Remnants of communism in Europe

Many people are finding it difficult to understand the egoistic, egocentric and calculating culture that is becoming increasingly prevalent in some countries in the European Union, which is supposed to be the world’s most modern, humanist and sharing community.

People are watching in amazement at what is happening not only on the issue of refugees but also about other humanitarian matters. Indeed, there is a very clear explanation for this situation.

For many, communism is a concept basically identified with the Soviet Union and countries in Eastern Europe and some Asian regimes. This identification goes on with the Latin American countries including primarily Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia. Many do not simply associate communism with the continent of Europe. Actually, communism is an ideology 100 percent based in Western Europe.

Marxism, which is regarded as the socioeconomic basis for communism, is the interpretation of historical and social changes in the societies by two German philosophers. For the first time, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began to account for world history by class conflicts in the second half of the 19th century. The place where the Communist Manifesto was prepared and published was Great Britain. Both of these philosophers were profoundly influenced by Maximilien Robespiere, one of the radical figures of the French Revolution, the British economist David Ricardo and German philosopher Georg Hegel. Lenin and Stalin’s peasant revolutions, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s Cambodian Genocide, the Cuban guerilla movements; all were based upon these European-centered theories of class conflicts. Although communist notions have spread all over the world, the ideological foundation for these practices were laid, cultivated and updated as necessary in Europe. The manifestos, dragging the masses along, were all written in Europe. The earliest followers of communism, Rosa Luxemburg, Otto Bauer, Rudolph Hilferding, Karl Kautsky, were all ideologists originating from Europe.

The idea of the European Union was basically an extension of the left-wing proposal for the creation of a “United States of Europe.” Otto Bauer believed that European capitalism would inevitably end up with being a socialist United States of Europe. Leon Trotsky, one of the pioneers of communism, expressed many times that the union of the European states would be the first phase of a communist Europe.

The Paris Uprising of 1968 was actually a full-fledged attempt at a communist revolution in Europe. Had Charles de Gaulle not come to an agreement with the French army in Germany, most likely, there would be a Communist State of French in the world today. Indeed, the communist cadres of the uprising have swayed European politics for decades. The foremost figures of this attempt, such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit or Alain Krivine, the leader of the Trotskyite movement in France, still continue to make policies as influential political figures in the EU.

European politics has witnessed many politicians under the influence of Marxist ideology. For instance, François Mitterrand, one of the two architects of the Maastricht Treaty, which officially created the European Union, as well as Giorgio Napolitano, who served as the president of Italy for 10 years, both had a Marxist background. Considered among the founding fathers of the European Union, Sicco Mansholt, Paul-Henri Spaak and Altiero Spinelli were technocrats who were followers of the Marxist ideology as well. The “Ventotene Manifesto,” written by Ernesto Rossi and Spinelli while they were in prison, is regarded as the founding document for today’s European Union. The Spinelli Group, seeking to promote Europe’s federal structure, is led by communists such as Cohn-Bandit and Joschka Fischer, today as well.

These are the facts many people are not aware of. Interestingly enough, the fact that the political configuration and administrative regulations of the EU increasingly bear an uncanny resemblance to that of the Soviet Union is being voiced in many circles today. A group led by Vladimir Bukovsky, who was incarcerated in mental hospitals and concentration camps of the Soviet Union for more than 12 years, decries the EU for getting closer to communism. So much so that Bukovsky claims that the only difference between the European Union and the Soviet Union is their respective names. He states that the EU is a federal structure unified under socialist administrations and led by a bureaucratic elite, just like the USSR.

Peter Reeve, a councilor with the UK Independence Party, which advocates the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, states that he wants “...Britain to pull out of the EU while it still can before it’s trapped into a thick web of European regulation and control that escape becomes impossible and the country winds up as an offshore outpost of a totalitarian regime.”

He says, “I genuinely believe that the EU has turned into a totalitarian regime and there is a Marxist revolution happening.”

The technocratic structure of the European Commission, acting as the Council of Ministers for the European Union and being in an ostensibly executive position is pointed out as an example of these elitist administrators. Unlike the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, the Commission acts as an institution that is appointed, not elected. Jose Manuel Barroso, the longest-serving president in the commission, was a former Maoist communist. Also, former presidents of the Commission Jacques Delors, Romano Prodi and Manuel Marin are all left-leaning politicians.

As can be clearly seen, Marxism has never really left Europe. It has been simply affected by practices in the world over time and has been adapted and reshaped by ideologists. However, in their own ways, ideologies that regard the world as an environment of unceasing conflicts and depend on these conflicts for development, have dominated European societies in every era.

The situation has become so grave that many Europeans themselves do not know what to make of the hostile approach displayed toward different cultures in their own countries. Indeed, what happens in the West is a natural outcome of the culture of conflict in the foundation of communism. It should be particularly noted that people may have any kind of idea, faith or disbelief and everyone is free in this respect. However, this freedom does not entitle anyone to attempt to run the world by means of class conflicts and thus to bring about wars and clashes.

The street conflicts should cease and utopian dreams of revolution should be left behind in the 20th Century. The world should be a place where not only the strongest survives but one where the strong and the weak can coexist. Otherwise, the number of the wars, of people starving in Africa and of refugees drowning in the sea will continue to increase. Europe should not look for its future in the streets or in unending conflicts. Marxist ideologies have brought about more than enough conflicts in the old continent. The European community should be a role model for the world. To keep their distance from the egoistic and confrontational culture of communism is what best befits them. The world longs for such a Europe.

Adnan Oktar's piece in Arab News:

http://www.arabnews.com/node/954416/columns