Dedication and Leadership

Douglas Hyde

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780268159665
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

On March 14, 1948, Douglas Hyde handed in his resignation as the news editor of the London Daily Worker and wrote "the end" to twenty years of his life as a member of the Communist Party. A week later, in a written statement, Hyde announced that he had renounced Communism and, with his wife and children, was joining the Catholic Church.

The long pilgrimage from Communism to Christ carried Douglas Hyde from complete commitment to Marxism, to a questioning uneasiness about Soviet Russia's glaring contradictions of ideology and action, to a final rejection of the Party.

In Dedication and Leadership, Hyde advances the theory that although the goals and aims of Communism are antithetical to human dignity and the rights of the individual, there is much to be learned from communist methods, cadres and psychological motivation. Hyde describes the Communist mechanics of instilling dedication, the first prerequisite for leadership. Here is the complete rationale of party technique: how to stimulate the willingness to sacrifice; the advisability of making big demands to insure a big response; the inspirational indoctrination; and the subtle conversion methods.

In this small book, so large with implications, Douglas Hyde comments on both Communist and Catholic potential and their lack of maximum effectiveness. He advocates positive Catholic action, not just a negative anti-Communism, and he points out that the guidelines are now down for a decisive choice between total Communism and a total Christianity.

Here is a realistic approach to an acute problem uncolored by emotional propaganda, and here is a realistic answer on how to inspire dedication for leadership.

CHAPTER I

The Starting Point

THERE are two points it is necessary to make, right at the start, so that we may have the aim and purpose of this study clear. Firstly, the subject is dedication and leadership, not anti-Communism. Secondly, we shall in the main be discussing those Communist leadership training methods which are capable of imitation or adaptation by Christians and others or, conversely, which may spark off some useful and constructive thought about our own methods.

If in the process we arrive at a better understanding of the motivation and formation of the Communist cadres, then so much the better. Indeed, I hope that this may be a useful by-product of this discussion. But its main purpose is to see what we can learn from the Communists’ attitudes, methods and techniques.

We shall be looking at the Communists, not in order to attack, not to prove them wrong, but rather to see what they have to teach us. So when I describe Communist methods I shall not select those which have nothing for us. Quite obviously I shall not be recommending those which, for moral or ethical reasons, we must abhor, although even here we may in fact find that some of these still merit examination, even if only because of the single-minded approach the Communists bring to them. This will be a highly selective look at the Communists and Communism.

Even the examples I quote will be the best I have seen after years of living with Communists and observing Communism in almost every part of the world.

When I left Communism after twenty years in the Party, I knew its evils. But I also believed that the Communists were right in some important respects. For example, when they said that there is a great battle going on all over the world which in the final analysis is a struggle for men’s hearts, minds and souls. We can accept this even if we do not take the view that all the ‘goodies’ are on one side and the ‘baddies’ are on the other. There is plenty of evidence that the thought of millions today is in a state of flux, people everywhere are breaking away from age-old allegiances, beliefs and ways of life, and it is much too early yet to say where the process will finish.

I believe that they are right, too, when they say that, although we may not see the end of the battle, its outcome will most probably be decided in this period in which we are living. In short, this is a turning-point in man’s history, a terrible, yet tremendous time in which to live.

This has, of course, been said before by other generations. In the past, however, when men talked of the fate of ‘the whole world’ and ‘all mankind’ being at stake they could mean only a small part of the surface of the globe, the one in which lived only a minority of the human race. When we talk of a world-wide battle today we mean one which involves men in every country everywhere.

When, therefore, the Communists speak of launching the world on the way to Communism in the period in which we are living, it is this that they mean—not the whole world with the exception of the United States, or the United Kingdom or whichever country, being your own, you may feel is proof against assault.

Their aim is quite clear. They have never concealed it and it is something that is immensely meaningful to every Communist. It is a Communist world. In the past half-century they have achieved one-third of that aim. On any reckoning, that is a remarkable achievement, probably an unprecedented one. Nonetheless the world in which we live is still predominantly non-Communist. Twice as many people live in the non-Communist world as live under Communism. There is no basis here for defeatism.

Even so, it is probably true to say of the Communists that never in man’s history has a small group of people set out to win a world and achieved more in less time. Certainly, they have brought far more people under their sway by the methods they employ than anyone else has done during the same period. Moreover, they have always worked through a minority. This is true of those territories which they now rule and also of those where they have not yet come to power.

This is, however, less exceptional than would appear. In practice, most organisations and causes work through minorities. Even those who believe most deeply in majority rule still depend upon the faithful few to do the work, to make the necessary sacrifices in time, energy and devotion to keep the movement going.

The Communists have learned from experience, and as a result both of pooling their ideas and of learning from the successes and failures of their movement everywhere, how best they can make the maximum impact upon others, even though they must work through a minority. Many of the methods they have evolved have grown out of this realisation. It is these that I consider it is most useful for us to examine.

