Fascism and Communism

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 August 1946, Page 8

Fascism and Communism

[TO THE EDITOR.] Sir, —My letter under the above heading contains two printing errors of importance. These make me appeal' to say that Communism and Fascism

are out to eliminate the present social set-up. My letter said that Communism and. Socialism appeared to be out to do this, not Communism and Fascism. The other printing error is that the word “France” should read “Franco.” The main bone •of contention in your footnote seems to be some unfounded statement regarding the mass massacre of political opponents. Fascism obviously resorted to this, but there is no parallel so far as' Communism is concerned. The last trial of political disrupters in the Soviet Union, who were doing Fascism’s work, was declared to be fair and just by international observers, despite a terrific barrage from the world press about the Russians using some secret drug to make the prisoners say just what was wanted. Childlike stuff of this nature used to go over with the masses once, but they are gradually awakening, and if they don’t hurry the capitalistic atomic bomb will put them to sleep for all time.—Yours, etc., “X.” Christchurch, July 30. (Our correspondent obviously has only a superficial knowledge of the cause of Marxism—Leninism which he espouses. “The substitution of the proletarian State for the bourgeois State is impossible without a violent revolution,” says Lenin in “The State and Revolution.” And lest there be any doubt, as to what he means he goes on to give the following definition of revolution: “It is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon. And the victorious party, if it does not wish to have fought in vain, must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.”. Recent history is not without its examples of the seizure and maintenance of power by such means.—Editor, Evening Star.)