The Spectre Of Communism Haunts The US Congress 175 Years Later

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: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels – Preamble To The Communist Manifesto

It is 175 years since the famous lines quote above were first published as a dramatic preamble to the Communist Manifesto. One might expect, given the triumphalism of the bourgeoisie over the last 30 years, that the political representatives of the American bourgeoisie would not need to invest any time to chasing this spectre. After all, communism is dead and gone buried by the revisionist traitors and their friends in the western “communist” parties now capitalism is the only game in town and history is over. Chasing this spectre however is exactly what the US House of Representatives spent time doing last week in a bill put forward with hysterical incoherence by Republican Floridian Congresswoman Maria Salazar. The bill itself is fairly uninteresting, it is the standard collection of wild lies about socialist countries that is taken straight from the notorious “Black Book of Communism”, a fascist inspired piece of propaganda that was for many years seen as a fringe and far right text. Since the implosion of the USSR however there has been a consistent push from reactionaries in the USA and their allies (in places like Poland especially) to ensure that claims made in the black book become accepted fact and that all of it’s claims are true in order to equate Communism with Nazism. This is of course a sleight of hand manoeuvre which is as much about rehabilitating fascism as it is about damning communism. For many decades it wasn’t possible to do such a thing because the Soviet Union and Socialist Block represented a genuine power in the world which had to be taken seriously and there were millions of people even in the west who had fought what they believed to be a war against fascism. With the disappearance of the Socialist block and the generation that fought in that war thought an opportunity has arisen for ultra reactionaries in Poland and the Baltic States in particular to put their falsified view of history out into public circulation.

Again though we must return to the question, why? Why would the Polish and Baltic reactionaries bother with this when the system they hated so much has been gone for over a generation. The truth here is a multi-layered one. Firstly we have to see clearly that the restoration of capitalism in the period 1989-1991 across Eastern Europe was a counter revolution led by pro-capitalist forces. These bourgeois forces (and their backers in Germany, Britain & the USA) know very well that when your class has secured power it remains insecure particularly when you are overseeing a wholly parasitical system, then the ideology of your enemy needs to be continually and mercilessly supressed. This is particularly true for the Baltic States which have seen deindustrialisation and depopulation rapidly increase in the period following capitalist restoration.

But why in the USA, where the socialist movement is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, the remains of the once heroic Communist Party of the USA operate as a “vote democrat” organisation and the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaigns turned into organisations for enriching officials who worked in them and providing careers for all manner of opportunists. None of these organisations represent the remotest threat to US capitalism. And yet still the anti-communist hysteria within the bourgeois press of the United States has only got more severe as time goes on. To return to the above quote from the manifesto “Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? ” this is certainly the case in the USA where it is standard practice for pro-Republican Party propagandists to brand the Democratic Party as being “communist”. This reached bizarre and hysterical levels under Obama, a man who submitted his cabinet appointments for approval by Citigroup, with quacks like Glenn Beck constructing all manner of stories for his audience involving Obama being a deep cover Kenyan nationalist who was on a secret mission to destroy America. You have to give Beck credit for being creative at least, but of course this is the role of propagandists on both sides of the political oligarchy in the USA. They have to spin wild tales about their supposed opposition to keep the activist base of these parties invested in them.

The current wave of anti-communist propaganda though is linked to a real decline in American capitalism which has gone together with consistent polling showing younger Americans (millennial and gen Z) developing less favourable views of capitalism. After all, why wouldn’t they view capitalism less favourably given that those born since the early 1980’s have only known spiralling inequality (which even bourgeois think tanks have to concede might be a problem), increased levels of personal debt and decades of stagnating wages. This picture is not likely to change anytime soon and with comes increasing insecurity and instability within the political system of US capitalism, even if that instability (in the form of Trump) wasn’t anti-capitalist in the slightest but was seen as threatening nonetheless. The return of anti-communism to the centre of the political stage must therefore be seen in the context of rising dissatisfaction with American capitalism, even if that is not translating into the birth of a powerful Communist Party as yet. This crisis will necessitate an attack on the American working class by capital which will need to dramatically increase the rate at which labour is exploited in order to restore profitability. An even more intense class war is coming from the American capitalist class and anti-communism will be a key part of the weapon they will be using in order to fight it. To prevent the American working class reaching dangerous conclusions the bourgeoisie need to make sure that the real alternative is as damaged as possible so that any revolt which does break out can be channelled into safe avenues such as fake populism or support for some kind of American Bonapartism. Anti-communism remains important to our enemies and so we must familiarise ourselves with its arguments (however outlandish) and be prepared to counter the lies of the ruling class about our history and future.