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Marxism-Leninism and its Strategic Implications for the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Paul Seabury
Paul Seabury
Affiliation:
Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

My central concern in this paper is with the implications of Marxist-Leninist ideology for Western defense policy and for United States strategic policy in particular. However, this is an extremely complex issue, and consideration of it will lead me to examine the ways in which ideas are related to interests, interests to strategy, and strategy to actions.

I

I begin with an important observation: Americans in general, and for various reasons, have not taken Marxism-Leninism seriously for a long time. This is true even of many experts who consider the Soviet challenge to be very serious, affecting our very survival as a free society. At the risk of oversimplification, I would claim that many quite well-informed Americans, hardened to the realities of the Soviet “empire” and its activities, have come around to the view that Marxist-Leninist ideology has simply degenerated into a rigid system of enforced belief administered by authorities who have no particular commitment to it other than to employ it in order to remain in power. In this regard, “Marxism” (like “God” in America in the 1960s) is deemed “dead,” surviving only in the publicity offices of formal establishments as a means of maintaining their authority. Marxism-Leninism is thought to be no different from the moribund “divine right of kings,” which undergirded the monarchical establishments of 17th Century Europe.

Oddly enough, the “socialism-is-dead” theme is today found in the writings of such prominent American neo-conservatives as Irving Kristol, George Gilder, and many others. It is also echoed in Europe in the writings of such eminent philosophers as Leszek Kolakowski of Poland and Paul Johnson of England.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Autumn 1985 , pp. 192 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1985

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References

1 April 1985, pp.9–11.

2 Rauschning, Herman, The Revolution of Nihilism; Warning to the West (New York: Alliance Book Corp., Longmans, Green & Co., 1939).Google Scholar

3 For a discussion of this, see Niebuhr, Reinhold famous work, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1962).Google Scholar For a more recent study, see Howard, MichaelWar and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

4 Lenin once remarked to an associate that “political tactics and military tactics represent that which Germans call Grenzgebiet [adjoining areas], urging party workers to study Clausewitz concerning this principle.

5 Quoted in Pipes, RichardSurvival Is Not Enough (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p.207.Google Scholar

6 See The International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1984–1985 (London, 1984).Google Scholar

7 It is not known whether this situation has improved. See, for instance, my chapter in Johnson, Chalmers, The Industrial Policy Debate (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1984), pp.204–205.Google Scholar

8 “General Considerations of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua Concerning Military Service,” Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, 29 August 1983.

9 The Americas at the Crossroads, Report of the Inter-American Dialogue, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, April 1983, p.41. (Emphasis in the text.)

10 Paul, Seabury and Walter, McDougall, eds., The Grenada Papers (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1983).Google Scholar

11 Radu, Michael, “Soviet Proxy Assets in Central America and the Caribbean,” unpublished paper (Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1984), p.8.Google Scholar

12 In attempting to understand this relationship, two major contemporary novelists (neither one a product of “advanced industrial societies”) have given us stimulating insights into the problem: the Peruvian novelist Llosa, Mario Vargas, in his War of the End of the World, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1984)Google Scholar, and the Naipaul, Trinidad-Born V.S., in his Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981).Google Scholar