ISMS ARE OPIATES:

In the opening essay, Arthur Koestler wrote: "I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thirsting for faith." Here Koestler speaks of his coming to communism in religious terms. Koestler wrote that after having read Marx, Engels, and Lenin, "something had clicked in my brain that shook me like a mental explosion. To say that one had 'seen the light' is a poor description of the mental rapture which only the convert knows, regardless of what faith he has been converted to."

Another image for the appeal of communism is drug addiction. "The addiction to the Soviet myth," Koestler wrote, "is as tenacious and difficult to cure as any other addiction. After the Lost Weekend in Utopia the temptation is strong to have just one last drop, even if watered down and sold under a different label." For Koestler those different labels were the many forms of popular front politics of the late 1930s.

Koestler's essay closes with a biblical allusion:

"I served the Communist Party for seven years--the same length of time as Jacob tended Laban's sheep to win Rachel his daughter. When the time was up, the bride was led into his dark tent; only the next morning did he discover that his ardors had been spent not on the lovely Rachel but on the ugly Leah. I wonder whether he ever recovered from the shock of having slept with an illusion. I wonder whether afterwards he believed that he had ever believed in it. I wonder whether the happy end of the legend will be repeated; for at the price of another seven years of labor, Jacob was given Rachel too, and the illusion became flesh. And the seven years seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had for her."

In The New York Times Book Review on Jan. 8, 1950, Rebecca West, the eminent British woman of letters, penned a laudatory review of The God That Failed. It opened with this trenchant observation: "There is no subject on which it is more difficult to establish communication with one's fellow-creatures than anti-communism." West described Arthur Koestler's essay as "one of the most handsome presents that has ever been given to the future historians of our time." She concludes her review with this observation: "The value of this book is not that its authors showed themselves outstanding, but they were typical."

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