Marx (who grew up in Germany and had never heard of, for example, Magna Carta of 1215, whereby the power of the English king was limited, or of habeas corpus writ against illegal imprisonment in 15th-century England) believed that the "proletarian revolution" should begin with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to destroy the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," camouflaged as political freedom, constitutional monarchy, or constitutional republic (the word "democracy" in its sense today was not yet in general use). Under communism, there will be no government, no police, and no money. But how could a society live before communism comes? Lenin was the "leader of the proletariat" since he had organized and led the Marxist party, which had taken power. So he became the dictator. But who was to succeed him and how?

Finally, Stalin became the undisputed successor of Lenin. How? Just as a mobster in a gang or a band succeeds its chieftain by killing off all the other claimants to the chieftainship, including sometimes the chieftain himself. When Lenin fell ill, Stalin cut him off from any communication with the world outside his sickroom to prevent his return to power in case Lenin were to recover. Lenin died in 1924, and a free-for-all to succeed him became ruthless, and ended only when Stalin arranged "show trials" for all of his competitors as terrorists, spies, and what not, and had them "sentenced to death" and shot.

Whereupon Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury (England!), said that Stalin personified Christ, who had come to establish true Christianity, in contrast to false Christianity still lingering in the West.

A sufficiently big dictatorship (in Soviet Russia, in Germany, and now in China) has always been striving for its dictator's world power. Lenin ordered troops into Poland to "liberate" Germany and establish his "world proletarian revolution" in Europe for starters. But at Warsaw the Soviet troops were routed and rolled back. Hitler conquered Czechoslovakia, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Poland; and reached the Volga in Russia. Stalin appropriated Eastern Europe, while his successors began in the late 1960s the development of post-nuclear superweapons, and China carried on this development in 1986.

The political fact is that nothing within his country can keep the dictator from planning (secretly) and financing (secretly) any measures to attain his world dictatorship, just as nothing can keep the dictator from doing whatever he wants to strengthen his dictatorship in his own country-in the case of Stalin, even over the corpses of Lenin's fellows-in-arms and disciples.

Also, while an American billionaire can stop enlarging his fortune, and be sure that $2, 5, or 7 billion he has are enough, the possession of absolute power is precarious (recall Tiananmen Square or the fall of Gorbachev) until and unless the national dictator becomes global, while freedom, constitutionalism, or democracy everywhere becomes history, forbidden to be mentioned, just as the Tiananmen Square movement is forbidden to be mentioned in the media of China today.

After this short introduction of what dictatorship is to those who have never experienced it (and the U.S. mainstream media avoid the application of the very word "dictatorship" to China), here are some e-mails I received from my American readers on one day, February 17.

In his e-mail to me, Michael Kelly writes:

Dear Lev Navrozov,
Thank you! I am convinced that China has every intention to use capitalism to gain the economic power it needs to build its military. What better combination could you have? Dictatorship with capitalism. Provide cheap labor, draw the "minds" of the West to invest and you have the economic machine. Why are we so stupid?

Michael Kelly is right. But a comment is appropriate. It is assumed in Western scholarship that Stalin forbade capitalism because he was a Communist in contrast to Hitler. But private enterprise flourished in Lenin's Russia and for several years after his death. Was Stalin a Communist and Lenin was not? Actually, Stalin decided to convert the economy of Russia into a single (capitalist!) supercorporation for the development and production of the latest weapons. Private enterprise would have only interfered with Stalin's military supermonopoly capitalism by "wasting money" on goods and services beyond a soldier's ration, established by Stalin for the entire rank-and-file population. On the other hand, Gorbachev, who focused on the development of post-nuclear superweapons, talked about the reintroduction of private enterprise.

Michael Kelly continues:

There is no utopia. Man is not basically good and until we realize it we will continue to trust the untrustworthy until it becomes our master.

Let us suppose that crimes could be committed in the United States with total impunity. The country would become an unlivable criminal den. This means not that "man is not basically good," but that, given impunity, a higher percentage of the population would become criminals, and many criminals would commit many crimes daily or hourly.

Now, in dictatorship, any crime is not only unpunished, but is rewarded if it is in keeping with the dictator's wishes, such as his quest for his absolute global power.

How many public deceptions, excuses, and pretexts, were needed in the United States to invade Iraq, whose geostrategic value would be next to nil even if the United States had really attained a brilliant victory in 2003!

A dictator does not know such difficulties. Hitler invaded Russia on June 22, 1941, but he had launched "Barbarossa," the development of a plan to conquer Russia, on Dec. 18, 1940, by his own order and in total secrecy for nearly half a year. Stalin did not announce that he was going to seize Hungary and Czechoslovakia, neither of which had ever been ruled by Russia. There will be no need to announce in China that its dictator would present an ultimatum to the United States: surrender unconditionally or be annihilated!

The annihilation of the United States may be regarded as a mega-crime. But if this is the dictator's wish, this mega-crime is a rewarded noble deed, and this is its justification, requiring no excuses or explanations.

Jack Honeycutt, Ph.D., ends his e-mail as follows:

My point is, why would China need to attack us with nuclear or post-nuclear weapons if their only goal is unconditional surrender? With 2000 WalMarts coast to coast, we surrendered to the Chinese a long time ago. Back when Clinton arranged to give them advanced U.S. nuclear (warhead, guidance, propulsion and missile) technology. . . .
Anyway, the Chinese seem content stealing everything that's not bolted down and enslaving us economically. If they annihilated us, who would buy all their products? WalMarts would go under. Bill and Hillary would never allow that.

