Last week, all 222 Republican members of the House of Representatives were joined by 109 Democrats in supporting House Resolution 9, a symbolic resolution “Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism.” It begins with:
Whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorship…
Whereas socialism has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide…
And continues with…
Whereas tens of millions died in the Bolshevik Revolution, at least 10,000,000 people were sent to the gulags in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)…
And…
Whereas the “Father of the Constitution,” President James Madison, wrote that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”
If these accusations sound absurd, it’s because they are. Socialist ideology does not require a “concentration of power” (unless they mean the power of workers to overthrow their bosses and run society democratically); communist regimes wouldn’t be regimes (Communist communities, or communes, would be run democratically by everyone equally.); socialism has not “repeatedly led to famine and mass murders” (These have been caused by failure to achieve a classless communist society, and when a small group that has amassed power attempts to substitute its decisions for the democracy of the masses.); “tens of millions” did not die in the Russian Revolution (In fact, during the few days that the actual October Revolution lasted, only a handful of people died in the capital, Petrograd, with sporadic fighting nationwide killing only a few hundred more in the following weeks); 10 million people were not sent to gulags in the Soviet Union (Even Stalin’s harshest critic, right-wing historian Robert Conquest, only argues that 3.5 million died in camps.); and finally, James Madison should not be seriously cited by anyone claiming to promote human liberty from tyranny or oppression (Madison was part of the colonial ruling class who oppressed their property – slaves – both before and after the independence of the United States from Britain, and therefore obviously wouldn’t want the working class to use “arbitrary seizures” to take their slaves and therefore their wealth away from them)!
There are a few other lies and half-truths in the document, but we don’t need to continue. The Congresspeople who wrote and supported this resolution either don’t know the history well, or don’t really care about that history.
But they do have another agenda. Even though the threat of any socialist organization successfully leading a revolution in the immediate futureis small, the very fact that so many capitalist politicians felt the urgent need to pass such a symbolic piece of propaganda speaks volumes. It’s designed to miseducate people about what socialism is and about the horrors for which it’s supposedly to blame. It’s intended to again stoke fear and paranoia about the supposedly terrible ideology, as the U.S. ruling class has done consistently throughout our history.
But the good news is that it’s also a silent admission that many young people and many workers are no longer afraid of the words socialist, communist, and Marxist. In fact, many young people are actively seeking information about these ideas, and beginning to act on them in their workplaces, and their political activity. And that knowledge, plus worker organization in the workplaces, could lead workers to see what socialism really is: the complete democratization of society – political, economic and social – and the elimination of the class society that we live in today.
