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p Every attempt on the part of anti-communist theorists to refute Marxist-Leninist ideas betrays their fear and panic in face of the power of these ideas.

p Bourgeois ideologists are terrified not only by the fact that Marxism-Leninism is insuperable as a scientific system of views, but also that it has great moral power. In 1951, Barbara Ward, one-time foreign editor of the London Economist, wrote that “in communism moral weapons are as formidable as those of military power”.  [172•1  In order to reduce the moral attractive power of communist ideas, bourgeois ideologists have produced another version, namely, that MarxismLeninism is “inhuman”, that under socialism man is oppressed 173 and deprived of freedom, and that Marxism-Leninism denies man’s spiritual world. Because the Communists take the collectivist attitude, the anti-communists insist that Marxists are opponents of human individuality. There is much play with the problem of alienation, and a special effort is being made to prove that under socialism alienation of man continues, and then why have a socialist revolution? The ideologists of anti-communism also deny the fact that a new type of man emerges with the changing social conditions, and say that man’s nature is immutable, so that communist intentions to produce a new man are sinful and Utopian. The West German reformist theorist W. Knoerringen says: “The substance of man is the crucial contradiction that divides the two worlds. That is the field of battle on which a decision will be fought out concerning mankind’s further way.”  [173•1 

p The polluted stream of demagogic prattle about “the freedom of man”, the human personality, whose interests are allegedly jeopardised by communism and Marxism- Leninism, have flooded the books and periodical markets in the capitalist West, while the radio and television resound with loud wails by the self-styled champions of human freedom.

p Back in 1919, Lenin anticipated that capitalism would speculate on the slogan of freedom, that is precisely what has happened.

p The stories about the socialist system suppressing the human individual and human liberty are being spread by bourgeois anti-communists in close collaboration with the reformists and the clericals. Haakon Lie, a leader of the Norwegian Right-wing socialists, told at a conference of the Socialist International that the only way to defeat the Communists was to explain that communism meant suppression of the rights of the free individual.  [173•2  A philosophical dictionary issued in the FRG says: “Dialectical and historical materialism are the theoretically untenable fundamentals of an inhuman system of oppression.”  [173•3 

p What are the rights of the free individual the bourgeois 174 ideologists have in mind? A closer look shows that it is above all the claim that “Soviet people have no freedom to dispose of a private sphere independent of society”  [174•1 , which means, no right in private property and consequently no right to exploit other men. But is it at all inhuman to have abolished this right? The way to deal with this matter is to ask this question: freedom for which class? Freedom in the interest of which class? The socialist system does not abolish this “freedom” and the “right” to private property in the means of production and man’s exploitation of man in the interests of a small group of rich men, but it does it in the interests of millions of working people, that is, the overwhelming majority of society.

p Now and again, the Communists are accused that they do not allow the free spread of bourgeois propaganda in the socialist countries. Indeed, the Communists make no secret of the fact that they refuse to let bourgeois ideology spread in the USSR. But that does not mean that the socialist countries are opposed to any development of cultural ties with the Western world. On the contrary, the USSR has been most broadly developing its cultural and scientific ties with other countries. The USSR frequently holds various international scientific congresses and conferences and has an extensive programme of scientific and cultural exchange. National expositions by various countries are traditionally held in Moscow, the Soviet capital. Such expositions provide an opportunity for the broadest exchange of scientific and technical experience. All this is designed to strengthen mutual understanding among nations. That is why the attempts to use cultural ties to spread anti-communist propaganda or to “soften up” socialism are most resolutely rebuffed. The CPSU and the Soviet state have set themselves the noble task of fostering among Soviet people a high level of ideological awareness, a scientific outlook and moral principles. Why should they create favourable conditions for those who are opposed to these progressive aims? Why should they help those who spread ideas that drug and poison men’s minds?

p The lie about the “oppressive” essence of socialism and Marxism-Leninism is supplemented by the story that the 175 Communists deny the existence of man’s spiritual world.  [175•1  The theologists have turned into the official dogma the claim that “Marxism has no idea of man’s inner world, that man does not count, and that the individual is being sacrificed to pay the price for materialism”.  [175•2 

p Present-day bourgeois philosophers and sociologists have variously speculated on this claim that Marxism is limited. The personalists, for instance, insist that by bringing the human personality to the fore they overcome the “ limitations” of Marxism. However, while paying lip service to the welfare of the human personality, they have in fact opposed the working people’s fundamental interests, defended capitalism, condemned the class struggle, and put forward in contrast “universal love” and “reconciliation” between the exploited and the exploiters. The reactionary pseudohumanists’ concern for the human personality is hypocritical because it fails to deal with the key conditions for true human happiness, and the real prerequisites for the flourishing of the human individual.

