COMMUNISM

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3182, 26 May 1932, Page 2

COMMUNISM

Addressing members of the Legacy Club in Sydney reecntly, Sir Robert Garran, ex-Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth, uncompromisingly denounced the activities of those elements in the community *which advocated a dictatorship of the proletariat. " Of Communism in the abstract," he said, "I have nothing to say except that Comlmunism in itself, as a theory of government for an ideal humanity, is just as respectable as any other Utopian ideal. It merely denotes the collective ownership of all property by the community. If the Communist party proposed to persuade the electors of the merits of this theory, and to establish it by constitutional means, we could have no quarrel with them. But their programime is very different. They do not propose to begin by converting us to Communism. They tell their followers that the road to Communism lies through revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat, in plain English, is nothing more or less than the Red Terror. It is £0 be prepared for by the secret or open stirring up of industrial strife at every opportunity; it is to be established by armed revolution; and it is to be maintained by the butchery of all who have courage and strength to resist, and by the cowing of the rest into abject submission. The proletariat—the revolutionary mob are to ' dictate 'at their own sweet and arbitrary will, with rifle, knife, and halter; and the ' bourgeoisie " —everyone else—are to bleed, or swing, or cower."