The Hasty Whitewashing of the Communist Parties' Facade Does Not Guarantee a Real Change of Doctrines

The leaders of the various communist parties spread throughout the world did not want to see or could not see this seven-decade‑old situation, cruelly laid bare by the dramatic events now shaking the Soviet world. This situation has begun to make the communist parties in the different countries visibly uneasy. The very label "communist party," once borne so proudly, already seems to be psychologically clumsy and tactically vexatious.

For this reason, several of them now tend to label themselves as socialists, a change not merely of labels, so they claim, but also one of content.

Such changes naturally suggest some thoughts:

1. What the communist parties do in the future cannot, in itself, justify what they have or have not done until now. For example, changing their label in no way explains why they have supported everything done in the Soviet world to the present date. Nor does it explain the silence of the communist parties of the Free World regarding the terrible misery in the Soviet Union and the captive nations. With this in mind, the questions raised above continue to be compelling.

2. The present changes can only be taken seriously if the communist parties clearly state:

a) What has changed in their doctrines, philosophically, socio-economically, and so on;

b) Why they changed them and how these changes relate to perestroika.

3. Furthermore, the communist parties must concretely clarify:

a) What their present position is regarding the freedom of the Catholic Church and, mutatis mutandis, of the other religions;

b) How they now envision the freedom of political parties, as well as of different philosophical, political, cultural, and other currents, in accordance with the rights guaranteed to man by the Decalogue;

c) Whether they have changed their doctrines and legislative goals as regards the institutions of the family, private property and free enterprise; and if so, how;

d) Finally, if they consider their new look to be a reasonably stable order of things, or merely a phase in an evolving process toward other positions;

e) If the latter be the case, what are these positions?

Without these clarifications, the hasty covering of the communist parties' facade with socialist whitewash does not guarantee in the least that the communists have really changed doctrines.