p Talk of humanism in isolation of the struggle for the emancipation of the working people or—what is much worse—such talk coupled with denials of the struggle for emancipation adds up to the most inhuman fraud. Under capitalism the advocacy of abstract, sentimental love for all men inevitably (whether these preachers want to or not) turns into an apology of slavery and violence, and a call to humility and submission to the oppressors. That is why this advocacy is false and hypocritical. Maxim Gorky wrote: “The humanism of the proletariat requires abiding hatred for philistinism, for the rule of the capitalists, their lackeys, parasites, fascists, executionists and traitors to the working class—hatred for everything that makes hundreds of millions of men suffer, for all those who live on their suffering.”  [175•3  But this abiding hatred is deeply based on love, fiery love for the real architects of life, for the toiling sections of mankind, for the interests of social progress.

p Marxists oppose those who want to substitute an emancipation of the working people’s “spirit” for their real emancipation. The advocacy of the emancipation of the spirit and 176 calls for the flourishing of the individual as amounting to no more than the flourishing of man’s spiritual qualities amount to another fraud because the all-round development of the individual, including his spiritual qualities, requires real conditions creating practical possibility for satisfying his material and cultural requirements. The oppression of capital deprives the working man of such conditions. That is why the interests of the individual are closely bound up with the struggle for communism. Marxism condemns the view of the individual in terms of idealistic philosophy, which tends to separate the individual from the concrete historical conditions in which he lives, and insists on dealing with the individual “in general” as a “free and autonomous will”, as “self-consciousness” and as “spirit”. The Marxists see life for what it is and realise that the overwhelming majority of men under the capitalist system are deprived of the real possibility of satisfying the material and cultural requirements and of developing their endowments. They are subjected to various forms of economic, political, national and spiritual oppression.

p Viewed in terms of actual reality, the interests of the individual today necessarily suggest the conclusion that if he is to develop and flourish to the full there is need above all for freedom from exploitation and national oppression, and lasting peace. In fact, the Communists have been working to create such conditions for men.

p The touchstone of humanism is one’s attitude to capitalism, to social and national oppression, and to the struggle of the nations for peace.

p Marxists have never denied the existence of man’s inner world, but they have insisted that all the aspects of this world should be considered from the standpoint of reality: they have worked to create for working men human conditions in the material life; they have shown which concrete social changes in which concrete conditions help to bring about the individual’s genuine emancipation and his full development.

p Indeed, what is the concrete expression of the flourishing of the individual and of man’s spiritual world? It is creative endeavour, the possession of knowledge, the all-round development of man’s endowments in the opportunities to enjoy works of art, in high moral qualities, and in a sense of fraternal equality with other men. Does capitalism give man 177 all this? No, it does not. Based on private property in the means of production, making use of all the achievements of thought and culture, it is incapable of giving its citizens equal opportunities for development. Gradually, step by step, this is being done by socialist society, which creates, as it advances, ever more favourable conditions for the maximum satisfaction of man’s requirements, for bringing out the rich potentialities latent in each individual. Communist society is built to ensure full welfare and free all-round development for every member of society.

p Anti-communist ideologists like to scare the working people of the capitalist countries by circulating another invention to the effect that the Communists, advocates of collectivism, refuse to reckon with man and refuse to recognise his human individuality. Actually, however, concern for human individuality has nothing in common with individualism.

p The advocates of individualistic views separate man from society, from his class, from the collective of working people, and confine him to isolation. Real conditions for the development of each man’s personality are to be found not in separation from the others, but in joint, collective struggle by the working people against every kind of oppression of man.

The anti-communist slanderers who insist that socialist society—the “collectivist system”—refuses to respect the personality of each individual were given a fitting rebuff at a conference on the critique of anti-communism in Berlin (GDR) by Hans Steussloff, of the Karl Marx University of Leipzig. He said: “The groundlessness and falsehood of such statements have been fully shown up by the emulation and the broad popular discussion during the preparation for the 7th Congress of the SUPG. Thousands of men and women in our republic spoke quite freely and consciously, with a sense of personal dignity, to express new ideas, display initiative and the spirit of innovation—-When the theorists of anti-communism level charges against so-called collectivism, behind this lurks nothing more than a classlimited, bourgeois individualistic sense of bitterness over the fact that we have eliminated the inhuman rule of private property in the means of production. The all-round development of each personality—something the humanists have always demanded—is possible only with the abolition of private property, when it is no longer proprietary status

