p The anti-communism of the ideologists and leaders of Right socialist reformism is the main obstacle in the way of joint action by the working class in the fight against monopolies.

p The Marxists-Leninists, carrying on an implacable struggle against the ideology of anti-communism, make a distinction between Right Social-Democratic leaders and ideologists, who deliberately spread anti-communism, and the masses of Social-Democrats, to whom the ideology and policy of anti-communism is organically alien and who accept some anti-communist myths mostly under the influence of propaganda.

p The anti-communist views of the Right theorists and leaders of reformist Social-Democracy took shape as a logical effect of their actual switch to the defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie on the main aspects of present-day social development. These views also resulted from their negative attitude to the Great October Socialist Revolution, a turning point in world history and the start of a new historical epoch, the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism. These views were given their final shape when the ideologists of reformism openly broke with Marxist-Leninist theory and when the Right reformist leaders began to pursue a policy of collaborating with the reactionary forces.

p In content, the anti-communist ideology of Social- 314 Democracy is close to the anti-communism of the imperialist ideologists. Whereas the main content of the latter is slander on the socialist system, and falsification of the policies and purposes of the Communist Parties and the theory of Marxism-Leninism, the reformist brand of anti-communism also contains, even if in a curious form, slander on the practice of socialism and the communist movement, and distortions of Marxist-Leninist theory. It is widely known that anticommunist minded Right Socialist leaders collaborate with the Right-wing bourgeois political leaders in foreign and domestic policy. Right Social-Democrats take an active part in setting up a united international anti-communist front. Thus, for instance, they take part in the activity of an international committee for information and social action, an anti-communist outfit engaged in the collection of provocative material, mounting of subversive activity from inside the socialist parties and the socialist countries, spying among the workers, etc. However, it would be wrong to say that the anti-communist ideology of Social-Democratic reformism and the anti-communism of the imperialist politicians and ideologists were identical, and to fail to see their distinctions. Anti-communism is a complex and many-faceted phenomenon. To ignore the specific features of its various brands would not only run counter to the Marxist-Leninist principles of the concrete analysis of the social phenomena but could do damage in practice, because lack of the differentiated approach in the struggle against anti-communism could weaken its effectiveness.

p The specific features of reformist anti-communism arise mainly from the fact that the Right Social-Democrats try not to present their anti-communism under patently imperialist slogans. Their anti-communist ideas are camouflaged as socialist ones, to facilitate their penetration into the minds of masses of people.

p The “democratic socialism” concept is the most important piece of camouflage, for it is presented as a “pluralistic society”, which synthesises, according to the bourgeois advocates of convergence, the “best” that is in capitalism and in socialism. The Right Socialist theorists say that this society must retain private capitalist property, competition and even monopolies, provided that they do not “threaten” freedom and justice, bourgeois political parties, etc., while social property and the Communist Party are either excluded 315 altogether or pushed into the background. This concept is anti-communist for all practical purposes, but up until recently the Right Social-Democrats had been more or less successful in playing up “democratic” catchwords and the “third way” slogan in covering up the true meaning of “democratic socialism” and to smuggle this “ democratic” variant of anti-communism into the working-class ideology.

p Anthropological camouflage, which falsifies the MarxistLeninist interpretation of the individual and man’s condition under socialism, has a growing part to play in the ideology of Social-Democratic anti-communism. The Right Socialist theorists have tried to present Marxism-Leninism as being a Utopian doctrine of a “dictatorship of inhumanity” which ignores the “anthropological” factor, the “greatest force behind historical development”. Quite naturally, they present themselves and their own theory as championing and expressing the true “human” substance.  [315•1 

