The Descent of Bolshevism

Front matter

The | DESCENT OF | BOLSHEVISM | AMEEN RIHANI

THE

DESCENT OF

Seeds for the Sower

SEEDS FOR THE SOWER

Russia cries, Proletariat! History echoes, Sans-culotte.

The rule of the Proletariat is another swing of the pendulum of Time.

Autocracy is a government of the few from above; Bolshevism is a government of the few from below.

Society may be likened to a rod, which only a just government can balance properly. But we are still trying to find the balancing point.

Bolshevism is the other end of Czarism.

In a true democracy is the cure for most of our social and political ills; but a few of them must remain to keep us going.

A true democratic government is still an ideal to be attained.

Revolution is glorified by intellectuals, apotheosized by poets, sanctified by visionaries, and bled white by politicians.

Revolution applies a local anaesthetic to one class of Society and operates on the other.

Bolshevism may be Marxian in theory, but it is Hulagoesque in practice. It may be of European descent, but it is Oriental in tradition, Oriental in mood, Oriental in temperament.

The Orientals are the extremists of the world. As individuals, they are slaves of Caprice; as types, they are slaves of Authority, The one knows no law, the other knows no exception to the law.

The Oriental in the Russian has set the House of Socialism on fire; and the European in the Russian has not yet found the fire extinguisher.

Foreward

Foreword

More than once in history have people revolted against the inequalities of life and refused to submit to the restraints of laws and creeds. They have often gone through a period of communism and red terror in the hope of realizing ultimately the Perfect State. Their leaders, undoubtedly sincere at first, espouse the utopian dream, declaring themselves the exponents of its ideals, the promised messengers of its blessings. But with the material for revolt ready at hand, and unable to resist the seductions of nascent power, they soon undergo that transformation which history identifies, often not unjustly, with demagogy, if they fail, or with autocracy, if they succeed.

In either case, by utilizing the elements of negation in Society, they become apos of violence, proclaiming the theory of "creative destruction." But instead of creating a utopia on the ruins of their making, they only succeed in setting up, as history shows, another government, which, no matter how just and sound its foundations are in theory, soon becomes in practice more despotic and corrupt.

But the vision of the Perfect State, which awakens a people from the stupor of slavery, arouses them to revolt, fires them with dazzling promises, and leads them to self-sacrifice, to martyrdom, to destruction, continues, nevertheless, to leaven the aspirations of succeeding nations. The theory of "eternal recurrence" is inseparable, it seems, from the theory of "creative destruction."

And no matter how ambitious and sincere, or how selfish and unscrupulous are the leaders of the movements that embody this theory, no matter how ruthless and uncompromising are the apostles of equality and violence, the nation they overturn soon or late finds its balance again and, through the agencies of law and order, reestablishes on a higher plane the principles of justice and progress.

For, as a rule, a nation emerges stronger, morally and spiritually, from a revolutionary upheaval. With this single exception, however, all the movements of the world that sought to establish, by the dagger, the sword, the bayonet, the machine gun, or even by peaceful communities, a utopia on earth, have been doomed to failure.

The extremists, no matter how long and brilliant their temporary success, have gone the way of all political despots and all religious impostors. And their culpability is not in plunging a nation into anarchy and crime, but in debasing the ideals of utopia, by yoking them with the destructive agencies of negation in a people.

This is true of the ancient as well as the modern world, as I shall endeavor to show in these chapters, tracing the more prominent movements in history against the existing order of things. The only differ is in the background and the surroundings, which give the movements distinct local colors and strange sounding names.

As a rule, however, the tyranny of inequality has been at the bottom of all revolts and revolutions. Only that in the past it was embodied in religions and autocracies, today it is embodied in industrialism. The masters in the past were the kings and priests, while in our times they are the captains of industry and the labor leaders. Under either condition, however, a long-suffering and downtrodden people will be driven ultimately to extremes of materialism expressed in universal negations.

Mazdak and Mazdakism

CHAPTER I

Mazdak and Mazdakism

This is the Bolshevism we meet with, as early as the fifth century, in Persia. Its exponent and leader, a man named Mazdak, was a priest in Neishapur before he became a prophet. King Kobad, the little father of the great Nushirvan, was then on the throne; and Christianity, which had penetrated Persia, was still convulsed by the controversies of the single and the double nature of Christ and the persecutions that generally followed or accompanied them.