178 but the personal human qualities of each individual, and his contribution to the cause of progress of all society that are the only means acceptable to all for man’s ’assertion’....

p “In the GDR there have emerged free men, who are sure of themselves, who have a pronounced sense of dignity, who display their individuality in every way, and who work for the common welfare of all men with a sense of full responsibility. These men have the capacity constantly to improve the socialist system, which befits human dignity, and on the basis of their creative labour to build their own future. A genuine humaneness has become part and parcel of these men’s lives....

p “Humanistic ideas and feelings have been deeply and firmly established in our socialist life. They reflect the historic feat of emancipation carried out by our people under the leadership of the SUPG over the past 20 years....

p “While being socialist humanists we remain realists and adhere to the facts. Without relentless struggle against imperialism, the especially aggressive West German imperialism in the first place, humaneness would remain an impotent ideal, and humanism would amount to no more than empty talk. That is why our love for man goes hand in hand with a sense of just hatred for the inhumanity of imperialism, with our readiness tirelessly to defend and in every way to strengthen the humanistic community of men, which is the highest good we have.

p “Socialist humanism is militant humanism. So long as social classes and class contradictions remain in the world, humaneness can be translated into life and can triumph over inhumanity only as a result of class struggle.”  [178•1 

p In their fight against socialism, bourgeois ideologists have insisted that “man cannot be remoulded”, that human nature abounds in ineradicable ills and evils, and that the effort to set up a just, communist system is doomed to fail.

p US bourgeois ideologists have been saying, for instance, that while the Soviet Union may catch up with the United States economically in a relatively short time, no new man will emerge, no harmony will be established between man and society, no communist attitude to labour will be developed, in short, that the transition to communism will remain 179 a utopia.  [179•1  This conclusion springs from the unhistorical and metaphysical character of the bourgeois science of man. It regards human nature as static and unchanging; to this view religious thinkers also add the medieval doctrine of “the original sin”, which holds that man is organically evil. Thus, the anti-communist “Sovietologist” A. Kiinzli, in his book, The Alienated Paradise. Communism on the Way to Reality, spreads the idea of an abstract man with egoism and the acquisitive urge as part of his make-up. He says that these are “innate, immanent and independent of the external environment”.  [179•2 

p Marxism-Leninism counters this anti-humanistic and deeply pessimistic doctrine with its scientific view of man and his relations with society. Man changes together with the changing social relations. Marx said: “All history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature.”  [179•3  Revolutionary practice, Marx says in his third thesis on Feuerbach, leads to a change of circumstances and of men themselves. Of course, this is a difficult, complex and drawn up process. Lenin also said that men could not be remoulded right away, and that of tremendous importance in this process were their own experience, the change in the material condition of their existence, and the main thing, extensive and purposeful educational work carried out by the Communist Party and under the leadership of the Communist Party. In this matter as well, Lenin said, there would arise a great many practical difficulties, but the Communists would win out in this endeavour as well by involving in the work of communist education hundreds of thousands of able men.  [179•4 

p Bourgeois and socialist ideologies take a different approach to man’s role in society and his ideals. In bourgeois society, man’s attention is switched from production to consumption, and work is considered an inevitable necessity, but not for all members of society. The rich elite, who lead a parasitic existence, are set up as an ideal within the reach of anyone who manages to find his line of “business”.

p There is no place for creative labour, and no effort is made 180 to show its social value not only as a means of producing material goods, but also for developing the individual’s diverse capacities, including his spiritual qualities.

p The individual can truly develop only under a social system where the labour of each becomes not only a means of subsistence, but also a most important common endeavour, and where a man is transformed into a public figure. Man’s work and the socio-political sphere of his activity are brought closer together and interwoven. Of course, under socialism material incentives have not been abolished, and remuneration for labour is duly regulated in accordance with its value for society, but more and more the urge to bring maximum benefits for all and not only for oneself, the urge to make the fullest use and development of one’s capacities and endowments is being brought to the fore. This is paralleled by totally new criteria in evaluating man himself. It is not riches, not idleness, not station in life or rank that are the source of authority, but features of their moral makeup like honesty, industriousness, ideological awareness, similar standards to oneself and to others, and concern for the interests of the country and the whole socialist cause.

p Bourgeois ideologists, speculating on the problem of man, have concentrated attention in their struggle against Marxism-Leninism over the theory of alienation, and have tried to falsify the problem along these main lines.

