Essential Information & explanations, latest texts & monographs on
Anti-communism.
Reds : McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by TED MORGAN
A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? by Tom Mertes
Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture by Michael Barson
Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era (The American Ways Series) by John Earl Haynes
Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Annals of Communism) by Joshua Rubenstein
An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto by Alex Callinicos
Covert Life, A : Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster by Ted Morgan
The Specter of Communism by Melvyn Leffler
Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe (Anti-Movements in America) by Michael J. Schaack
The Anarchists: A Portrait of Civilization at the Close of the 19th Century (Vlack Triangle Anti-Authoritarian Classics) by John Henry MacKay
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works: Frederick Engels: Anti-Duhring Dialectics of Nature by Karl Marx
Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States by Regin Schmidt
The Cold War at Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania by Philip Jenkins
The Red Plot Against America (Anti-Movements in America) by Robert Stripling
Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era (American Ways Series) by John Earl Haynes
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communist ideology, organization, or government, on either a theoretical or practical level. For much of the period between 1950 and
1991, it was one of the major components of the containment policy of the United States.
Some people oppose communism due to what they perceive as contradictions or errors within communist theory and gaps between communist theory and practice. Many anti-communists feel that the theory is less objectionable than its adherents' actions in power. Some anti-communists consider Communism a variant of fascism and refer to both Communism and fascism as totalitarianism.
Many anti-communists also believe that capitalism gives economic freedom, and regard the lack of property rights under communism as taking away fundamental human rights.
Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide")
1 History
2 Objections to Communist theory
3 Promise and Practice
4 Fascism and Anti-Communism
5 Repression and Anti-Communism
6 Criticisms of Anti-Communism
7 See also
History
The first major manifestation of anti-communism in the United States occurred 1919-1920 in the Red Scare led by Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer.
Following World War II and the rise of the Soviet Union many of the objections to Communism took on an added urgency because of the stated Communist view that the ideology was universal. The fear of many anti-Communists within the United States was that Communism would triumph throughout the entire world and eventually be a direct threat to the government of the United States. This view led to the domino theory in which a Communist takeover in any nation could not be tolerated because it would lead to a chain reaction which would result in a triumph of world communism. There were fears that powerful nations like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were using their power to forcibly assimilate other countries into communist rule, in a new form of imperialism. The Soviet Union's expansion into Central Europe after World War 2 was seen as evidence of this. These actions prompted many politicians who might have otherwise been somewhat sympathetic to communist ideology to adopt a sort of pragmatic anti-Communism, opposing the ideology as a way of limiting the expansion of the so-called Soviet Empire.
Anti-communism became significantly muted after the fall of the Soviet Union and communist backed regimes in Central Europe in 1991, and the fear of a worldwide Communist takeover is no longer a serious threat. Remnants of anti-communism remain, however, in United States foreign policy toward Cuba, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea. In the case of Cuba, the United States continues to maintain economic sanctions against the island due to pressures from Florida's Cuban exile population, in a policy which is widely regarded outside of the United States as absurd and counterproductive. In the case of China, United States policy is influenced by business interests, and much of the United States foreign policy establishment does not regard China as Communist in any meaningful sense. Nevertheless, there is some hostility toward China, particularly among conservative Congressional Republicans which can be regarded as remnants of anti-communism. North Korea remains Stalinist, but U.S. policy toward North Korea is less the result of anti-communism than of its classification by the United States as a nuclear-armed rogue state or part of an axis of evil.
Objections to Communist theory
The central part of Karl Marx's communist theory is historical materialism, which states that human society must necessarily evolve through historical stages due to the contadictions inherent in each stage, with each transition to the next stage (except the last) involving the overthrow of the existing socio-economic order. The next step after capitalism is socialism, followed ultimately by communism.
Most anti-communists reject the entire concept of historical materialism, or at least do not believe that socialism and communism must follow after capitalism. Some anti-communists question how and why the state is supposed to "wither away" in a true communist society.
Many critics also see a key error in communist economic theory, which predicts that in countries with free-market economies ("capitalist society"), the rich will inevitably get richer and the poor will get poorer. Anti-communists point to the overall rise in the average standard of living in the industrialized West as proof that contrary to Marx's prediction as, they assert, both the rich and poor have steadily gotten richer.
Promise and Practice
Anti-communists also object to the actual practices of communist governments in contrast to the stated promises of communism. Many argue that while communism may be an excellent-sounding idea in theory, in practice it is thoroughly incompatible with their view of basic human nature. A properly functioning communist society requires every citizen to be an equal contributor, working for the common good, sharing everything, and never getting more than their neighbour. The view of human nature usually expounded by anti-Communists is that humans are self-interested, greedy, lazy and even stupid, this makes establishing a proper communist society fundamentally impossible.
Communist parties (sometimes combined with left socialist parties as workers' parties) which have come to power have tended to be rigidly intolerant of political opposition. Most communist countries have shown no signs of advancing from Marx's "socialist" stage of economy to a "communist" stage. Rather, communist governments have been accused of creating a new ruling class (called by Russians the nomenklatura) with privileges parallel to those in the overthrown "capitalist" societies.
Another criticism of communism is its history of internal repression. Joseph Stalin's Soviet regime presided over millions of civilian deaths in purges and famine, as later Russian governments admitted. In China, Mao Zedong's regime is accused of more extensive bloodshed, compounded by the disruption of economic life through ill-judged revolutionary experiments (See Cultural Revolution). Vietnam and North Korea have also made use of reeducation camps.
