p Here is a document testifying to the atmosphere of the time, an extract from the chronicle of the spiritual impoverishment of anti-communism. An editorial entitled “Ideologies and Idea Systems" in the solid bourgeois Times Literary Supplement of August 24, 1951, contained an attempt to sort out these problems. Here is its conclusion about the results of the Second World War: “One of the main ideologies of our time—Fascism—has been crushed, but another—Communism—is the main beneficiary of its destruction. So at the present moment the world has the appearance of being divided between monolithic Communist ideology, able to draw the functions of millions of people within one political drive, and the ‘West’ which has no unifying ideology, from its own point of view; although, from the Communist one, it can be analysed as a complex of diverse impulses all directed towards destroying Communism. The West has been made to feel amorphous and incoherent; with a dozen faiths, and yet without faith in itself; ...

p ...“It is not inconceivable, in a time when half the world is fascinated by Communist ideology. ...It would be accompanied by a persecution of liberal opinion and an attempt to direct all thought into channels which were supposed to be anti-Communist.

p ...“There is also a danger that in fear of Communism, Fascist ideas might revive in precisely those countries where Fascism has been most successful."  [332•4 

p This is, in effect, an attempt to present the prospect of the vicious circle: fascism—rout of fascism—anti-communism—revival of fascist tendencies. This article was designed not to assert the prospect of another fiasco with the revival of fascism but to suggest another way. What attempts have been made to escape from this vicious circle?

p After the Second World War, the formation of the world socialist system, the successes of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Soviet Union’s achievements became especially obvious. There was a growth of sympathies all over the globe for the Soviet Union in the period of its heroic struggle against fascism, while the Communists advanced fearlessly at the head of the masses facing death and torture in the struggle against the fascist invaders. The prestige of communism and the Communists was enhanced. For bourgeois ideology, the Second World War had very sad results. Fascism suffered not only a military but also an ideological and political defeat, and there could now be no question of an open revival of the old fascist ideology. There was need to cast about for a “new” ideological platform for the capitalist world in its fight against communism. Accordingly, the bourgeoisie set about fulfilling this task, now smuggling in the ideas of fascist reaction, now covering up its policies with religious slogans or extracting from the museums the banners of 19th-century bourgeois liberalism. But let us take a look at the historical milestones along this way.

p Just after the war, the vast propaganda machine and the “psychological warfare" mechanism, set up during the war, were turned against the Soviet Union and the countries which had dropped out of the capitalist system. Their scheme was very simple and cynical: all the habitual ideas advanced against fascism, all the well-known arguments of wartime were to be mechanically aimed against the Soviet Union, so as to create round it a thick curtain of lies and slander in an effort to convince men that the social system developing in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries was not a harbinger of the future but a repetition of the past. The press and radio kept using terms like “totalitarianism” with respect to the Soviet Union, and “free world" with respect to the capitalist countries.

p At the same time, it was decided to make use of the main ideas of fascist propaganda in harassing the Communists. From Dr. Goebbels’s jargon they borrowed terms like “iron curtain" and the myth of a “red imperialism" allegedly intent on destroying Western civilisation.

p Emphasis was made on the myth about a “communist military threat”. During the Second World War men in the West had grown accustomed to respect the Soviet Armed Forces, and the Western press was itself forced to write about the defeats inflicted by the Soviet troops on the Nazis, who had fairly easily invaded and occupied a number of West European countries. Bourgeois propaganda now kept saying that the Soviet armies were poised for an attack on the West.

p With the emergence of the world socialist system, bourgeois propaganda began spreading the false idea that the historical contest between the two systems was bound to be decided through war. Day by day, the people in the capitalist countries were induced to accept the idea that war was inevitable, and that it was, therefore, natural for the West to militarise, to carry on an arms drive and prepare for war against the Soviet Union and the countries taking the socialist path. This required much propaganda effort, because the men and women who had just gone through the Second World War, were still under the influence of the idea that that war had been the last one. Also there was much war fatigue.

p In order to overcome these attitudes, a great effort was made to assert that war and its roots were indestructible, that the seeds of war were planted in human nature and man’s fatal passion, without which human nature was inconceivable.

p Among those who joined in the chorus, were the Malthusians, who argued that war was necessary to save the world from overpopulation and to keep pure mankind’s genetic material.

p There were other theories galore. Herbert Read, a British sociologist, argued that war had always had an invigorating effect on human nature and man’s spiritual powers. That was a rehash of the old fascist stories, but there followed this philosophical postulate: there was need even in peacetime of some Ersatz of war. That was already an attempt to provide a theoretical backup for the cold-war policy.

p John Foster Dulles came out with a book designed to prove that during the Second World War a mistake had been made that split the Western world. The policy of the Western powers had to be designed to avoid divisions and to set up a united bloc of capitalist powers against the Soviet Union. This US diplomatist coined such a well-known Western policy term as “roll back”, and then “containment” of communism by armed force. It was also he who first used the “policy from positions of strength" term.

p This helped to create the background for Churchill’s speeches urging a crusade against communism and the establishment of a military bloc of the imperialist powers. The signal was issued for a drive on the ideological front so as to create a change in Western opinion despite the war fatigue and the great yearning for peace.

