p The main ones can be seen: 1) from its content; 2) in the sphere of organisation of anti-communist action; 3) from its forms; 4) from its methods; and 5) in the sphere of its theoretical substantiation.

p 1. Turning to the present-day content of anti-communism, we find that it is characterised by actual non-recognition that the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries have a legitimate existence; non-recognition (contrary to the obvious facts) of their communist prospects and, in full conformity with this, denial of the objective laws of history. This provides justification for staging, by any means, political acts aimed to abolish socialism.

p Because the socialist community and the Soviet Union are the mainstay of communist progress, anti-Sovietism— political and ideological measures aimed at undermining the Soviet Union’s strength and influence—has become the main feature of the content of present-day anti- communism.

p The ideological content of anti-communism is aimed at buttressing this adventurous policy, for which purpose increasing use is being made of the fight against Leninism, which relies on the means provided by the armoury of the bourgeois social sciences.

p In its fight against the forces of progress and socialism, anti-communism makes increasing use of nationalism. Gustav Husak, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, was quite right when he observed: “Bourgeois nationalist propaganda is now marked by a pronounced anti-Soviet line, which is why the struggle against it, against every form of anti-Sovietism is a component part of the class struggle in the modern classdivided world, a component part of the consistent internationalist policy of the Communist Parties.”  [75•1 

p 2. In the sphere of organisation, anti-communism, both in politics and in ideology, has this distinctive feature that it is directed and financed by the governments of the imperialist states and the giant monopolies, that is, that in the countries 76 of the capitalist West it has been enshrined as government policy. The whole imperialist mechanism of foreign and domestic policy, the intelligence agencies, the armed forces, the ramified network of bourgeois propaganda and the whole system of education and scientific research, the numerous institutes, funds and centres, specially set up with the funds of the imperialist monopolies are engaged in subversive activity against socialism and the communist movement, and in falsifying the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. A caste of professional “specialists” in fighting communism, socialism and Marxist-Leninist ideas has crystallised from among the representatives of the military-bureaucratic machine of the imperialist states, and the most reactionary scientists.

p US imperialism has become the headquarters of anticommunism, the centre of international reaction and militarism.

p The State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, the Peace Corps, the United States Information Agency and many other outfits are engaged in organising anti-communist political and ideological acts. The cost of ideological struggle and anti-communist propaganda comes to over $ 500 million a year. Thus, USIA, for instance, has a staff of 12,000, of whom 7,000 are foreigners. In 105 countries, it has 111 so-called peripheral missions and 230 information centres, employing over 8,000 Americans. It also runs the Voice of America radio system, which has 43 radio stations on the territory of the USA and 59 abroad. Free Europe and Liberation, two radio stations engaged (in varying style) in praising the bourgeois “paradise”, and slandering the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, are branches of the Voice of America in Europe.

p There are now over 150 organisations and almost 200 university departments in the so-called research centres and institutes in the USA which are engaged in formulating problems of strategy and tactics in the fight against the socialist countries and the international communist movement, in falsifying Marxism-Leninism and in producing diverse anti-communist doctrines and training the necessary personnel.

p The Hoover Institute of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University in California, is one of the scientific centres of anti-communism. One of its chiefs, Professor 77 Possony, concentrates on working out “bridge-building” tactics. The Institute’s “advisory committee” includes executives from giant corporations like the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Republic Steel Corporation, T. Mellon and Sons, and others, whose contributions make up almost 70 per cent of the Institute’s budget. The well-known anti-communist expert, Admiral A. Burke, works at the Centre for Strategic Studies (now the Hodge Institute) in Georgetown. Other centres engaged in vigorous anti-communist activity are the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University, Columbia’s Russian Institute, and the Institute for Central and Eastern Europe at Columbia University, New York. The Russian Institute at Columbia University, which is financed by the Rockefeller Fund, has trained two-thirds of the “Sovietologists” working in the USA.

p In the FRG, a special branch of research called Ostforschung (studies of the East), involves dozens of institutes and societies, including, for instance, the East European Institute under the “Free University” in West Berlin, the German Society for the Study of Eastern Europe at Stuttgart, the Institute and Society of South-Eastern Europe in Munich, the Institute for the Study of the History and Culture of the USSR in Munich, the Federal Institute for the Study of Marxism-Leninism in Cologne (institute of “ Sovietology”), and many others.

p 3. A characteristic feature of anti-communism is the growing refinement and diversity of forms in the fight against the practice of socialism and the theory of Marxism-Leninism.

p Imperialist reaction, having spread to global scale its attempts to intrude into the minds of the working people at home and in the socialist countries, has tried to have its anti-communist policy and propaganda exert an all- pervading influence on every section of the population. Hence, the diversity of its forms.

p One of these is the extremely bellicose, openly aggressive, and frequently neofascist form connected with the calls for starting a world thermonuclear war whose slogan is “ better dead than red”. In conditions of peace-time, the advocates of this policy extensively resort to terrorism. This form of anti-communism in ideology frequently goes hand in hand with a gross and primitive system of lies and slanders designed for mass consumption and speculating mainly on the ignorance of men. Back in 1920, Lenin wrote about “the 78 bourgeoisie incessantly slandering us through its entire apparatus of propaganda and agitation”.  [78•1 

p In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, the American counter-intelligence service, published a book in the United States, called /. Edgar Hoover on Communism, which abounds in the grossest and most primitive lies about the communist movement and Marxist-Leninist theory. Thus materialism is presented as a denial of man’s spiritual life, etc

p Of course, this type of slander, which capitalises on ignorance, inevitably proves to be a fiasco, which is why ever more refined means are now being more broadly used.

