When it comes to Russia, the question that raises perhaps the greatest difficulty of all for the realistic understanding of the nature of Soviet Russia and her political intentions is that of the meaning of Communist ideology. If it is true that Russia since 1923 has not been a revolutionary system, has not attempted to bring about revolution in the Western countries, and, in fact, has tried to contain them, how is one to look upon the fact that the Russians constantly speak of “the final victory of communism in the World,” and of capitalism as the enemy which eventually will be displaced by communism, et cetera? To understand this apparent paradox, one must understand ideologies. “An ideology” is a system of ideas. In talking, for instance, about conservative ideology one refers to the conservative system of thought, et cetera. This use of ideology may be called descriptive. Since the middle of the nineteenth century one finds other, more dynamic concepts. The dynamic concept of ideology is based on the recognition of the fact that man has longings and passions that are deeply rooted in his nature and in the very conditions of human existence. These inherently human needs are freedom, equality, happiness, and love. If these needs remain unsatisfied, they become perverted into irrational passions like the striving for submission, power, destruction, and so on. In many cultures these irrational passions are the main driving forces, yet only few societies openly admit that they want destruction or conquest. Man’s need to believe that he is prompted by humans and constructive impulses is so great that it always makes one disguise (to oneself and to others) his most immortal and irrational impulses, making them appear as though they were noble and good. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

In the history of the last four thousand years the great spiritual leaders of mankind—Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., Lao-tse, Buddha, Isaiah, Zoroaster, Jesus, and many others—have articulated the deepest longings of man. It is remarkable how similar are the fundamental ideas that have been expressed by the various leaders. They penetrated the crust of custom, indifference, and fear by which most people protect themselves from authentic experience, and found followers who awakened from half-slumber to follow them in their ideas. This happened in China, India, Egypt, Palestine, Persia, Greece—where new religions and philosophical schools were formed. However, after a while these ideas lost their strength. While people in the first flush of bloom experienced what they thought they thought, they slowly began to have purely cerebral, alienated thoughts, instead of authentic experiences. This is not the place to discuss the complex and difficult problem of why this deterioration occurs. It suffices to say that it would be much too easy to explain the problem by the fact of the death of the charismatic leader. It is even not enough to point to the fact that freedom, love, and equality are qualities for the achievement of which one needs courage, will, and the capacity for making sacrifices; nor is it enough to say that much as people want freedom, they are also afraid of it, and want to escape from it, and hence that when the first period of enthusiasm has evaporated, people are no longer capable of holding on to the original ideas. True as all this may be, there is another and more important reason. Man, in the process of history, changes his environment and changes himself. However, this process is slow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Aside from primitive societies, the development of civilization and the development of man has proceeded in such a way that the majority of men have had to serve the minority, because the material basis for a dignified life for all was not available. How could the ideal of love and of equality be experienced authentically over any length of time by enslaved people, by serfs, by the poor whose lives were mainly a struggle against starvation and sickness? How could the ideal of freedom remain alive among those who had to submit to the demands of the few who had power over them? Yet people could not live without faith in these ideals, and without the hope that in time they could be realized. The priests and kinds who came after the prophets made use of this need. They appropriated the ideals, systematized them, transformed them into a ritual, and used them to control and to manipulate the majority. Thus the ideal was transformed into an ideology. The words remain the same, yet they have become rituals, and are no longer living words. The idea becomes alienated; it ceases to be the living, authentic experience of man, and becomes instead an idol outside of him, which he worships, to which he submits, and which he also uses in order to cover up rationalize his most irrational and immoral acts. The ideology serves to bind people together, and to make them submit to those who administer the proper use of the ideological ritual; it serves to rationalize and to justify all irrationality and immorality that exist within a society. At the same time the ideology, containing in itself the froze idea, as it were, satisfies the adherents of the system; they believe themselves to be in touch with the most fundamental needs of man, with love, freedom, equality, brotherliness—because they hear and say these words. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

