Careful! Mind you don't slip in the troll drool. And please read through before you start taking a strip out of me.
When I was very young and even more foolish than I am today, I was a good anticommunist liberal. That's what I really was, even though I thought of myself as a social democrat, or occasionally an anarchist (I was politically precocious). As such, I was deeply thrilled when the mujahideen in Afghanistan, backed by the U.S., started to have success against Soviet troops sent in to prop up the leftist regime that had overthrown the monarchy in that country.
I share my enthusiasm with my father. To my surprise, he didn't share it.
"The Communists in Afghanistan are made up of the most educated, most modern people in the country,'' he said. "The people the most like us. People who have taken a Western ideology. The U.S. has backed the most reactionary elements in the country, religious tribal warriors, against the most progressive elements."
I was shocked. My father wasn't then a communist, and certainly isn't now, so it wasn't a point of view I had been expecting from him. I argued vociferously, but he wasn't to be budged (I did get firm support from my even more anticommunist aunt). So I just chalked him up as wrong.
In light of everything that has happened since, I am ready to admit that he was basically right and I was basically wrong. The consequences of having a stable, communist -- or at least forrmerly communist -- Afghanistan wouuld have been much worse than what did happen. (And I'd personally prefer a Communist Iran to the government there now) I suspect that the Soviet Union would have collapsed pretty much on the same schedule. Maybe it would have eked out a few more years.
Communism, the bugbear of American policy during the Cold War, like the liberalism that informed the U.S. Constition, was in its origins a rationalist ideology descended from the Enlightenment. Fascism, and the radical Islamism that is informing much of the politics in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia now, are fundamentally anti-Enlightenment.
This is important because rationalists are eager to be proven right objectively. Communists thought they were CORRECT, or at least would be eventually, and would be proven so. When they were proven wrong by falling economically behind the West (and I don't want to get into an argument with reddan here), the Communists regimes first faked the evidence and then after too many contradictions piled up, either collapsed or managed a sea change (China may be run by a Communist Party, but it sure as hell ain't communist in any meaningful sort of way any more.)
In the West this took the form of most Communist parties turning themselves into left-social democratic parties (Italy's PDS, or Democratic Party of the Left) and even in a many former Soviet Bloc countries the former Communist Parties, reformed and renamed, have had another kick at the can, democratically, as social democrats since the wall fell.
For the anti-Enlightenment right, however, rational arguments don't matter much. If you're antirationalist it often doesn't matter if you've objectively failed -- it's adherence to the ideology that matters. This is true both of Islamic fundamentalism, the religious right in the U.S. and, arguably, the modern Republican Party.
You'll notice, however, that I entitled this diary "In Praise of Communists" NOT "In Praise of Communism." Communism in power gifted the 20th century with at least three of its four worst mass murderers (Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot) and was a miserable, oppressive, and usually murderous system in power. The right likes to chalk this up to the party's leftism. I instead chalk it up to utopianism, which easily turned murderous in the 20th century. (I get a strong sniff of utopianism off the both the religious right and certain neoconservatives. But they're too inefficient and inept to do anything really serous about it.)
In opposition, however, Communists often stood up for democracy and human rights: in the pre-World War II U.S. South the Communist Party was about the only integrated institution and about the only organization pushing agressively and openly for full civil rights for blacks. The party's motives may have been mixed and some of its Depression-era ideas were wonky, such as its proposal for an independent republic in the so-called Black Belt. Still the CP WAS pushing for equality for black votes, something Roosevelt and the Democratic Party weren't willing to do: the Democratic Party platform didn't contain a strong civil rights plank until 1948.
Communists also made inroads in the Middle East: for its adherents the ideology provided was simultaneously the apotheosis of Western Enlightment thought, allowing for good stuff like sciences, rationalism and sexual equality, and a critique of the actual political practices of Western countries, such as Imperialsm.
This combination held, and to a degree still holds, an attraction to the educated middle classes in the Middle East. The Communist Part of Iraq was one of the few truly national political institutions in the country, with leadership drawn from all ethnic groups. It also had a secular program. Unfortuantely, its list didn't do very well at the polls.
In Israel, the Communist Party (in the form of its popular front electoral list, Hadash), is about the only truly binational large organization in the country (while its support mainly comes from Israeli Arabs, its leadership is studiously binantional). Its peace program is probably the most attractive realistic option available: a two-state solution, with the Israeli half of the state binational and secular. I'd be tempted to vote for it were I Israeli.
The end of the Cold War freed the Communist Parties of the Middle East from the need to follow the party lines of sponsoring states -- the Soviet Union looked after its own interests first, as did China (which stopped sponsoring overseas Communist Parties in the late 1970s), often to the detriment of the parties they were backing. Unfortunately for the Middle East's Communist Parties, it also freed them from their financial sponsors after they were weakened by popular resentment of Soviet actions in afghanistan.
This means the Communist franchise in the Middle East is now open. There's some residual organization left, and some dedicated members who are willing to undertake very dangerous political work in places where the odds see less than favorable. They are advocating a Western ideology that has proven intermittently popular in parts of the region (including Iran).
My modest proposal: the U.S should pick up that franchise. He who pays the piper calls the tune, so the Communist Parties would have to drop those parts of their platforms that are offensive to the values of even most progressive americans (dictatorship of the proletariat, which I believe is gone anyway from all but a handful of parties, and nationalization without compensation of various industries and resources.) What you would be left with is social democratic parties willing to take big risks. And wouldn't be afraid of a little direct political action where it's needed and seemed to have some chance of success, say in Iran.
When I first proposed this idea a couple of years ago on Kos, I was basically kidding. I don't think I am any more. The situation in the Middle East has gotten much more dire, and it's clear that the people in charge both here and there have no idea what to do. It's worth a try.