The theology of the Fathers and the philosophy of St. Paul carried the dissensions through Armenia to Persia, thus weakening the newly acquired faith, which had but a slight hold upon the people. It certainly had little or no influence upon King Kobad. As for Mazdak, he must have found his original inspiration in St. Paul. "The law worketh wrath; where no law is, there is no transgression." This he announced as a divine revelation to the people and proceeded to draw his own conclusions and enlarge upon them. His second revelation was that all men are born equal and have a right to maintain this equality through life. His third: Everything belongs to God, and it is impious in man to claim or to appropriate to himself what is the property of the Creator.

The law worketh wrath; all men are born equal; God is the direct source and owner of all things: with these three cardinal doctrines, Mazdak embarked upon his utopian career, pursuing the fatal phantom of his logic. He took St. Paul by the letter, shaking the spirit out of his words. Or he may not have been endowed with sufficient grace to see the true essence of the Gospel, considering as mere theology or mysticism such doctrines as are calculated to elevate the believer to the free life of the spirit.

Mazdak wanted freedom—the sort of freedom, in fact, that is today the object of popular clamor. "Where no law is, there is no transgression." St. Paul was twisted into a universal negation, which Mazdak pretended to have discovered, through the medium of Fire, in Zoroaster's own divine bosom. For he would destroy the new religion by invoking the aid of the old. And he would establish the reign of perfect equality on earth to justify divine ownership and power. For if all titles of worldly things are vested in God, they are destined for the common use of all human kind.

Mazdak's three cardinal fallacies were more attractive, indeed, to the people than Christianity. And they were excellent vehicles for a counter-movement. Mazdak moved and many others moved with him. In spite of his initial success, however, he knew that, without royal sanction and support, the new Temple—the Temple of Fire and Freedom and Common Ownership—would not long endure. But with a king and a prophet at its head, the new cult would spread, would prosper, would triumph. The prophet was there; and he set out to convert the king. His qualifications were traditional. He began by setting the first example in sanctity and abstemiousness. He clothed himself in coarse wool, denied himself at first all worldly things, and retired into seclusion for meditation and prayer.

And when King Kobad demanded a miracle before he embraced the new faith, he was not disappointed. Mazdak invited him to the Temple, where he heard the Fire speaking to the Prophet. The fact that a man was hidden behind the altar to lend the flames a tongue, did not much matter. From Tabari to Gibbon, all historians agree that Mazdak was a downright impostor. They are also agreed that Kobad was a royal scoundrel. The new cult appealed to him for more than one reason, and he was predisposed to accept any penny wonder as divine.

For he had an illicit carnal desire which could be sanctioned only by some such religion as Mazdakism. "He was not nice in point of conscience," as one historian puts it; nor was he happy on the throne. His brother and his courtiers cast an enchantment upon his crown and, as soon as he became a Mazdakite, they whisked it away. And he was cast into prison as a warning to Mazdak and his followers. But the warning was of no avail; for in addition to a prophet and a king, the movement gained the support of a queen. Kobad's wife became an ardent Mazdakite. And by smiling assent to the jailer one night, she succeeded in having her husband, hidden in a mattress, carried away. This was a signal triumph for the new cult. And Mazdak, son of Bambadan, thereafter called himself the Sign, the Demonstration, the Word, the Redeemer.

And his followers set out zealously, violently to prove themselves faithful to his creed. Everything was to be held in common, "Goods, Women, Children and the Rest." And for more than fifty years there was no relaxation in the practice, which, of course, was accompanied by plunder and bloodshed, by all the crimes, in fact, that lawlessness and anarchy engender. Everywhere his votaries seized the wives, the daughters and the property of others. And the King could not punish them, having become himself a Mazdakite.

When Kobad escaped from prison, he fled to the White Huns, a powerful tribe of Central Asia, who invaded Persia, and were defeated by the great Bahram Gur, to whom Omar pays the mocking tribute:

"And Bahram, the Great Hunter, the wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, but can not break his sleep."