Fascism and Anti-Communism
Fascism and "Soviet" Communism are political systems that arose to prominence after World War I. Historians of the period between World War I and World War II such as E.H. Carr and Eric Hobsbawm point out that liberal democracy was under serious stress in this period and seemed to be a doomed philosophy. The success of the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in a revolutionary wave across Europe. The socialist movement worldwide split into separate social democratic and Leninist wings with the formation of the Third International prompting severe debates within social democratic parties resulting in supporters of the Russian Revolution splitting to form Communist Parties in most industrialised (and many non-industrialised) nations.
At the end of World War I there were attempted socialist uprisings or threats of socialist uprisings throughout Europe. Most notably in Germany where the Spartacist uprising in Germany led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919 failed. In Bavaria, Communists successfully overthrew the government and established the Munich Soviet that lasted from 1918-1919. A short lived soviet government was also established in Hungary under Bela Kun in 1919.
The Russian Revolution also inspired attempted revolutionary movements in Italy with a wave of factory occupations, a strike wave in Britain, the Winnipeg General Strike, the Seattle General Strike and other radical events.
Most historians view fascism as a response to these developments. A movement that both tried to appeal to the working class and divert them from Marxism and also appealed to capitalists as a bulwark against Bolshevism. Italian fascism founded and led by Benito Mussolini took power with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist led unrest led many conservatives to fear that a communist revolution was inevitable.
Throughout Europe numerous aristocrats and conservative intellecutals as well as capitalists and industrialists lent their support to fascist movements in their countries which arose in emulation of Italian fascism while in Germany numerous right wing nationalist groups arose, particularly out of the post-war Freikorps which were used to crush both the Spartacist uprising and the Munich Soviet.
With the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s it seemed that liberalism and the liberal form of capitalism was doomed and Communist and fascist movements swelled. These movements were bitterly opposed to each other and fought each other frequently. The most notable example of this conflict being the Spanish Civil War which became a proxy war between the fascist countries and their international supporters who backed Franco and the worldwide Communist movement allied uneasily anarchists and Trotskyists
who backed the Popular Front and were aided chiefly by the Soviet Union.
Initially, the Soviet Union supported the idea of a coalition with the western powers against Nazi Germany as well as popular fronts in various countries against domestic fascism. This policy was largely unsuccessful due to the distrust shown by the western powers (especially Britain) towards the Soviet Union. The Munich Agreement between Germany, France and Britain heightened Soviet fears that the western powers were endeavoring to force them to bear the brunt of a war against Nazism. The Soviets changed their policy and negotiated a non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. The Soviets later argued that this was necessary to buy them time to prepare for an expected war with Germany. Stalin expected the Germans not to attack until 1942 but the pact ended in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and fascism and communism reverted to their relationship as lethal enemies with the war, in the eyes of both sides, becoming one between their respective ideologies.
Repression and Anti-Communism
Aside from anti-Communist repression in Nazi Germany and fascist countires prior to World War II there have also been anti-Communist repression in the United States, most notably in the Red Scare of the 1920s and the McCarthyist era that followed World War II.
Anti-Communism was also a notable feature of Latin American regimes in the 1970s including the persecution of Communists and leftists under Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Argentina's Dirty War which ran from 1976 to 1983.
Criticisms of Anti-Communism
Proponents of communism in capitalist countries historically tended to downplay or deny the accuracy of such claims. Another rebuttal agreed that the countries had created a new ruling class and thus were not in fact Communist. Furthermore, most modern communists do acknowledge failings on the part of "communist" governments, saying that Marxism is clearly against these dictators' practices. A useful comparison would be the Catholic Church's Inquisition which was a fundamental error in its history.
Some anti-communists, particularly those with libertarian leanings, extend their criticisms well beyond Soviet-style communism, associating it with any state-run activity beyond the most minimal. People who support a mixed economy where some services are supplied by government-run institutions, such as what takes place in social-democrat countries, resent the association with communism.
Some writers object to anti-communists' comparisons of communism to fascism. Moreover, during World War II the Soviet Union fought against Hitler and said that fascism was the enemy of communism, while many anti-communists in occupied Europe took the side of Nazi Germany (others, however, placing anti-fascism or national independence above their dislike of communism). The term totalitarianism was invented to comprise both soviet-style communism and fascism, partly in response to these objections.
Yet another objection to anti-communism which became more widely advanced in the 1970s was that in pursuit of anti-communism, the United States was conducting a foreign policy in which it supported people and governments that sometimes egregiously violated human rights, which it saw as lesser evils than communism and its accompanying purges. In order to justify these actions, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick stated the Kirkpatrick doctrine which highlighted a difference between totalitarian regimes and authoritarian regimes.
Repression, of course was not unique to communist regimes. Under slavery, colonialism and later imperialism (which some argue still continues), western powers also have a record of: denial of political or labour rights, racism, oppression and violence, support for governments which presided over mass killings, torture and detention of political opponents, or engagement with regimes (usually on the basis of their shared anti-communism) which practised genocide or racial segregation.
Ironically, many anti-communists were too focused on the perceived challenges of Communism to notice its internal decay, and few anti-communists were able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union even as late as the mid-1980s.
In some of the earlier 19th century usages anti-communism referred to people opposed to the growth of independent, self-reliant and often religious communities such as the Oneida and Amana communities.
See also
The above article is adapted from from Wikipedia
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