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C. Objection: The Communist
Successes in Italy and France
But,
someone will object, the successes of these tactics in Italy and France do not
permit one to affirm that communism is retreating in the free world, or even
that the smiling communism of today is progressing more slowly than the
scowling communism of the Lenin and Stalin years.
First
of all, in answer to this, one must say that the general elections in Sweden,
West Germany, and Finland, as well as the regional elections and the present
instability of the Labor Government in Great Britain, attest to the inappetence
of the great masses for socialist “paradises," communist violence, and so
on. 73 There are expressive signs that the example of these countries
has already begun to reverberate in those two great Catholic Latin nations of
Western Europe, thus hindering the communist advance.
But,
in our opinion, it is necessary above all to question how authentically
communist is the growing number of votes obtained by the Italian Communist
party or the French Socialist party (of which we speak since the French
Communist party is stagnant). Both parties are far
from having benefited only from the votes of their own electorates. Certainly
considerable Catholic support – whose real amplitude only history will one day
reveal in its full extent - has created entirely exceptional illusions,
weaknesses, apathies, and complicities around the Italian Communist party. The
electoral projection of these shocking and artificial circumstances explains,
in large measure, the growth in the number of people voting for the Communist
party, many of whom are by no means communist voters. Nor should we forget the
direct or indirect influence of certain Croesuses upon the voting. Their
frankly collaborationist attitude toward communism allows electoral maneuvers
from which the Third Revolution draws an obvious profit. Analogous observations
can be made in regard to the French Socialist party.
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