p The Social-Democratic and Socialist parties, which are members of the Socialist International, have mostly arrived at reformism by abandoning Marxism-Leninism, but they continue to use it for anti-communist purposes. A typical instance is the artificial contrast between Marxism and Leninism, and the “criticism” of communist practices on the strength of the “authority” of Marx. These attempts have been more frequent in connection with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet State, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx and the centenary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. Neue Gesellschaft, theoretical organ of the SocialDemocratic Party of Germany, carried an article urging a ”more serious study of Marxism so as the better to use it against—communism.”  [315•2  The curious thing is that in their efforts the Social-Democratic ideologists have tried to spread the ideas of Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, Leon Trotsky and similar other men, whose views they present as being the “true Marxism”. When using the contrast between Leninism and communist practices, on the one hand, and “non- communist Marxism”, on the other, to promote their anti- communist purposes, the Social-Democratic ideologists also bank on the fact that rank-and-file Social-Democrats and broad 316 masses of workers are to some extent under the influence of anti-communist propaganda, and have a poor knowledge of Marxism and the history of the working-class movement.

p Another characteristic feature of the ideology of reformist anti-communism is its skill in adapting itself to the situation. Social-Democratic anti-communists seek to use every turn and new element in the life of capitalist society, on the one hand, and in the world communist movement and the world socialist system, on the other, to promote their anti- communist ends. They speculate on the difficulties within the international communist movement, displaying an efficiency that deserves better application. An example is the Right Social-Democrats’ response to the 1968 events in Czechoslovakia, when five socialist states, in fulfilment of their internationalist duty, took resolute steps to prevent the triumph of what is known as creeping counter-revolution, which incidentally operates under the slogans of “democratic socialism”. The Bureau of the Socialist International sent the United Nations a resolution “condemning” this internationalist act and mounted a campaign of anti-communist hyste- ria.  [316•1  The Right Social-Democrats played up nationalism and revisionism, whose advocates they claimed to be “ revolutionaries” seeking to “complete the incomplete revolution in the communist countries” in accordance with the ideas of Karl Marx.  [316•2 

p The imperialist ideologists are fully aware of the essence and tenor of anti-communist reformism, and have recently been advocating that ruling circles of their countries should make greater use of “social democratic ideas” in order to “erode socialism from inside”. Such proposals were put forward in the summer of 1968 by prominent anti-communists like the Director of the Institute for Communist Affairs at Columbia University, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the West German professor Klaus Mehnert, a one-time member of the nazi Abwehr.

p The repudiation of Marxism by Right-wing leaders and theorists of Social-Democracy has gone hand in hand with their falsification of Marxist-Leninist theory, a line of reformist anti-communism which has, in content, run in the main stream of bourgeois falsification of Marxism. The reformist 317 theorists have been most assiduous in rehearsing such widely advertised bourgeois propaganda ideas as that Marxism is “outdated”, having allegedly been refuted by the presentday development of capitalism, as the denial that Marxism is scientific, and in their efforts, undoubtedly constituting the main line in the reformist falsification of Marxism, to excommunicate Lenin and his followers from Marxism and to contrast Leninism and Marxism.

p Let us bear in mind that the bourgeois falsifiers of Marxism spearhead their fight against Marxist-Leninist theory, accentuating their fight against Leninism and on the claim that Lenin had allegedly switched to voluntarist attitude when he abandoned the “economic determinism” of Karl Marx (see Chapter Four of this book). Many bourgeois anti-communist experts have also suggested that Lenin “departed” from Marxism when he discarded its democratic traditions.

p The theorists of reformism joining in this loud chorus of falsifications spouted by bourgeois ideologists, also claim that there are two concepts of Marxism, one of which, according to Julius Braunthal, is “the version which the Communists call Marxism-Leninism”,  [317•1  and which they resolutely condemn, and the other, Marxism proper, which is also discarded as having outlived itself in historical terms.

p In his report at a meeting in Trier to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx in May 1968, Braunthal contrasted Marxism-Leninism and the “non-communist Marxism of Plekhanov, Martov, Kautsky and Otto Bauer” and especially brought out the differences on the question of the Party’s structure and its functions, the problem of dictatorship and democracy, and the various views of revolution.

