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Where Marxists have Where Marxists have sought political power from ballot boxes rather than gun barrels, they have not fared well. Eurocommunism—the attempt by Communist parties in Western Europe to win popular support and parliamentary power by electoral appeal—seemed to be a worrisome specter in its own right only a few years ago. No longer. The Italian Communist Party, the largest and most powerful in Western Europe, has been in steady decline since it reached its peak in the 1976 national elections. French Communists, who are far more Moscow-oriented than their Italian colleagues, lost nearly half their parliamentary seats in the national election last summer.
Portugal had a close call with a takeover by a more extreme breed of Communists, some of whom campaigned with the slogan VIVA STALIN in 1975. In both Portugal and Spain, the death of right-wing dictators created a political vacuum that ultra-leftists sought to fill. But as moderate, democratic parties have established themselves, the voters seem to have relegated the Communists to the fringes where they properly belong.
Marx would probably be somewhat distressed to know that Eurocommunism has waned largely because of its association with the world's first and largest Marxist state, the Soviet Union. The Italian Communist Party has disavowed the key Soviet notion of "proletarian internationalism," since it connotes intervention, aggression and Moscow's primacy in the movement; and at their Party Congress two years ago, the Italian Communists went so far as to drop the term "Leninist" in describing themselves.
The encroachments of Communism in the Third World have also been tentative and ambiguous. Enough developing countries have learned the hard way not to believe Marxist promises of progress and liberation. Cuba's Fidel Castro came to power in a genuine, homemade, popular revolution. But he was the exception that proves the rule, since during his years as a guerrilla in the hills and even after his triumphant march into Havana, he kept his ideological orientation camouflaged. Although he was obviously leaning leftward, Castro and his apologists denied that he was Marxist or that he planned to rebuild Cuba along Leninist lines. Today he is probably the Soviet minion most troublesome to the U.S., but he became that way partly in reaction to two decades of unremitting American hostility.
Chile's Salvador Allende was one hile's Salvador Allende was one of the few Marxist leaders to come to power through democratic elections. Had not the Chilean military cut short his rule and his life, in a coup that had the covert assistance of the U.S., Allende might well have gone on to achieve a more comforting distinction: a Marxist President voted out of office because his policies had turned a bad economic situation into a disaster. In Africa, Soviet-style and Soviet-sponsored