But the White Huns were still camping on the frontier, awaiting the opportunity for another Great Offensive. The opportunity came when Kobad arrived and straightway made an alliance with his country's enemies. And at the head of an army of White Huns he led the invasion, entered the capital in triumph, smote his infidel brother off the throne and regained the crown.

And Mazdakism, which had suffered a momentary check in his absence, became again a power of terror and frightfulness in the land. In the name of Equality, Lawlessness and Communism, the tables were turned, every crime was sanctioned or condoned, the rich, in consequence, becoming poor, the poor becoming rich, and everywhere the mob ruled supreme. Morality and religion were renounced, abolished; man became a law unto himself; and the strong, whether of the proletariat or the bourgoisie of those times, prevailed.

But the most amazing things about Mazdakism, is the inconsistency that is scarcely found outside the Orient, where piety and crime go hand in hand. For while it encouraged, even sanctioned all kinds of unspeakable abominations, it imposed upon its followers a rigid observance of the sacredness of animal life. Mazdak himself was a vegetarian, and he prohibited the killing of animals for food or for sport. Indeed, to kill a man who had an abundance of the things of the world, was in his eye, a virtue; but to kill even an insect was a crime. And he continued to pray and to wear coarse wool even in his last days, when his own wealth and his harim were re-distributed among the people. How true of him the Arabic couplet:

"He wore bells on his sandals to warn the insects from his path, While in his hand the dripping dagger sought the victims of his wrath."

When King Kobad died, his son the Great Nushirvan took a real pious interest in the new cult. He introduced it to the higher equality, led it to the final communism—Death. On his coronation he made a speech worthy of a great monarch, in which he promised many good things to all his subjects and called upon them to help him make good his promise. Whereupon, he ordered the chiefs of the Sect, Tabari, tell us to appear before him and had their heads cut off. Others say that he imitated Jehu in the Book of Kings. Which means that he had the Mazdakites assemble in the Temple, and at his command, his executioners descended upon them and introduced them in a jiffy to the higher equality.

And he issued an edict abolishing the practice of Mazdakism and confirming the domestic rights of Society. The wealth and property of the Mazdakites were divided among the poor; such as could be identified were returned to their lawful owners; and the women held in the slavery of communism were freed and given the option of either returning to their former homes or of remaining, as legal wives, with whom they had accustomed themselves to live.

Such was the justice of Nushirvan. But in spite of the heads that were cut off and the Jehu method of extermination, Mazdakism continued to squirm in the dust and succeeded in making its way to other lands. For the new law of the community of women was later observed and promul in Syria; and, with the other doctrines of Mazdak, it spread to the West and was embraced, archeologists tell us, by what remained of the ancient Gnostics.

The Khawarij

CHAPTER II

The Khawarij

In Arabia, after the death of Mohammed, a party of extremists and fanatics renounced all existing authority, civil and religious, proclaiming Allah their only Master and Sovereign. The Prophet himself is more or less responsible for their action; for having given the Arabs a religion, a form of constitution, and a moral code, he failed to lay down or suggest any rule governing the right of succession. The field was open to any of his friends and companions who had the will, the power and the ill fortune to succeed him. The first two, however, commanded the confidence and obtained the suffrage of the Faithful. The third was the first to be assassinated; and the fourth, Ali, who ultimately met with the same fate as his predecessor, had many rival candidates, among them the powerful and wily Moawia. Forty years after the Prophet's death, therefore, the state of Islam was shaken by wars and torn by tribal strife.

This was not promising, was not edifying. And among the people who revolted against one claimant or another, were the group of extremists I have mentioned, who renounced them all and would obey only the Koran. The Prophet, they argued, did not name a successor, laid down no rule for the succession, did not evidently believe in delegating his divine power to man. The three leaders, Ali, Moawia and Amru, are all usurpers and it is the right of true Muslem to deny them their suffrage. Nay, it is their pious duty, in order to uphold Islam, to get rid of them all.

