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I have often wondered how Communists can make their faith acceptable to their reason. Granted that in most cases the emotional forces released by their mystique leave little room for reasoning, yet man is a rational being and ultimately everybody is driven to rationalise, in however haphazard a manner, and thus to justify to himself the faith that is in him.
Most difficult of all to rationalise must surely be the ultimate foundation on which the whole structure of the Communist party rests, I mean belief in Stalin’s infallibility. And let it not be said that to use the term ‘infallibility’ is an exaggeration. Members of the Communist party are expected to hand themselves over entirely to its cause, to consider its claims as overriding those of any human tie, any interest, any personal conviction, and to be ready to sacrifice for it all they have or are, even their life. And for them this life is the end: they cannot be buoyed up by the expectation of any future reward, they cannot esteem this short present life of theirs as nothing compared with a future eternal life. They are pledged to an oboedientia cadaveris which for them is not a mortification of the will which brings its rewards, quite irrespective of whether the order obeyed is in itself right or mistaken, whether it will or will not further the end aimed at. Success—earthly success—is, for the Christian, suspect; for the Communist it is the only possible criterion.
For the Communist to hand himself over body and soul (as we would say) to the directives of the party can therefore only seem justifiable to himself, because only by following them does he think that success can be achieved. And the directives of the party are in the last resort of course those that are validated by Stalin. The course steered by Communism may be a zig-zag: it is for Stalin to say when the ‘zig’ is right, and when the ‘zag’. He is always right, unquestionably, because infallibly right.