And at the same time, however, the ideology also presents these ideas. While they become rituals they nevertheless remain expressed; they become living ideas again when the historical situation enables man to awaken and to experience again as real that which had become an idol. When the ideology ceases to be a ritual, when it becomes connected again with individual and social reality, then it is retransformed from ideology into an idea. It is as if ideology were a seed, resting for years in sand and then transplanted into fertile ground where it grows again. An ideology, then, is at the same time a deceptive substitute for an idea and its preservation, until the time has come for its revival. Ideologies are administered by bureaucracies that control their meaning. They develop systems, they decide what is right and what is wrong thinking, who is faithful and who is a heretic; the manipulation of ideologies becomes one of the most important means for the control of the people through the control of their thoughts. The ideologies become systematized and acquire their own logic; words have their specific meanings and—this is very important—new or even opposite ideas are still expressed in the terms of the older ideological frame of reference. (One of the most drastic examples of this is Mr. Spinoza’s negation of the God of monotheism which he expressed in terms of a definition of God apparently only slightly different from the orthodox definition.) The ideas of Mr. Marx were transformed into ideologies. A new bureaucracy took over, and established its rulership on principles exactly the opposite of the original ideas. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The Russians say that they are a classless society, that they have achieved a true democracy, that they are moving toward the withering away of the state, that their aim is the fullest development of the individua personality, the self-determination of man. These are Mr. Marx’s ideas; indeed, they are ideas that Mr. Marx shared with other socialist and anarchist thinkers, with enlightenment thought, and, in the last analysis, with the whole tradition of Western humanism. Yet, the Russians have transformed these ideas into an ideology; a bureaucracy which makes the state increasingly powerful at the expense of the individual, rules in the name of the ideas of individuality and equality. How can this phenomenon be understood? Are the Soviet leaders plain lairs deceiving their people? Are they cynics who do not believe a word they say? This is a puzzling question; many people are prone to assume that the Russians either fully mean what they say, or that they are outright liars. Yet if we were to examine ourselves more carefully, we might find that we too do the same thing without being aware of it. Most people in the West believe in God, hence in God’s principles of love, charity, justice, truth, humility, et cetera. Yet these ideas have little influence on our behaviour. Most of us are motivated by the wish for greater material comfort, security, and prestige. While people believe in God, they are not concerned with God, that is, they do not worry or lose sleep over religious or spiritual problems. Yet we pride ourselves on being “God-fearing” and call the Russians “godless.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Or, mot Americans believe that the capitalist system under which we live is based on the free, unmanaged market, on private property, a minimum of government control, on individual initiative. While that was true nearly two hundred years ago, it is not true now. The means of production are essentially not controlled by those (still only a small minority) who own them; individual initiative is drowned in a bureaucratic system and more often found in “Western” films than in real life; the “free” market has become a directed and manipulated market; the state, instead of interfering minimally, is the biggest employer and customer and support industry whenever it seems desirable to the “government-business-armed services” bureaucracy. We say that we are an alliance of freedom-loving people, yet quite a number of dictatorships belong to our alliance. We accuse the Communists of wanting to proselytize us and make communism a World system—but we sat that “it is our aspiration also to see the Russian people freed from their present enslavement, and the Chinese people, too. We want people everywhere to be free.” Are we all liars? Or are we, and they, genuinely starting convictions? In order to fully understand that these alternatives are not the only one, it is useful to think of one of the most important discoveries of Dr. Freud: the nature of rationalization. Before Dr. Freud, it was generally believed that unless a person were lying one’s conscious thoughts are what one really thinks. Dr. Freud discovered that a person can be fully sincere, subjectively, and yet that one’s thought may have little weight or reality, that it may be only a cover, a “rationalization” for the real impulse which motivates one. Examples of this mechanism are known to many people by now. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Who does not know the scrupulously moral person who in the name of virtue and goodness dominates his wife and children and deprives them of their freedom and spontaneity? He is not lying when he recites his principles, yet if we analyze him, that is to say, if we study his effective motivations, we find that a wish for power or control or even a sadistic impulse to strangle any kind of spontaneity is what in reality motivates him. This reality is unconscious—while his consciousness is not real. Yet he is sincere and, in fact, would be genuinely indignant if his motives were even questioned. Moreover, his ideology is not simply an empty lie and a means to dominate his family all the better because he uses noble phrases and this impresses them. He actually has a genuine longing for goodness, virtue, and love, but instead of acting upon these impulses, he transforms them into words and deceives himself with the illusion that he is in touch with love when he talks about love. Mr. Stalin or Mr. Khrushchev, using the words of Mr. Marx use them ideologically, just as most of us use the words of the Christian Bible, Book of Mormon, of President Jefferson, of Mr. Emerson, ideologically. We fail, however, to recognize the ideological and ritualistic character of Communist utterances, just as we overlook the ideological and ritualistic character of many of our own statements. Hence, when we hear Mr. Khrushchev pronounce Mr. Marx’s or Mr. Lenin’s words, we believe that he means what they meant, while the fact is that these ideas are no more real to him that the wish to save pagan souls was to the European colonialists. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Paradoxically, the only people who take the Communist ideology seriously are we in the United States of America, while the Russian leaders have the greatest trouble in shoring it up with nationalism, moral teaching, and increased material satisfactions. Every social and economic system is not only a specified system of relations between things and institutions, but a system of human relations. Any concept and practice of socialism must be examined in terms of the kind of relations between human beings to which it is conducive. The supreme vale in all social and economic arrangements is man; the goal of society is to offer the conditions for the full development of man’s potentialities, his reason, his love, his creativity; all social arrangements must be conductive to overcoming the alienation and crippledness of man, and to enable him to achieve real freedom and individuality. The aim of socialism is an association in which the full development of each is the condition for the full development of all. The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man. In relations between people, every man is an end in himself and must never be made into a means to another man’s ends. From this principle it follows that nobody must personally be subject to anyone because one owns capital. Humanistic socialism is rooted in the conviction of the unity of mankind and the solidarity of all men. It fights any kind of worship of State, nation, or class. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

The supreme loyalty of man must be to the human race and to the moral principles of humanism. It strives for the revitalization of those ideas and values upon which Western civilization was bult. Humanistic socialism is radically opposed to war and violence in all and any forms. It considers any attempt to solve political and social problems by force and violence not only as futile, but as immoral and inhuman. Hence it is uncompromisingly opposed to any policy which tries to achieve security by armament. It considers peace to be not only the substance of war, but a positive principle of human relations based on free cooperation of all men for the common good. From socialist principle it follows not only that each member of society feels responsible for his fellow citizens, but for all citizens of the World. The injustice which lets two-third of the human race live in abysmal poverty must be removed by an effort far beyond the other ones hitherto made by wealthy nations to help the underdeveloped nation to arrive at a humanly satisfactory economic level. Humanistic socialism stands for freedom. It stands for freedom from fear, want, oppression, and violence. However, freedom is not only from, but also freedom to; freedom to participate actively and responsibly in all directions concerning the citizen, freedom to develop the individual’s human potential to the fullest possible degree. Production and consumption must be subordinated to the needs of man’s development, not the reverse. As a consequence all production must be directed by the principle of its social usefulness, and not by that of its material profit for some individuals or corporations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Hence if a choice has to be made between greater production on the one hand, and greater freedom and human growth on the other, the human as against the material value must be chosen. In a socialist industrialism the goal is not to achieve the highest economic productivity, but to achieve the highest human productivity. This means that the way in which man spends most of his energy, in work as well as in leisure, must be meaningful and interesting to him. It must stimulate and help to develop all his human powers—his intellectual as well as his emotion and artistic ones. While, in order to live humanly, basic material needs must be satisfied, consumption must not be an aim in itself. All attempts to stimulate material needs artificially for the sake of profit must be prevented. Waste of material resources and senseless consumption for consumption’s sake are destructive to mature human development. Humanistic socialism is a system in which man governs capital, not capital man; in which, so far as it is possible, man governs his circumstances, not circumstances man; in which the members of society plan what they want to produce, rather than have their production follow the laws of the impersonal powers of the market and of capital with its inherent need for maximum profit. Humanistic socialism is the extension of the democratic process beyond the purely political realm, into the economic sphere; it is political and industrial democracy. It is the restoration of political democracy to its original meaning: the true participation of informed citizens in all decisions affecting them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Extension