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p To say nothing of the fact that propaganda aimed at discrediting communist ideals and the practice of socialism is losing its effectiveness as socialism and the communist movement grow stronger and free themselves of all that had prevented them at the early stages of their 145 existence from showing all their power of attraction, the negative approach to the ideological struggle cannot in principle win the broad masses to capitalism.

p Writing that in the ideological struggle "the United States ... are on the defensive”,  [145•*  Murray Dyer, the American foreign policy propaganda expert we have already mentioned, notes that "we have wasted our time arguing with Russia, attempting to deny the premises for her ideas, seeking to preserve a status quo”. The world is changing rapidly and therefore the "critical question is not the preservation of outmoded social forms, but the evolution of new forms".  [145•** 

p But that is just what anti-communism is unable to do. More, by concentrating their propaganda attacks on an ideology that is offering mankind a positive solution of its basic problems and by their inability to suggest an acceptable alternative to this ideology, the imperialists are in the long run alienating the masses, who want constructive changes. The peoples legitimately assess this position as conservatism, as a defence of outmoded practices to which they no longer desire to reconcile themselves.

p A book entitled Around the Edge of War was brought out in the USA in 1961 under a pen-name—John F. Amory, who, the publishers say, "is a strategically placed Washington expert".  [145•***  From the contents it becomes clear why the author uses a pen-name: the book is an indictment of US foreign policy and propaganda. The author writes that the basic shortcoming of this propaganda is that it "offers no solutions except a glorified status quo".  [145•****  The US information agencies, the author says, are engaged solely in grinding out propaganda for big business, while US foreignpolicies"protect immediate American overseas interests".  [145•***** 

p While laying bare the imperialist substance of Western policies, anti-communist propaganda is beginning to yield smaller dividends for a number of other reasons. First and foremost, it has not succeeded in shifting to communism 146 the blame for the difficulties and hardships that a^e falling to the lot of the peoples.. Amory ridicules the attempts of US propaganda to make a scapegoat out of the Coinmunists. Similar ridicule comes from other quarters. The American poet Archibald MacLeish, who headed one of the first US Government propaganda agencies (Office of Facts and Figures), fully subscribes to this view, saying that attempts to blame the Soviet Union and the Communists for all misfortunes are unconvincing even to adversaries of communism. "It is not communism...,” MacLeish writes, "which has begotten the new nations of Asia and Africa or the new nationalistic stirrings in South America and the Caribbean and even in Europe."  [146•* 

p Another typical example is the following pronouncement by W. W. Kulsky, an American foreign policy expert. He says that "the problems of our epoch would have existed without communism or the communist bloc. The nuclear revolution in military technology was due to science, not to communist ideology. As a matter of fact, the first and only use of nuclear weapons cannot be blamed on a communist power. The national awakening of the non-European countries began before the October Revolution.... The crisis of the colonial system and the movement for the modernisation of retarded societies would have occurred, quite independent of communism and the communist movement".  [146•** 

p The keynote of these admissions is that in a situation witnessing the rapid growth of popular influence on politics directed towards solving problems affecting the vital interests of the people, an ideological campaign that fails to answer these problems and is essentially negative is doomed to failure. It is unable to resolve even the negative task of undermining trust for the ideology and aims of communism. In this respect there have been in recent years radical changes in the ideology and psychology of the world. In spite of all its efforts imperialist propaganda is unable to turn communism into a bugbear that would frighten 147 the peoples. This is being admitted with growing anxiety by bourgeois leaders as well.

p Extremely symptomatic in this light is a book entitled An Approach to Peace by Professor H. Stuart Hughes of Harvard University, who takes an uncompromising stand against anti-communism on the contention that it is growing increasingly hollow and fruitless. Communism, he writes, is "a positive force of social and economic reconstruction with a profound appeal to more than half the population of the world”. That is why, despite all the exertions of Western propaganda, "communism seems likely to remain a permanent (and growing) feature of the ideological landscape".  [147•* 

p It may safely be said that as early as at the close of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s it became obvious to a considerable number of imperialist politicians and ideologists that in its former shape, as a policy and propaganda intensely hostile to socialist and communist ideals, anti-communism had become ineffective. More, some of them realised that it could damage imperialism itself while helping to rally its adversaries.

