Completed Dr. Fred Schwarz’s “You Can Trust The Communists to be Communists.” You can tell I think this is an important book because I only occasionally re-read a book. This is the third time I’ve read Schwarz’s book. It’s chapter on the Materialistic dialectic probably should be read every year.
The book is dated having been written in 1958 but the material remains important in understanding the basics of Communism. Now, people will ask; “Why read a book like this when Communism fell in 1989?”
The answer to that is three fold,
1.) I’m not convinced that Communism really fell in 1989
2.) Even if the Easter Bloc did fall, China remains
3.) Communism thrives here in the West
As such there is a need to stay up with what Communism is, how it functions, how it moves forward, how it recruits, and what it’s purpose is.
Schwarz gives us all that and more.
This book is needed for Biblical Christians because it helps us to understand our own faith. I remain convinced (though legion are the people who disagree with me) that is not enough to know what we believe and why we believe it but that we must also know what we do not believe and why we do not believe it. Knowing the inner-working of other Christ denying faith systems makes us more able to instantly locate the fault in any system anywhere we encounter it.
Of course this means that Communism is a faith-system and so a religion. That it is a faith system and religion the Communists would never agree because a “faith-system” is not a corporeal or material something and so cannot be true. The Commies insist that their Communism is Scientific and so indisputable. However, that is just Marxist bovine scat. Communism is a full blown religion that requires of its adherents faith in the unseen.
Schwarz gives us a chapter on how Communists organize (we saw that come to the fore especially in Obama’s campaigns for President) with the creation of a multitude of false fronts that can easily dissipate with the wind only to be re-created somewhere else as needs be. Schwarz gives us a chapter on how Communists recruit, noting that intellectuals find Communism appealing because it provides a purpose in life and a reason for existence — something nothing else yields except a muscular Biblical Christianity. In the chapter on Communist organization Schwarz gives us the five circles of communist commitment and how they interlock.
Schwarz gives a chapter on the Communist necessity of violence and terrorism as their technique for seizing and maintaining power. We see this technique being used today in our streets and in the demand to mask and social distance. All of these are just contemporary versions of the Communist philosophy of violence as to the seizing and maintaining of power here in the States. A key thing to remember is that there cannot be Communism without constant terror and violence. Communism thrives on the conflict of interest and so can not allow harmony of interest.
Schwarz gives us insight in how the Communist model works in a top down fashion and so explains why Communist states so easily crush any opposition that arises (think Hong Kong). Communism thrives on the strong man model as the system requires everyone to reflect the decisions of the Strong man at the top.
There is a good deal more, but if you read this book and understand it you will have a better grip on knowing the times we are in right now and what should be done. We desperately need our clergy to be reading these kinds of books because these kinds of books inform us where the battle is raging hottest and what must be spoken to from the pulpit.The Communists offer their own version of salvation and if the clergy refuses to compare and contrast and crush false notions of salvation the danger is that salvation will be reinterpreted in a Communist direction. (And we are seeing that in spades with books from Tim Keller like, “Generous Justice,” and the spate of books and conferences that have been held such as MLK50, and all the Communist racial justice blather.) The modern church is awash in Communist assumptions.
In the end Communism can only be defeated by a Muscular Christianity. R2K and Federal Vision and Keller Christianity need not apply.
What percentage of masculine Christianity do you guess exists in this dark age?
In the West?
Less than 1%
I’m wondering if you’ve ever actually read leftist texts, or just conservative authorship on leftism.
I’m curious if you’ve ever read Left authors or theory, or just Rightist commentary on Leftist beliefs?
I read enemy documents quite frequently. I’ve read the neo-orthodox. I read existentialists (indeed all my undergrad work was reading the existentialists — Sartre, Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Tillich, Kierkegaard, etc.) I also read quite a bit of Nietzsche for that degree work. I’ve read a number of the po-mos. I’ve read the Marxists… Charles and Mary Beard, Eric Foner, Gramsci’s “Prison Notebooks,” Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” Richard Riss on Revivalism… etc. etc. etc.
I’ve read extensively on the enemy on the other side of the coin… the Doctrinaire Libertarians.
And I must say I regret all the time I’ve spent eating out of the garbage can. I wish that instead all I had ever read is the Conservative critique of the left’s ridiculous bilge. It was wasted time wading through their pablum.