PAUL HOLLANDER
The End of Communism?
The recent collapse of communist states provides an unsurpassed
opportunity to recall how long and tenacious the Western mispercep–
tions of these systems had been, how confidently misjudgments were pa–
raded, and how much resistance against revising these misconceptions still
remains. This is an especially good time to ponder once more the rela–
tionship between theory and practice, that is, between the ideas and ide–
als of Marxism and the character of societies which were allegedly guided
by or fashioned on behalf of, or in conjunction with, these ideals - in
short, the relationship between "existing socialism" (the communist states
in Eastern Europe and elsewhere) and the ideals of socialism.
Did communist practices merely give a bad name to socialist ideals
(as some maintain) or were the ideals themselves defective or inherently
difficult to realize? At last the collapse and total delegitimation of com–
munist systems also invites reexamination of the long-standing dispute in
the West, and especially in the United States, between those who have
been unembarrassed critics of communism and those who brought us
anti-anticommunism.
Let me say something first about the reactions of the card-carrying
anticommunists, conservatives, and neoconservatives to the decline of
communist systems. Their aversion to these systems has been further vali–
dated by the new revelations following the reestablishment of free
expression in Eastern Europe; we now have more evidence than ever
about the specifics of political crimes and repression perpetrated by these
systems (along with upwardly revised figures of the number of their vic–
tims); we have more inside information about lies routinely disseminated
by their agitprop machinery; there is new, more detailed knowledge of
their unsolved social problems and unsurpassed record of environmental
degradation; there is even new revelation of the assistance (for long
doubted by many in the West) these governments gave Western and Arab
terrorist groups. Most importantly anticommunism has also been fully
vindicated by the massive rejection of these systems by their own people
and by the fresh evidence indicating not only their ruthlessness but also
their inefficiency and inability to satisfY basic and modest material and