p The propaganda against communism was further intensified with the start of the “Marshallisation” of the Western countries and the knocking together of the Atlantic bloc. Bourgeois theorists argued the need for military, aggressive alliances of the capitalist powers, praised the “unity of Western culture”, the “Atlantic community”, etc.

p But it soon transpired that for all this bellicose noise capitalism lacked the offensive theoretical weapon, and that its ideological content was negative. In August 1949, The Atlantic carried an article by the US writer 335 Archibald MacLeish, who first considered the matters: “American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic politics were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto: no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as detesting the Russians, and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn’t like it. American political controversy was controversy sung to the Russian tune; left-wing movements attacked right-wing movements not on American issues but on Russian issues, and right-wing movements replied with the same arguments turned round about.

p “American education was Russian education backward: ignorance of Communism was the principal educational objective recognised by politicians and the general press, and the first qualification demanded of a teacher was that he should not be a Communist himself, should not have met persons who might have been Communists, and should never have read books which could tell him what Communism was. American intellectual life revolved around Russian intellectual life: writers stopped writing and convoked enormous meetings in expensive hotels to talk about Russia for days at a time, with the result that the problems of American culture (if that self-conscious and overfingered word is still in use in 1980) became reflections of the problems of Russian culture. Even religious dogma was Russian dogma turned about: the first duty of a good Christian in the United States in those years was not to love his enemies but to hate the Communists—after which he was told to pray for them if he could."  [335•5  The idea of this piece was to argue in favour of a simple truth: it is impossible to base a world outlook on negation. The article was an alarm signal. For several years such signals came one after another, showing that anti-communism had driven bourgeois social thought into an impasse and signified an extreme state of its degradation.

p Ten years later, the same questions were raised by the bourgeois journalist Pierre-Henri Simon in an article in Le Monde on March 11, 1960. He wrote: “Thus, in this world of ours where two civilisations are in confrontation with each other, either—through the will of brute chance—for armed conflict or for a lengthy peaceful competition, I seem to hear communism shouting to us: ’On my side I have the weight of my countless masses of men, disciplined by my law and my hope; on my side I have their will, which has been liberated from God and aimed to establish domination on Earth, the sorcery of my laboratories which put dancing celestial stars which I have created into the skies; I have on my side hundreds of my universities, millions of my students, my Spartan and doctrinaire youth which scorns the affectation and the 336 corruption of yours, and which makes joyous use of all its powers to unchain Prometheus and to kill his vulture."  [336•6 

p There are three points to be brought out in these numerous statements. First, they recognise the organic bonds between communism and science, and its “faith” in science. This bond was denied only a short while ago, when bourgeois theorists assured us that science was entirely on the side of the bourgeoisie. That old myth has been blasted for good. Bourgeois theorists are no longer able as easily to refer to science as they did in the past, and this has narrowed their field of movement. Even the rabid champions of bourgeois ideology have come to realise that bourgeois thought has had to retreat from the field of battle. Second, they admit that communism is a “synthesis of heretical tendencies" in mankind’s development, the result of “bold expressions of the human spirit”, that is, that it is a legitimate heir of all the progressive tendencies in social development. That, too, tends to narrow down the field in which bourgeois theorists can operate, and forces them to repudiate the classical legacy, with the result that their social thought is totally impoverished. Third, they stress the active and effective character of this alliance of science and communism, which is aimed to restructure the world.

p At the turn of the century, bourgeois social thought reached the conclusion that society could not be changed through revolution and that communism was a Utopia. After 1917, the revolutionary change of society was designated as a “Russian deviation from the rule”, an “episode” on the way of capitalist development that was much to be regretted. The time has now come to accept the reality of these changes and to draw up the balance in the battle for the minds of men. The result has been discomforting for the bourgeoisie. The power of communist ideas has been recognised indirectly and with various reservations, and such admissions have from time to time appeared in the press.

p We find more and more statements in the capitalist world about a lack of ability to act with the use of ideas. The US Senator Thomas Dodd proposed in a lengthy speech in the Senate the establishment of a special academy to train personnel capable of carrying on the ideological struggle against communism. He said: “We seem to be so obsessed with studying the enemy, we have no energy or talent left over for thinking through the conclusions to which these studies should point. It is almost as though we were hypnotized into a condition of partial mental paralysis.” He attacked the amateurs using primitive methods of political warfare which are easily frustrated. “We have produced no Free World Lenins to show us how to develop our own operational science and train our own leaders."  [336•7 

p These statements, coming from professional anti-Communists, show that capitalism has already lost a number of important ideological positions and has been forced to retreat from strategic frontlines on the field of the battle of ideas.

Consequently, the life has shown that present-day monopoly capital is unable to feed social thought with positive ideas, for its main task is defensive and prohibitive. It has induced its theorists to fear social change and any fundamental restructuring of social relations. It requires social thought to camouflage and embellish reality. Only partial, empirical research is allowed in the social sciences, without any deep-going generalisations and bold conclusions. Social science is to provide the ideological weapons for the fight against communism, that is, against progress and its mighty forces. The monopolies exert a devastating influence on social thought and lead to its elimination, for social thought which fails to consider the basic issues in social development inevitably tends to die out. To reduce it to refined attempts to protect what is on the way out means to lead social thought itself to destruction.