International Communism after the war

Communism had undergone important changes since 1939. With the dissolution of the Comintern, Communists were for the first time independent of any centralistic international organisational headquarters. The Communist parties now maintained that they would take national roads to socialism.(1) They would not, they said, imitate the Soviet model. They had also changed their political tone. From 1939 to 1941 they had stood for an uncompromising class struggle. In 1944 and 1945, they came forward as partners with whom even anti-socialist parties could cooperate. They had apparently rejected the old revolutionary line, and underlined that they now wanted to attain socialism by peaceful means. On these premises, Communists were included in coalition governments all over Europe. They took the lead in the reconstruction of national systems of production, and warned against strikes and other forms of industrial action. They talked more about extending national democracy than about socialism. More general formulations, to some extent, replaced traditional Marxist terminology and there was talk of transitional forms between capitalism and socialism. In East Germany, the so-called anti-fascist democratic republic was born, a state with a constitutional form Walter Ulbricht regarded as Marxism-Leninism's most modern achievement.(2) At the same time Palmiro Togliatti spoke about ``the progressive democracy'' which was to be created in Italy.(3) In general, Communists all over Europe distinguished between ``reactionary'' and ``progressive'' forces. This analysis was a departure from the pre-war distinction between the bourgeoisie and the workers. The new dividing line was now more diffuse than in the old, more straightforward, pre-war model. This illustrated a new development: a break with old dogmas and the emergence of something new that had yet to be defined. The Communist parties justified their moves away from the old Marxist ABC by referring to what they called the new tactical position in world politics. They spoke of the ``special situation'' which had arisen with the conquest over fascism, which, they claimed, had deprived capitalism of its storm troopers. In general, society's ``reactionary forces'' had thus been greatly weakened -- in other words, the forces of capital and the traditional right. The Communists claimed that these were the forces that had stood behind Hitler in Germany and had collaborated with the Nazis in other countries during the war. In the opinion of the Communists, crushing of Hitler had also, to a large extent, been a general defeat of reaction.

Together with the vanquishing of fascism public opinion had, all over the world, grown much more radical. The Communist parties were more strongly placed than ever before. In France and Czechoslovakia, they were the largest parties, with 28.6 and 38.0 per cent of the votes respectively.(4) In the heartlands of Western Europe, the Communist parties could muster about 20 million voters. In Scandinavia, they numbered as much as 1.2 million.(5) Eastern Europe was undergoing radical economic reorganisation, behind which there was the Soviet Union, where Stalin had unprecedented authority. Colonial peoples were also on the move, turning their weapons against the capitalist countries of metropolitan Europe. In China, too, things were looking bright for the Communists, with the Chinese People's Army advancing under Mao Tse Tung's leadership. Never before had the Communists been so strong at a time when their antagonists were so greatly weakened. That was the new special situation which provided much of the background for the changes in traditional Communist policies around 1945.