p Anti-communism is imperialism’s ideology and policy directed against socialism, the revolutionary working-class movement and all other democratic forces. It dates back to the days when the working-class movement became organised and began its struggle against capitalist exploitation and bourgeois rule. Today, as in those days, anti-communism is used as a weapon for holding up social advancement. Its aim is to split the revolutionary forces and undermine socialism. The growing international influence exercised by the socialist community and Marxism-Leninism compels modern imperialism to resort to new and diverse forms of anti-communism. Seen from this angle, it becomes crystalclear that present-day anti-communism mirrors the deepgoing crisis of bourgeois ideology. Anti-communism is imperialism’s principal ideological and political instrument, whose purpose is to slander the socialist system and misrepresent the policy and aims of the Communist parties and the teaching of Marxism-Leninism. Under the spurious slogans of anti-communism imperialist reaction persecutes and intimidates all advanced, revolutionary movements and endeavours to sow dissension among the working people and paralyse the militancy of the working class. All the enemies of social progress—the financial oligarchy, the military, the fascists, the reactionary clericals, the colonialists, the landowners, and all the ideological and political 8 accomplices of imperialist reaction—have now united under this black banner. Determined opposition to anti-communism is one of the conditions for the success of the genuinely democratic and communist movement. The eminent German author and humanist Thomas Mann called anti-communism the most colossal absurdity of our epoch.

p Anti-communism spells out not only slander against the scientific philosophy of the working class but also ruthless persecution and suppression of its most consistent spokesmen: Communists, democrats and other fighters for social advancement. In the class struggle anti-communism is used not only against the Communists but also against the working masses, against progressive mankind as a whole. However, it is spearheaded first and foremost against the revolutionary vanguard of the anti-imperialist forces and seeks to isolate the Communists from the people and use every possible means for suppressing the international communist movement.

p The first practical experience of the organised struggle of the proletariat’s vanguard was generalised by Marx and Engels in the Introduction to the Manifesto of the Communist Party, in which it is stated: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre... .”^^1^^ In the subsequent decades the class battles have shown that with the growth of the class struggle of the proletariat and its organised movement the methods employed by anti-communism become more subtle. The ruling circles of the bourgeoisie have never abandoned every possible means which they feel can safeguard the outworn capitalist social system. They fight the Communist and Workers’ parties, and every democratic movement that threatens capitalist rule, not shrinking from physically destroying Communists and democrats.

p Although the substance of anti-communism has remained unchanged at all the phases of history, its forms have been modified. Under the impact of the mounting influence of 9 socialism and the revolutionary working-class movement, when it is becoming increasingly more obvious that capitalism is on the defensive, the ruling circles of the bourgeoisie have to adapt themselves to the new situation. This, naturally, limits the possibility for open forms of anticommunist policy and ideology. For that reason, alongside undisguised, violent forms of anti-communism they have recourse to more flexible methods, combining frontal assaults with efforts to “soften” socialism and erode it from within.

p Time has distinctly brought to light the following phases of anti-communism.

p The first phase embraced the period from the rise of the communist movement to the October Socialist Revolution in Russia. During that period the ruling classes used primitive anti-communism, chiefly in the form of anti-Marxism, in their striving to subordinate the working-class movement to bourgeois influence and obstruct the formation and growth of independent parties of the proletariat.

p Following the Paris Commune the ruling classes resorted to every possible slander and falsification in order to halt the spread of revolutionary Marxism in the international revolutionary movement. By portraying the revolutionary spokesmen of the working class as “enemies of the state”, “traitors”, “homeless tramps”, “criminals” and “murderers” seeking to shake the foundations of the family, society, civilisation and morals, they counted on stopping the offensive of the revolutionary working-class movement.

p Lies, slander, bans, persecution, imprisonment, exile and violence failed to hold up Marxism’s advance and its further development in Marxism-Leninism. Working-class organisations grew stronger and, finally, in the early 20th century the working class of Russia with Lenin at its head created the first party of a new type. Thus, alongside objective conditions the subjective prerequisites matured for the overthrow of capitalism, which had by then entered its imperialist stage of development.

p However, the ruling bourgeoisie of the imperialist states had no intention of surrendering its positions without a battle. On the contrary, the development of the first phase of capitalism’s general crisis and the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the advance of socialism in the Soviet Union marked the beginning of the second phase of anti-communism.

