WHY I AM NOT A COMMUNIST

New York, July I4, I932

“If I am wrong, prove it to me”

“If I make a wrong move, show me the danger”


During these times of ideological uncertainty, of social changes and reconsiderations of concepts, it is right that every one should bring to the immense workshop of his life his part of work for the repairing or the reconstruction of our civilization. It is unworthy of men of will to be lukewarm in ideas, neutral in sentiments or amorphous in character. One must be something and be it completely. The modern crime is to be nothing, to escape all effort.

I am asked why I am not a communist.

I answer, that I am not a communist:

1. Because the communist or marxist doctrine ignores spirituality.

2. Because it despises human nature and subordinates it to coarse conventionalism.

3.  Because it makes the individual a slave of an unknown power which is the equivalent of a tyranny, making the former a part of a machinery whose driving power is not the imperative or the burst of human dynamism, but rather a constant abstraction without concrete effective transcendence, because it resumes itself in a collectivism founded on the negation of individual factors.

4.  Because it denies to the human being any quality of individual consciousness and thus reduces him to personal impotence and obliges him to renounce any inner transcendence, obliging him to vegetate, conforming himself to a general status which cannot be harmonious as it is based on a chaos of individuals deprived (by ukase) of any value, in spite of all its power in favor of collectivism.

5.  I do not believe in the communist doctrine of the equality of work and equality of compensation, which obliges everyone to do a common work, even without preparation or calling and is always compulsory and which remunerates equally the indolent and the active, the egoists and the altruist, the learned and the ignorant, women and men, old and young, the incapable and the skilled . This is against all scientifical logic and even philosophy . Remuneration proportionate to the work, merits and service is far more logical and especially human. As to the equality of work it is anti-scientifical as well as inhuman. But the doctrine has already ended in failure in Russia itself, where one has triad to assure the success of the five year plan by fixing proportionate wages for engineers, mechanicians and specialized workers, on a higher scale than for ordinary workers, and also by returning to the system of salaries for work done and not for a day’s work as established in Soviet Russia. So it is the beginning of a great change toward which the working class of the entire world aspires.

6.  I do not believe in the efficiency of the communist system of sabotage and terrorism. I cannot believe that a state of things which is the product of a slow social evolution could be eliminated overnight by bloodshed, by destruction, or by violent overthrowing of a government. Human intelligence has at its disposal better resources. In order to defend an ideal it is not necessary to convert oneself into a wild beast.

7.  I do not believe in the much vaunted value of communism because it is based on the human miseries and the sufferings and not on the supreme human necessities of man. It is the product of illusions and agreements and not on wisdom; it incarnates the human instinct, but not the spirit. It makes laws of prejudices and at the same time it ignores the principles which govern human nature.

8.  I am not a communist because I cannot recognize a preponderant value to collectivism which is the expression of a gregarious psychology of feeble, uncultured, invalid, senile, diseased, abject or unconscious souls.

9.  I do not believe in the communist doctrine of the assault power and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. All dictatorship is unjust and a known evil is no better than good which must be discovered. As regards the proletariat, I consider it a folly that it wants to obtain the power, because, while it has the strength, it does not possess the necessary aptitude and the examples, whether in Russia, Spain, San Salvador or in Germany are not very edifying or commendable. Besides this, in all the countries where the vote is free and respected, all social and political changes are made by the will of the voters or by a parliament. In the US, France, South America, England, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where the communists have full freedom of action during the elections, communism has not made any progress, which, proves that the majority of citizens and specially the workers -- are not on its side. The suffrage has its defects and offers same inconveniences, but that does not justify that dictatorship of same idle and abandoned people who feel the weight of not being understood and who for this reason believe they have the right to impulse on a majority the vengeance of their grievances of a minority . It is a bad way of understanding the function of tyranny according to the conception of the Romans. And the desire to impose a proletarian tyranny in the whole world, like in Russia for 30 years, is to lose the sense of reality and to condemn  in advance all logic.  30 years of despotism, of suppression of the liberty of thinking, of character and of opinion; of tyranny in material affairs and even in spiritual things; in customs and in tastes ! 30 years under the ferule of 200.000 sectarians of the Cheka, without being able to travel in liberty, without being able to enjoy the intimate leisure -- time of every mentality -- To be kept for 30 years in the stupid claws of censorship! Those 30 years instead of insuring the progress of communism could destroy all germs of progress and would kill all the desires of renovation of the human spirit and it would produce a psychological regression so formidable that the day when the explosion of those new complexes would occur, one would experience the greatest state of barbarity of all times, despite the popular servile psychology that such a regime would create. But the christian, the Inquisition and the French Revolution made the same mistakes of ideal, fortunately without transcendence!

10.  I abhor the communistic pretension of desiring to establish a control of religious conscience, philosophic sublimations, intellectual speculations and even esthetic sentiment. These forces belong to a n intangible realm and which therefore cannot be organized and controlled, subjugated or gagged, in other words “proletarized”. The French Revolution incurred the same ridicule for having tried to regiment everything, even the iconoclastism has proved a failure since. In order to receive approval in Russia, one has to be a proletarian and above all to be “proletarized” .  You can discuss theology, write an apology of Socrates or Plato outline psychology, do some art, but it must be at any price in accord with a proletarian standard, that is, exalt communism and serve the propaganda of communism . Everywhere it is the cult of the rough, the hate of the refined, the delirium for an equality of all the human beings which attains to the degree of a mysticism which is wild and intransigent, fanatical, like all that which comes from dogmas. The dogmas are the anti—bourgeoisie arid the anti—capitalism, as absurd as they are incongruous and against nature.