Great Britain, the Metropolis of the British Empire, knew how to benefit from its colonies. But China will be not just the Metropolis in the British Imperial Style, but the master race, as Hitler meant his Germany to be, while the United States will be one of-no, not colonies, but one of the slave races. Everything profitable will be encouraged, but as much profit as possible will go to the master race. An American crane operator will earn not $70 an hour, but $7 a day, the rest going to China.

As for the annihilation, the United States and the West in general will surrender unconditionally, as did Japan in 1945. So the annihilation will be only a threat, not a fact.

In his e-mail to me, Harry Kuehn is one of those Americans who believe that in order to win any argument it is necessary and sufficient to insult his or her opponent as much as possible, that is, to argue ad hominem. Thus, Harry Huehn announces that I "sound like a right wing wack job, I heard coming out of the deserts of California. All he talked about was conspiracies among them being a Jewish conspiracy." This is the same as announcing that I "sound like a left wing wack job, and no doubt a Jew, talking about an anti-Semitic conspiracy."

After this mental destruction of myself Harry Kuehn reveals the TRUTH:

The era of world wars has been over since the end of WWII, and no one except maybe Osama would use WMDs or Post-Nuclear Weapons. The Chinese are money hungry and desperately want to stay in power, so how does starting a war with the West accomplish that, let alone unleashing some post-nuclear weapons with unknown consequences. Come back to reality [that is, to Kuehn's fantasy!]. China and Russia are playing the same global game every nation in modern times has played and that is the Power Game, but with modern rules which means using soft power more than hard power to gain influence and power. I read some of your articles and I think you are stuck in the 19th Century or perhaps the early 20th.

So, "no one except maybe Osama would use WMDs or Post-Nuclear Weapons." This is a common delusion in the West: criminals may only be private individuals or gangs. But if criminals call themselves a "government" and terrorize a whole country, such as China, a "government" cannot be criminal (unless it is to be overthrown because it is rich in oil like Iraq or important for an oil pipeline like Afghanistan).

Since the "Chinese" (as Harry Kuehn politely calls the dictators of China) are "money hungry" (yes, to use it for the development of superweapons) and "desperately want to stay in power" (true!), "how does starting a war with the West. . . ."

The "Chinese" are not going "to start a war," as Hitler did (and destroyed himself). He grabbed Czechoslovakia and Poland, which meant war with England and France, and hence the United States. The "Chinese" have refrained from grabbing Taiwan for 56 years and will not grab it until it is clear that they can do it without provoking a war with the United States. The "Chinese" intend to be able to shashou jian the West, that is, to make it surrender unconditionally by the threat of post-nuclear superweapons as the United States made Japan in 1945 surrender unconditionally by the threat of nuclear weapons as demonstrated by two "atom bombs."

In conclusion, Harry Kuehn makes a curious caper. He is stuck in the 19th century. He does not want to see the emergence of a dictatorship in 1917, Hitler's war for his world dictatorship, the advent of nuclear weapons, and the inevitable appearance of post-nuclear superweapons, being developed first by Russia in the 1970s and 1980s, and then, since 1986, by China, now in cooperation with Russia. But instead of confessing that he refuses to see all this and wishes to live in the 19th century, he announces that I am, not he is, "stuck in the 19th century."

It is worth recalling that those in the 19th century or the early 20th who foresaw the two "world wars" were said to be have been stuck in the Middle Ages or barbarian antiquity. How can Germany, the world's best educated and most culturally creative country, which gave mankind the noblest, most beautiful, and soulful music as well as the profoundest philosophy, be suspected of aggressive world wars? In 1938 Chamberlain brought from Hitler the "peace in our time," and the resulting general joy of the democratic West was delirious. The territory of the British colonies, acquired by wars, exceeded that of England itself more than 90 times, while Hitler, a noble German patriot, claimed in 1938 only that part of Czechoslovakia where Germans lived, Hitler's equivalent of Taiwan.

Harry Kuehn would be not worth noticing if he could not be a voter. But what if such voters constitute a majority of the electorate? Whom can they elect except geostrategically blind ignoramuses, fantasizing in 2006 (not 1938!) the "peace in our time"?

John Gavigan's e-mail is only one short paragraph:

Dear Lev Navrozov,
Your statement that the press has not once mentioned the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization, founded by China and Russia in 2001] is unnerving. Your article is very thought-provoking. My question is somewhat related: Are Islam and world communism compatible? Assuming that we in the West continue on our various pre-occupied ways toward our own destruction, what will happen when the two forces dedicated to our annihilation meet? Thanks, John G.

In contrast to Hitler, the dictators of China consider conventional war an obsolete Western delusion, and believe in shashou jian, the ability to knock an enemy down at one blow of post-nuclear superweapons. Hence they don't need the Islamic world as military manpower. Nor do they need or fear its suicidal terrorism.

In the democratic West, the death of even one person may entail a national or international sensation. About 3,000 deaths as a result of a terrorist act have been a shock in the United States, and is still recalled as an epoch-making catastrophe. After the fall of the Soviet dictatorship, it became known that the real number of human losses in Stalin's war against Hitler's invasion is 37 million. But Stalin had announced only five million-that is, 32 million deaths were successfully concealed. On the other hand, shashou jian by post-nuclear superweapons destroys not 3,000 or even 37 million lives, but an entire country or civilization by post-nuclear superweapons. The dictator of China will convert the Islamic world into so many slave satrapies "on pain" of their annihilation.

The situation would be different if Islamic countries were "reunified" into a single entity, as German principalities were into Germany in the 19th century, and had developed post-nuclear superweapons. But the chances of it are next to nil, and so the Islamic countries are doomed to become, "on pain" of annihilation, part of the "slave race."

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.