Could Communism Be Made to Work by God?

When I was a kid during the height of the Cold War, I was given to understand that our “way of life” was threatened by International Communism and that Americans had to be willing to sacrifice their blood and treasure to slow the spread of International Communism around the world. You see, International Communism was irresistible to the people of the world, and if we didn’t intervene violently the whole world would become Communist. It was probably only a matter of time before America itself succumbed to the temptation.

This was more than a little confusing to me. If International Communism could turn the world into the Big Rock Candy Mountain, who were we to stand in the way?

Later, when the Chamber of Commerce’s mobile “Communism (and labor unions) Is Bad” trailers appeared at school every year, I learned that, in fact, International Communism could not deliver on its promises. Why, according to one memorable graphic, a Russian had to work ten times as long to buy a loaf of bread than an American worker did. I didn’t know why Russians were paid so poorly or bread cost so much in Russia, and the Chamber did not go into how the Soviet Union had been so recently devastated by doing all the heavy lifting in World War II and by Stalin’s madness, but I did not want to work that hard for loaf bread.

Still later, I learned that International Communism depended for its success on the development of a new kind of human being, Socialist Man or Homo sovieticus, devoted to society more than to his own selfish interests. That could never happen. Silly Communists.

Yet I learned in church that through the transforming power of the Holy Ghost the Kingdom of Heaven would some day be realized on Earth. This would require the development of a new kind of human being, disciples of Jesus devoted to their fellow man more than to their own selfish interests. Some of my co-religionists reckoned that having Baptists take over the government so as to impose a godly order on their fellows would hasten the day. Silly Baptists.

I now reckon that the Soviets and the Baptists had it all backwards. The godly or socialist state can’t make the new man from old man; rather, new men must make a godly and just state or dispense with the state altogether. It is not force that will create the new man and the godly and just social order; rather, it is love.