The Communist Party throughout the world has thirty-six million members. Of these, a very high proportion live in lands ruled by Communism. There, quite consciously and deliberately the party is kept small so that it may retain the character of an élite. Only a few million live and work in the non-Communist world. Yet the impact they make upon it is such that we are conscious of their presence the whole of the time. They have profoundly influenced the thought of the majority. The policies of other parties are notably different from what they would otherwise have been because the Communists exist.

Communists are a very small minority, in comparison with some of the other groups who are also contending for men’s hearts and minds. There are, for example, 400 million Moslems and more than 500 million Catholics, the majority of whom live outside the Communist countries. These other great world movements have immensely larger human resources at their disposal than have the combined Communist parties. Yet no one could claim that in the period in which Communism has been in our midst they have had anything like its success. I am not, of course, talking of their ability to seize power by force of arms or by subterfuge, but of their ability to fire the imagination, create a sense of dedication and send their followers into effective, meaningful action.

It is almost impossible to read a newspaper or to listen to the news on radio or television without learning of something which the Communists are doing. They never let us forget them. This is not just an accident, there are reasons for it and these are worth examining.

I do not believe that the strength of Communism lies in the strength of its ideas. I believe, as any Christian must, that Christianity has something infinitely better to offer than has Communism. To put it in the rather degraded terminology of our times, we have something immensely better to sell. Yet it is they who have been able to influence our generation much more profoundly than have we.

Beliefs are important to Communists. Communist policies grow out of them. Reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, may not be easy but it is necessary to an understanding of Communists and Communism. But it is not this that attracts people to the Communist cause. In my experience, the strength of Communism lies in its people and the way in which they are used. It is at this level that Communists have most to teach us. They use well the human material at their disposal. Most often non-Communists do not.

Perhaps I should make it clear that when I speak of Communists in these terms I do so against a background of having associated with Communists in almost every part of the world, not just some special sort of British Communists, or Western Communists, who live in affluent societies. A point which must be grasped in any discussion of world Communism is that Communists are, or become, much of a type the world over. They have certain things in common which distinguish them everywhere.

For twenty years I was a member of the British Communist Party. I joined when I was seventeen years of age. I spent all my late adolescence and early manhood in the Party. By the time I left it, almost every friend I had in the world was a Communist. Communism had been my life and I could claim to know Communists, or at any rate the Communists of Britain, very well. Normally, the ex-Communist, particularly one who has come out publicly and so is dubbed as a renegade, is cut off from his old comrades and from the movement with which he has been associated.

It happens that since I left the Party a steady stream of Communists has been in touch with me. With the exception of the first few months after my resignation from the Party and its daily paper, of which I was news editor, there has been no period when I was not in touch with some, at least, of the Party’s members. I did not in the first instance seek them out. They had heard what I said in public lectures, or they had read what I had written about them in books and articles; they recognised that I was trying to give a faithful picture of them as they really were; and so, when they were in any difficulty or began to feel any doubt about their communism, some of them turned to me, believing that I would understand. The result has been a living ‘dialogue’ which has continued over the years.

As a commentator on world affairs, I have travelled in almost every area of the world. Wherever I have gone, I have continued to keep in touch with Communists and Communism. Since 1957 I have spent several months of each year living in prison cells with Asian Communist leaders who were serving prison sentences after having led jungle wars or insurrections, or who were detainees in lands where Communism was banned and the Party an illegal, clandestine organisation. What I have to say, therefore, about the Communists’ use of people relates to members of many different races, in many different parts of the world.

Again, in order to get the picture clear, it must be noted that the human material on which they work is not something different from that which is at the disposal of others. The majority of Communists are ‘first generation’. This means that others, frequently Christians and Christian missionaries, had them in their hands long before they went to the Communist Party. One can, and must for honesty’s sake, be more specific: often these people are identical with those who are available to Christians to instruct and use in the sense that a disturbingly high proportion of them, particularly those who form the hard core of the Communist Party, were once Catholics. In other words the Communists train and use successfully people with whom Christians had failed. I am not just theorising: any analysis of the origins of the leadership of the Communist Party of, say, Britain, U.S.A., Australia or, for that matter, Kerala (South India), will provide ample evidence of the Communist ability to attract to their ranks lapsed and fallen-away Catholics.

I make this point, which may seem a brutal one, for two reasons: first, it is necessary to appreciate that there is no basis for the belief that Communists have some special sort of human material on which to work. The people with whom they frequently have great success are our own failures. Secondly, we must in humility accept that amongst the Christians, and Catholics in particular, who go to the Communists are many who find in Communism what they had hoped, without success, to find among the Christians. The onus is, therefore, on us to find the answer to this problem.

If we recognise that Communists are not some different brand of human beings from those who make up other, comparable movements, we must then turn to their methods and see what part these play in assisting the Communist Party to develop its members’ potentialities for dedication and leadership.

