p The fact is that the myth about communism destroying the foundations of social life was being spread about in the 19th century in this form: the claim was that social property clashed with human nature itself, damping man’s initiative and enterprise, while private property accorded with human nature. Towards the end of the century these views were propounded by Herbert Spencer, the leader of bourgeois sociology. Indeed, this untenable idea is virtually the only one used by all the bourgeois economists, philosophers, sociologists and lawyers in their efforts to refute communism to this very day.
p Thus, the Catholic philosopher J. M. Bochenski said that since Plato’s time Western culture tended to consider the “individual” in contrast to 329 the “abstract” concepts of the collective, mankind, etc. [329•2 However, the very concept of the “individual” as opposed to the collective took shape precisely during the centuries of private-property domination.
p Lenin showed that far from damping emulation and bold and creative initiative, socialism in effect allows masses of people to display these attitudes for the first time in history on a truly massive scale. Life has borne out Lenin’s idea, but the propagandists of reaction still refuse to abandon the old myth, which is designed to discredit the future society. They have been spreading it through their periodicals, radio, television, books and pamphlets, as the basis for their stories about the “free world”, the self-styled image of capitalism today.
p Since the mid-19th century, the reactionary bourgeoisie has relied not so much on ideological struggle against communism as on force and police reprisals against the Communists and the working-class parties. The slanderous inventions about communism clashing with human nature naturally helped the police, but there was need of a more direct ideological sanction. After all, if communist ideas were contrary to “human nature”, why did they not die out, but continued to spread across the world? The myth about exported revolution was brought to the fore during the Paris Commune, and fitted nicely with the sociological and philosophical conceptions of the reactionaries, who denied any uniformities in historical development, and set up subjectivism and voluntarism as the basis of the social process. They claimed that the revolution had no internal causes, that it did not result from internal development but was an “evil” imported from outside. Bourgeois theorists claimed that revolutions resulted from arbitrary action, so that force had to be used to end revolutionary movements.
p This produced a very convenient ideological pretext for putting down the vanguard of the working class, the best part of the nation. Those who accepted communist ideas were declared to be agents of a foreign power that was alien to the nation. When Marx and Engels issued their call for the workers of all countries to unite, the reactionary bourgeoisie stepped up its propaganda of the myth about the exported revolution, and about the making of the revolutionary ideas and the training of revolutionary leaders in some kind of “international centers" which then dispatched conspirators to every part of the globe.
p The myth about exported revolution was blasted by Marx and Engels, and during the Paris Commune Marx wrote: “The police-tinged bourgeois mind naturally figures to itself the International Working Men’s Association as acting in the manner of a secret conspiracy, its central body ordering, from time to time, explosions in different 330 countries." [330•3 The exported revolution myth has served and continues to serve imperialist reaction as justification for its bloody reprisals, armed interventions and police persecutions.
p The imperialists and their theorists have produced another version of the exported revolution myth: having established itself in the Soviet Union, the revolution proceeds to spread across the world either through Soviet secret agents or by means of its armed force.
p The emergence of the People’s Democracies in Europe was presented as Soviet “expansionism”. The fact that Soviet troops were stationed in a number of East European countries towards the end of the Second World War and prevented armed intervention by the imperialists against these countries was presented by the ideologists of imperialism in a distorted light. Never before had the false and absurd theory of exported revolution been spread on such a scale and with such effort as in that period. Why was this done?
p First, it was designed to induce the masses to believe that revolutionary change was not a result of internal development in this or that country but that they were unnatural and illegitimate because they were implanted by an alien armed hand. A characteristic feature of bourgeois political thinking is unwillingness to recognise the deep and natural changes in the world since the Second World War, and unwillingness to recognise the historical swing towards socialism in some countries.
p Second, it was designed to justify the export of counterrevolution and to substantiate the imperialists’ “right” to intervene in the domestic affairs of other states. Reaction had arrogated this “right” in the early 19th century under the Holy Alliance, and it was now taken out of mothballs.
p Third, the false version about the People’s Democracies was designed to help the imperialists to mount slanderous campaigns against the Communist parties in the Western countries and to revive the old story about the “hand of Moscow”, which was allegedly manipulating the whole world communist movement. The reactionaries sought to change the attitude of the masses to the Communist parties in the capitalist countries and to undermine their prestige. In the early postwar years, Communists were members of the governments in France and Italy, and the imperialist reactionaries then put through a strategic plan to oust the Communists from the political arena and to help the bourgeois parties control political life in the capitalist countries. That was the first major postwar attack by reaction against the progressive forces.
p It was preceded by a wild attack before the Second World War, when the imperialist reactionaries, having trampled all the traditions of bourgeois democracy, resorted to the fiercest forms of suppression to 331 put down the working-class movement, introducing fascism in their efforts to establish an open dictatorship by the most extreme aggressive groups of monopoly capital. That was an attempt by monopoly capital to find a new and more convenient form of political organisation in society. However, the attempt to oust the working class from the political arena has proved to be a reactionary Utopia and has failed. Thus, fascism was unable to rule for long, for its key features—aggressive foreign policy, armed invasion, colonisation of once independent countries and a drive for world domination—naturally caused growing contradictions and strong resistance throughout the world. The presence of the USSR, a great socialist power, was the main factor which doomed fascism to total military, political and ideological defeat.
p The rout of fascism, the shock force of monopoly capital, released vast democratic forces in the capitalist countries. Without some reliance on these forces, Britain, France and the USA could not have withstood German and Japanese fascism, but even during the war the reactionary circles were terrified at the growth of the democratic movement and the growing strength of the Left-wing elements, the Communists in particular, in the Resistance. Now and again, the military-strategic tasks facing Britain and the USA were fulfilled in the light of their political goal, which was to prevent the democratic elements from gaining in strength. After the war, the most vigorous steps were taken to block the way of democratic development in the West European countries, especially Italy and France. But the reactionaries were unable to do this in a number of countries in Eastern and Central Europe, which took the socialist path, set up democratic people’s states and dropped out of the imperialist system.
p The new stage of ideological struggle was marked by the fact that the apologists of capitalism found it altogether impossible to claim that the socialist revolution was a purely “Russian phenomenon" and that the Soviet Union’s way was unfit for other countries. The false idea about the capitalist countries of the West being immune to communism was also refuted. The situation that has taken shape increases the possibilities for historical activity by the working class in the capitalist countries.
p Law-governed development which the imperialists managed to block in the West after the Second World War, by roughly 1947, has not been abolished altogether. After all, it is the bulk of the nations that has an interest in doing away with the sway of the monopolies, and this makes it possible to unite all the democratic movements, opposing the financial oligarchy, in a mighty anti-monopolist tide. The working class, advancing at the head of this struggle, favours extensive nationalisation on terms which are most advantageous for the people, and control by parliament, the trade unions and other democratic and representative organs over the nationalised industries and the economic activity of the 332 state as a whole, together with radical agrarian reforms under the slogan: “Land to those who till it!”. The general democratic struggle against the monopolies marks an important stage in the progressive development of society because it helps to rally the working people round the working class and bring on the socialist revolution.
p There is no doubt about the overall line of development: in its struggle for peace and against preparation for war, for better living and working conditions (higher wages, shorter working hours, social security, etc.), the working class exercises its right to have a say in policy decisions, in selecting the forms of social life and determining the prospects for social development.
Thus, instead of being destroyed, as the bourgeois ideologists think, the idea of socialist revolution and the question of its forms are being given ever more thought by millions of people throughout the world. In the new historical conditions one comes to realise the great achievement of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who first posed these key questions of social development and provided the scientific answers. What then is the state of bourgeois social thought in these historical conditions?