» posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 9:38 am by Andy D
Book Review: Witness
If you need a late Christmas gift for the conservative, historian, or statist in your family, you should pick them up a copy of Whittaker Chambers Witness
During the 1940′s, a man came forward and accused a very high ranking member of the administration of being a communist. The alleged communist was Alger Hiss, and Whitaker Chambers was an ex-communist who claimed to know Hiss from his work in the Communist apparatus. At the same time this was going on, other ex-communist were stepping forward and naming communists as well, but on a very small scale. Alger Hiss had helped negotiate the Treaty of Yalta (ending World War II) and had helped set up the United Nations. As the different Senate hearings and trials unfolded, Chambers would eventually produce proof that Hiss was engaged in espionage from within the State Department for the Soviet Union.
I started this book knowing that it would be Chambers account of how all of that unfolded. I also expected an account of his activities from before he left the communist apparatus. What I didn’t expect was for this book to also be Chambers witness to his conversion to Christianity. We often discuss Communism in terms of it opposing Capitalism. It does. But truthfully, we should be discussing Communism as the opposite of Christianity. Communism is a faith. It’s a faith that believes there is no God and that man is the highest creature there is. It teaches that because there is no greater right or wrong, anything is acceptable to further the goals of the Communism party. Chambers believed that Communism would eventually rule the world, though he hoped it wouldn’t. Yet he left the party and thought he was leaving the winning team for the loosing team.
One of the sections that most touched me in this book is when Chambers describes encountering a random woman. This woman’s father was an ex-communist and she was somewhat embarrassed that her dad had left Communism. Chambers writes:
It was hard for her because, as an enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the irrationality of his defection embarrassed her. “He was immensely pro-Soviet,”she said,”and then — you will laugh at me — but you must not laugh at my father — and then — one night — in Moscow– he heard screams. That’s all. Simply one night he heard screams.”
..and further on…
She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.
For Chambers, and I would imagine for any ex-communist, the break with communism was a very emotional event. Chambers states that all of the pain that he went through at the various trials were in some ways an atonement for the sins he committed as a communist.
Witness is a very thick book. However, it reads like a modern day spy novel. It’s hard to keep in mind that the events Chambers describes actually occurred in our history. Witness is also very relevant to today’s world. Many of the problems and solutions offered by communism are supported by the communism’s fellow travelers. These people, such as the woman above and today’s collection of liberals, progressives, and statists, believe in many of the same solutions to today’s problems. This book should be read to learn a part of our history, but also to recognize some of the problems with communism and its fellow travelers.
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If you would like a little more information on Witness, here is a link to each of the blog piece’s I wrote for the Red State Book Notes Project. The Book Notes Project is an online book club that looks for conservative lessons in various books. You can use these articles as a guide to reading Witness, complete with weakly reading assignments.
And Now for Something Completely Different