History’s rebirth?

Over the past year the capitalist governments making up the European Union have opened a reactionary attack on the rights of communist organizations. This seemed somewhat surprising, given that 15 years ago the capitalists’ most esteemed and highly paid philosophers declared that history had ended and the eternal reign of the free market had begun. The remaining communists were to be ridiculed, rather than repressed.

But in 2005 the Council of Europe decided to distort this history—the one that had “ended”—by declaring that the Soviet Union’s Red Army, which stopped German imperialism at enormous sacrifice, was equally guilty with the Nazi leaders who launched World War II. That could make it illegal to fly the banners of communism as well as the hated swastika.

In addition, the government of the Czech Republic, now a mini-state well under the control of German and U.S. imperialism, found it imperative to try to outlaw the Communist Youth Union (KSM), since it dared to proclaim the existence of the class struggle.

And then the Danish state launched an attack on Danish communist organizations just at a time when these groups were exposing the reactionary role of the anti-Muslim caricatures and trying to mobilize solidarity with the oppressed Muslim immigrants. The government’s excuse: the Danish communists—of different parties—all supported an appeal on the “Rebellion” website whose goal was to challenge national anti-terror
legislation, the Danish equivalent of
the Patriot Act. This appeal included a request to give financial support to the Colombian liberation army, FARC-EP, and the Palestinian liberation movement, PFLP.

All progressive people in the United States should defend the rights of the European communists to organize and struggle for their ideas. Communist organizations in Europe have mounted a campaign to protect the rights of the KSM. (http://4ksm.kke.gr)

Anyone learning of this might also ask, why do European capitalists—and especially their right-wing, neoliberal
parties—believe they now have to use police methods to stop the communists from organizing? What are they afraid of?

In 2005 there were electoral successes of the Communist Party in the Czech Republic and of the Portuguese CP, a party that openly aims for socialism and that improved its position in both local and national elections for the first time in decades. But these were just small signs of a turn. Do the capitalist parties anticipate a working-class resistance to their own merciless attack?

The signs are growing stronger. The youthful revolt in the oppressed suburbs of France was the earliest indication of real struggle.

Then, beginning in March, hundreds of thousands of German workers turned to the strike weapon. They have gone out sporadically, trying to defend the econo mic gains they made after World War II, which have been under relentless attack.

In Britain, on March 28, a strike of 1.5 million workers rejected a government plan to reduce pension benefits.

That British strike went almost unnoticed by the world media because, in nearby France, some 3 million students and workers half shut down the country and marched in every major city to defend the right to a job for young
workers.

And now, across the Atlantic in the United States, the center of world imperialism, where history is not only supposed to be ended but buried, some millions of immigrant workers are standing up and flooding the streets.

Those who boasted of having buried communism really thought that was the end of the workers’ struggle. They’re wrong on both counts.