p The second form of present-day anti-communism may be designated as bourgeois-liberal, whose political advocates prefer to use the methods of so-called quiet anti- communism, “bridge-building” and “the driving in of wedges”. They frequently present themselves as “Marxologists”, “ Sovietologists”, “Kremlinologists”, etc., whose fight against socialism and Marxism-Leninism is covered up with “objective” research into the development of communism and its theory. They distort the essence of socialism and the Marxist- Leninist doctrine in order to divert the attention of broad circles of bourgeois intellectuals.

p Another form of anti-communism that has been actively spread in the capitalist countries over the last few years, is hypocritical, demagogic anti-communism, which is presented as a “creative development of Marxism” and a “critique of capitalism”. Some of its exponents, who pretend to be Marxists or men close to them, engage in ideological subversion among the bourgeois intellectuals who take a critical attitude towards capitalism or some of its manifestations, and in corrupting young people in colleges and universities so as to isolate them from the working class and the communist movement. Herbert Marcuse, an American philosopher of German origin, provides a typical example of this brand of bourgeois anti-communist ideologist.

p The extension of the social base of the anti-imperialist movement under the influence of the scientific and technical revolution, the involvement in the struggle against the monopolies of the intelligentsia and the young people create real prerequisites for uniting the democratic forces. What 79 ideologists like Herbert Marcuse are doing is fulfilling the monopolies’ “social order” to prevent the formation of a broad democratic anti-monopoly front under the leadership of the working class. They have tried to do this above all by distorting the role of the Communist Parties and the working class in capitalist society. Marcuse, for instance, says that it is meaningless to look for any specific historical agents of revolutionary change in the advanced capitalist countries.  [79•1  He has been spreading lies about the Soviet Union’s “ repressive bureaucracy” and “collaborationist policy”, and slandering socialism.  [79•2  As for his “critique” of capitalism, it is in fact an apology of capitalism, emphasising the system’s great strength and “integration potentialities”. He declares: “ capitalist society shows an internal union and cohesion unknown at previous stages of industrial civilisation”.  [79•3 

p 4. The methods of anti-communist policy and propaganda are characterised by ever closer ties with reformism, revisionism and nationalism. This is quite natural, because the anticommunists expect these ties to open up the way for penetration into the socialist countries, and into the working-class and communist movement, that is, to help to undermine the decisive forces opposing imperialism.

p In the context of this coalescence, there are the highly typical attacks by bourgeois reformism and revisionism of the Right opportunist and Leftist stripes against the general laws of the socialist revolution and socialist construction, above all the great role of the working class in world history and the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the proletarian dictatorship, the Leninist doctrine of the working-class party; the attempts to obscure the fundamental antithesis between the capitalist and the socialist systems; slander of the Soviet Union and the CPSU; political and ideological subversion against internationalism from the standpoint of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism, and so on.

p The methods used in anti-communist policy and propaganda today reveal a clear intention on the part of the imperialists to carry the centre of gravity of their political and ideological struggle directly onto the territory of the 80 socialist countries, and this calls for much greater political and ideological vigilance on the part of all working people in socialist society.

p We find that the present stage of anti-communism is marked by particularly subtle methods of ideological struggle against socialism and Marxism-Leninism. The efforts to cover up the reactionary character of anti-communist policy and ideology have assumed unprecedented proportions, and extensive use is being made of hypocritical demagogic phraseology. This mimicry of imperialism’s reactionary policy makes anti-communism an especially dangerous and treacherous weapon of imperialist reaction.

p In this context, one cannot help recalling Lenin’s warning that the open preaching of their ideology by the exploiters themselves, and their open defence of their class interests are less dangerous for the working people than the spread of the same ideology by men who claim to be progressive, who take a stand “over and above parties”, and who clothe these reactionary ideas in demagogic form and cover them up with the “latest” unscientific theories.

p In his article, “In Memory of Count Heyden”, Lenin exposed this stripe of bourgeois liberal and pseudodemocrat. He stressed that they were much more dangerous than the members of the Black Hundreds, whose every action antagonised the people and produced hatred and contempt. A much greater danger was presented by the reactionaries who flew the flag of democracy, freedom and general humane principles. “The influence of the intelligentsia, who take no direct part in exploitation, who have been trained to use general phrases and concepts, who seize on every ’good’ idea and who sometimes from sincere stupidity elevate their inter-class position to a principle of non-class parties and non-class politics—the influence of this bourgeois intelligentsia on the people is dangerous. Here, and here alone, do we find a contamination of the masses that is capable of doing real harm and that calls for the utmost exertion of all the forces of socialism to counteract this poison.”  [80•1  This warning of Lenin’s is just as meaningful today.

p 5. Highly active and characteristic efforts are being made to present the theoretical “substantiation” of anti- 81 communism as being scientific. In the recent period, a new set of anticommunist sociological theories have been produced, aimed directly against socialism and Marxism-Leninism. These theories (which have actually nothing in common with science) pretend to make an “objective” recognition of some of the successes scored by socialism, but make a point of twisting the past, the present and especially the future of the communist formation.

p Simultaneously with the stepped up production of pseudoscientific theories, which speculate very skilfully on a distorted interpretation of various objective facts and phenomena, the ideologists of anti-communism have started an intensive effort to falsify Marxism-Leninism.

This falsification, aimed both against the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism and against its component parts, undoubtedly deserves a special analysis which is given in the following chapters.