The Christian who is trying to train and produce leaders may object that Christians are concerned with the supernatural and must operate at that level, whereas Communists are concerned only with the natural. I would submit that this is not a reason for ignoring the natural. It is theologically sound to say that the supernatural is built on the natural. In considering the Communists’ methods we shall be dealing with the question at the natural level which is precisely where the Christian tends often to be at his weakest. It is here that we have most to learn.

Willingness to Sacrifice

If you ask me what is the distinguishing mark of the Communist, what it is that Communists most outstandingly have in common, I would not say, as some people might expect, their ability to hate—this is by no means common to them all. I would say that beyond any shadow of doubt it is their idealism, their zeal, dedication, devotion to their cause and willingness to sacrifice. This characterises the Communists wherever Communism has still to come to power and is obviously true of many in the very different circumstances where it now rules. The vast majority of the Communists I have met anywhere conform to this pattern.

This is no accident. It does not just happen. The Communists have evolved their own means by which they are able to evoke an exceptional degree of dedication. And they use it very effectively indeed. To understand how it is done, one must follow through the process step by step from the start.

The majority of those who join the Communist Party are young. The average joining age used to be between seventeen and twenty-five. Today it is between fifteen and twenty-five. For some years now they have been recruiting successfully among fifteen to seventeen-year-olds. The British Communist Party recently organised a recruiting campaign which brought in several thousand new members. When, in due course, the General Secretary made his report to the Executive Committee, he said that most of those who joined during the period of the campaign were between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.

A majority of the Asian Communists with whom I have shared prison cells joined the movement when they were at school. Go to Caracas, Venezuela, and you will find that some of the Communists’ greatest successes are amongst high school and secondary school boys and girls. Some of the guerilla bands in the mountains of Venezuela are manned almost exclusively by youngsters of this age who have left their homes and their studies in order to be able to start the armed fight for Communism. The first sign of Communism which missionaries in Africa have discovered has often been when strikes occurred in their own mission schools. In other words, the successful appeal to the very young is not a British phenomenon. One finds it everywhere.

Youth is a period of idealism. The Communists attract young people by appealing directly to that idealism. Too often, others have failed either to appeal to it or to use it and they are the losers as a consequence. We have no cause to complain if, having neglected the idealism of youth, we see others come along, take it, use it and harness it to their cause—and against our own.

It is fashionable in some circles today to sneer at ‘starry-eyed idealism’. Of all the ways of helping Communism I can think of none better than this. That sort of cynicism has driven many eager, earnest, intelligent and potentially good youngsters to believe that the West has nothing to offer the young idealist but cynicism, and that this is an expression of the decadence of our way of life. It has led them to believe that if you are interested in improving man’s lot on earth, if you want to change the world (and the boy who does not want to do this at some point during his adolescence will certainly make a cynical old materialist later on), it is to the Communists, not to the Christians, you must turn.

Wherever I have travelled I have found that young people are idealistic. This is natural to any healthy youngster. I can only conclude that it is the way God wants them to be. We offend against charity and justice, and against commonsense too, when we sneer at starry-eyed idealism. We do it to our own loss.

Young people have always dreamed of better worlds and we must hope that they always will. The day we lose our dreams all progress will cease. Idealistic young people will want to change the world and will pursue their own idealistic course in any case. If their idealism is not appealed to and canalised within the circles in which they have grown up they will seek elsewhere for an outlet.

The Communists have demonstrated that the idealism of youth is something which can be harnessed and used with tremendous effect. It is a dynamic thing. Despite all the twists and turns of Communist policy it continues over the years to provide the dynamism of the Communist movement.

Older Christians, believing that you cannot build perfect worlds and perfect societies from fallen men, too often take up what is at best a superciliously tolerant approach to youthful idealism—when they do not ignore it altogether. The Communists take it and use it.

Communism becomes the dominant thing in the life of the Communist. It is something to which he gives himself completely. Quite obviously it meets a need, fills a vacuum at the time when he is first attracted to it. More significant is that it normally continues to be the dominant force in the life of the Communist for as long as he remains in the movement.

The Communists’ appeal to idealism is direct and audacious. They say that if you make mean little demands upon people, you will get a mean little response which is all you deserve, but, if you make big demands on them, you will get an heroic response. They prove in practice that this is so, over and over again. They work on the assumption that if you call for big sacrifices people will respond to this and, moreover, the relatively smaller sacrifices will come quite naturally.

When I first went to work on the British Communist Party’s daily paper, I was proud that I had been chosen for the work, proud to make whatever sacrifice was asked of me, but I was nonetheless conscious of the fact that I had willingly accepted a ludicrously small wage. I will admit that I felt slightly virtuous about this—until I met other members of the staff. Most of them were older than I was at that time, they had gone further in their careers (and some had gone very far indeed) and had had to make far bigger sacrifices than I. Some of them were earning one-tenth of what had been their salary when they had worked fo...