By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES.
ONE of the oldest tricks of political revolutionists (especially of the collectivist breed) is to fasten epithets on their adversaries.
A conservative becomes a Tory, a Tory becomes a reactionary, and a reactionary becomes an advocate of shooting down strikers.
Today in America all who do not believe in Communism, Socialism, Tugwellism, Wallaceism or any of the other varieties of collectivism are “reactionaries.”
The reverse of this is the cold truth.
It is individualism (the ruggeder, the better) that is RADICAL, PROGRESSIVE and in the STREAM OF EVOLUTION.
It is Communism that is REACTIONARY and RETROGRESSIVE.
Communism is NOT advancement. It is a RECESSION, a degenerative movement to OLD, DISCARDED FORMS.
It can only be put over where THE INTELLIGENCE IS LOW, WHERE PERSONAL INITIATIVE HAS BEEN PARALYZED, WHERE FEAR IS THE DOMINANT EMOTION.
That is the reason it was so easy to apply the doctrine to Russia. The Russians have regimented minds and fear has been their constant companion for centuries.
Communism may be observed in all its mechanical degeneracy in the ant, the bee and the beaver, where millions of years of automatism has killed all change. Here is complete Stalinization.
There is nothing new in Communism. It is as old as herd-tyranny.
Dr. Frederick B. Robinson, president of the College of the City of New York, recently said something about Communism that demolishes tons of verbal humbug:
“Communism is nothing new. It was one of the primitive forms of tribal government thousands of years ago. Its obvious shortcomings and fallacies caused it to be discarded as civilization progressed.
“To revert to it would be to destroy the development and advancement of mankind for many centuries. It would be a reversion to patriarchal government…. It would destroy the freedom of the individual. This is the freedom for which America, and the American Government especially, stands—freedom of selfexpression, freedom to make personal contracts and free use of personal property.”
Communism has been tried here in America. There were Brook Farm, the Oneida Community, the George Rapp experiment in Pennsylvania, Robert Owen’s “New Harmony” and Topolobampo in California.
They all went to pieces—these “Edens”—because of that old serpent the INDIVIDUAL, who is always a healthy, energetic, promoting, progressive, good-and-evil animal.
Communism’s divinization of the laborer and the peasant is an insane attempt to reverse a supreme biological law—THE RACE IS TO THE SWIFTEST AND THE STRONGEST AND THE MOST INTELLIGENT, even among laborers and peasants.
History also gives Communism the lie. All collectivist nations are culturally dead nations.
Civilization advances with STRUGGLE, COMPETITION, THE RIVALRY OF BRAINS.
The whole economic plan of the brain-trusters at Washington is REACTIONARY-COMMUNISTIC, or maybe Commufascist.
The depression began with a panic in 1929.
IT HAS BEEN PERPETUATED BY SEMI-COMMUNISTIC EXPERIMENTS AT WASHINGTON.
The REACTIONARIES are in the saddle and the fabric of our institutions crumples.
The genius and destiny of America is FORWARD—which means MORE RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM.
Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Reactionaries,” Syracuse Journal, April 29, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).