THERE has been some excitement in Britain’s media lately because a television guest informed an ignorant, hectoring Piers Morgan that she is “literally a communist,” while Cuba’s draft constitution redesignates the country’s social system as “socialist” in place of “communist.”

Politics programmes have pondered the supposed significance of these events, while ensuring that no member of the Communist Party is actually present to correct the usual misconceptions, distortions and lies. 

As usual, the heroic struggles and achievements of communists around the world from the US and Chile to France and Portugal, or from South Africa and India to Russia, China and Vietnam, go unmentioned. 

As the state religion of capitalism and imperialism, anti-communism should not be allowed to concentrate wholly on partial, negative features of communism’s history. 

The left should insist that the full picture is presented, including the achievements of the Soviet Union and today in China, as well as the sacrifices of communists such as Nelson Mandela and the anti-fascist freedom fighters of wartime Europe.