The God That Failed (1)

The God That Failed
Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Louis Fischer
New York: Bantam Books
1950

Why read it? The accounts in this book are by idealists who thought Communism would create a classless society to replace a capitalist society built on social class and competition, a society that created poverty, inhumanity and injustice for the lowest class, the working class, the proletariat, the poorest people in society. Some of these men joined the Communist party. Others were considering it. All were disillusioned by the actual experience in the Communist Party and in the Soviet Union.

I once took a college course in the philosophy of Communism, taught by an Augustinian priest, because I wondered why the Communists thought their type of society was inevitable. I learned something about Hegel’s dialectic of one set of ideas being contradicted by another set of ideas that then melded together to produce a superior idea that would then be contradicted by another set of ideas and so on. Marx substituted classes for ideas. I learned that the classless society would have an interregnum called the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” that would “wither away” to produce a classless society. The men in this book concluded that such a dictatorship would never wither away because as Stephen Spender, one of the six authors in the book said, the Communist dictatorship in Russia and in the Communist Party consisted of too much power in the hands of too few people. People like Stalin do not “wither away.”

Three topics addressed by these writers were the Communist theory of “truth,” the Communist theory of art, and the Communists' primary method of achieving their ends by using any means necessary.

“Truth.” Truth for the Communists was whatever the Party said it was. Statements were made and then completely contradicted and the Party faithful were expected to accept the new line as “truth.” The most incredible contradictions were Russia’s pact with Hitler, the ultimate Fascist, Communism’s bitter enemy, and the resurrecting of “heroes” from the years of the Czars, the society that the Bolshevik Revolution had wrested from Russia. These writers could not accept this complete change in point of view as “truth,” especially when it contradicted reality as they saw it and they walked away from Communism.

Art. The Communist view of art was that writers and artists had to justify the party line, whatever it was. From the point of view of the writers in this book, art is a highly individual approach to reality, which the Communists dismissed as “formalism.” Communist leaders wanted writers who supported the Party line and would write about the dream of the classless society as if it existed, even though it did not exist. Another reason that these men left the Communist “faith.”

The ends justify the means. In achieving the “good” goal of a classless society, the Communists used any means necessary, therefore, causing many victims. To achieve the goal of equality in a classless society, victims were inevitable said the Communists. But the result, the classless society, would be worth the lives of the victims. On the other hand, one of these writers contended that no society believing that the ends justify the means can be humanitarian. In fact, ethics and charity are the “glue” of civilization. Strike three for Communism.

The writers in this book were too accustomed to freedom, the freedom to interpret reality as they saw it and the freedom to criticize. The Communist Party wanted nothing to do with criticism.

Disillusioned, these men turned away from Communism as practiced in the Communist Party and in Soviet Russia. The society of Soviet Russia was built on class and privilege like the capitalist countries and with the same results—inhumanity and injustice for the working poor. The differences between Communist theory and reality were enormous. In their eyes, the revolutionary “God,” a classless society, had failed. But their criticism of Communism did not mean that they accepted capitalism or Western values.

Next: Sample ideas from the book.