Nothing could be more absurd than the two contradictory views of Communists promulgated today by their opponents. They are usually pictured as planless inciters to violence and riot, people who have a crazy desire for chaos, in the hope that something vaguely called communism may somehow ensue. A more sophisticated view, to which no less a person than Sinclair Lewis falls victim in It Can’t Happen Here, portrays them as brainless sheep required to act in blind obedience to the orders of their superiors for the sake of discipline. Neither of these types could possibly lead a successful strike, much less a revolution.

Again, it's astounding how a work from 1936 before the Great Patriotic War could communicate the then and now current day anticommunist myths with ease. Strong's prose is straightforward but doesn't lose its ideological consistency.

The emotional vagueness which is a feature of all capitalist political platforms, and which is indeed desired in order to win wide support without being too definite, is the exact opposite of Communist statement.

This reminds me of the recent proclamations of the moderate fascist Bernie Sanders in his claim to nationalize AI to create a "sovereign wealth fund" for the working class. It sounds great to hear, to kick it to the private venture capitalists that their machines will now be public property, but quickly falls apart in any concrete or specific analysis.

From time to time the Party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done at open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each Communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life and activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.”

Strong points out that "communist purging" was often just officials being compelled to defend their position, something entirely absent in western institutions where the observance of elections as rituals gives its winners the key to the city. The idea of "unelection" is predictably unappealing to a capitalist system where wealth has to constantly be justified with any number of excuses.

Stalin would no more attempt to sway a Communist congress by “force of personality” expressed in brilliant oratory and colorful phrasing, than Edison would have expected to convince a group of American engineers of the reliability of some new formula by emotional words. One such attempt would ruin either an Edison or a Stalin.

But not a Sam Altman .

This chapter highlights the ethos of which the Russian communist party was formed and how leadership in the USSR was formed through democratic discipline rather than force. There's a common refrain that "all states are authoritarian" when responding to anticommunist remarks about socialist states but I don't honestly believe socialist states could be classified as anything close to authoritarian with a "monopoly on violence" in the same vein as capitalist states which rely entirely on the monopoly of violence that gets called fascism in crisis.

Another bangin' chapter, Strong's writing is just chock-full of gems that it's a crime that this book isn't more widely known and quoted in marxist circles.