Hyde - Dedication and leadership: learning from the communists

DEDICATION and LEADERSHIP

By the same author

THE ANSWER TO COMMUNISM

I BELIEVED

RED STAR VERSUS THE CROSS (with Fr. Dufay)

THE MIND BEHIND NEW CHINA

ONE FRONT ACROSS THE WORLD

GODS BANDIT

THE PEACEFUL ASSAULT

UNITED WE FALL

CONFRONTATION IN THE EAST

DOUGLAS HYDE

Learning from the Communists

Douglas Hyde 1966

Published in the United States in 1966
by University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 66-19032

eISBN 9780268159665

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at .

THE origin and evolution of this book need to be understood if its purpose is not to be misunderstood. It began as an attempt to answer from my own experience the question which is so often asked: Why are Communists so dedicated and successful as leaders whilst others so often are not?

I was asked to try to answer this in a series of lectures given as a Leadership Training Seminar at the annual convention of the Mission Secretariat in Washington, D.C. Present were hundreds of religious and lay leaders who had come from almost every part of the world, but particularly from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The sponsors urged me to talk as freely as I wished, since the purpose was to examine where Catholics were weak and, by contrast, where the Communists were strong. I took them at their word and pulled no punches. This explains why, throughout this bookin which I have retained the form of the spoken rather than the written wordI stress Communist successes and Catholic weaknesses.

The original seminar was in due course adapted to the needs of other organisations, religious and non-religious. It is my hope that in its present form Dedication and Leadership may have something new to offer the politician, the man who is interested in the psychology of Communism and, in particular, the man who believes that there is an urgent need for leadership at every level in the non-Communist world. For, above all, this book is intended as a challenge.

Douglas Hyde

THERE are two points it is necessary to make, right at the start, so that we may have the aim and purpose of this study clear. Firstly, the subject is dedication and leadership, not anti-Communism. Secondly, we shall in the main be discussing those Communist leadership training methods which are capable of imitation or adaptation by Christians and others or, conversely, which may spark off some useful and constructive thought about our own methods.

If in the process we arrive at a better understanding of the motivation and formation of the Communist cadres, then so much the better. Indeed, I hope that this may be a useful by-product of this discussion. But its main purpose is to see what we can learn from the Communists attitudes, methods and techniques.

We shall be looking at the Communists, not in order to attack, not to prove them wrong, but rather to see what they have to teach us. So when I describe Communist methods I shall not select those which have nothing for us. Quite obviously I shall not be recommending those which, for moral or ethical reasons, we must abhor, although even here we may in fact find that some of these still merit examination, even if only because of the single-minded approach the Communists bring to them. This will be a highly selective look at the Communists and Communism.

Even the examples I quote will be the best I have seen after years of living with Communists and observing Communism in almost every part of the world.

When I left Communism after twenty years in the Party, I knew its evils. But I also believed that the Communists were right in some important respects. For example, when they said that there is a great battle going on all over the world which in the final analysis is a struggle for mens hearts, minds and souls. We can accept this even if we do not take the view that all the goodies are on one side and the baddies are on the other. There is plenty of evidence that the thought of millions today is in a state of flux, people everywhere are breaking away from age-old allegiances, beliefs and ways of life, and it is much too early yet to say where the process will finish.

I believe that they are right, too, when they say that, although we may not see the end of the battle, its outcome will most probably be decided in this period in which we are living. In short, this is a turning-point in mans history, a terrible, yet tremendous time in which to live.

This has, of course, been said before by other generations. In the past, however, when men talked of the fate of the whole world and all mankind being at stake they could mean only a small part of the surface of the globe, the one in which lived only a minority of the human race. When we talk of a world-wide battle today we mean one which involves men in every country everywhere.

When, therefore, the Communists speak of launching the world on the way to Communism in the period in which we are living, it is this that they meannot the whole world with the exception of the United States, or the United Kingdom or whichever country, being your own, you may feel is proof against assault.

Their aim is quite clear. They have never concealed it and it is something that is immensely meaningful to every Communist. It is a Communist world. In the past half-century they have achieved one-third of that aim. On any reckoning, that is a remarkable achievement, probably an unprecedented one. Nonetheless the world in which we live is still predominantly non-Communist. Twice as many people live in the non-Communist world as live under Communism. There is no basis here for defeatism.

Even so, it is probably true to say of the Communists that never in mans history has a small group of people set out to win a world and achieved more in less time. Certainly, they have brought far more people under their sway by the methods they employ than anyone else has done during the same period. Moreover, they have always worked through a minority. This is true of those territories which they now rule and also of those where they have not yet come to power.