p The unprecedented activity of anti-communism is the most pronounced expression of the reactionary nature of presentday bourgeois ideology.

p Anti-communism appeared as a reactionary response to the emergence of the communist doctrine. The forces hostile to the working-class movement and the Marxist revolutionary theory first began to act when the spectre of communism was haunting Europe. In the opening words of their Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels said that all the dark forces of the exploitative world had banded together to fight against communist ideas. Since then, for over 100 years, the international working-class movement has been ceaselessly fighting anti-communism. The true essence of the policy and ideology of anti-communism can be exposed only with an understanding of the general laws of the class struggle including ideological struggle, set up by Lenin.

p Long before our day, he had anticipated that with the growth of the forces of revolution and its successes there was bound to be 1) a sharpening of the class struggle; 2) a growth of the slanderous, fraudulent nature of bourgeois propaganda; and 3) ever greater use by the bourgeoisie of increasingly refined and flexible methods in its ideological fight against socialism.

p All these general laws underlying the development of ideological struggle are reflected in present-day anti- communism, which has turned its sharpest edge against the social progress of all mankind.

p Imperialist reaction has been intensifying its anti- communist attacks, as imperialism loses its footing, as the crisis of world capitalism deepens, and as the economic and political might of the socialist countries and the revolutionising influence of their example grow.

p The slanderous, fraudulent nature of anti-communism is a visual illustration of the successes of socialism throughout the world. It is these successes that drive the bourgeois ideologists to extremes in distorting reality. In distorting the 70 s^jt* fit ’-. i,J truth, the ideologists of anti-communism go so far as to deny the most important facts of present-day reality, like the existence of capitalism and socialism. A book written by three well-known anti-communist ideologists at Pennsylvania University says: “We should emphasise the obvious fact that the Western world is not ’capitalist’ nor is the communist bloc ‘socialist’.”  [70•1  This line of global distortion of the whole content of modern history goes hand in hand with a total denial of the objective laws of social development and this, for its part, is an extreme manifestation of the unscientific nature of anti-communism, and its hostility to the truth of life.

p Among the other important tendencies observed by Lenin in the changing ideological tactics of the opponents of socialism were the increasing flexibility and subtlety of forms and methods used in the propaganda of bourgeois anti-communist ideas. Indeed, it is hard to suppress the growing sympathies among men for the new system, and to reduce the attractive power which the Marxist-Leninist doctrine has for ever broader sections of the population in the capitalist countries. Accordingly, bourgeois ideologists have been more active than ever before in resorting to the most hypocritical and refined methods of fighting socialism and Marxism. Lenin wrote about the international efforts by bourgeois theorists “to kill Marxism with ‘kindness’, to crush it in their embraces”.  [70•2  Today, the opponents of socialism claiming to be “experts” on communism, “objective” students of Marxism and socialism, “Marxologists”, “Sovietologists”, and “Kremlinologists”, refrain from using words of abuse against the Soviet system and Marxist-Leninist theory, and seek to undermine the authority of the socialist world and its ideology by means of subtle falsification. What is this but an embodiment and development of the tendency observed by Lenin? But the ideological opponents of Marxism seek not only to crush it in their embraces, but resort to even more refined camouflage. Lenin wrote: “The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists.”  [70•3  Today, not only the 71 revisionists and renegades from the communist movement, but now and again bourgeois ideologists also “disguise themselves” as Marxists and fight it by pretending to help in its “creative development”. Now and again, a peculiar union occurs in this field between bourgeois professors and revisionists (a visual example of this is provided by the editorial board of the Yugoslav journal Praxis).

p Consequently, there is good reason why anti-communism has acquired its present forms and manifestations. Its specific features and lines are determined by the content and nature of the social changes characteristic of this epoch of ours.

Successful struggle against anti-communism requires a close look at its present-day aspects.