p First, an effort is made to contrast the young Marx, who dealt with the problem of alienation, with the mature Marx, who had allegedly ceased to take an interest in various questions of humanism, and had abandoned his earlier ideas.

p Second, in their efforts to prove that man’s condition under socialism is not fundamentally different, bourgeois theorists seek in every way to “substantiate” the existence of alienation under socialism, and now and again accuse Marx of having taken a much too “narrow” view of alienation.

p Let us consider this problem in detail.

p The consideration of the problem of alienation by the young Marx was the start of his economic and philosophical substantiation of communism. When analysing alienation, the young Marx began his analysis of capitalist relations of production. He proceeded from the proposition that private property and alienation were inextricably connected 181 with each other, which is why a study of the problems of alienation by the young Marx, and of the theories of surplus value by the mature Marx are in no sense mutually exclusive or contradictory attitude, but a natural evolution of Marx’s views. In his earlier writings, Marx already discerned the roots of alienation as lying in the class relations between men, and it is these that led him to the unravelling of the secrets of surplus value; he did not analyse alienation “in general”, but the realities of capitalism.

p In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the young Marx considered, as he himself wrote, “an actual politico-economic fact”. He remarked that the “object which labour produces—labour’s product—confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer”.  [181•1  In analysing this phenomenon, which is inherent in capitalist society, there arises the concept of “alienation”, which appears as a “loss of the object and object-bondage”.  [181•2 

p Consequently, Marx saw the alienation of the product of labour not only as the capitalist’s appropriation of the results of the worker’s labour, but also as a derivative form of social relations which arises on the basis of capitalist relations of production and the existence of the private capitalist form of property, so that the relations produced by alienated labour are private-property relations. Marx wrote about this very definitely, characterising private property as “a product, a result, a necessary consequence of alienated labour”.  [181•3  Marx gives a more clear-cut definition of this interconnection between alienation and private property when he says: “Only at the very culmination of the development of private property does this, its secret, re-emerge, namely, that on the one hand it is the product of alienated labour, and that secondly it is the means by which labour alienates itself, the realisation of this alienation.”  [181•4  He goes on: “This material, immediately sensuous private property is the material sensuous expression of estranged human = life.”  [181•5  From this follows Marx’s clear-cut conclusion: “The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of 182 human life is, therefore, the positive transcendence of all estrangement.”  [182•1 

p Bourgeois ideologists start by distorting the concept of alienation and then go on to produce a myth about the “two Marxs”, The theoretical basis for this first anti-communist version which falsifies the problem of alienation is the anthropological view of the theory of alienation and the Hegelian interpretation of Marxist dialectics. This line is most clearly expressed in the writings of a Joint Commission for Marxism of the Evangelical Academies of the FRG, which stages various conferences and seminars on Marxism, and which has published various “Essays on the Study of Marxism” (Volume One appeared in 1954, Volume Two in 1957, and Volume Three in 1960).  [182•2 

p On the pages of this publication Erich Thier converts Marx into an ordinary anthropologist, and says, falsifying the works of Karl Marx, that these should be seen in a theological light. Erwin Metzke, who has a contribution to Volume Two, says that the causes of alienation are not objective but subjective, so that it is not possible to take an objective scientific view of the real causes of alienation, or to find scientific ways of eliminating alienation.

p Marx is presented as an anthropological subjectivist and a philosopher who saw alienation as a part of man’s natural make-up. If that is so, alienation can never be done away with however radical the social changes. This view of alienation is objectively aimed against the socialist system.

p But this idea has yet another aim, and it is to back up a false conclusion that the mature Marx had ceased to be a humanist.

p Like the Evangelical ideologists, Catholic ideologists (Jean-Ives Calvez, Henri Chambre, Jacob Hommes) have also most actively speculated on the theory of alienation.

p Jesuit philosophers have produced the following dilemma: either dialectics fails to change itself in the course of history, which means that “alienation” is organically inherent in human society, including the communist formation, or communism marks the “end of alienation” which means an end 183 to dialectics, and also that Marx’s dialectical conception is not at all universal. The Jesuit Professor H. Chambre writes: “To the extent to which it is assumed that there are no longer any antagonistic contradictions or exploited workers in the USSR, the motive forces of historical development disappear, in accordance with the doctrine of Karl Marx.... The death of dialectics appears on the horizon of the Soviet Union’s historical development.”  [183•1  However, antagonism and contradiction are not the same thing. The former disappears whereas the latter remains even under socialism. A most important feature of non-antagonistic contradictions under socialism is that they are resolved by peaceful means, and that no political revolutions are required for their resolution. Marx anticipated this Law when he said: “It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions.”  [183•2 

