Lenin's Time Bomb

 

It starts with intellectual arrogance.  

Since the development of literacy, at least, the educated -- literate -- class has believed itself to be not just better educated but more intelligent -- than the mere peasants: the folk who actually do the work of catching game, herding livestock, gathering crops, making tools or furnishings, and all those other lowly tasks that keep humanity alive.  For that reason, at least since Plato elaborated on the concept of the Philosopher King -- the intelligentsia have believed that they were more fit to rule society than those loutish workers and soldiers and sons of successful soldiers who normally run things.  They just couldn't figure out how to elevate their so-intelligent selves into positions of real political power.  The best they could do was make themselves kings' advisors, and hope the kings were manipulable.  

Then came the Age of Revolution -- from about 1776 to the present -- when it became obvious that enough peasants, if decently armed and organized, could overcome even kings' armies, and overthrow kings.  That's when intellectuals started plotting revolution anywhere they could, in the hopes of overthrowing the old kings and putting themselves up in power.  The success of various attempts differed notably.  The American Revolution was a howling success: the French Revolution... not so much.

Then the intelligentsia got a real shot in the arm from Karl Marx, who wrote extensively on the subject of organizing the Oppressed Working Class into the intelligentsia's army by exploiting the workers' real grievances and offering to lead them to victory.  One of the best such plotters was Vladimir Lenin, a lawyer -- whose mother had been a schoolteacher, and whose father was an Inspector of Schools -- in Russia, where the money and power gap between the rulers and the workers was the most obvious in Europe.  Now Russia at the time -- turn of the last century -- was mostly agricultural, didn't have that much industrialization or much of a proper Marxist Proletariat, but Lenin could see that there were enough "oppressed masses" to organize and use.  

Lenin saw that his best weapon was education, carefully sculpted to fit different audiences.  The Masses were to get enough education -- provided by the intelligentsia, of course -- to recognize their oppression, get angry about it, and look to the intelligentsia to lead them.  The intelligentsia were to become a "dedicated cadre", trained in techniques of "leadership".  Under no circumstances were the Masses to be allowed to lead themselves.  Whenever rural peasants organized co-ops or granges for their own benefit, or urban industrial workers put together labor unions, Lenin gave his "cadres" instructions on how to steer such organizations off into political dead ends or simple reforms, while keeping them handy for the revolutionaries' use.  

When the actual Russian Revolution came, it was a surprise to Lenin & Co.  Those workers-and-peasants' organizations ranged themselves behind a minor -- and non-"cadre" -- intellectual named Kerensky, who indeed led them (the "Mensheviks") to victory over the Czar's armies.  Once in power, Kerensky organized a mildly democratic government and started instituting those reforms his followers wanted.  Lenin's cadres (the "Bolsheviks"), not to be satisfied with that, staged an internal coup that threw out Kerensky and put themselves in power, with Lenin and his enforcer Stalin in charge.  Lenin came up with the strategies, and Stalin calculated how to enforce them. 

Other countries in Europe, not to mention the Americas, were not at all sympathetic.  Lenin soon figured out that Russia must "spread the revolution" to those other countries, to keep them from attacking Russia and throwing out the new regime.  At the time, the rest of Europe -- and the US -- was busy fighting the last of World War One, and was too distracted to deal with Russia;  Lenin knew that wouldn't last;  he had to disarm the western industrial nations fast.  

Drawing on his family's experience, Lenin came up with a tactic that was pure genius.  He ordered all his remaining cadres to worm their way into not only the western news media and entertainment systems but to infiltrate the schools of education.  The news media and entertainment businesses, being almost 100% privately owned at the time, were only variably sympathetic to Marxist ideals;  but nobody famous was paying much attention to such uninteresting businesses as teachers' colleges.  The takeover began in 1920, and continued long after Lenin's death, well into the 1930s. 

So what did Lenin's cadres teach to class after class of would-be teachers in the western countries?  I heard this second-hand from my mother, when she was studying to get her music-teacher's license in the '60s, and from college classmates and friends who became teachers in the years thereafter.  First, of course, there's a lot of child psychology and studies of how children learn.  Then there's a slightly-slanted history of education itself, with a large dollop of Marxist class consciousness under any other name.  I recall my mother telling me about how teachers had to always beware of "religious and political" groups (always on the right wing of the political spectrum, of course) trying to "undermine" the public schools so as to get their own "biases" taught there.  Then there were tactics of "defending free education" that worried my mother with their "almost Socialist" bent.  These included forming teachers' unions of course, but also trying to get teachers and former teachers elected to school boards -- local at first, then working up to state and even federal levels -- and of course getting involved in local (etc.) politics.  Teachers were also supposed to keep children "informed" about current politics, and even get them involved: writing letters, signing petitions, and even joining political demonstrations.  

What worried her more was a particularly nasty tactic for giving children "class consciousness" and "awareness of oppression".  First, the teachers at a particular schools would secretly confer with each other to determine which children were "privileged" and which were "oppressed".  In those days, that usually meant the rich kids and the poor.  The teachers would divide up along "good cop/bad cop" lines, with the "good" teacher usually being the younger and prettier.  The (older and uglier) "bad" teacher would make a point of being nasty to the "oppressed" kids while fawning all over the "privileged";  then the "good" teacher would act as the comforter and rescuer of the "oppressed" while sternly reproving -- and inculcating guilt in -- the "privileged".  The whole point was to divide up the kids along class lines, and teach the "oppressed" kids to hate the "privileged".  The kids were also supposed to learn tricks for "getting their own back" from the "privileged".  And of course the "good" teacher, their guide and sympathizer, was the kindly intellectual who shared her/his knowledge.  

Years later, when I was in college and studying political science myself, I learned to call this "The Red Tactic";  it was meant to make things worse so as to encourage the "oppressed" to rebel, to bring on the revolution -- which the intelligentsia could then ride to power, like Lenin.  

I noticed that a lot of my old school pals who were studying to become teachers eventually quit the public schools and took up work in odd intellectual corners: teaching night-school to adults, teaching citizenship classes to immigrants, teaching at charter-schools or home-school "pods", teaching at martial arts dojos, and teaching at mental hospitals.  When I asked, they complained that the public school system was "too corrupt" and "too political" for them to stomach any longer.  It wasn't too hard to trace the source of their complaints to the long-term effects of Lenin's tactic.

Frankly, I think the FBI could earn its budget by conducting a covert investigation of every School of Education in the country, identifying and tracking down the Leninist elements (and instructors!), and exposing them.  The resulting scandal should create a long-needed overhaul of the school system -- its structure, its funding, and above all its ideology.  

It will be fun watching the rest of the intelligentsia react.

--Leslie  <;)))><