From paralysis to self-destruction

Carlos Franqui

pp. 19-22

in: Vladimir Tismaneanu, Judith Shapiro (eds), Debates on the future of communism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Abstract

Communism's strength lies in its unlimited capacity for destruction, its weakness in its incapacity to construct and to create. In its first phase, communism destroys previously existing institutions, riches, culture and society. In its second phase, the terror associated with communism paralyzes political opposition, disobedient revolutionaries and individuality itself. In its third phase, the phase which prevails in the Soviet Union today, society is rendered incapable of rejuvenating itself, thus threatening by its very paralysis the material base which feeds its expansive empire. Communism has expanded greatly beyond its territorial boundaries, but it is immobilized from the inside by its fixation on the dominion of outer space.