Talk politics.

During an interview with a young revolutionary I asked why the proletarian class would make good leaders. She gave me food for thought when she described a nineteenth century manufacturing environment. She seemed to be unaware that manufacturing techniques had advanced in the past hundred years. She also recommended Lenin's rationale in favor of revolution. I did not attempt to burst her bubble by pointing out that Lenin had a different audience in mind. What was clear to me was the parallel with that of the religious zealot who claims that his Jesus can save me as he takes the Bible completely out of context. Revolutionary zeal is religious zeal by another name.

Unlike the zealous Leninist I took something quite different away from my study of the life and works of Lenin. He did not strike me as a sincere proponent of positive development. I got the impression that his rant against czarism harbored a latent ambition to be the czar. Like Alexander Hamilton Lenin's efforts could be seen more as counter-revolutionary than revolutionary. Lenin was the new boss who was pretty much the same as the old boss.

One of our students came up with the proposal that Communism is actually a more sinister from of anti-communism. Rather than promoting a revolutionary advancement in human development it offered only a more sophisticated form of oppression. This explains why the most feared and hunted enemies of Communist revolutions were themselves communist revolutionaries. Add to this the fact that the heroes of the Proletariat were scions of affluent families rather than the fabled nobles of the nineteenth century factory floor. Furthermore, the drudgery under the Revolution was far more oppressive than that under the money lender.

In The Vietnamese Gulag Doan Van Toai made an observation that rational revolutionaries went along with the inhumane actions of dogmatic revolutionaries out of a fear of becoming victims themselves. A similar process can be seen in the establishment of Christian orthodoxy over heretical rationalism in the propagation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The rationalists went along with the persecution of their own kind out of a fear of being burned to death themselves. This fiendish despotism dated back to the incident reported in the book of Acts when a couple died after it was revealed that they did not strictly conform to the policy of turning in all their money to the apostolic treasury. It could be said that Lenin is to Marx as Peter is to Jesus as Hamilton is to Franklin.

Can you think of any other examples of the devil inside?

Links: Lenin on revolution. Doan Van Toai on Vietnam.