The Khawarij, or Seceders who started this movement, were the only so-called orthodox Muslems who, reading between the lines of the Holy Book, were able to con the esoteric wisdom and the divine will. All power emanates from God—a variation of Mazdak's All titles are vested in God—and mankind is responsible to Him alone. He is the one and only ruler, and they the Khawarij would recognize no other. Those that claimed to be vicars of God and his Prophet on earth, are usurpers, therefore, and impostors. Islam should not be ruled by an autocrat called khalif or imam, but by local councils elected by the people. This is the democracy that was so dear to the Arabs even before the Prophet; and the Khawarij called themselves the only true apostles of Mohammedanism and democracy. And they would proclaim its reign by the sword; they would reduce its enemies by assassination.

Accordingly, three of their leaders met one day in the Kaaba and swore by the Black Stone and the Koran to carry out their criminal plan. Each one of the conspirators chose his victim; and Ali, Moawia and Amru were to be assassinated at one appointed day and hour. But the plot was discovered and the Khawarij decided to fight in the open like true Arabs. They declared war on Ali and his rivals in the field; but they were defeated by Ali's forces in the battle of Nahrawan. They were dispersed; they were not crushed. Instead of a united army, they broke up into various sects, who conducted a secret propaganda both in Arabia and Persia against the civil and spiritual authority of Islam. The Prophet is dead, but Allah liveth forever. This was the slogan that was whispered in secret councils and was yet to shake the very foundation of the Faith.

It was not heard of, after the defeat of the Khawarij, for over a hundred years. But in the ninth century, Abdallah ibn Maimoun Kaddah of Ahwaz revived it and expanded upon it. He was wise enough to see, however, that not until his followers were strongly united and well armed would the method of the Khawarij be favorable to him and his ideals. For he was a man of lofty ideals, this Persian of Ahwaz. He began by founding a secret society which was to bind together Arabs and Persians, Muslems, Christians and Jews,—indeed, all mankind. Kaddah had political ambition also, which he could not realize by openly antagonizing the existing governments. But he proclaimed a new right of succession.

There was Ismail, the son of the sixth Imam after Ali and descendant from Ali's line. And Kaddah, who was a master of mystic lore, ingeniously evolved the theory of hidden and revealed successors to the Prophet. Ismail, he claimed, was the last revealed, and since his death the succession continued through hidden or unincarnate imams. But he, Kaddah, awaiting the psychological moment, harbored the secret purpose, the ambition of proclaiming himself to Islam the first revealed imam and khalif after Ismail. He died, however, a disappointed man. For one named Obeidullah was the founder of the new dynasty. But Kaddah and his followers were nevertheless called Ismailites, a name that even today is despised and dreaded by orthodox Mohammedans, because to them it is synonymous with infidelity, immorality, anarchy and crime.

For Kaddah's secret society was founded on a universal negation and wrapt in a crazy-quilt of philosophy. Its deep mysteries were revealed only to those who had attained the highest degree of the Order. It had novices and missionaries called dais to preach its political and outwardly religious doctrines. It offered inducements to all classes and creeds and led them on, from a mystical interpretation of Islam—the Ismailite method was allegorical—to a total renunciation of its teachings. "The inner doctrine," says one Orientalist, "was philosophical and eclectic." In other words, Mazdakism was resuscitated; the Khawarij idea was taken down from the shelf and dusted; and both were invested with the dignity of Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorian wisdom. But in their interpretation of the Koran, some of the Ismailite doctors pushed the allegory so far that it ended in nothing less than the aboli of all public worship and the foundation of a purely philosophic—in name—and a very licentious moral code—in reality—on the ruins of all revelations and all civil and spiritual authority.

The Karmathians

CHAPTER III

The Karmathians

Among the foremost disciples of Kaddah of Ahwaz was an Arab of Bahrein called Karmat or Quermut, who in the latter part of the ninth century (880 A. D.) established in Irak a secret society of his own and, like his master Kaddah, took to preaching in allegories. Like him too, he taught the doctrine of "hidden and revealed imams," but he added that while the imam is hidden, his cause must be revealed and upheld by missionaries. And he, Hamdan Quermut, first assumed this modest role and soon became the leader of a new movement. It is curious how his followers were transformed by degrees, as they advanced in the secret order, from true and pious Mohammedans to atheists and anarchists, in a word, to Mazdakites.

