People's Democracy

Editorial

65TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY OVER FASCISM

Distortion of History cannot

Erase Red Flag's Decisive Role

THIS year, People�s Democracy dedicates its May Day issue to commemorate the 65^th anniversary of the defeat of fascism in the WW II.

The victory over fascism represents an important milestone that shaped the future of human civilisation and its advances. Along with the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution in 1949, the defeat of fascism marks one of three seminal events in the first half of the 20^th century. This indeed unleashed a new correlation of political forces globally that led to hitherto unknown gains for the working people the world over.

The process of decolonisation that this victory set in motion gave deliverance to millions of people the world over from the yoke of colonial domination. The popular struggles and the freedom movements in the former colonies unleashed peoples energies which resulted in a paradigm shift in the concepts of democracy and people�s rights. This process provided many political and economic gains to the peoples in these countries.

This victory over fascism prevented the fascist designs that sought to control the whole world. This would have meant not only the installation of open terroristic dictatorships in large parts of the world but also the complete erosion of democratic rights and civil liberties. The defeat of Hitlerite Nazism and Japanese and Italian fascism in WW II prevented such a regression in the evolution of human civilisation.

It was only in the post WW II period that human civilisation legalised many a fundamental right and civil liberties that are today considered inalienable in any civilized society. The rights of the working people that have been earned through heroic struggles in the past were legally enshrined. The very concept of the �Welfare State� arose in the aftermath of this victory.

With the dismantling of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the last decade of the twentieth century, many of these rights earned by the working people are being systematically eroded. Many of these rights were conceded by capitalism, in the first place, under force of the rise of socialism and socialist alternatives. With this threat now appearing to recede following the demise of the USSR, capitalism has resurfaced with a greater savage expression of its predatory character. The last two decades of imperialist globalisation is witness to the most barbaric forms of primitive accumulation that is heaping unprecedented miseries on vast chunks of the world�s population while benefiting the exploiters through huge super profits.

In order to sustain this predatory order, world capitalism had also unleashed a new ideological offensive against socialism. The �eternality� of capitalism was proclaimed as universal truth and any alternative to it was decried. This multifaceted ideological offensive was accompanied by a serious erosion in the rights of the working people. Such intensified exploitation both globally and domestically in individual countries set in motion a very fundamental contradiction that renders this process of imperialist globalisation as being simply unsustainable. This contradiction lies in the fact that with huge accumulation of profits the economic inequalities have sharply widened. This led to declining purchasing power in the hands of the vast mass of people. This in itself limits the possibilities of capitalist expansion and profit generation because unless the goods produced are sold the capitalist cycle cannot be completed. In order to sell what is produced, people need to have the resources to buy. With this declining sharply, the system is itself rendered unsustainable.

Globalisation sought to overcome this problem by providing cheap credit to vast sections of the people and hoped that the consequent spending would sustain their profits. In the process, fancy financial instruments were created that helped global finance, which dominates the globalisation process, reap super profits. The crunch however came when these cheap loans had to be returned. The unsustainability chillingly expressed itself in the current global recession, which may well turn out to be more devastating than the Great Depression of the 1930s. The capitalist solutions to get out of the crisis through billions of dollars of bailout packages at the expense of growing unemployment and misery for the vast mass of people is generating, naturally, popular discontent and protests as currently seen in Greece.

In this background, in order to prevent the rise of socialist alternatives to the capitalist order, imperialism has intensified its anti-communist propaganda. An important element of this has been the falsification of history and attempts to try and discredit any socialist alternative by equating fascism with communism. On July 3, 2009 at a regular parliamentary assembly session of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a resolution was adopted equating fascism with communism. An important corollary of such an ahistorical anti-communist ideological campaign was to decry the role of communism and the Soviet Union in defeating fascism. Thus began the effort to rewrite the history of the WW II. The epic saga of courage, valour and sacrifice shown by the Red Army and the Soviet people in defeating fascism is sought to be erased. The Soviet Union alone lost over 20 million lives � 40 times more that all the allied forces put together � in this war.

With this special issue, People�s Democracy joins this ideological battle and makes its humble contribution against such anti-communist rewriting of history.

(May 05, 2010)