of democracy into the economic sphere means democratic control of all economic activities by the participants: manual workers, engineers, administrators, et cetera. Humanistic socialism is not primarily concerned with legal ownership, but with social control of the large and powerful industries. Irresponsible control by bureaucratic management representing the profit interest of capital must be replaced by administration acting on behalf of, and controlled by, those who produced and consume. The aim of humanistic socialism can be attained only by the introduction of a maximum of decentralization compatible with a minimum of centralization necessary for the coordinated functioning of an industrial society. The functions of a centralized state must be reduced to a minimum, while the voluntary activity of freely cooperating citizens constitutes the central mechanism of social life. Does our definition of freedom as non-submission to any higher power exclude sacrifices, including the sacrifice of one’s life? This is a particularly important question today, when Fascism proclaims self-sacrifice as the highest virtue and impresses many people with its idealistic character. There are two entirely different types of sacrifice. It is one of the tragic fact of life that the demands of our physical self and the aims of our mental self can conflict; that actually we may have to sacrifice our physical self in order to assert the integrity of our spiritual self. This sacrifice will never lose its tragic quality. Death is never sweet, not even if it is suffered for the highest ideal. It remains unspeakably bitter, and still it can be the utmost assertion of our individuality. Such sacrifice is fundamentally different from the “sacrifice” which Fascism preaches. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

There, sacrifice is not the highest price man may have to pay to asset his self, but it is an aim in itself. This masochistic sacrifice sees the fulfillment of life in its very negation, in the annihilation of the self. It is only the supreme expression of what Fascism aims at in all its ramifications—the annihilation of the individual self and its utter submission to a higher power. It is the perversion of true sacrifice as much as suicide is the utmost perversion of life. True sacrifice presupposes an uncompromising whish for spiritual integrity. The sacrifice of those who have lost it covers up their moral bankruptcy. One last objection is to be met: If individuals are allowed to act freely in the sense of spontaneity, if they acknowledge no higher authority than themselves, will anarchy be the inevitable result? In so far as the word anarchy stands for heedless egotism and destructiveness, the determining factor depends upon one’s understanding of human nature. Man is neither good nor bad; life has an inherent tendency to grow, to expand, to express potentialities; if life is thwarted, if the individual is isolated and overcome by doubt or a feeling of aloneness and powerlessness, then one is driven to destructiveness and craving for power or submission. If human freedom is established as freedom to, if man can realize his self fully and uncompromisingly, the fundamental cause for his asocial drives will have disappeared and only a sick and abnormal individual will be dangerous. This freedom has never been realized in the history of mankind, yet it has been an ideal to which mankind has stuck even if it was often expressed in abstruse and irrational forms. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

There is no reason to wonder why the record of history shows to much cruelty and destructiveness. If there is anything to be surprised at—and encouraged by—it is the fact that the human race, in spite of all that has happened to men, has retained—and actually developed—such qualities of dignity, courage, decency, and kindness as we find them throughout history and in countless individuals today. If by anarchy one means that the individual does not acknowledge any kind of authority, the answer is to be found in what has been said about the difference between rational and irrational authority. Rational authority—like a genuine ideal—represents the aims of growth and expansion of the individual. It is, therefore, in principle never in conflict with the individual and one’s real, and not one’s pathological, aims. Freedom has a twofold meaning for modern man: that he has been freed from traditional authorities and has become an “individual,” but that at the same time he had become isolated, powerless, and an instrument of purpose outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, that this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage. Positive freedom on the other hand is identical with the full realization of the individual’s potentialities, together with one’s ability to live actively and spontaneously. Freedom has reached a critical point where, driven by the logic of its own dynamism, it threatens to change into it opposite. The future of democracy depends on the realization of the individualism that has been the ideological aim of modern thought since the Renaissance. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become an empty shell. The victory of freedom is possible only if democracy develops into a society in which the individual, his growth and happiness, is the aim and purpose of culture, in which life does not need any justification in success or anything else, and in which the individual is not subordinated to or manipulated by any power outside of himself, be it the State or the economic machine; finally, a society in which his conscience and ideals are not the internalization of external demands, but are really his and express the aims that result from the peculiarity of his self. These aims could not be fully realized in any previous period of modern history; they had to remain largely ideological aims, because the material basis for the development of genuine individualism was lacking. Capitalism has created this premise. The problem of production is solved—in principle at least—and we can visualize a future of abundance, in which the fight for economic privileges is no longer necessitated by economic scarcity. The problem we are confronted with today is that of the organization of social and economic forces, so that man—as a member of organized society—may become the master of these forces and cease to be their slave. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

