Anti-Capitalism is Profitable; Pro-Socialism is Criminal
By: He Zhao
Tags: Socialism, Communism, Anti Capitalism, Politics, Chomsky

Anti-capitalism is not dangerous to bourgeois kleptocracy, while pro-socialism is its greatest threat.

Not only can all criticism of capitalism, no matter how sharp, be absorbed by the system and neutered without much trouble, but the existence of anti-capitalist commodities in the “market of ideas” reinforces the central fixture of liberal capitalist ideology, the illusion of “speech/thought/press freedoms” and “democracy”.

Anti-capitalism is wholly permitted, and to an extent even encouraged as controlled opposition, but pro-socialism is always disallowed, severely punished, de-platformed, and thoroughly discredited as fringe insanity. No one who defends actual living socialism (as opposed to a lofty set of abstractions or nostalgia for past revolutions) have been and will ever be allowed to reach a large audience. No one who praises the myriad of large scale strides that leftist nations have made, how real life communists have improved life for hundreds of millions, or refuses to denounce existing socialist states along the trite propagandistic lines, will ever be given significant platform in Western mainstream media.

“Rebellion”, “dissent”, and “resistance” are all perfectly acceptable and sexy like “alternative fashion”, but constructive positivity with regard to the actual world-historic process of socialism-building and real liberation is labeled “authoritarian extremism in praise of evil dictators”. So all of the most visible and powerful leftist voices in the liberal-capitalist bourgeois states are given free reign to endlessly and passionately rail against the wide range of extreme abuses of capitalism and imperialism (crimes which only confirm the rightist “dog eat dog” and “strongest survive” false logic), but nonetheless toe the ideological line of anti-communism.

“USSR was a betrayal of leftism”

– Noam Chomsky “Marxism is dangerously and disastrously utopian”

– Chris Hedges “Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.”

― Slavoj Žižek “China’s authoritarian capitalism is the worst of both worlds”.

– Slavoj Žižek “..autocratic industrial socialism has also been a disaster for the environment… Venezuela’s petro-populism has continued this toxic tradition into the present day, with disastrous results.”

– Naomi Klein And David Graeber steers very clear of any cheers for existing socialism, and has often expressed unfavourable views of “Chinese State Capitalism”.

The list goes on and on and on. Without a single exception, anti-communists completely monopolise the tiny bandwidth of attention allotted to the left; while in many ways much more rigorous and illuminating scholars and historians such as Michael Parenti have not even reached their 5000 friends limit on facebook.

It isn’t a precise measure, but which political symbol is wildly popular and celebrated under capitalism, adorns and used to sell nearly every product imaginable, and which symbol is widely frowned upon, can not be found at all in any shopping malls, and even banned in many reactionary states (such as Poland) is a good general indication of which ideology perfectly fits the individualist liberal consumerist paradigm and which poses an actual threat to the bourgeois capitalist order. (Che Guavara has been made into a pop culture icon similar to Bob Marley; the fair comparison is between the anarchy symbol and the Hammer & Sickle) Anyone who does not believe me, simply try wearing a Hammer & Sickle T-shirt in public in a major city in Europe or the USA, and compare the responses you get to what you receive when wearing an Anarchy T-shirt.

Under such conditions, it is no wonder that we have entire generations and hardline factions within the left who have thoroughly internalised anti-communism, who wilfully and gladly do the CIA’s bidding in today’s renewed Cold War.