His ladder, which was broad at the base, tapered at the top to a point, from which the Karmathian plunged headlong into a regenerated world of absolute freedom and equality. The Koran is full of mysteries, Quermut warned the climber as he set his ladder firmly on the ground of faith; and mysteries must be taught and explained. The early teachers of Islam were often wrong; only seven imams are infallible; the others are all in error. Climb, climb higher. Every infallible imam had a prophet who was obeyed in all things; the last imam was Ismail. Another step, and Quermut is his prophet. Still another, and the traditions vanish from view. The next disposes of religion itself; prayers, fasting, alms, the pilgrimage are no longer essential to salvation. For behold, you are reaching the top, the vanishing point and you are free to entertain any belief or unbelief so long as you recognize no authority, temporal or spiritual, but that of Quermut, the new Prophet. Thus the Karmathian gradually sheds his creed, renounces his faith, but is in duty bound to fight against all Muslem power and authority.

For since Islam combined the spiritual and civil power in one ruler called khalif and imam, these secret societies were origginally a protest against one or more of its tenets as well as against its established governments. And since it was founded as much on the sword as on the Koran, and united in the person of the khalif the functions of pontiff and sovereign, almost in all the sects, secret or otherwise, the chief ground of the schism is the contested succession to the throne. And the Karmathians, who secretly coveted the throne, made certain concessions at first to religion. But while they adopted the two fundamental doctrines of Islam, that is, the omnipotence of God and the fixedness of Fate, they declared all the others, even as the Wahhabys of today, vain and futile. Nay, they are snares contrived to exalt a certain portion of mankind at the expense of the vast majority. And they the Karmathians would free the majority from these snares. They would utterly destroy the foundation of all existing order, set men free from the despotism of all morals and laws and creeds, and re-establish their direct allegiance to God.

Some of these so-called high mysteries are entertained also by the Sufis of today. But Sufism does not prompt to action and rebellion. The Sufi detaches himself from the world and all its tyrannies and evils,—rises on the ladder to the vanishing point, so to speak, and stays there,—while the Karmathians, the Ismailites and other kindred sects, would fight to substitute the reign of Allah for the reign of man on earth. And the Arab is no where so well at home as in metaphysical abstractions and the desert. He is most credulous, is more believing, in fact, than religious. His deep sense of the possibilities that may be hidden in the depths of the unknown, induces in him a ready easy credence in any message supposedly divine. If one prophet, why not another? Mohammed has by no means closed the Arab nation's account with Allah. This is the religious reason for Quermut's great success. The political reason is still more plausible.

The Abbaside khalifs were usurpers. Most of them were tyrants and profligates. Moreover, they favored the foreigners at court, even though they secretly plotted against them, more than they did the Arabs. The Khalif Mo'tasem's Turkish guards at the palace soon became a power in Baghdad. And the Karmathians, aroused by their intrigues, found in them additional cause for revolt. They disclaimed the Abbasides, abhorred their worldly pomp, denounced their tyranny and their unpatriotic conduct, and finally declared war upon them. Their battle-cry was, "Allah liveth forever, Allah sufficeth us!"

And combining thus the religious and the political issues, based on the wholesale negations excepting only Allah, for both worlds, they raised the standard of revolt; and for a century or more they were a terror to the Khalifs of Baghdad and the undisputed masters of Arabia. And Quermut, not long after his first missionary activities, became the Prophet, the Guide, the Director. He was also called the Camel, the Word, even the Holy Ghost—the Herald of the Messiah. The Millenium madness, which was upon Europe at that time, had reached, it seems, Arabia, and Quermut, the Universal, incorporated it into his Scheme of Salvation.

Most of his followers were of the Beduin tribes, who found Islam too irksome, too exacting, and were ready to join any movement that would offer encouragement to their liberal and looting spirit. And they were desperate, indomitable fighters. Under the leadership of two Generals, Abu-Said and his son Abu Taher, they conquered first the provinces of Oman and Bahrein and established themselves at Hasa behind the burning sands of the Red Desert, where they themselves were secure against any attack or invasion. Northward they marched to Irak, laying waste everything before them; to upper Syria, where they stormed and captured the city of Baalbek, putting its inhabitants to the sword. There were no novices among the Karmathians in action, at war. They all had mastered the higher mysteries, and were fighting like demons to establish the reign of Allah on earth. No army of the Khalifs could withstand their desperate attacks and their slaughter. They threw themselves into the jaws of death, blindly obeying the command of their leaders.

