsistency here. They are applying dynamic Marxism.
      The same thing applies in the realm of religion. The ultimate goal of Communism is the abolition of all religion. Lenin says, "Atheism is a natural and inseparable portion of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our propaganda necessarily includes propaganda for atheism." It would be logical, therefore, to expect the persecution of religion wherever Communism is in power. In many places this is happening, but not in all. In some states under Communist rule, religion is being patronized and encouraged.

Putin, KGB, and Communism
by John Stormer

Readers may recall the international outrage early in the year 2000 when Austria’s small Freedom Party gained enough votes to be a part of the nation’s ruling coalition government. The Freedom Party was headed by Joerg Haider, whose father had been a minor Nazi official during World War II
almost 50 years before. Haider himself had been quoted as saying many conscripted Nazi soldiers were "victims" and not "criminals."
      The 15-nation European Union threatened all sorts of boycotts and sanctions against Austria and its citizens if Haider and the Freedom Party became a part of the ruling coalition. The United States Secretary of State, Madelaine K. Albright, on a visit to Moscow, called the chancellor of the upcoming Austrian government to express U.S. misgivings.
      As a result of media and governmental protests and pressures, Joerg Haider’s resignation as head of the Freedom Party was forced.
      Few noticed the contradiction and the double standard when a few weeks later, Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia. Putin was not just the son of a man who 55 years before had been a low level Nazi official. Putin was a 16-year veteran and key member of the communist KGB, the Soviet FSB, the successor organization to the dreaded KGB. Insight magazine’s J. Michael Waller said: "He promptly began to move his allies into key positions and resumed the KGB’s domestic espionage activities."
      On December 20, 1998, Putin showed his nostalgia for the golden days of the Soviet police state. In a televised address celebrating the 81st anniversary of the founding of the feared Bolshevik Cheka secret police, forerunner of the KGB, Putin praised the Cheka but said nothing to condemn its systematic executions of political opponents.
      On December 21, 1999, Putin received leaders of the parties which had won seats in the Duma, the Russian Parliament, two days before. In Putin’s office the assembled leaders of the Duma toasted Stalin, the greatest mass murderer of history, on the 120th birthday of the Russian dictator. Arnold Beichman of the prestigious Hoover Institute at Stanford University and longtime student of the world communist movement said of the toast honoring Stalin in which Putin participated: "imagine the clamorous reaction were the present German chancellor to convene a reception in his office and they all toasted Adolf Hitler on his birthday. An ultra-rightwinger scores big in an Austrian election and 

cries of alarm are heard in the West. But the Russian Communist Party tops the parliamentary elections with 25 percent of the vote and the most seats, 113, in parliament and you hear all kinds of talk about they’re not really communists.
      U.S. Secretary of State, Madelaine Albright, who expressed misgivings about any participation by Haider in the Austrian government, spent three hours with Putin a few weeks later and described him as... "a well-informed problem solver who seems to favor practical solutions...He’s a man we can do business with."
      The Communist Party was supposedly abolished over ten years ago but still controls the most seats in the Russian parliament. Putin, who while building a reputation as a "reformer," has admitted that he personally never left the Communist Party. In fact, a keen-eyed observer of the CNN TV report on the December, 1999 Russian parliamentary elections spotted Putin presenting his I.D. to the clerk so he could vote. The I.D. clearly showed the letters CCCP in dark gray on the inside of the booklet—which was, of course, his official Soviet Union Communist Party ID. The authoritative British journal, Soviet Analyst commented that CNN ignored this "curiosity."
      In the book, Conversations with Putin, released a few weeks before his March, 2000 election as president of Russia, Putin conceded that he never harbored any doubts about communism or questioned the Soviet system in his 16-year career as a KGB agent. Putin said: "For better or worse, I was never a dissident."
      The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in a pre-election comment on Putin’s KGB past, said Putin... "shows some authoritarian tendencies but that does not frighten ordinary people. They think they now need a firm person because we are in such a big mess."
      Putin was elected. He avoided a runoff in a 14-person race, getting about 52% of the total vote. Gennady Zyuganov, running as an open Communist, did better than expected and received 30% of the vote.
      So, Putin, with a longtime background as a communist in the dreaded secret police, became president. Has his secret police and Communist background in any way influenced his actions as the president of Russia? During his three months as acting president following Yeltsin’s resignation and in the days following his own election, Putin: "Appointed 10 identified former KGB secret police officers to high government posts out of 24 such jobs; ordered the FSH domestic intelligence agency, successor to the KGB, to monitor the allegiance of military personnel. In effect, this created a Putin-controlled ideological police force within the 

