– Hardial Bains –
December 25, 1989, 33 years ago today, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were brutally murdered.
Ceausescu and his system were a product of the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc undertaken after the death of Joseph Stalin. At the time he was a member of the CC of the Romanian Workers’ Party. Those who betrayed Marxism-Leninism in their time of power, setting upon the capitalist road, had their system betrayed by their own collaborators in 1989 — “Betrayal has now become the means of obtaining power and retaining it…”
More than that, it set a precedent for the new world international order the U.S. and its allies, including the Soviet Union, were creating: a world where issues between countries are sorted out through impunity and dictate on a mass scale, where the choices for the proletarians and peoples of every country are to follow the American road or have its leaders assassinated, its state face coups d’etat, its life sent into chaos and anarchy, its economy crushed under the weight of neo-colonial relations, its people starving under the minimum level of sustenance for survival.
Ceausescu was no Marxist-Leninist, in his time the Romanian people languished under the enslavement of IMF debts and the world capitalist order, but this did not matter to the U.S. imperialists. By the time the voice of reason could raise this point, he was already “tried” and shot for communism. This assault on freedom of conscience has grown exponentially all over the globe since 1989. Any country that attempts to take an independent path is “tried” and shot for communism, even if they are explicitly clear they are against communism; armed gangs and enemy provocateurs are trained, cities are flattened and thrown into civil war — such are the ongoing experiences of Libya, Ukraine and Syria.
“This offensive against communism must be the concern of not only the communists. It must concern not just the workers. It must concern all the people, because when reaction attacks the communists, when it attacks the interests of the workers, it is putting a block in the development of history. It is telling the world that it will never let revolution succeed, it will never let the highest ideals of mankind be realized in practice and create a society fit for human existence.”
NEPH
* * *
History marches through zigzags. We have seen a great march backward since Nikita Khrushchev, but we also see great advances, the rise of people’s consciousness about their national rights and their right to freedom, progress and prosperity. We see the positive and negative marching side by side. We see revolution and counter-revolution, with counter-revolution threatening to undo the gains of the twentieth century and to leave the world at the mercy of international monopolies and conglomerates and imperialist and social-imperialist marauders.
What is at stake today is the defence of all the achievements of the twentieth century and the winning of new victories. Nothing will be handed to us on a silver platter, or by just wishing for it, even if we formulate the wish in the most beautiful way. We have to create the conditions for it. We have to work for it and we have to create this beautiful new reality. This has been the hallmark of the twentieth century, the beautiful new reality created by the October Revolution, ushering in a new era, the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the era of the victory of socialism on the world scale.
The ugliness of the old world found its most grotesque form in the assassination of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day. The entire old world was calling for his blood, and he, defiant, not even for a second regretted the revisionist course which led to this disaster. The vultures were calling for the blood of one of their own, hoping to convince the world that they have some compassion, humanity, and care. The two superpowers led this lynch mob, and you could hear the voices: “Kill, kill, kill!” Here you have those who are for democratic methods, for peaceful transition, and who do not mind assassination if it serves their goals. Then, they accused Ceausescu of being maniacal about paying back the debts, collectivizing agriculture, and building huge apartment blocks. But they did not accuse him of being at the head of a state which was administering the capitalist system and has brought disaster to Romania. They accused him of starving the people, but they did not say a word about the International Monetary Fund. They did not accuse him of the crimes of capitalism. They accused him of socialism.
The real architects of this disaster were gleeful in Washington, smiling in Moscow, and full of joy in London, Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Ottawa. The tragic figure of Ceausescu lay alongside that of his wife as an offering to the treachery against Marxism-Leninism, the betrayal of the cause of the working class, revolution and socialism, to history which judges everyone and everything ever so severely. He accused his executioners of plotting and organizing the coup d’état with the help of a foreign hand. But he did not name the foreigners. He did not raise his voice, even in his death, against the two superpowers. He did not concede that he was another one in the line of traitors who danced to the tune of the foreigners for their own vainglory. Nobody wanted to claim Ceausescu in his catastrophic fall. But there still is room for them to hoodwink, fool and cover up, by expressing “regrets” that he was not judged fairly. Yes, these imperialists and their apologists can never admit that they are the greatest fascists and tormentors of every democrat and democratic ideal. They had qualms about how Ceausescu was led to his final end? What a laugh. They are saying “how”, but not “why”. Already a bullet has gone through his heart, and history has given its verdict. Now the judgment will fall on those who were in a hurry to get rid of him. While Ceausescu’s regime spoke in the name of the working class and acted against its interests, his executioners spoke in the name of democracy and established their power by chopping its head off.
