Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough

Seumas Milne write that Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough for the right-wingers.

Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries". Now Göran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Yesterday, declaring himself delighted at the first international condemnation of this "evil ideology", Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.

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Indeed, the Economist magazine has the following definition for Communism:

The enemy of CAPITALISM and now nearly extinct. Invented by KARL MARX, who predicted that feudalism and capitalism would be succeeded by the "dictatorship of the proletariat", during which the state would "wither away" and economic life would be organised to achieve "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". The Soviet Union was the most prominent attempt to put communism into practice and the result was conspicuous failure, although some modern followers of Marx reckon that the Soviets missed the point.

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So instead of relegating Communism to the dust bin of history, some of the right-wingers are not so sure anymore. On the streets, I do not get any comments about Communism being dead. I think events in South America have put the frighteners up people.

Further on, Mr. Milne writes:

Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained that "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive". Perhaps the real problem for Lindblad and his rightwing allies in eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart and buried it at the crossroads at midnight.

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The desire of people for a just and equitable society cannot be swept aside as some utopian dream. We are not all callous and calculating individuals. Some of us care about our neighbours. Indeed, it is the second of the two commandments that Jesus gave to us.

Mr. Milne concludes that:

No major 20th-century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today's Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering and bloodshed. With the new imperialism now being resisted in both the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for political and social alternatives will increase. The particular form of society created by 20th-century communist parties will never be replicated. But there are lessons to be learned from its successes as well as its failures.

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The very success of Capitalism is driving people to seek alternatives either in an Islamic or a Socialist state.