p The history of anti-communism is closely associated with the history of the appearance of scientific communism, its development and implementation. Anti-communism does not have a range of problems of its own. It lives parasitically on the errors and difficulties in the shaping and development of communism as a theory and as practice, having recourse to falsifications of this theory and practice in its tactics of “flexible reaction”. For that reason its forms correspond to the stages of the development of communism.

p Initially, when the theory of scientific communism emerged anti-communism came forward as a bellicose refutation of 263 that theory, i.e., in the form of anti-Marxism. Later, when the theory of scientific communism was adopted by the working-class movement of the European countries anti- communism came forward with criticism of the communist workingclass movement and criticism of the policy of the SocialDemocratic (and later Communist) parties.

p The further evolution of anti-communism followed the revolutionary changes in social relations and the ascension to power of the working class led by Communist and Marxist Workers’ parties. In response to the socialist revolution in Russia and the establishment of Soviet power the imperialist bourgeoisie (and partly the petty bourgeoisie in the West) propagated anti-Sovietism as a violently hostile criticism of the nascent implementation of socialism in its concrete, namely Soviet, form. Three decades later, with the formation of the world socialist community and the appearance of new forms of implementing socialism, anti- communism, too, acquired a new form—criticism of the aggregate experience of a number of countries in putting the principles of scientific communism into effect.

p Today anti-communism exists in various forms that are, needless to say, intertwined, but which must nevertheless be differentiated when it is necessary to ascertain the specific attitude to the theory and practice of communism of various social groups and even of one and the same group in different regions and countries.

p While in the person of its ideologists and politicians the imperialist bourgeoisie conducts an unflagging offensive against communism all along the line, the petty bourgeoisie, by virtue of the contradictory nature of its being and consciousness, displays a dissimilar and inconsistent attitude to it.

p The distinctions between the attitudes of the big imperialist bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois strata to communism are seen principally in their attitude to Marxist theory.

p The attitude of the petty-bourgeois strata (in the person 264 of their ideologists) to Marxism has never been simple. Their Right wing has always been sharply critical of Marxist theory, siding with the reactionary bourgeoisie, who justifiably regarded Marxism as the spiritual weapon of the proletariat directed against it. This hostility received its most concentrated expression in the ideology of fascism, which grafted a racist overtone on its criticism of Marxism.

p The attitude of the revolutionary sections of the pettybourgeois strata to Marxism has been and remains much more complicated. The petty-bourgeois revolutionaries need a radical revolutionary theory that would demonstrate the necessity for demolishing the bourgeois social structures and open up an historical prospect for the anti-capitalist forces. Insofar as Marxism meets these expectations the pettybourgeois revolutionary turns to it as a radical revolutionary theory. For the petty-bourgeois strata of the Third World another circumstance attracting them to Marxism is that they see in it an ideological weapon, which, duly modified, can help them achieve their nationalistic ambitions. For the petty-bourgeois leaders of the African and Asian countries the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia and then in a number of other countries under the leadership of parties adhering to the teaching of Marx and Lenin is evidence of Marxism’s efficacy as a teaching capable of raising a country with a low or medium level of economic development to the level of advanced states and of helping it to achieve social and national liberation. (In this, as a matter of fact, lies the key to the settlement of the question why Mao Tse-tung proclaimed himself a proponent of Marxism and dressed his nationalistic ideology in the toga of Marxism.)

p But Marxism links the socialist revolution with, above all, the revolutionary practice of the proletariat, with the effective leadership of the Marxist Party, and does not reduce revolution to a total rejection and demolition of all the structures that have taken shape in capitalist society. On the 265 contrary, it regards it only as an element of the natural historical process that rejects the anarcho-apocalyptical approach to historical creativity. Hence the criticism of Marxism by the petty-bourgeois revolutionary. He suggests his own revolutionary theoretical alternative that claims to take “national” and “regional” conditions, the “latest socioeconomic changes”, and so on into account, but which in fact reproduces the internal contradictions and fragmentation of the petty-bourgeois consciousness and ideologically converges with the revisionist orientation in the international communist movement.