p The falsification of Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution by the ideologists of Right Socialist reformism links up with the stand taken on this question by the bourgeois ideologists. Braunthal declares: “Leninism can therefore be characterised as the theory of social revolution for pre-capitalist socie- ties.”  [317•2  George Sabine claims: “Leninism can therefore best be defined as an adaptation of Marxism to non- industrialised economies and to societies with a prevailingly peasant 318 population.”  [318•1  Let us note that this version, which is common to the reformists and the bourgeois theorists, is, on the one hand, an attempt to deny the great international importance of Leninism and, on the other, an attempt to claim that the advanced capitalist countries are beyond the threat of socialist revolution. This version is characteristically close to the Leftist views propounded by spokesmen of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, who say that in the present-day conditions the international working class can no longer play its revolutionary role, and that only the peasants are a revolutionary class. These views have nothing in common with Leninism. Lenin put a high value on the role and prospects of the peoples’ national liberation struggle, and never contrasted it with the struggle of the working class and the international working-class movement. The pledge of further successes of socialism lies only in strengthening the alliance and interaction of all the main streams of the world revolutionary process: the world socialist system, the working-class movement in the capitalist countries and the national liberation struggle of the peoples.

p The anti-communist propaganda of the Right Social- Democrats is geared mainly to falsifying the substance of socialism as a social system, for they are very well aware of the tremendous revolutionary impact the practice of socialist construction is having on the development of the working-class movement throughout the world. That is why they have been trying so hard to denigrate the socialist countries, to erode the importance of socialism in the minds of masses of men and to spread the illusion that the capitalist system is sound and has the future before it.

p Let us note that all the anti-communist distortions ’of socialism, as a social system, by the Right SocialDemocrats appear to constitute a logically coherent system of views.

p The Right Social-Democrats start by distorting the content of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the democratic people’s revolutions in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. They claim that these countries, Russia specifically, were either at a pre-capitalist stage of development or in the initial phase of capitalism and for that reason did not have 319 the material conditions which Marx had seen as necessary for the triumph of socialism.  [319•1  As a result in place of the expected socialist system of society what was established in these countries was a “state capitalism” with new class antagonistic distinctions and a “totalitarian” order requiring “humanisation”.  [319•2 

p Such views will be found in any official document of the Socialist International (notably, its 1951 Frankfort Declaration and the Declaration of the Council of the Socialist International, The World Today: The Socialist Perspective (1962), in the “new” programmes of the Socialist Party of Austria (1958), the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (1959), the French Socialist Party (1962) and others, and the writings of Right Socialist theorists like Fritz Sternberg, John Strachey, Willi Eichler and C. A. R. Crosland, Carlo Schmid and Fritz Klenner, Christian Broda, Norbert Leser, and many others). At first sight their views appear to differ from the views of socialism and capitalism taken by the imperialist ideologists themselves, most of whom say that the antagonistic systems are either the “free” (Western) world confronting to totalitarianism, or as species of the “one industrial society” moving closer to each other. By contrast, the Right Socialist theorists set up an antithesis between real socialism and capitalism, on the one hand, and “democratic socialism”, on the other. However, there is no profound distinction between these views because both seek to deny the fundamental superiority of socialism over capitalism, and to safeguard the foundations of capitalism.