p But even when class antagonisms have been eliminated development continues to proceed through the unravelling and overcoming of contradictions. Even under socialism, the productive forces run ahead of the relations of production in their development. But these contradictions are resolved in a different way as compared with a resolution in antagonistic socio-economic formations. The contradictions of socialism are resolved within the framework of existing economic relations through the improvement of the latter. The modes of resolution of these contradictions depend on the character and specific features of the socialist system. Of the utmost importance in this matter are the growing role of the masses in social development and their Marxist-Leninist consciousness; the scientific guidance of society, which is evident in the leading role of the Party in socialist construction; criticism and self-criticism; and improvement of the economic and organisational functions of the socialist state.

p Another unscientific view of the problem of alienation in Marxism is also used in an effort to back up the anticommunist assertions that under socialism man is enslaved.

p Marx’s great discovery of the mechanism of surplus value, and the causes, substance and forms of alienation under capitalism tore the veil of respectability off the private 184 property, the very basis of the exploiting society. Under present-day capitalism it is becoming ever more obvious that man’s alienation springs from no other source than the private-property relations. No wonder bourgeois ideologists have felt the need to argue that socialism makes no real difference to man’s lot.

p In an effort to present a coherent theory of alienation, the well-known American anti-Marxist, Daniel Bell, has reproached Marx for allegedly tying in, without good reason, alienation and private property under capitalism, together with an oversimplified class analysis and a narrow conception of exploitation. Bell himself says that there is a better way of studying and elaborating this problem, namely, from Hegel’s abstract idealism to the views of present-day German sociologists (among them G. Simmel who sees the source of alienation as lying in industrial society), from Kierkegaard, who relied on Hegel to universalise alienation, to Mannheim, and Weber, who merged the idea of alienation with that of bureaucratisation. Bell says that the two had gone beyond Marx.

p Bell brings out Weber’s following “conclusion” which anticommunists so cherish: “The drift of all society was towards the creation of large-scale organisation, hierarchically organised and centrally directed, in which the individual counted for naught—-Capitalism and socialism were simply two different faces of the same, inexorable trend.” Having laid this “scientific” foundation for the theory of alienation, Bell hastens to draw a practical conclusion which is important for the anti-communists. He says that “the workers in the communist countries are even more exploited than those in Western lands”.  [184•1 

p The idea that under socialism man is alienated is used to heap slander on socialism. S. Hook asserts that “it is a conception of man which ... serves as a remarkable weapon in communist countries in the struggle of independent spirits—philosophers, writers, artists, scholars—to liberalise their regimes—-In the presence of the multiple coercions of a closed communist society, the phenomena of human alienation are omnipresent”.  [184•2 

p Present-day bourgeois philosophers have also tried to 185 justify the need for “supplementing” Marxism with a theory of the human personality.

p Such tendencies are highly contradictory. On the one hand, they now and again testify to growing interest in Marxism and disappointment with the capitalist system among bourgeois intellectuals, and on the other, whenever any variant of “supplementing” Marxism is brought up, it is invariably no more than an attempt to “synthesise” a falsified Marxism with various schools of idealistic philosophy. Thus, the US philosopher Erich Fromm criticises capitalism for its failure to solve the problem of man, but believes that it is necessary to “supplement” Marxism with a refurbished variant of Freudism.

p To achieve this symbiosis, Fromm tries to put a psychological gloss on Marx’s doctrine. He obliterates the distinction between the concept of the socially unconscious and objective social laws, and ascribes to Marx an abstract analysis of the problem of alienation. Fromm, like many other bourgeois philosophers, seeks to emphasise the “one-sidedness” of Marxism. This is being done in two ways: first, an attempt to prove that Marxism confines its dialectical-materialist conception of development to the socio-economic sphere, without extending it to the other spheres of being and consciousness; and second, by insisting that in the new conditions of the socialist system the Marxists-Leninists have allegedly failed, both in theory and in practice, to give any attention to the problem of man.

p I said above that Marxism alone discovered the objective laws of social development, gave the scientific substantiation of the importance of the subjective factor in history, understood the position and role of the individual in the transformation of the world, and showed the way to his real—- and not imaginary—emancipation from every type of oppression (economic, political, national and ideological), the way to his real—and not imaginary—flourishing and moral perfection.