p This revision of Marxism has specifics of its own in different countries and regions. But it also has features in common that unite the New Lefts, the Maoists and the protagonists of various “national socialisms”. These are: 1) negation of the revolutionary role of the working class on a national and world scale; 2) exaggeration of the role of the petty bourgeoisie and the marginal strata in the modern revolutionary process; 3) overestimation of the role of sociopolitical violence in society’s revolutionary reorganisation and negation of the dialectics of peaceful and non-peaceful forms of the class struggle; 4) exaggeration of the role of the consciousness and the active subject in history and disregard for the material conditions of the socialist revolution.

p However, it would be wrong to equate the rejection of Marxism by the ideologists of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois criticism of Marxism. This identification would mean ignoring the development prospects of the petty-bourgeois strata and the possibility of drawing them into the international revolutionary workingclass movement. In summing up the experience of drawing non-proletarian strata into the revolutionary working-class movement at the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Lenin noted that “the enlistment of larger and larger numbers of new ’recruits’, the attraction of new sections of the working people” (into the working-class 266 movement.—Authors.) “must inevitably be accompanied by waverings in the sphere of theory and tactics, by repetitions of old mistakes, by a temporary reversion to antiquated views and antiquated methods, and so forth”.^^5^^

p Today, with the widening of the zone of the world revolutionary process the rate of this involvement is steadily increasing and, consequently, the former vacillation in the sphere of theory and the former errors are reproduced ’m, a larger volume. Drawn by history into this process, the revolutionary segments of the petty-bourgeois strata cannot directly and unconditionally go over to the positions of Marxism. Their contradictory attitude to Marxist theory is an element of the quest for a revolutionary theory which, with further evolution toward union with the revolutionary working class, can culminate in a rupture with former views and in the adoption of the socialist philosophy.

p While adopting a dual attitude to Marxism, the Left wing of the petty-bourgeois strata is, as a rule, extremely critical of, if not hostile to, the communist movement. True, this critical attitude is manifested differently in different regions.

p Committed to one form of political power or another and, consequently, taking part in charting and implementing foreign policy, the petty-bourgeois strata of the developing countries have to take into consideration not only the world socialist community as a source of aid and protection of the gains of the national liberation movement from inroads by the imperialists, but also, by virtue of the above-mentioned circumstance, the communist movement and have at least to tone down or somehow camouflage their criticism of the latter.

p Their attitude to “internal communism”, i.e., to the Communist and Workers’ parties in their countries, hostility for whom erupts into brutal massacres, is quite another matter. Inasmuch as these parties are “by their side”, the pettybourgeois strata of the developing countries are inclined to treat them as a rival in the struggle for power, a rival who is more consistent in giving effect to internal socio-economic and political reforms and in the struggle against imperialism 267 and colonialism on the international scene, a rival who threatens their interests. In the shaping of this attitude toward Communists a role of no little importance is played by imperialist propaganda and the policies of the local big bourgeoisie (where it exists) and the feudal reactionaries, who regard Communists as their class enemy. In this area there is organisational and political solidarity between the petty bourgeoisie, the marginal strata, the big bourgeoisie and the feudal reactionaries. True, in periods when international imperialism or the internal Right-wing forces become active and crucially threaten the interests of the petty bourgeoisie, it can, as recent developments have shown, somewhat relax its own anti-communism and even enter into a bloc with Communists. However, these blocs do not as yet show sufficient stability and tend to disintegrate, especially when Communists activate their work and strive to secure a consistent implementation of the Marxist line in internal policy.