p The most prominent specific of that phase was that as a result of socialism’s successful development the contradiction between socialism and imperialism became the principal contradiction of the new epoch. Anti-communism’s distinctive feature is that it has always been directed against the leading revolutionary forces. Since from the moment of its establishment the Soviet state led by the Communist Party showed that it was the main force of the world revolutionary process, anti-Sovietism became the core of anticommunism. For all reactionaries, beginning from the fascists and ending with the “Left” opportunists, antiSovietism became a hallmark determining the substance of their reactionary, anti-socialist policy and ideology. It evolved into the predominant state doctrine in the imperialist countries.

p Acting on the recommendations of Winston Churchill, who urged a war against “Bolshevik tyranny” as early as 1917, imperialist leaders embarked upon a crusade against historical progress, against socialism.

p Fascism, which aims at exterminating Communists and all other consistent democrats and forcibly uprooting MarxistLeninist ideals from people’s minds, has been the most open and inhuman form of anti-communism. Its rise to power in Germany was the first direct step toward the political, ideological and military preparations for the Second World War. The world will never forget fascism’s crimes, its monstrous persecution, barbarous torture and extermination of Communists and other fighters for democracy, against imperialism. This was all done under the guise of fighting communism. But the results of the second phase of 11 anti-communism proved even more strikingly than hitherto that the anti-communist stand of the imperialist bourgeoisie has no future. Fascism’s defeat led to the emergence of the world socialist community and struck another blow at the ideology and policy of anti-communism.

p But the weakening of imperialism’s positions by no means signified that its ideological champions were prepared to lay down their arms. They persisted in their efforts to reanimate anti-communism and make it more effective by resorting to new forms and methods.

p The third phase of anti-communism, which began after the Second World War, was characterised by an intensifying struggle between imperialism and socialism, which had spread beyond the frontiers of one country and developed into a world system. A new wave of anti-communism swept across the world as a result of the cold war policy pursued in those years by the imperialists.

p But monopoly capital and its accomplices were unable to halt the historic advance of the revolutionary forces, much less reverse it. By the end of the 1950s it had become obvious that nothing had come of imperialism’s design of “rolling back” communism by high-handed military, political and economic pressure on the socialist countries. Despite all the efforts of anti-communism, the socialist countries steadily built up their economic, political and defensive might. The cohesion of the socio-political community of socialist states and the formation of the world socialist economic system disrupted imperialism’s political strategy of undermining and overthrowing the new system in at least one of these countries. The Soviet Union’s scientific and technological achievements in the development of thermonuclear energy and the build-up of a powerful missile potential made it highly dangerous for the imperialists to continue using their traditional means of international policy. Socialism gave the peace forces enormous resources for curbing imperialist aggression. The untenability of the calculations on the success of the 12 “policy of strength” became increasingly evident to imperialism’s political strategists. This was admitted by one of the architects of the policy of “rolling back” communism, John Foster Dulles, when in November 1956 he categorically refused to render military assistance to the counter- revolutionaries in Hungary. He declared that such interference would trigger a nuclear war.

p Later imperialism was unable to hinder the victory of the revolution in Cuba and, in 1961, to prevent the GDR from exercising her sovereign rights in Berlin.

The change in the world balance of forces compelled imperialism to bring its policy and ideology into conformity with the new situation. Open military, economic and political pressure on the socialist countries gradually gave way to a policy of undermining the world socialist community by “eroding” the social system in the socialist countries and disuniting these countries and other anti-imperialist forces. The end goal of imperialism’s political strategy has remained unchanged, namely, to preserve and, if possible, strengthen and enlarge capitalism’s position, to disable and crush the liberation movement. Imperialism’s counter-revolutionary activity, which is openly directed mainly against MarxismLeninism and its champions—the socialist countries and the Communist and Workers’ parties—in fact has as its objective the suppression of all the forces fettering arbitrary rule by the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is mirrored by the propaganda and policy of various non-government and government agencies in the bourgeois states. With the development of state-monopoly capitalism, anti-communism was raised to the level of state policy in the capitalist countries. The efforts to overwhelm the socialist states and the communist movement in the capitalist world form the pivot of imperialism’s political strategy. The failure of anti- communism as a result of the further growth and consolidation of the revolutionary forces and the change in the world balance of forces, which became particularly evident in the 1960s-1970s, induced imperialism to begin a feverish quest 13 for ways of adapting itself to the changing situation. To this end, imperialism’s leaders are perfecting their political strategy, which more fully reflects the class aims of the monopoly bourgeoisie in the different countries, the principal orientations of the struggle to achieve these aims, and the means, methods and forms of this struggle, including their replacement and combination. As the concentrated expression of economics and politics, imperialism’s anti- communist political strategy inevitably mirrors the appearance of new phenomena in these spheres.