George Walford: Political Gravitation

The communist parties work in the belief that if they could only gain power they could establish a society which, if not fully communist, would be nearer to that condition than is existing society. Given power they would, they believe, be able to lead, drive, educate or manipulate the general body of the people into moving from their present way of life toward communism. Experience does not support this belief. In Russia and China communist movements have gained power and engaged in a struggle to impose their wishes which has continued over decades and cost millions of lives, but the outcome has not been that the people have moved toward the party. The party has moved toward the people; in both these countries the communist rulers are coming to accept the respect for tradition, the competitiveness, the pursuit of private interests and the patriotism which the general body of the people tend to accept but which communist theory repudiates.

It reminds one of Sir Isaac Newton. His law of gravitation states that every physical body attracts every other physical body, but the earth did not, to any perceptible extent, move toward the apple; it was the apple that fell to earth.

from Ideological Commentary 16, January 1985.