p The Right Socialist myths and inventions about socialism are based on diverse methods of distorting actual events and processes going forward in the socialist countries, with downright lies and slander ranking high among these methods. An example is provided by Braunthal’s report, “Marx and the Present” at a symposium arranged by UNESCO’s German Commission at Trier on May 5, 1968. He restated the view that socio-economic relations in Russia on the eve of the October Revolution were non-capitalist, and claimed that Lenin “saw clearly that in Russia the material 320 conditions necessary for a transition to socialism had not yet de- veloped”.  [320•1 

p His assertions are refuted by a careful reading of Lenin’s works on the eve of the October Revolution and an analysis of the specific features of capitalism in Russia. Firmly rebutting the statements which appeared in the bourgeois, SR and Menshevik press, declaring, like present-day anti- communists, that it was “too early to introduce” socialism in Russia, Lenin wrote in his The Immediate Catastrophe and How to Combat It: “That capitalism in Russia has also become monopoly capitalism is sufficiently attested by the examples of the Produgol, the Prodamet, the Sugar Syndicate, etc. This Sugar Syndicate is an object-lesson in the way monopoly capitalism develops into state-monopoly capitalism.”  [320•2  It is true that in many of his articles, notably, “Political Notes” written in February 1908, Lenin said that the main feature of socio-economic relations in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was a combination of the most advanced industrial and finance capitalism with the most backward land tenure, and the wildest rural conditions. There is no doubt that at the turn of the century, Russia was relatively backward in economic terms, as compared with countries like Britain, Germany and the USA, whose capitalist development had begun much earlier. But this backwardness was in no sense an insuperable obstacle on the country’s way to socialism even if, as experience showed, it did have a definite effect on the pace and forms of Russia’s transition to socialism. But the fact that until the October Revolution Russia remained a predominantly agrarian country did not prevent the formation, in the first 15 years of the 20th century, of capitalist monopolies controlling key industries, above all heavy industry connected with the banks. Russia already had highly industrialised areas. The concentration of workers at the large enterprises led to a high level of organisation among them. Moreover, it is a wellknown fact that the strength of the proletariat in any capitalist country is much greater than its share of the population.

p Criticising Bukharin, who believed that the collapse of the world capitalist system would start with the weakest 321 national-economic systems, with the less developed state capitalist organisations, Lenin wrote: “This is wrong: it will start with the ’middle-weak’. We should never have succeeded without an appreciably high level of capitalism.”  [321•1  Before the revolution, Russia was a veritable centre of social and national oppression. It was turned into a central ganglion of contradictions of the world imperialist system, and its weakest link, by the fierce exploitation of the workers, the peasants’ land hunger and poverty, the people’s political rightlessness, the oppressed conditions of the national minorities, the feudal, serf and patriarchal survivals and the country’s dependence on international capital.

p The unjustified denial that the material conditions for socialist revolution had in fact been present in Russia appeared to give the Right-wing Socialist theorists something like the ideological possibility to go on denying that the Soviet economy was socialist as well, thereby producing the story that the system in the Soviet Union was “state capitalism”.

p Thus, the Address of the Chairman of the Socialist International, Bruno Pittermann, to the 23rd ordinary Congress of the Swedish Social-Democratic Party in June 1968, recommends that capitalist society should be reformed in the spirit of the “third way”, and censures those who advocate an unlimited policy of force, as well as those who “want to replace capitalist society by a dictatorship of state capital- ism”.  [321•2 

p The assertion that the system in the socialist countries is “state capitalism” is based on a purely outward similarity of phenomena and processes, specifically state forms of property under capitalism, on the one hand, and under socialism, on the other. An unbiased view of the situation shows that state property under socialism, far from being identical, is in fact fundamentally opposite in nature to state property under capitalism, but this purely outward similarity has not prevented the Right Social-Democrats from drawing their false conclusion that the etatisation of the means of production is in itself socially neutral, which means that there is no imperative necessity to establish a socialist system or to 322 demand a revolutionary change of the economic and political relations prevailing under capitalism.

p This distortion of the essence of the economic foundations of socialism by the Right Social-Democrats is combined with inventions about “new class distinctions” in the socialist countries. In an effort to discredit social property in the means of production, they claim that far from being able to ensure the establishment of a class-free society it does in fact, under certain conditions, help to bring about a “new social differentiation”, new antagonistic social groups, between whom there is a struggle which is “just as sharp as it is in the world of classic capitalism”.  [322•1  The Right Social-Democrats make an absolute of the fact that under capitalism property distinctions in the main coincide with the fundamental antagonistic class distinctions, and this is artificially applied to the state of affairs in socialist society, where class distinctions are vestigial and not fundamental.

