"First, Hyde argued, the appeal of communism was not its ideas. It was rather the moral fervor of the Communists, a fervor which appealed to people who were committed to a moral cause greater than themselves. Communists were idealists, Hyde said. This is a great irony, for Karl Marx dismissed all such appeals to morality as irrelevant at best and deceptive at worst. He saw all morality as class morality. He identified morality the superstructure of the dominant class, a tool of class dominance. The substructure is fundamental, he said: the structure of economic production. He proclaimed scientific socialism, and he dismissed all rival socialist systems as utopian. I am convinced that this is equally true of all broad-based ideological movements. Few people join them because their founders developed philosophically persuasive systems of istorical cause-and-effect. They join because the movements promise moral uplift personally and even moral reform culturally.
Second, Hyde told his listeners that a statistically abnormal number of Communists he had met on several continents had this in common: They were lapsed Catholics. Why? Because of their idealism. The Church failed to appeal to this idealism, especially among youth. So, they departed into the camp of the enemy.
Third, Hyde argued that when organizations make minimal demands on their members, they get minimal commitment. When they make big demands, they get big commitment. This theme pervades this document. Of course, the Communist movement was always a minority movement. This went back to
Lenin’s organizational decision to limit the Bolsheviks to an elite, although Hyde does not mention this. Hyde was speaking to missionaries: the Church’s hardest of hard core members. The Roman Catholic Church has always allowed religious orders to form on the basis of extreme personal commitment. This degree of commitment is not expected to be widespread in the
membership. This tension between universal appeal—mass evangelism—and minority commitment affects every large organization. The standard rule of thumb is that 20% of the members will do 80% of the work. The top 4% (20% of 20%) will be the equivalent of the military’s field-grade officers, and less than one percent will be the senior decision-makers and innovators (20% of 20% of 20%).
Fourth, he insisted that successful long-term leadership requires systematic training. The Communist Party was careful to provide such training at all levels. Everyone was trained to exercise leadership in his appropriate field.
Fifth, the communists understood that, in order to be an effective leader in the trade union movement, a person must be good at his job. If he is a slack worker, he will not be taken seriously by his peers, no matter how good a speaker he is. So, the communists pressured members to become the best workers on the shop floor.
Sixth, Communist leadership was for the sake of the Communist Party’s cause. It was not leadership for its own sake."
??? Apparently, this model is outdated. The Libertarian Party sees very little growth considering how energized the libertarian base is.