There is a psychological side of freedom, but the psychological problem cannot be separated from the material basis of human existence, from the economic, social, and political structure of society. It follows from this premise that the realization of positive freedom and individualism is also bound up with economic and social changes that will permit the individual to become free in terms of the realization of his self. We cannot afford to lose any of the fundamental achievements of modern democracy—either the fundamental one of representative government, that is, government elected by the people and responsible to the people, or any of the rights which the Bill of Rights guarantees to every citizen. Nor can we compromise the newer democratic principle that no one shall be allowed to starve, that society is responsible for all its members, that no one shall be brightened into submission and lose one’s human pride through fear of unemployment and starvation. These basic achievements mut not only be preserved; they must be fortified and expanded. In spite of the fact that this measure of democracy has been realized—though far from completely—it is not enough. Progress for democracy lies in enhancing the actual freedom, initiative, and spontaneity of the individual, not only in certain private and spiritual matters, but above all in the activity fundamental to every man’s existence, his work. What are the general conditions for that? The irrational and planless character of society must be replaced by a planned economy that represent the planned and concerted effort of society as such. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Society must master the social problem as rationally as it has mastered nature. One condition for this is the elimination of the secret rule of those who, though few in number, wield great economic power without any responsibility to those whose fate depends on their decisions. We may call this new order by the name of democratic socialism but the name does not matter; all that matters is that we establish a rational economic system serving the purposes of the people. Today the vast majority of the people not only have no control over the whole of the economic machine, but they have little chance to develop genuine initiative and spontaneity at the particular job they are doing. They are “employed,” and nothing more is expected from them than that they do what they are told. Only in a planned economy in which the whole nation has rationally mastered the economic and social forces can the individual share responsibility and use creative intelligence in his work. All that matters is that the opportunity for genuine activity be restored to the individual; that the purposes of society and of one’s own become identical, not ideologically but in reality; and that he apply his effort and reason actively to the work he is doing, as something for which he can feel responsible because it has meaning and purpose in terms of one’s human ends. We must replace manipulation of men by active and intelligent co-operation, and expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, so help me God, from the formal political to the economic sphere. The only criterion for the realization of freedom is whether or not the individual actively participates in determining one’s life and that of society, and this not only by the formal act of voting but in one’s daily activity, in one’s work, and in one’s relations to others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Modern political sphere, cannot sufficiently counteract the results of the economic insignificance of the average individual. However, purely economic concepts like socialization of the means of production are not sufficient either. I am not thinking here so much of the deceitful usage of the word socialism as it has been applied—for reasons of tactical expediency—in National Socialism. I have in mind Russia where socialism has become a deceptive word; for although socialization of the means of production has taken place, actually a powerful bureaucracy manipulates the vast mass of the population; this necessarily prevents the development of freedom and individualism, even if government control may be effective in the economic interest of the majority of the people. Never have word been more misused in order to conceal the truth than today. Betrayal of allies is called appeasement, military aggression is camouflaged as defense against attack, the consequences of small nations goes by the name of a pact of friendship, and the brutal suppression of the whole population is perpetrated in the name of National Socialism. The words democracy, freedom, and individualism become objects of this abuse too. There is one way to define the real meaning of the difference between democracy and Fascism. Democracy is a system that creates the economic, political, and cultural conditions for the