ABSTRACT
‘As long as it does not threaten the Communist Party's monopoly of power, it's socialism.’ This is the new ‘party line’ preached by Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia and by Deng Xiao Ping in China. But this is not a new pragmatism, as the western press calls it. It is the ideology of naked power (and very old). It totally abjures everything that communism of any kind – or socialism for that matter – ever stood for. It is as if the Pope declared that as long as Catholics pay Peter's pence to Rome it does not matter whether they believe in Christ or not.
