The news of the collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe and now the Soviet Union has been received with almost universal enthusiasm across the political spectrum. That the Bushes and Thatchers of the world are pleased at the collapse of socialism is quite natural. But that people calling themselves progressive and even socialist find it comfortable to be cheering events in exactly the same way as those archenemies of humanity, is this not more than a little strange?
For how can they who oppose the corporate vampires here at home cheer developments which have opened up the peoples of East Europe to those same blood-suckers?
How can those who oppose racism and national chauvinism here welcome developments which have unleashed viplent jingoism, racism and anti-Semitism over there?
How can those who stand against the neo-Nazis here welcome a movement which has spawned a huge resurgence of Nazism there?
How can those who champion the rights of women here applaud that movement there which has driven women from thepolitical arena, which demands the return of women to the kitchen and nursery，and which has led to the spectacle of a flood of pornography and rising prostitution?
How can those who have opposed the ceaseless interventions of the US government around the world, who have stood for the principle of self-determination, now wax ecstatic at a movement which has placed the peoples of East Europe and the Soviet Union under the thumb of Western banks who now dictate every facet of their lives?
How can those who believe in the dignity and rights of the working people hail a movement which has led to massive unemployment, a devastating plunge in living standards, and the rug being pulled out from under the social protections that workers once enjoyed?
Well, some might reply: “What about all those people demonstrating? Didn’t what happen express the people’s will? And isn’t that democracy in action?” The problem is that history is full of too many instances where people have been drawn into movements that have had nothing to do with their best interests have been misled and confused over and over again. Have we forgotten how many times people have risen in revolt against a tyranny only to have new tyrants rob them of the fruit of their victory? Have we forgotten how millions of working people in different countries, swept up by jingoist sentiment, enthusiastically (at least in the beginning) participated in mutual slaughter for the benefit of imperial interests? And have we forgotten the frenzied adulation of Hitler by the German people, including millions of German workers?
The fact is that the character of a movement is not determined by who participates in it but rather who benefits by it.
But the movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union must be democratic, we are told, because before there was only one party and now there are many parties. Well, what if none of the many parties represents the people’ s interests? What if real politics takes place behind the parties and behind the people’s backs? What if parties turn out to be for sale to the highest bidders? What if, with all the parties, the people are still kept in the dark and have no real say? in other words, what if the situation there is like the situation here, where the people are cynical about politics, apathetic — view the whole political process as a sham?
The Bible says, “By their deeds ye shall know them.” And so as we get past the beautiful rhetorical flourishes of movement leaders and survey the movement’ s fruits in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as we see the hideous face of chauvinism, the amassing of unprecedented power in the hands of new “democratic” leaders, as we see the shameful sellout of national dignity and the national treasure to the transnational vultures, as we see threats of civil war everywhere, of well-being nowhere, as we see disintegration and economic catastrophe, affecting first and foremost the working people, must we not judge the movement by these results? A disaster for the people, a bonanza for black marketeers, for the nouveaux riche fattening off of the people’s misery, a triumph for international finance and for the “New World Order,” which is nothing but the old order where a handful of capitalist countries run by rich white men kept the peoples of the world in chains. This is what we owe to the “pro-democracy movement.”