p In 1967 the influential American journal Commentary organised an opinion poll among prominent American liberals who in the 1940s and 1950s had made a large contribution towards fostering anti-communism. The journal put its question bluntly: To what extent was the anticommunism of the “Lefts” responsible for the war in Vietnam and what the attitude of those questioned was to their anti-communist stand in the past? The questionnaire was answered by 21 people. With few exceptions they dissociated themselves from traditional anti-communism in the sense that it was running counter to US national interests, as they understood them today, and could have disastrous consequences in the age of missile-nuclear weapons. In short, they believed that anti-communism could not serve as the basis of national foreign policy.

p Lewis A. Coser, editor of the journal Dissent, writes: "Hoisted by its own ideological petard, American foreign policy is now committed to a global anti-communist stance.... It has led to alignment of America on the side 148 of some of the most reactionary and illiberal regimes. Anticommunism has become the last refuge of all the scoundrels of the world in their effort to get backing from America.... The official anti-communism of our governmental and military establishment ... is a profoundly regressive ideology which American intellectuals need to oppose in a principled and decided manner if they wish to play a political role on the American scene.” Richard H. Rovere, a well-known political commentator and the Washington correspondent of The New Yorker, notes: "...more important, I think, and especially among liberals, is a realisation of the awful inadequacy of anti-communism as a foundation for a global policy.” Arthur Schlesinger (believing as he does that a liberal cannot help being an anti-communist) declares that it is high time to put an end to doctrinaire debates and take up other problems, namely, "the problems of the control of nuclear weapons, of the modernisation of the underdeveloped world and of the humanisation of industrial society".  [148•* 

p In all this one can see the result of imperialism’s countless setbacks in the global struggle for people’s minds. These setbacks did not, of course, come of themselves. They are due not simply to the "propaganda skill" of the Communists but to the superiority of their ideology and to the superiority of the social system, which has been proved not only in theory but also in practice. They are due to the dedicated labour of the peoples of the socialist countries and to the correct policy and selfless struggle of the Marxist-Leninist parties, who form the vanguard of the working people. They are due to the extensive work that has been accomplished throughout the recent period by the communist movement to surmount bigotry, dogmatism and subjectivism, to sweep away all the stumbling-blocks to the successful development of the new social system and show its advantages in all spheres of life. They are due to the work charted by the 20th-24th congresses of the CPSU, and by the latest International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties, and to the creative efforts of all the adherents and champions of Marxism-Leninism.

p All this could not fail to yield results. Despite the increased activity of the anti-communist forces there has been 149 a marked change in the mood of world public opinion, in its attitude to communism.

p Anti-communist propaganda has also mirrored this in its own way, in its main trend and character.

p The changes that have taken place in this sphere are not absolute, of course. In the anti-communist chorus they are singing in different keys. This is seen, above all, in the fact that there are “soloists”, who, in spite of everything, doggedly sing the old, plaintive refrain. But if one listens closely to this many-voiced anti-communist chorus one will easily pick out new tunes. The criticism of socialism and of communist ideals no longer concentrates solely on refuting them but is increasingly looking for “deviations” from these ideals in the practice of socialist construction and in the communist movement, for past or present errors or inconsistencies in the policies of individual Communist parties and socialist countries. Paradoxical as it may seem, but it is a fact that anti-communist propaganda is sometimes conducted as though its organisers were criticising communism not so much for being communism as for being insufficiently “communist”, for not fully realising its ideals and aims.

p It is urged that propaganda should concentrate on criticising not communism as such but its "vulnerable spots”. This is urged in the works of an increasing number of anticommunist theorists and even of those who belong to the wing of the most diehard and uncompromising enemies of socialism and of communist ideals.

p Very typical in this light is how this question is put in The New Frontier of War by William K. Kintner and Joseph Z. Kornfeder. They strongly recommend stressing " unfulfilled" revolutionary promises, saying that the "Communists of yesterday can be used against the communism of today".  [149•* 

Hence their advocacy of an emphasis on the negative. They recommend shelving until better times the attempts to convert the peoples of the socialist countries to the capitalist faith,  [149•**  concentrating on stirring discontent and accentuating individual shortcomings, "unfulfilled promises" and “inconsistencies” between various aspects of life and Marxist theory.

