Democrat Strategies Right Out Of V.I. Lenin Playbook
By SVETLANA KUNIN Posted 06:25 PM ET
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the socialist revolution in Russia, published multiple tutorials for like-minded revolutionaries around the world. Someone in the Obama administration must be familiar with his writings. Socialist minds think alike.
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In the "Children's Maladies of the Left in Communism/Results of the Popular Conversation About Marxists Strategy and Tactics" (V.I. Lenin, 1920), Lenin wrote on the critical importance of timing: "To accept the fight, when it is beneficial to your opponent, is a crime; and leaders of the revolutionary class who cannot maneuver, manipulate and compromise to avoid obvious defeat are useless."
According to Lenin's rule, it is strategically appropriate for President Obama to halt all policies that are inconvenient to his election. That's why regulations like the EPA ozone plan, which would impose tremendous regulatory burdens on manufacturing in the USA, and the full-blown implementation of ObamaCare, will wait until after the presidential election of 2012.
Lenin also wrote on the importance of taking advantage of every available disagreement among opponents: "To win over a stronger opponent requires tremendous effort, the necessity of very careful, skillful use of any little crack among the opponents ... requires the use of every available case to gain an ally — even if temporary, weak, unreliable or conditional."
It is interesting to observe how the avalanche of attacks against the Tea Party activists by mainstream media, liberal commentators and other Democratic Party representatives makes some Republicans uncomfortable with the Tea Party. Conservatives should realize that there is no time for old-fashioned political rituals when the transformation of the country is under way.
On using a society's democratic conventions to make that society weak, while increasing the power of the central government, Lenin wrote: "Participation in the bourgeois-democratic parliament not only doesn't hurt the revolutionary proletariat, but makes it easier to prove to the uninformed masses that this kind of parliamentary governing should be destroyed, helps in the success of distractions and helps in the elimination of the bourgeois parliaments."
Lenin was talking about the British system of government, but his main point was on the strategy of replacing democratic system of governing with centralized power.
The theme of "broken government" is popular among liberals — so much so that the governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, recently said: "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover."
Peter Orszag, former director of President Obama's Office of Management & Budget, wrote an article titled "Too Much of a Good Thing — Why We Need Less Democracy." Top mainstream Democrats such as Purdue and Orszag are in alignment with Lenin's teachings.
But while propaganda, deception and manipulation work on people, they do not work on economies. In 1920 Lenin forecast that the full transformation of the Russian society into the prosperous communist state would be completed by 1930-1940. By 1930, after the destruction of private manufacturing and the collectivization of the agriculture, the country was facing famine and hunger.
After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin continued centralizing power and silencing opposition. By 1937, travel outside the USSR was strictly regulated. People were locked inside the country, surrounded by government-controlled propaganda.
After Stalin's death in 1953, the next party leader, Nikita Khrushchev, declared that by 1980 the foundation of the communism in the USSR would be built. At the XXII summit of the Communist Party of the USSR in October 1961 he announced: "This generation of Soviet people will live in the communist society." By 1990, Soviets witnessed their economy, managed by government bureaucrats, collapse.
The disoriented "Occupy Wall Street" protesters, looking for a society where the government takes care of citizens and redistributes wealth, would find such a society in the USSR. Since that society collapsed, they can now look to North Korea or Cuba as the natural endpoint they're agitating for.
In an Aug. 8 speech, Obama said: "For all of the challenges we face, we continue to have the best universities, some of the most productive workers, the most innovative companies, the most adventurous entrepreneurs on Earth.
"What sets us apart is that we've always not just had the capacity, but also the will to act — the determination to shape our future; the willingness in our democracy to work out our differences in a sensible way and to move forward, not just for this generation but for the next generation."
There are plenty of countries around the globe with the capacity and will to act. There were plenty of capable and willing people in the USSR determined to shape their future. Many of them were trying to immigrate to the USA.
What sets the United States apart are its founding principles, based on the concept of individual liberty and the protection of the private property. "The best universities, some of the most productive workers, the most innovative companies, the most adventurous entrepreneurs on Earth" that Obama mentioned are the result of these principles.
The fawning media, the divorced-from-reality professors, the crony capitalists and the power-hungry individuals do not set this country apart from any other. What does make the United States unique is the phenomenon of the Tea Party: freedom-loving people, rising against government interference into their lives.
It is no wonder that those who would like to transform this country despise Tea Party activists. Intentionally or not, the ideology of today's Democrats is closer to Lenin's writings than to the founding documents of this country.
• Kunin lived in the Soviet Union until 1980, working as a civil engineer. She is now a retired software developer living in Connecticut. This is the 18th article she has written for IBD. The others can be found at IBDeditorials.com.