p Of course, under socialism there are distinctions between income groups of working people and individuals, but these are inevitable distinctions so long as there remained distinctions between skilled and unskilled, and mental and manual labour. But these are distinctions which have nothing in common with class antagonisms. Under capitalism, the great gap between the income of the workers and the bourgeois springs from the qualitative distinctions between the exploited and the exploiter, expressing their fundamentally different relations to the means of production, but under socialism there is nothing of the kind. Socialism put an end to the division of men into those who have and those who have no means of production in their possession, thereby taking the most decisive step towards overcoming any social inequality. Exceptional importance also attaches to the further tendencies in the development of socialism in this respect. Socialism, the first phase of communist society, cannot reject the principle of distribution of material values by labour, the principle of differentiated remuneration for labour, the principle of personal material incentives for the working people. But there is an alignment in the levels of incomes in the advance towards communism, as the productive forces develop, the cultural and technical level of the working people is raised, and the productivity of labour is increased. 323 Moreover, the development of various forms of social satisfaction of the working people’s requirements narrows down the distinctions in the material security of various families. The same purpose is served by the steady improvement in the system of wages, as a result of which, for instance, several tens of millions of industrial and office workers in the Soviet Union have received wage rises in the last few years.

p The vestigial inequality under socialism is being evened out through a boosting of the welfare of the whole people, for as Marx had predicted in his day, “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”  [323•1  Only “in a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  [323•2 

p The arguments of the Right Social-Democrats about class antagonisms allegedly arising under socialism because of different incomes and status within the system of “ administrative power over the means of production” are based on the unscientific administrative and organisational theories of classes, and a distortion of the actual relations under socialism between the working people in the sphere of material production and those who direct and manage social production, that is, workers of the state apparatus.

p Very frequently, the Right Socialist theorists distort the nature of the socialist system in the USSR and other socialist countries along lines which are typical of bourgeois, imperialist propaganda, which claims that their system is “ totalitarian”.

p The Right Social-Democrats link up their myth of the “totalitarian” nature of the social system under socialism with its criticism in the light of “freedom”, “democracy” and “humanism”, a line in which it is virtually impossible to distinguish between Social-Democratic and imperialist anti-communism, because their conceptions are so close to each other. The Right Socialist advocacy of such positive concepts as “freedom”, “democracy”, “humanism”, and so on, becomes grossly anti-communist because of their unscientific and abstract approach to these concepts.

p The anti-communist views of the Right Social-Democratic leaders and theorists were most pronounced in the attitude taken by the leaders of the Socialist International to the 1968 events in Czechoslovakia and the tactics of the antisocialist forces in the country.

p One of the key ideological lines along which the activity of the anti-socialist reactionary forces in Czechoslovakia developed was propaganda of democratic socialism in a specific, Czechoslovakian “model” which was advertised as a most important “historical experiment”, and as something to be imitated. In their efforts to poison the minds of the working people with ideas of “pure democracy” and “ absolute freedom”, the anti-socialist forces strove to prove that socialist democracy was allegedly not genuine democracy.

p All the main arguments trotted out by the anti-socialist propagandists in Czechoslovakia revealed a close connection with Right Social-Democratic concepts. Thus, writing in the newspaper Prace, L. Sochor in his article entitled “Marx and the Present”, contrasted the “proletarian dictatorship” concept and the “democracy” concept, claiming that the proletarian dictatorship was an organisation of state power which was alien and hostile to democracy.

