On Saturday 16 February 2019, it was discovered that Karl Marx’s memorial in Highgate cemetery had been defaced for the second time in a month. The first attack had hammered at the tomb’s marble plaque. The second was more empathic: ‘doctrine of hate’, ‘architect of genocide, terror, oppression and mass murder’ were splashed in red paint on the side and back of the memorial. This was an extreme expression of a commonly held view. Communism, the political ideology inspired by Marx’s writings, is often equated with authoritarianism and state terror. The example of Stalin’s dictatorship over the Soviet Union is the one most commonly advanced to support this thesis. The fact that Stalin purged and imprisoned over a million Soviet citizens over the course of his rule (1929-1953) offers powerful evidence that Communism is a highly oppressive form of government.
In light of such evidence, it is hard to understand why Marxist Communism had so many adherents in the twentieth century. One explanation is that those drawn to Communism were particularly ruthless individuals who were willing to use murderous force to achieve their ends. This view has some merit and may explain why Marxists like Stalin were able to exercise power in such an unsparing manner. It does not explain, however, the appeal of Communism for individuals with no obvious violent or authoritarian tendencies, such as the American actor and singer Paul Robeson or the British historian E.P. Thompson.
In my view, much of Communism’s allure in the twentieth century can be explained by its staunch opposition to racism and imperialism. Even if Communist regimes did not, in practice, live up to their pledge to observe full equality between nations and races, they nonetheless provided powerful rhetorical support for this position. This is one reason why ethnic minorities were among the most vocal supporters of Communism. Jews such as Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek were prominent in the leadership of the Russian Bolshevik party. In 1917 the Bolsheviks abolished the legal restrictions that had curtailed the liberties of Jews in the Russian Empire for centuries. It also helps explain Communism’s powerful attraction for anti-colonial activists. From Ho Chi Minh to Che Guevara, Communism was closely connected with the violent resistance of imperial domination.
Today, anti-racism and anti-imperialism have become mainstream progressive positions and are entirely separated from Communism, which is taken to be a deeply unprogressive ideology of absolute state power. This negative view of Communism reprises the stance taken by some in the twentieth century, such as George Orwell and the Philippine diplomat Carlos P. Romulo, who were opposed to both European colonialism and Communist authoritarianism. Yet for many on the left in the twentieth century, opposition to imperialism and racism went hand in hand with a commitment to abolishing the economic exploitation that they associated with capitalism. Detaching anti-capitalism from anti-imperialism was simply unthinkable, since capitalism and colonialism were taken to be synonymous. It was in this vein that the Indonesian Marxist Tan Malaka argued in 1948 that the anti-colonial revolution against the Dutch was inseparable from the social revolution against capitalism. Few would voice such opinions now, but in order to understand the appeal of Communism in the twentieth century we must be aware that Marxist political thought had anti-imperialist and anti-racist elements which are uncontroversial now only because they have become so widely accepted.