“The Upper Class is Communist”

“By any Marxian pattern of how classes behave, the upper class should be for you and the lower classes should be against you. But it is the upper class that is most violent against you. How do you explain that?”

Henry Luce, the founding publisher of Time magazine, asked this question of Whittaker Chambers at a private dinner. This was during the period when Chambers was testifying that Alger Hiss was part of an extensive network of Soviet spies inside the US government in the 1940’s. “All the best people,” inside and outside of the government, supported Alger Hiss. Meanwhile, Whittaker Chambers received cards and letters of support from ordinary people of modest means from across the country.

Chambers reports that a “witty European whom I shall call Smetena” replied to Luce’s question:

“You don’t understand the class structure of American society or you would not ask such a question. In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are communists.” *

Today, we could modify this statement slightly and say: “The poor are Democrats. The working class are Republicans. The Elites are advocates of Moral Relativism. ” Or “The Elites are advocates of Multi-culturalism.” Or “The Elites are advocates of “the Sexual Revolution.”

What do all these ideologies have in common? They are all totalitarian ideologies.

Communism is a fantasy ideology that says that we can have prosperity and justice without private property and with government control of the entire economy. It cannot be done. But “All the Best People” were absolutely convinced that attempting it was a moral duty. The attempt to do the impossible empowered the State to an unimaginable degree.

Moral Relativism is a fantasy ideology that makes the truth-claim that there is no such thing as truth: there is only “truth” which is socially constructed. This belief system leads directly to the Law of the Strongest, since it short-circuits any appeal to truth, reason or evidence. This allows the People in Power to label anyone they dislike, or anyone who hinders their agenda du jour as bigots.

Multi-culturalism is a subset of Moral Relativism. It is a fantasy ideology that claims to be unable to detect any differences among cultures. Ditto for empowering those who already have power. 

The Sexual Revolution is a fantasy ideology that says that a good and decent society should separate sex from babies and both from marriage and that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. Ditto that this ideology is impossible to implement. But, this belief system leads to the destruction of the most basic human bonds. This destruction allows Elites to move into the legitimate sphere of the family, take it over and refashion it at will.

In short, Elites like these ideologies because they empower those who already have power: economic, political or cultural power. By contrast, the institutions of self-government allow people with minimal power to nonetheless rule their own lives. This is why the Elites prefer court rulings to elections, mass society to localized society, mass media to personal participation and a highly regulated global economy to small scale enterpreneurs.

*(Quotation from Witness by Whittaker Chambers, pp. 539-540.)