      A month later, Vladimir Gusinsky, Media-Most’s owner, was jailed and accused of swindling $10 million from the government in a privatization deal. After what The Readers’ Digest called "an international outcry" Putin questioned whether prosecutors had gone too far and Gusinsky was released. However, the harassment continued until in a predawn raid on Saturday, April 14, 2001, Gazprom, the government controlled natural gas monopoly seized control, ending the only remotely independent mass media outlet in Russia.
      When questioned, Putin told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder the NTV takeover was not a freedom of the press issue. It was just a business deal like General Electric acquiring the NBC network.
      As Putin moved for control of the media, the government ousted Russia’s most popular and controversial news magazine, the Sergei Dorenko Show. Dorenko said his fate was sealed after an August 29 meeting with the President when Dorenko resisted Putin’s request that the broadcaster "play on his team." When Dorenko resisted and criticized Putin, saying his team consisted of his 40-million viewers, the program was canceled four days later. The Washington Post commented: "The event seems to be part of a series of actions taken by Putin to rein in the media since he became acting president on New Year’s Eve as the handpicked successor to Boris Yeltsin and then was elected on March 26."
      In protest, Boris Berezovsky, a Kremlin insider who months earlier had broken with Putin, was in Washington DC where he said, Putin... "...wants to combine all political power—executive, legislative, judicial—in his own hands. There is no real opposition in Russia today whatsoever."
      The crackdown against those who fail to give Putin the regard he apparently expects extends even to seventeen-year-old girls. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that Anna Provorova, an outstanding student, lost her medical school appointment as a result of a letter she wrote to Putin. In keeping with the Russian tradition of cutting through red tape by writing directly to the Tsars for help, Anna went to the top requesting a video camera to film her school-leaving (graduation) ceremony.
      Soon inspectors arrived at her school and ordered her to write an explanation for her "disrespectful letter." Her crime? She forgot the customary exclamation mark at the end of the greeting "Esteemed Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin!" She also used the Russian word for "you" in addressing Putin without starting with a capital "Y". The inspectors ordered that Anna’s final grades be marked down and her silver graduation medal—her passport to medical school be withdrawn. Instead, Anna was to attend a local training school for dairy workers.

Capitalism’s Self-Destruction
According to the Marxist, capitalism is so destructive that it will eventually destroy itself. Marxists believe that the system of exploitation will simply exploit more and more people until virtually everyone is a member of the proletariat. "All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees," says Engels. "The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population. . . ." 
      Engels goes on to describe what happens next: "Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property." 
      This revolt by the proletariat is crucial for assisting the downfall of capitalism. The proletariat must act as the catalyst for the creation of the new system. Moscow’s Political Dictionary states, "Capitalism is the last social system founded on the exploitation of man by man. Under capitalism all the resources of society are in the hands of a small group of private owners—capitalists and landowners—who exploit the workers and peasants. The bourgeois state defends the interests of the capitalists and landowners. The church and school, science and art are all put into the service of capitalist exploitation. The extremely sharp class conflict between the exploiters and the exploited constitutes the basic trait of the capitalist system. The development of capitalism inevitably leads to its downfall. However, the system of exploitations does not disappear of itself. It is destroyed only as the result of the revolutionary struggle and the victory of the proletariat." 
      On the surface it would appear that Marxists are not at all certain of the victory of the proletariat and the self-destruction of capitalism. However, once the dialectic is taken into account, this uncertainty vanishes. For Marxists, it is historically inevitable: the thesis (bourgeoisie) and the antithesis (proletariat) must clash and create a synthesis—socialism—and socialism guarantees the advent of communism.