[To the Editor of THE SPEC'FATOR,]-- - — SIR,—I should
like to suggest-that in the interestingdiscussion_ of Communism which has recently taken _place in your journal, much too little attentioabai been paid to the essential differ- ence between ComMunism as an ideal, and actual tomMulism;
as a political manifestation. - • • .
Many of your correspondents argue as if what was now taking place in Russia tinder the .name of Communism was,.. more or less, the ideal Communism of the New Testament. It is surely something utterly different. It is in fact - for propaganda Purposes- chiefly that it is called Communism. There is a saying in Russia " We used to have seven classes ;
now we have seventeen ! " _
Miss Ethel Mannin, a left-wing witness, when she returned from Russia, commented on the appalling rlifferences in wealth between the classes. She saw large expensive villas, the residenees of Commissars; and a: hundred. yards away miserable hovels, filthy and insanitary,' where proletarians lived.
In I Speak for the Silent, by Tchemovin,' we find a terrible picture" a the sufferings of the expropriated peatiants and others in. modern Russia. These wretched men are looked upon, and treated, hardly as hilinan lkirigi.• They die off like'- flies 'in' 'camps. (All this—Is - related from personal -
experience.) • • • Why, "I' asic; should this be called CamMunism? Such a •
social system does not ekjirei:s Or aims of genuine Commanists: It is rather a ruthless State capitalism, creating new classes separated by. social and economic gulfs. It is a
_ . , . new class tyranny established in the interests of a hierarchy • of fanatics. It is a thousand pities that Christian men and
won:ten shniddhe persuaded-to look with-favour upon a system so cruel, so intolerant, and so far removed froth. what real Communism would be in practice.—Yours sincerely, 111 Norton Way, Letchworth. MEYRICK Boom.
Previous page
