Anti-communism
Anti-communism is a reactionary position which is opposed to the creation and spread of communism, revolution, and Marxist movements. Anti-communism is interlinked with support for the capitalist system, and has been a core aspect of anti-Semitic and fascist tendencies. Nominally "left-wing" opponents of communism are known as the non-communist left.
Anti-communism is as old as communism itself, and has taken many forms throughout the history of capitalism. Examples of anti-communism include Jewish Bolshevism, the Red Scares, McCarthyism, and in the present, cultural Marxism.
Beliefs and propaganda
"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?" — Opening of the Communist Manifesto
Communism as a totalitarian movement
Opponents of communism claim that socialist states such as the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin were totalitarian and despotic with little or no democratic rule or freedoms. These accusations are proven false when considering the thriving Soviet democratic system in place which provided popular rule.[1] Additionally, freedoms such as the freedom of speech, assembly, voting rights, and equality for all regardless of nationality and other aspects were constitutionally ensured in the Soviet Union.[2]
Inferior quality of life under socialism
Socialist societies are often depicted as dreary, impoverished, and destitute with poor qualities of life compared to their capitalist counterparts. However, socialist planned economies have often been able to reach parity or exceed capitalist economies and many regards, an aspect made more considerable by the backwards economic conditions which often existed where socialism was developed.[3]
Excess deaths in socialist states
Anti-communists frequently cite the supposedly massive death toll in socialist states, often asserted to be in the tens of millions, to discredit communist movements. Sources for these claims generally derive, directly or indirectly, from the Black Book of Communism, a notorious propaganda-piece which employs intellectually fraudulent methods to reach a total estimate of over 100 million deaths under communist states.[a][4] Anti-communists who make assertions about the death toll under communism care little about the extremely high death toll under capitalism.[5]
Notable figures
Academia
Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest was a notable anti-communist author who wrote multiple pseudo-historical and propaganda works such as The Great Terror and Harvest of Sorrow which chiefly attacked the Soviet Union under Stalin.[6] Conquest was known to collaborate with bourgeois governments during his writing of anti-communist propaganda, namely with the Information Research Department,[b] a British state agency which was created purposefully to hinder revolutionary movements and propagate falsehoods against communism. Many of his most well-known works were written under the supervision of state agents. Conquest's work was shown to employ fraudulent methods to reach its conclusions by historians such as Grover Furr, who described his and other anti-communist authors' books as "propaganda with footnotes."[7]
See also
References
- ↑ Samantha Lomb (2018). Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315194004
- ↑ Constitution (Fundamental law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1936). Available on the Marxists Internet Archive.
- ↑ "The Nutrient Content of the Soviet Food Supply". Available on the Red Spectre Web Archive.
- ↑ Stephane Courtois, Karel Bartošek et al. (1997). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Available on the Internet Archive.
- ↑ Engel-Di Mauro, Salvatore; et al. (May 4, 2021). "Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism". Capitalism Nature Socialism.
- ↑ Ella Rule (January 14, 2017). "Lies concerning the History of the Soviet Union". The Stalin Society.
- ↑ Grover Furr (August 11, 2015). "Robert Conquest dies – but his lies live on!". The Communists. Archived from the original.
Notes
- ↑ They include revisionist and non-communist states in the estimate, including the People's Republic of China under the leadership of both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
- ↑ Originally known as the "Communist Information Bureau".