p Consequently, the inexhaustible wealth of Marxist-Leninist philosophy includes the scientific theory of the human personality. However, Marxism-Leninism does not regard it as a biological species or a blind tool of mysterious divine forces, and does not take an irrational view of the individual outside the context of social being and absolutised consciousness, not as an abstract being “in general”, but as a 186 historically concrete and practically active person. The Marxist theory of the human personality provides the scientific basis for social human practice, something no other philosophical theory does. That is why Marxism has nothing to do with fatalism. In his polemics with Bruno Bauer, Engels wrote: “‘History’ is not a person apart, using man as a means for its own particular aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.”  [186•1 

p While Marxism never ignores man’s role in social development, its attitude to this problem cannot be reduced to a mechanistic conception of human society as a conglomerate of individuals. Any analysis of society as a specific social whole with its own laws of motion, historically concrete interrelationships and contradictions, implies the view of every human personality as a historically concrete individual determined by his social status, and acting in definite conditions and at a definite stage of social development.

p The Marxist theory of a human personality is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie precisely because it is organically and indissolubly connected with the scientific theory of class struggle and clashes with the most vital social interests of the bourgeoisie and its individualistic psychology. The class struggle and revolution, and construction of socialism and communism alone provide the practical solution to the problem of real humanism, namely, the further development and all-round flourishing of the human personality.

p The Marxist theory of the human personality, like the other spheres of Marxist-Leninist philosophical thinking, are in no sense cut-and-dried or immutable. It has been developing and will continue to develop, as Marxism has developed, on the basis of generalisation and scientific knowledge of human practice, on the basis of the historical experience of socialist society, in which relations between men acquire a new character, that of socialist humanism. The development and perfection of the human personality and of truly human relations under socialism is the best evidence that the Marxist theory of man is right.

p Marxism-Leninism is the most humanistic doctrine in the world because under its great banner the working man is rising to his full stature, throwing off class and national oppression. Woman has become man’s equal, and once 187 backward nationalities are overtaking and surpassing the leading countries.

p Maxim Gorky, the great humanist of our epoch, wrote: “The humanism of the revolutionary proletariat is straightforward. It does not utter any loud or sweet words about love for men. Its purpose is to liberate the proletariat of the whole world from the ignominious, sanguinary, insane oppression of the capitalists, to teach men to stop considering themselves to be commodities which are bought and sold, raw materials for the fabrication of gold and the luxuries of the philistines.”  [187•1 

Such is our humanism, the humanism of Marx and Lenin, the humanism of the peoples of the socialist countries and of all those who struggle for social emancipation and national liberation, for a truly human life. The bourgeois slanderers will never succeed in denigrating the great moral power of this true humanism.

p Bourgeois falsification of Marxism-Leninism is becoming ever more refined and hypocritical.

p There is an especially marked effort to detach Leninism from Marxism, and having twisted Marx’s theoretical legacy, to present this distorted “Marxism” as a basis for “discarding ideological distinctions” or for a subsequent drawing closer together with those who revise the Marxist-Leninist theory and claim to have connections with the communist movement.

p This tendency is well illustrated by a symposium on the subject “Marx and the Western World” held at the Catholic University of Notre Dame in the USA, with the participation of American and West European anti-communists, and also of some present-day revisionists (Gaio Petrovic and Karel Kosik among others).

p Speakers at the symposium stressed the “deep gap between Engels’s or Lenin’s allegedly scientific ideology and Marx’s early ‘humanism’ ”.  [187•2  On the strength of this gross falsification, the anti-communist organisers of the symposium urged a denial of the view that Marx is a foreign body in the history of Western culture, asserting that there are “non- 188 communist Marx scholars working in the world”. Alfred G. Meyer, the notorious anti-communist, declared: “We are all Marxists.... We all are critics of alienation, at least in a vague sense. We need not be critics of economic expoitation or political domination....”  [188•1 

And so, there is Marxism, but without the mission of the working class in world history, without proletarian revolution; there is “reconciliation” of Marx’s sociology with Western sociology  [188•2 ; there is “systematic exclusion of every connection between the notion held by Marx and modern socalled socialist regimes”; there is a “development not of class consciousness, but consciousness as such”; there is a “transition from capitalism to socialism, at first as a quantitative change”; and there is a “point on which Marx is closer to Nietzsche”.  [188•3  These and various other novelties of antiMarxism once again show the complete ideological poverty of present-day bourgeois thinking, its lying, falsifying and Jesuitical character, and the unprecedented depth to which bourgeois ideologists and their revisionist yes-men have fallen.