150

p The authors of A Forward Strategy for America, StrauszHupe, Possony and the above-mentioned Kintner insist that one of the points Western foreign political propaganda should stress is that "the Western world is not ’capitalist’ nor is the communist bloc ‘socialist’~".  [150•*  The propaganda keynote offered by them is that "communism is not an economic system but a political weapon ...for seizing and consolidating political power".  [150•** 

p Hence the concrete plans for foreign political propaganda calling for manipulation with themes such as inner-party democracy, the strengthening of legality in socialist countries, the extension of trade union rights, and so forth.  [150•***  In other words, the matter concerns a series of programme propositions put forward by the Marxist-Leninist parties of the socialist countries and envisaging not only the eradication of some past mistakes and shortcomings, but also the natural development of important tenets of socialism calling for the strengthening of that system and the gradual transition to communism.

p These then are the processes to which imperialist propaganda is trying to “adjust” itself in order to make political capital! This is not only duplicity but a reflection of its crisis caused by the fact that traditional anti-communism has entered a blind alley and is turning into a boomerang hitting those who are trying to use it as a weapon.

In itself the anti-communism of the modern bourgeoisie is evidence of the degradation of bourgeois ideology,  [150•****  a weapon which imperialism had hoped would extricate it from its profound ideological crisis. But as was to be expected, the position of the bourgeoisie in the war of ideas is growing increasingly more precarious.

151

p Professor Bernard Lavergne, the French economist and sociologist, justifiably writes: “~‘0 liberty, liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!’ runs a famous saying. ’0 anti-communism, what absurdities are perpetrated in your name!’ is what we ought to say today. Because in that state of frightful intellectual decline, which on the political level remains the principal characteristic of the past quarter of a century, the Western countries are continuously having to resort to measures that most of all foster their downfall."  [151•* 

p The increasingly lucid evidence of anti-communism’s doom, of its crisis and spiritual emptiness is regarded by Marxists-Leninists as the natural outcome of the development of modern political relations. But they also appreciate the fact that victory over anti-communism is not something inevitable that does not depend on their own actions, something presented to communism by the very course of events. Incorrect policy and departures from MarxistLeninist principles can seriously hinder this victory, help anti-communism and put off the total defeat of that archreactionary policy and ideology.

p The experience of recent years has yielded much convincing evidence on this score. An example is what happened in Czechoslovakia. The activation of anti-socialist forces in that country in 1968 as a result of the errors made by the former leadership of the party and the government was widely used by the imperialists in an effort to discredit socialism and prove that that system was incompatible with the interests of the masses and was encountering resistance from the people.

p Imperialist propaganda and policy are making similarly energetic use of the activities of the leaders of the Communist Party of China, using their errors and distortions to vilify the socialist social system and the ideals of communism.

p Anti-communism’s setbacks, which since the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s were apparent to many Western observers, have by no means induced the imperialist bourgeoisie to renounce this weapon of its policy and propaganda. But it has been forced, as is in fact the case, to modify the strategy and tactics of 152 anti-communism. This finds expression in the increasing employment of the methods and subterfuges we have already mentioned. Moreover, it finds expression in a subtle ideological campaign designed to provoke the notorious “erosion”, i.e., the gradual weathering and emasculation of communist ideals, the infiltration of bourgeois ideology into socialist countries and intensified efforts to utilise the divergences in the socialist community and the communist movement and also manifestations of nationalism and of “Left” and Right opportunism in the policies and ideology of some Communist and Workers’ parties.

p That is what makes the present-day efforts to cement the unity of the communist movement on the principled foundation of Marxism-Leninism and surmount Right and “Left” opportunism and nationalistic deviations a major factor of the struggle against imperialist ideology and anticommunism and one of the prerequisites of final and complete victory in this struggle.

There is not the least doubt that in the long run the Marxist-Leninist parties will successfully carry out this task as well.