But Mecca is the ultimate goal of every Muslem, and every Muslem rebellion. Without it, no victory is complete. Towards Mecca, therefore, commanded by Abu Taher, the Karmathians swept over the desert. And like swarms of locusts, wave after wave, they descended upon the City at the height of the pilgrimage season and committed, in the name of Allah, the most unspeakable crimes and abominations. Thirty thousand of the pilgrims were slain; the well of Zamzam was choked with the dead; the House of God, the Kaaba, was polluted; the Holy Veil was torn in shreds; and the Black Stone, the most sacred relic of Islam, was carried off to Hasa. But it was restored twenty years later.

And although their atrocities had the effect of uniting for a time all the Mohammedan factions against them, they continued for many years after the capture of Mecca and the sacking of the Kaaba, to achieve one victory after another and spread the terror of their power in the land. It was a war waged by anarchy and rapine, not only against Islam, but against Society and all organized governments. "The sect of the Karmathians," says Gibbon, "may be considered as the second cause of the decline and fall of the empire of the Khalifs."

And the death of Abu Taher, their great General, may be considered as one of the principal causes of the decline and fall of the Karmathians. The Beduins themselves, who first joined the movement and were chiefly responsible for its success, turned against it when its power began to wane. At the close of the tenth century, after the death of Abu Taher, the Karmathians were defeated in Irak and soon after they lost the control of the pilgrimage. The Beduin tribes therefore had no longer any use for them. Not only did they refuse them their support, but they revolted against what remained of their authority. The revolt became general, and one after another of the provinces recovered their independence. One Beduin sheikh alone, it is stated, besieged and took Katif, the capital of Bahrein.

The Wahhabys of today continue to rule in Hasa, maintaining their independence even against the new King of Hijaz. And under their Mohammedan puritanism is the smouldering fire of the Karmathians. They, too, once captured and sacked the Holy City of Mecca and still nourish, under the guise of piety and the assumption of learning, the most dangerous designs against it and Islam.

Like the Mazdakites, like the Khawarij, the Karmathians were not completely destroyed. They had other successors than the Wahhabys. Straggling bands of freethinkers and freebooters, followers of Abu Taher and Quermut, continued to rove on the borderland of Society till the middle of the eleventh century, when their famous slogan was beginning to be heard among the hills of Persia and Syria and was soon to be embodied in one of the most fiendishly criminal movements against law and order that is recorded in the history of the world.

The Assassins

CHAPTER IV

The Assassins

Three students in Neishapur, swearing eternal friendship to each other, entered one day into a fantastic agreement by which they were to circumvent Fortune. Whoever succeeded first, pledged himself to lend a helping hand to the others. The one was destined to power; the other to fame; and the third, to the universal malediction of mankind. Nizam ul-Mulk, who afterwards became vezier to the Sultan Malek Shah; Omar Khayyam, who refused the proffered favors of his former college friend, preferring the Book of Verse and the Jug of Wine; and Hasan ibn Sabah, who was later known and feared as the Old Man of the Mountain, the founder of the Sect of Assassins, were the three young covenanters of Neishapur.

In his early days Hasan nursed the dream of power; and this agreement, which was made at his suggestion, was an insurance policy, as it were, to his dream. And to be sure, Nizam ul-Mulk made good his promise, and Hasan, unlike Omar, was glad to accept the post he secured him at the court of Malek Shah. But as he was not capable of serving any one else but himself, he no sooner sat on the divan of authority than he began to build him a ladder of the favors of his benefactor and former fellow student. Before he had taken the first step, however, which was to be on the very head of Nizam, he was given a lesson in fidelity and gratitude, and politely escorted to the gate. The lesson was wasted upon him, and Nizam was thereafter marked out as one of his enemies. It was Hasan's boast that, with the aid of two faithful friends, he could have overturned the power of "the Turk and the Peasant," meaning the Sultan and his Vezier. For twenty-two years he nursed his grudge, while laying the foundation of his power. His patience, like his rascality, was inexhaustible.