On December 25, the day of goodwill amongst men, it was not just Ceausescu who was executed, but also every democratic ideal. History punished Ceausescu, not just for the betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, but for the establishment of treachery and betrayal as a norm of relations between people. He betrayed Marxism-Leninism, and his collaborators betrayed him. His execution was the necessary summation of his own line, the logical conclusion. The end of his betrayal was his execution by those who betrayed him. Betrayal has now become the means of obtaining power and retaining it, the old habit of the slave-owning classes. What his executioners received was a blow, the consequences of which are yet to be seen. More heads will roll. Traitors will become more ambitious, and treachery will become broader. The appetite of foreigners will also increase, especially that of the two superpowers and others. The slumbering working class will have to awaken and rise. The rule of treachery and betrayal will crumble.
The workers are saying that it is a good thing that a dictator is gone. Well, there is always joy on such occasions. The motive of the workers for saying so is pure, but the motives of their manipulators, those who carry banner headlines, are not so. They murdered Ceausescu because he was an obstacle to their plans for Eastern Europe and the world. Was he principled in his position? No. Was he a Marxist-Leninist? No. Was he acting in the interest of the working class of Romania? No. Even though we were ideological enemies of Ceausescu and opposed to his system, we would never accept that Moscow or Washington or anybody else was favouring democracy in organizing his execution. The workers must understand that the U.S. and Britain did not fight Germany, Japan or Italy, that is, the Axis powers, in order to oppose fascism and militarism. They fought in their own narrowest national self-interest. It is for the same narrowest national self-interest that they have been protecting and installing military and other forms of dictatorships, from Italian fascism to Hitlerite and Japanese militarism, to Franco, Salazar, the Shah of Iran and all the rest all over the world. The Somozas, Marcos’, Pinochets and others found their protection in Britain, in the U.S., in Canada… The U.S. may have fought Germany, but not Nazism. Britain may have fought Germany, but not Nazism. France cannot be accused of fighting Nazism. The same is the case with others who call themselves democrats. This includes the Canadian government, which, alongside the British and American governments, gave refuge and protection in one form or another to those who sided with Nazism, whether in West Germany, the state they established, or in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and all over the world.
The workers must understand that their pure sentiments about freedom and democracy are not the sentiments of those who are shouting from the rooftops about them these days. These governments are promoting fascism in the name of freedom and democracy. The main content of the ideology of Nazism and fascism, basing itself on the narrowest possible national self-interest and on the most reactionary sections of finance capital, was anti-worker and racist. In order to mete out severe blows to the workers’ cause, the Nazis had to hunt down communists and accuse them of being responsible for every ill. Now in broad daylight, we Marxist-Leninists are being accused of all the ills of capitalist restoration in the style of the Nazis! There was no criterion of truth for the Nazis except their own narrowest self-interest. Thus, they did not bother much with the truth, as is the case with the official circles in the U.S., the Soviet Union, and others today. They all deny that capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination are at the heart of workers’ and people’s discontent, whether in Eastern Europe or in Western Europe or on the world scale. The workers rose in Poland not to put Solidarity into power, but to voice their discontent with the revisionist betrayal and the capitalist system. Solidarity, supported by the U.S., the Vatican, and world reaction, took advantage of the situation. But this manipulation will not end the workers’ discontent. They will not be satisfied until their demands are met. The overthrow of revisionist parties and cliques in Poland and elsewhere also involved the hand and the narrow national interests of the Soviet Union. But the causes still are to be found in the internal situation and in the interference by the two superpowers. The fact that these cliques are toppled does not mean that those who replaced them will work in the workers’ and people’s interests.