p In an article entitled “Proletarians, Unite”, which appeared in Literarni Listy, Zdenek Pochop said that the proletarian dictatorship had given the workers nothing.  [324•1  An article by V. Pysk in Lidova Democratic proposed that the “ outdated” Marxist definition of socialism should be supplanted by the concept of “pluralistic socialism”,  [324•2  in accordance with which there was a thoroughly prepared plan for restoring the parliamentary system under which the bourgeois parties 325 would be enabled to oust the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from government.

p One of the ideologists of the anti-socialist forces, the philosopher Ivan Svitak, who at one time worked at the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences (and is now a member of the Institute of Communist Affairs at Columbia University in the USA, of which the director is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a well-known anti-communist ideologist) wrote in the magazine Student: “Our Social-Democratic movement has almost a century of traditions behind it. ... The present-day SocialDemocrats are truly overjoyed at the prospect of democratic socialism as a real possibility of the Czechoslovakian experiment and its contribution to the world socialist movement.”  [325•1 

p The Social-Democratic Party was declared to be the only force which could, by tradition and make-up, guarantee both democracy and socialism. Jan Siska, a member of the Czechoslovakian Social-Democratic Party, stressed that a situation had allegedly arisen in Czechoslovakia in which the Communists could be removed from power. He said that the Social-Democratic Party was just the right party to “inflict on the Communists the coup de grace” with the support of its “international leadership”.  [325•2  Svitak wrote in Student: “The Social-Democrats are not alone in the world. . . . They have many friends in Europe and elsewhere.”  [325•3 

p Bruno Kreisky, Chairman of the Socialist Party of Austria, and a former owner of a sausage factory in Czechoslovakia, used all the means at his disposal to exert an influence on the events in Czechoslovakia. His party worked actively to revive the Social-Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia.

p Klaus Mehnert declared on West German television: “If Czechoslovakia and the other East European countries move towards Social-Democracy, there is no doubt that we shall find it much easier to talk to a Social-Democratic even if nominally perhaps still communist Czechoslovakia. Moreover, there is need increasingly to isolate East Berlin.”  [325•4 

p The ideologists of reformism have been spreading the ideals of political “pluralism” on the pages of their theoretical periodicals and, as the anti-socialist forces in 326 Czechoslovakia became more active, gave the latter vigorous support.

p A characteristic instance of the spread of ideas of political “pluralism” by the Right Socialist ideologists is the article by the ideologist of reformism, Karl Czernetz, entitled Pluralism, Democracy and Socialism,  [326•1  which was published in March 1967 by Die Zukunft, the theoretical organ of the Socialist Party of Austria, and reprinted in January 1968 by Socialist International Information. Claiming to follow the traditional reformist “third way” line, Czernetz elaborates on the idea of the “autonomy of groups” and “diffusion of power”. Vilem Bernard, Secretary of the Socialist Alliance for Central and Eastern Europe, shortly observed in the same periodical that a substantial turning point had been reached in Czechoslovakia opening up a new era of “ enlightened socialism”, that it was now allowed for groups with different interests to exist and to “defend the right to voice different views”, so that important spheres of national life were being released from Party interference (he also stressed that this applied in particular to the mass media and the judiciary). He also drew the conclusion that “the pattern of society emerging from the sweeping changes and exciting debates of the past weeks increasingly conforms to Social Democratic principles and ideas”.  [326•2 

p An even broader picture of connections between the reformist leaders and the anti-socialist forces in Czechoslovakia was revealed in the so-called “Austro-Czechoslovak Television Dialogue”, the text of which was published in Socialist International Information.

p “Czernetz, Karl—You in Czechoslovakia have only one leading political party; if that party could be democratised so as to make possible the expression of all shades of political opinion within it and allow the formation of organised groups, then surely there would emerge a free and democratic system of society. Whatever name you would care to call such organised groups—they would be political parties. . . . The decisive factor is freedom to express opinions and freedom to form groups.

p “Goldstucker, Eduard—What the party must do is to 327 achieve a transition from a revolutionary dictatorship to a democratic socialist regime ... our system did not meet the demands of our time. . ..