p Also of no little importance is the circumstance that the petty-bourgeois ideologists, particularly those who declare they are “protagonists of socialism” and even followers of Marx and adherents of Marxism, regard the national Communist and Workers’ parties not only as a political, but also as an ideological rival threatening their ideological hegemony and monopoly over the moulding of the people’s revolutionary consciousness. For them this is another motivation for attacking “local communism”. They thereby undermine the front of the national liberation movement. At the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties it was recorded that the interests of “the social progress of the peoples in the newly-liberated countries demand close co-operation between the Communist and Workers’ Parties and the other patriotic and progressive forces. A hostile attitude to communism, and persecution of Communists harm the struggle for national and social emanci- pation”.^^6^^ Needless to say, while setting their sights on close co-operation with the patriotic forces, of whom a 268 considerable proportion consists of petty-bourgeois and marginal strata, Communists cannot ignore the fact that anti- communist elements in the minds of petty-bourgeois ideologists and politicians (as, indeed, in the mind of the petty- bourgeois philistine brought up in panic fear of communism) can only be surmounted as a result of a basic remoulding of these strata and a fundamental reorganisation of the social structure.

p Unlike the petty-bourgeois strata of the developing states, the petty-bourgeois strata of the capitalist countries do not, as a rule, participate directly in political power. But the question of power is today one of the most crucial for them. “Left” criticism of the Communist and Workers’ parties of the capitalist countries has intensified in connection with the dialogue on this question which grew sharp in the 1960s.

p As we have already noted, when the petty-bourgeois strata find that the possibility of preserving their status quo is either unreal or highly problematic, they are inclined to look for a solution of their own contradictions in an immediate and radical restructuring of society. Since this is associated with the activity of the Communist Party, particularly large parties like the Italian and French, as a force capable of opposing capitalism, the exponent of petty- bourgeois consciousness demands “genuinely revolutionary” actions from the Communists. However, he judges the revolutionary character of the Communist Party by his own, petty-bourgeois criteria, on the basis of his own ideas, and the models of his own behaviour characterised by abrupt vacillations from one extreme to another, impatience, anarchism and adventurist experimentation. For that reason everything in the political behaviour of the Communist Party that does not square with the petty-bourgeois notions of a revolutionary spirit is rejected as its antipode, in other words, as “bourgeois conciliation”, “conservatism”, “ treachery”, “thick-headedness”, “bureaucracy”, and so forth. The inculcation of these assessments into the mass nonproletarian mind is considerably facilitated by the 269 circumstance that although by their concrete form they appear as “inversions” of the stereotypes of imperialist anti- communism, which bourgeois propaganda has been spreading in the course of many decades, they mostly coincide with these stereotypes.

p The verisimilitude of these assessments may generate actual errors, against which no Communist Party is insured and which, in particular, were self-critically acknowledged by the Communists of a number of Western Communist parties during the broad 1968 movement of students and intellectuals.

p In petty-bourgeois ideology, notably in Left-radical ideology, the Western Communist parties, above all, the French Communist Party, are the targets of similarly heavy attacks as those directed at monopoly capitalism, imperialism or Right-wing bourgeois parties. Here it is a case of a kind of “substitution effect”: the petty-bourgeois strata are discontented with the existing order and they transfer their hatred of society to the Communists, who, they feel, do not go beyond the framework of the “rules of the game” and support the existing system.

p In May 1968 and subsequently the violent attacks on the French Communist Party united on an anti-communist platform many anti-bourgeois non-proletarian intellectuals and students, who on many other issues stood (or still stand) aloof from the anti-communism of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Herbert Marcuse charged that the Communist parties of the industrialised capitalist states had ceased to be protagonists of a revolutionary consciousness, that they had “parliamentarised” themselves and lost the function of the ideological and political catalyst of the revolution. “It was the traditional role of the Marxist-Leninist Party,” he wrote, “to prepare the ground for this development ( promoting a radical political consciousness in the masses.— Authors.). The stabilising and integrating power of advanced capitalism, and the requirement of ‘peaceful coexistence’ forced this party to ‘parliamentarise’ itself, to integrate 270 itself into the bourgeois-democratic process, and to concentrate on economic demands, thereby inhibiting rather than promoting the growth of a radical political consciousness.”^^7^^