The motive behind blaming the Marxist-Leninists is to deceive the workers and organize them against their own interests, in order to ensure that workers do not turn to Marxism-Leninism. It is the same motive when Jews are blamed for all the ills of the society; and this clamour has re-started, with all the blame being put on immigrants and aliens. We Marxist-Leninists have been telling the workers that these countries were not socialist or communist for decades. The ruling circles called them socialist and communist to fool the workers. First, the ruling circles wanted the workers to have an illusion, a false hope, in this hybrid system which is called socialism in Eastern Europe. When the time was ripe, they told the workers that it does not work. When they created an illusion, it was about something false, and when they are talking about its overthrow, they are talking about something real; that is, they want the workers to be disillusioned about real socialism and about Marxism-Leninism.
We Marxist-Leninists fought for decades against this illusion, and now we must fight this disillusionment. This is not the time to be disillusioned. On the contrary, it is the time to go further. Very well, well done. You have overthrown one clique of revisionists and reactionaries. Now go further. Overthrow the whole lot. Establish your own system. Establish a system which is led by the working class and has the hegemonic imprint of the working class. The twentieth century has shown, and the workers must be told, that only the working class can establish a system without exploitation of man by man. This is scientific socialism, led by the communists, Marxist-Leninists, at the head of the working class, for a system which responds to the demand of history that all the things of the past not be permitted to come back. We are talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism, the new system belonging to the twentieth century. Let the new advance! Let the old be buried! Let all the workers and the broad masses of the people not only have no illusions, but let them condemn the ruling classes of the so-called western democratic countries, the labour aristocracy and the trade unionist chieftains, revisionists and opportunists of all hues, for first fostering illusions that these revisionist states were humane and better than the Marxist-Leninists, and now for using the same examples to create disillusionment about Marxism-Leninism, about real socialism, about the fate of the working class itself. They are causing disillusionment about socialism and communism, and they must be denounced. We must distinguish ourselves, our politics from them. We must lay the accusation where it belongs. They have evil motives when they are spreading disillusionment now, as they had evil motives when they were spreading illusions before. This evil motive is to develop a fascist movement, which will destroy any democratic ideals and bring the world back to medievalism.
Anti-communism, anti-workerism and racism are a blight on a healthy body, an obstruction to the realization of truth; they serve the most reactionary sections of finance capital. Here the workers must appreciate that anti-communism hurts them, because it makes them distrust the very ideology and organization which can emancipate them, which can lead them to establish their power and end the exploitation of man by man. To defeat anti-communism is not just a program of the communists. The workers must realize that anti-workerism has its basis in the attack on communism, accusing the workers when they fight for their rights as being unpatriotic and dupes of communists. It finds its echo in the backward worker and is a refuge for a Nazi and a fascist, a war criminal amongst the workers. How many such individuals are hiding behind this veneer of opposing communism? Racism is the basis of beastly hatred amongst workers instead of the commonness of interest and fraternal unity.
This offensive against communism must be the concern of not only the communists. It must concern not just the workers. It must concern all the people, because when reaction attacks the communists, when it attacks the interests of the workers, it is putting a block in the development of history. It is telling the world that it will never let revolution succeed, it will never let the highest ideals of mankind be realized in practice and create a society fit for human existence. The spectre of communism is raised for self-seeking purposes, for the perpetuation of capitalist slavery and the rule of the rich. We must present this aim of fighting anti-communism as one of the most important political programs of our time, the 1990s. Post-world war experience has shown that the states of various countries have spent millions of dollars and made great efforts to install anti-communism as a block in the minds of the people, in the minds of the workers, who cannot see the objective situation, the causes of their exploitation and oppression, the way out. Universities, think tanks and institutes are filled with those who breed anti-communism, who give justification for false socialism and who create illusions. It is in the interests not merely of the workers, but of all people, to oppose anti-communism, because it is designed to prop up and give credibility to everything which is reactionary and which goes against the interests of the people. It is the duty of all progressive and democratic forces to fight anti-communism and to forge a broad political united front to lead the working class and people in this great anti-fascist, anti-capitalist struggle.
(December 26, 1989)