p “Huebl, Milan—We expect the non-Communist parties to reactivate their work and hope that they will turn into something other than just nominal partners in our society.”  [327•1 

p The anti-socialist attacks on the unity of the party ranks in Czechoslovakia expressed the urge to establish in the Rules of the Communist Party “right of minority and group views”, that is, the right to attack the Party decisions or the fundamental Leninist principles underlying the Party’s organisation. The revisionist elements were preparing a plan to create an atmosphere in the Communist Party that would help to turn it into an organisation with legalised factions, a loose, helpless and incompetent organisation, a sort of debating society. At the same time, the non-communist parties were in fact carrying things to the point at which a legal political opposition would appear in the country. By splitting the ranks of the working class and giving the most active support to the reactionaries in their fight against the Communists, the Right-wing leadership of the Czechoslovakian Social-Democratic Party served as a reliable support of all those who hoped for a restoration of the bourgeois system in Czechoslovakia.

p These processes were reflected and directly supported by the Right Socialist press in the capitalist countries.

p The turning point of the developments in Czechoslovakia, according to Gustav Husak, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, was marked by the April and May 1969 Plenary Meetings of the CPCz’s Central Committee. “The majority of our Party and the working people of Czechoslovakia support the new leadership of our Party, and its political line.”  [327•2 

p Anti-communism is alien not only to the working class as a whole, but also leads the Social-Democratic movement itself to ideological and political bankruptcy. It was anticommunism that led the Social-Democrats finally to abandon Marxism and scientific socialism, which they had used to cover up their betrayal of the basic interests of the working class up until the Second World War. Today, anti- 328 communism has doomed the Social-Democratic movement to virtually complete subordination to state-monopoly capitalism.

p The economic, political, scientific, technical and similar other successes scored by the Soviet Union and the socialist camp as a whole have demonstrated the advantages of the socialist system, the socialist way of life, and have blasted all manner of inventions and stories spread by the anti- communists about socialism and the condition of man under it. The growing economic instability, the spread of anti- democratic tendencies and aggressive action within imperialism itself are also having an eroding effect on the illusions about the “free world” and the “welfare state”, refuting any apologies of the capitalist system. The theoretical and practical activity of the Communist Parties in the advanced capitalist countries also help to expose these theories and illusions. The creative elaboration of Marxism-Leninism in application to present-day social conditions, and the explanation of the relationship between socialism and democracy, the possibilities of peaceful transition to socialism, the multiparty form of the proletarian dictatorship, etc., knock down the Right Socialist leaders’ assertion that the Communists are hostile to democracy, and undermine their positions in opposing working-class unity. Joint participation by rankand-file Social-Democrats and Communists in practical struggle against the monopolies, and for better conditions for the working people also helps to bring them closer together in practice.

p The facts of the last few years show that the masses of the working people have been voicing with increasing frequency their dissatisfaction over the anti-communist, splitting orientation of the reformist parties and trade union centres, over their inadequate activity fighting the monopolies and the aggressive imperialist circles. It is not surprising therefore that there is growing polarisation of forces within the socialist parties, the emergence of Left-wing trends, and growing class awareness that class interests are irreconcilable and that there is need for fundamental social change.

“In the new situation, the need for working-class unity has become even more urgent. Facts and the experience gained by the working class in the course of their struggles, and the sharp criticism of opportunist views by the Communist Parties—which remains a constant task—deepen the crisis of reformist concepts. A differentiation is taking place 329 in the ranks of Social-Democracy, and this is also reflected in the leadership. Some of the leaders came out in defence of monopoly capital and imperialism. Others are more inclined to reckon with the demands of the working masses in the economic and social fields, and in the questions of the struggle for peace and progress ... it is, of course, necessary for the Socialist parties and other political organisations favouring socialism resolutely to break with the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie and to pursue a policy of effective struggle for peace, democracy and socialism.”  [329•1