no longer pronounce the word »socialism« found themselves surround-ed by those who during the time of their retiscence were unusually vocal. Are not revolution destroyers of human elan and illusions and do they not leave behind countless living human skeletono who fright-ened by their own appearance flee into the garb and armor of me-dieval knights? But, it is obvious that there are no such shining and historically decorated garbs which could cover the nakedness of spirits who have lost youthful illusions. The loss of illusions can only be hidden by attainment of social power - the hiding of helplessness by illusory power.
The psychology of »fellow travellers of the revolution«, their zeal and downfall, pose the question of choice, as regards revolution and communism. As for revolutions, they evidently cannot be measured by the aforementioned oscillations because they contain epochal di-mensions which escape superficial revolts. As far as communism is concerned, for the man who cares cali himself a communist, it does not only exist as a class confrontation, as a conflict between communist and capitalist and does not vanish with the disappearance of class struggle, with the defeat and disappearance of capitalism, with the conversion of all people into working people. Communism does not e.\ist because of its opposition to nationalism, as a bourgeois ideology, because of the battle against Kys’ and Lon Nols’ mercenaries in the service of imperialism and against many other and similar national-ists, not even for those who would extend the party membership card to »progressive nationalism« (which up to now has not succeeded in defining itself as such). It is obvious that communism surpasses both class and national alignment, that it carries in itself a dimension which is neither one nor the other in spite of being closely linked to class struggle and appears in class society as its negation. But this is not a negation, as some think, which loses its meaning with the disappearance of class struggle, when the working class is in the process of formation or just a new kind of national solidarity among all social strata. Communism carries in itself a positive, truły humane existenti-al choice which can be realized only with the disappearance of class and other social antagonisms. Some of our preachers of »national communism« teach us that which Hegel very accurately described in the bourgeois society, that is, that it aspires social harmony within its own boundaries, but wars with everyone outside its boundaries. While communism represents the effort to overcome these Darwinistic char-acteristics of society, so as to bring the human species from the anim-alistic (or morę precisely from the sub-animal level, because no animal species wars against its own kind) to a truły human level of existence. This is not a new aspiration of mankind, but communism expresses it morę clearly and consistently than any other philosophy or ideology. That which represents the existential choice in communism is the desire for an authentic human society, a community of equal and free people. The modes of realizing it, the ways to achieve it are the subject of historical, political and sociological research.
5 PRAXIS 393