From Unity, 4 August 2007

Anti-communism will not succeed

The UZ Festival in Germany—besides being a major cultural event—has always provided a great chance for exchange and debate between communist parties, this year more so than ever. Twenty-five sister parties of the DKP (German Communist Party) came to Dortmund. They presented their policies at stalls to the visitors (several thousand people visited our stall during the three days to find out more about the CPI) and took part in public forums and meetings.
     The “international club,” which runs alongside the festival and is hosted by the International Committee of the DKP, is not open to the public. Its main aim is to provide the international guests with a place for exchanging viewpoints and discussing possibilities of strengthening co-operation. During the coming weeks I will try to get some of the major topics we dealt with across to the members of the CPI and to Unity readers.
     This week I have translated (and slightly abridged) a contribution made by the KKE, our Greek sister party.
     “Since the EU resolution on the ‘necessity to condemn crimes of totalitarian Communist regimes’ of 25 January 2006 [which failed to gain the necessary majority], anti-communist and anti-democratic attacks have been on the increase in almost all the former socialist countries. The ban on the use of communist symbols in Hungary [see Unity, 9 June 2007] and other countries, the criminalisation of the Communist Youth Movement in the Czech Republic, the decision by the Romanian parliament to ‘condemn communism as a criminal system’ [in that case a direct copy of the EU resolution], the decision to ‘de-communise’ the country and to dismantle the monument to Soviet soldiers in Estonia in April 2007—all these events pursue a general strategy of ‘witch hunt’ against communism as a political force and a philosophy.
     “The bourgeoisie is putting into practice its plan to criminalise the activities of communist parties—which have been banned already in several countries—to place communism equal to fascism, and to rewrite history. It is not coincidental that all this happens at the same time as the negotiations between the US and Polish governments about the construction of a rocket base in Poland as a ‘protection shield against terrorist attacks.’
     “After anticommunism became the centrepiece of ideology in the former socialist countries during the 1990s, the attempt is now to create an anti-communist network right across Europe in order to enable the capitalist forces to smash the communist ideology.
     “During the period after 1989 anti-communism was used in the former socialist countries of eastern Europe to restructure these states and their societies according to the needs of the bourgeoisie in the process of reintroducing capitalism and the grooming to fit into such organisations as NATO and the European Union.
     “It is now used as a tool to blind people who rebel against the consequences of ‘freedom and democracy.’
     “If people see no alternative to capitalism, no resistance can develop that aims to overthrow the system and lead to a better, more humane life—a life that is being kept from the vast majority of the people today.
     “The memory of the achievements of the former socialist countries has to be wiped out: history has to be rewritten. The communist parties themselves are being told to ‘rethink’ their history, the history of socialism and the communist movement, to break with this history.
     “Important parts of our ideology, such as equality and social justice, and a ‘nostalgic’ turning of many young people to the ideas of communism [It is not coincidental that the Communist Youth Movement is now by far the largest of any political youth organisations in Greece today]—these factors have to be wiped out of the collective memory of the peoples. All doubts about the ‘good and new’ world of today must be quenched; the final aim of capitalism is a world where no man or woman will resist the system.
     “Despite these reactionary plans, the front against the anti-communist campaign is growing and getting stronger. Communists and other progressive people have understood the importance of the struggle against anti-communism. They are responding in the only correct manner: by fighting it—in Europe and the world over. Anti-communism will not succeed!”

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