full development of the individual. Fascism is a system that, regardless under which name, make the individual subordinate to extraneous purposes and weakens the development of genuine individuality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Obviously, one of the greatest difficulties in the establishment of the conditions for the realization of democracy lies in the contradiction between a planned economy and the active co-operation of each individual. A planned economy of the scope of any big industrial system requires a great deal of centralization and, as a consequence, a bureaucracy to administer this centralized machine. On the other hand, the active control and co-operation by each individual and by the smallest units of the whole system requires a great amount of decentralization. Unless planning from the top is blended with active participation from below, unless the stream of social life continuously flows from below upwards, a planned economy will lead to renewed manipulation of the people. To solve this problem of combining centralization with decentralization is one of the major tasks of society. However, it is centrally no less soluble than the technical problems we have already solved and which have brought us an almost complete mastery over nature. It is to be solved, however, only if we clearly recognize the necessity of doing so and if we have faith in the people, in their capacity to take care of their real interest as human beings. In a way it is again the problem of individual initiative with which we are confronted. Individual initiative was one of the great stimuli both of the economic system and also of personal development under liberal capitalism. However, there are two qualifications: it developed only selected qualities of man, his will and rationality, while leaving him otherwise subordinate to economic goals. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

It was a principle that functioned best in a highly individualized and competitive phase of capitalism which had room for countless independent economic units. Today this space has narrowed down. Only a small number can exercise individual initiative. If we want to realize this principle today and enlarge it so that the whole personality becomes free, it will be possible only on the basis of the rational and concerted effort of a society as a whole, and by an amount of decentralization which can guarantee real, genuine, active co-operation and control by the smallest units of the system. Only if man masters society and subordinates the economic machine to the purpose of human happiness and only if he actively participates in the social process, can he overcome what now drives him into despair—his aloneness and his feelings of powerlessness. Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning. The victory over all kinds of authoritarian systems will be possible only if democracy does not retreat but takes the offensive and proceeds to realize what has been its aim in the minds of those who fought for our freedom throughout the last centuries. It will triumph over the forces of nihilism only if it can imbue people with a faith that is the strongest the human mind is capable of, the faith in life and in truth, and in freedom as the active and spontaneous realization of the individual self. Ideologies and culture in general are rooted in the social character; the social character itself is molded by the mode of existence of a given society; and in their turn the dominant character traits become productive forces shaping the social process. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

The collapse of medieval society threatened the middle class; this threat resulted in a feeling of powerless isolation and doubt; this psychological change was responsible for the appeal of Mr. Luther’s and Mr. Calvin’s doctrines; that these doctrines intensified and stabilized the characterological changes; and that the character traits that thus developed then became productive forces in the development of capitalism which in itself resulted from economic and political changes. With regard to Fascism the same principle of explanation was applied: the lower middle class reacted to certain economic changes, such as the growing power of monopolies and postwar inflation, with an intensification of certain character traits, namely, sadistic and masochistic strivings; the Nazi ideology appealed to and intensified these traits; and the new character traits then became effective forces in supporting the expansion of German imperialism. Germany is already looked at as a superior country, and known for producing some of the best products known to mankind. When a certain class is threatened by new economic tendencies, it reacts to this threat psychologically and ideologically; and that the psychological changes brought about by this reaction further the development of economic forces even if those forces contradict the economic interests of the class. Economic, psychological, and ideological forces operate in this way: that man reacts to changing external situations by changes in himself, and that these psychological factors in their turn help in molding the economic and social process. Economic forces are effective, but they must be understood not as psychological motivation but as objective conditions. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All. The Sacramento Fire Department has been proudly serving the City of Sacramento since 1851, and they are not receiving all of their resources. Please open your hearts this holiday season and make any donation you can. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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