The fourth flaw of Communism is that whenever the system encounters a serious difficulty or challenge, it gets replaced by dictatorship, with consequences far worse than before. The reason is that by destroying independent thinking, the system is bereft of new ideas that might help to overcome the challenge. As such, when the process of decline sets in or the system collapses altogether, there would be nothing, other than dictatorship, to fill the vacuum so created. Germany accepted Hitler, mainly because of the Communist movements that had swept the country. The experience of the French Revolution also supports that viewpoint. As the first wave of popular fervour over the newfound freedom receded, it gave rise to an autocrat like Napoleon. No one from among the ordinary people could assume the control of affairs under a democratic system.

Communism may choose to call itself a proletarian or a totalitarian regime. There is little doubt that this kind of system eventually and inevitably leads to dictatorship. In fact, the current situation is that although they claim to support representative government, in reality they do not share governance with ordinary citizens. There has only been dictatorship since the inception of Communism in Russia. Lenin was the first dictator, who was succeeded by Stalin; Molotov may well be the third dictator, and so on. In any case, such regimes cannot survive without the use of force, and the Russian experiment stands testimony to that.

Interest, a Part of Communist Philosophy

The fifth flaw of Communism is that it has not rejected the institution of interest as part of its philosophy. It is claimed that there are no private banks in Soviet Russia that operate on the basis of interest. I do not at the moment have any certain knowledge that this is actually the case. But the absence of banks that run on the basis of interest is an entirely different matter from rejecting interest as something fundamentally wrong. The absence of such banks may be due to a number of reasons: lack of facilities, general ignorance on the part of the public in regard to the working of banks, or just expediency. When the necessary facilities are installed, the public gets educated about the banking system, or when the opportunistic policy is abandoned, individual banks may start operating throughout the country. But when something is forbidden as a matter of principle, no change in circumstances can make it lawful or acceptable. Communism does not put interest under this absolute ban.

There is no prohibition of interest in the communist literature, which leads me to conclude that Communism is not fundamentally opposed to the institution of interest. I find, besides, that the Soviet government borrows from other governments that lend only on interest. Thus, it is clear Communism is not against interest — indeed, it accepts its use. During this war, the Russian government borrowed from Russian people, which I surmise must have been on interest.

If I am correct that Communism is not fundamentally opposed to interest (in fact, various developments leave no other conclusion possible), it must be conceded that the dearth of interest-based transactions in the country is only a temporary phenomenon and a consequence of the extraordinary changes that occurred since the overthrow of the old order. With the expansion of Russian trade and industrial development, the Soviet State too would increasingly resort to interest-bearing loans, just as in other European countries. Accordingly, for the successful prosecution of wars and industrial development, the branches of the state bank will be established in the country, and the institution of interest would take the country from Communism to Capitalism, just as it did in the other Western countries.