All this senseless mysticism seems to resume itself in the modern Russian soul as though the ideal of social renovation consists in that everyone must wear the same workman’s suit, think and act only like the proletarians of Russia do and want. I have even seen some young enthusiasts from Spain who learned Russian and wore Russia suits in order to be nearer to communism.

11.  I am not a communist because I hate and I disapprove of the communist doctrine of class war which divides humanity into two ferocious tribes, unhappy and irreconcilable and which preaches hate and destruction as the unique possible formula for a social renovation, and attributes only to proletarianism the ability to establish a just way of life for all human beings. As long as these means will be put into action, the ideal will be faulty and it will never be able to justify the many horrors and infamies placed in the altar of vanity and human caprice. But it is true that it is doubtful that this communism will have any transcendences.

Marx, an Occidentalized Jew, placed in his political and economics elucubrations all the primitive ferocity of the Old Testament, cultivated like a secret fire through twenty centuries of persecution, fanatism and ignominy. In his writings one can sea the incongruity, the inconsistency, the contradictions, the ignominy, the stupidity, the vanity which is contained in that great literary sea, which is the Bible. The same as with the ancient Hebrews, there are for Marx on the whole earth only two human entities, the proletarians, i.e. the chosen people; and the Bourgeoisie or Gentiles and all the people who must be hated and exterminated without compassion, as at Jehovah’s commandment the Israelites did it with the inhabitants of the Promised Land, in order that their impiety should not contaminate the purity of the dogma. What a nightmare for all those who are not proletarians!

In Russia alone there are now more than I2 million people, human beings, man, women and children of every age who belonged to the old bourgeois classes and to the fallen aristocracy, who are today deprived of all political and civil rights and even of all lawful means of existence and of human consideration, deprived of their dwellings, without belongings; deprived of food; persecuted, annoyed, cursed, ill treated and even shot under the slightest pretext. These people are reduced to the worse misery have submitted to the worst degrading servitude, converted into furtive beasts, into homeless dogs, into dirt, worse than “the untouchables” of India; and this after 20 centuries of Christianity; this in the time of electricity, aviation and scientific machinery which has reduced space and time nearly to nothing. These people cannot emigrate and they die of hunger and cold without commiseration, in expiation for not being proletarians.  Could this be a new Biblical Era, the new advent of the ferocious Jehovah of the Ancient Hebrew, the final establishment of the kingdom dreamed of by the Israelite? This cult of hatred and vengeance is an offense to modern science, a gross defiance to contemporary spiritualism.

I cannot believe that the social renovation will be accomplished by the exclusive action of one social class and by a social war without quarter, but rather it should be a natural transformation, progressive and harmonious, of the entire human species, according to an economic justice and mutual interest which will permit a utilization of the elements of culture and the necessities of progress which each group or society will have been able to attain. The best justice therefore is the one which establishes itself naturally.

12.  I am not a communist because communism is contrary to the interests of human nature, because its utopias cannot bring happiness to the world, its systematical ferocious hatred cannot become a plan of justice; and its intolerable despotism makes life unsupportable. At the same time, I think this communistic mysticism is a sort of valve to the sufferings of the moment; the poor of yesterday want to become the wealthy of tomorrow, the pariahs of a lifetime, dream of power. There are no rich man converted to communism, and this because communism is not an absolute necessity or natural to man; but there are wealthy communists which again proves that the communist principles or precepts are not yet well followed even in Russia. The day when we will see that the wealthy of the world will assimilate communism by inner conviction and that they will spontaneously renounce their wealth end that the B. Shaws, the ambassadors of the U.S.S.R., and all the functionaries of Russia who live in palaces and not in dwellings like the other communists of the outskirts of Leningrad or Moscow, will renounce their “bourgeoisie’ in their homes and will put an end to their power -- only on that day will we believe in a social justice and a just repartition of riches in the world, and when I will sea the abolishment of al the other inconveniences of’ communism, I will believe in communism, because I am a communist according to the ideal, but not according to the proceedings of men. I do not say that a capitalist regime and the Bourgeois Society are better than the Soviet regime and the Communist doctrines.  I would not make my choice between them in their actual conditions. But what I cannot admit is that under guise of promises to “regenerate social life”, and under the impulse of justice in all the matters, one should preconize the means and thus establish political regimes worse than that which one pretend replacing. If one cannot create something better, it is or preferable not to destroy anything.

Swami Jñanakanda

(Dr. OM Lind—Schernrezig)

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Printed in l’Aub, No. 56, October 1932 (French magazine, printed in Lyon—Terraux, France)

(Just as important, get hints as to how we all can meet the challenge of COMMUNISM by reading WHY I AM NOT COMMUNIST, AND WHY I COULD NEVER BE, by the Ill. Pr. OM Lind Schernrezig, originally published in 1931)