p By urging attacks on Communists, the petty-bourgeois revolutionary comes forward not only as an anti-communist, but also as an idealist squeezing the real historical process into a Procrustean bed of speculatively constructed “ideal types”. His slogans are highly “revolutionary”, of course: “take the state machine by assault”, “destroy the power of the bourgeoisie”, “disperse the illusions of parliamentarism”, and so on. But he links the implementation of these slogans with the operation of forces and mechanisms that obviously cannot bring them to realisation. As an anarchist he is disgusted with the very idea of party organisation, which requires discipline and is based on the principles of democratic centralism because he regards any system of subordination as personifying the abstract principle of “ domination-subordination”. He rejects revolutionary organisation in favour of the “revolutionary vanguard” principle, which he endows with only one function, that of agitation (but by no means organisation!). In May 1968 the Left-radical leaders claimed that their movement rested on uncontrollable spontaneity, which it impelled, and made no attempt to channel or use in its favour the actions that it had generated.^^8^^

p In this the Left-radical ideologists come strictly speaking into conflict with themselves: on the one hand, they recognise the strength of corporate capitalism and the repressive power of the bourgeois state machine; on the other, they reject the need for a strong mass counter-organisation (the Communist Party being precisely such an organisation), which, as a material force, could not only withstand but smash the bourgeois state machine. This approach predestines the revolutionary actions of the masses to defeat, while the very summons for spontaneous action acquires—whether the Left-radical leaders want it or not—a provocative character.

p To this it must be added that while they criticise what 271 they call the “inadequate” revolutionary spirit of the communist programme, the Left-radical ideologists do not (and cannot) suggest a realistic political programme based on a sociological analysis of the actual political situation and tied in with the objective trends of historical development. What they offer is nothing more than a categorical imperative of political action, i.e., abstract revolutionariness, whose orientation is linked with the typical petty-bourgeois divorce of freedom from responsibility. Being in a critical position, the petty bourgeois believes that he has nothing to lose and that he stands to gain the privileges he has lost (or their equivalent). Hence his orientation toward spontaneity, toward “absolute” freedom, which is not commensurate to historical responsibility for the possible after-effects of an adventurist policy.

p A different stand is adopted by Communists, for whom revolutionary activity is not an end in itself but the means of restructuring society, of developing and consolidating the gains achieved at preceding phases of the struggle against capitalism. As an art revolution cannot, of course, totally rule out the element of risk, but the measure of risk cannot fail to be corrected by the degree of the danger of losing the real gains of preceding generations of the working class, gains attesting not to the “integration” of the working class into the system of state-monopoly capitalism, but to the progress achieved on the road to the victory of the revolution. Moreover, today when the repercussions of radical political events in one country (or region) or another have amplified and these events are becoming a tangible factor of the struggle between the two world systems, the responsibility devolving on each national contingent of Communists is growing. In determining their political guidelines they put on the scales the achievements of the entire international communist movement and world socialism.

No Communist Party is insured against errors much as no revolutionary movement of the working class is insured against temporary declines. Neither is the working class 272 itself insured against manifestations of passivity or even conservatism in individual segments. But these errors and declines cannot be surmounted without a self-developing revolutionary organisation such as the Communist Party. “Only the Communist Party, if it is really the vanguard of the revolutionary class, if it really comprises all the finest representatives of that class, if it consists of fully conscious and staunch Communists who have been educated and steeled by the experience of a persistent revolutionary struggle, and if it has succeeded in linking itself inseparably with the whole life of its class and, through it, with the whole mass of the exploited, and in completely winning the confidence of this class and this mass—only such a party is capable of leading the proletariat in a final, most ruthless and decisive struggle against all the forces of capitalism. On the other hand, it is only under the leadership of such a party that the proletariat is capable of displaying the full might of its revolutionary onslaught, and of overcoming the inevitable apathy and occasional resistance of that small minority, the labour aristocracy, who have been corrupted by capitalism, the old trade union and co-operative leaders, etc.—only then will it be capable of displaying its full might.”^^9^^