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From Socialist Worker, No. 88, 14 September 1968, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
“Surely a situation where a Communist government, as in Czechoslovakia, can be denounced as a tool of counter-revolutionary elements for permitting minimal civil liberties which all Communist states have supposedly practised all along, means that Marxism has been stood on its head.”
Dear Comrades,
This excerpt from a letter in the Morning Star on August 26 goes to the heart of the matter.
All serious communists have to face the question of how, after 20 years of supposedly socialist rule in Czechoslovakia, the very existence of the regime can be said, by the Russian government, to be threatened by free speech for critics, most of whom claim to be socialists.
What sort of “socialism” is it that existed in Czechoslovakia from 1948? The Czech Communist Party’s letter of July 19, 1968 contains the following revealing statements:
“The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia is trying to show that it is capable of a different political leadership and management than discredited bureaucratic-police methods. “
And again:
“Any indication of a return to those methods would arouse the resistance of the overwhelming majority of party members, the working class, the co-operative farmers and the intellectuals. “ (Quoted by John Gollan in the Morning Star, 26.6.68. Our emphasis.)
There could hardly be a clearer admission that Czechoslovakia had been ruled autocratically, run according to orders issued from the top, enforced, in the last resort, by police terror against the “overwhelming majority”.
What has such a regime in common with socialism? Most communists, and many others, have accepted the equation “Total ownership of industry = socialism”.
This is completely false. The essence of the matter is workers’ power. As Lenin, writing in 1919 put it:
“The quintessence of the Soviet system lies in that the permanent and sole basis of the whole state system, the whole state apparatus, is the mass organisation of precisely those classes that were oppressed by capitalism, i.e. the workers and semi-proletarians.” (Selected Works, vol. 7 p.231)
Without workers’ power, no socialism. Without freedom of discussion, publication and organisation within the working class, no workers’ power.
But these considerations apply equally to other East European countries and to the USSR itself . In our opinion, the Brezhnev regime does not differ in essentials from the former ‘bureaucratic-police’ role of Novotny.
This is precisely what worries the ruling group in the Kremlin. What they fear is the possibility that Dubcek’s attempt to “liberalise” Czechoslovakia may result in the sweeping away of the power of the bureaucracy and that the example may prove contagious.
What they fear is not counter-revolution but revolution. And their chief worry is not Czechoslovakia itself but the effects of a revolutionary development in Czechoslovakia on Russian workers.
The British Communist Party’s criticism of Russian military intervention and call for the withdrawal of Russian troops was a big advance on its previous subservience to Russian requirements. In our opinion this relative independence is due largely to the Gollan group’s adaption to reformist opinion in Britain, but it is nevertheless important.
The British party is now on record as saying:
“Whatever differences of view there might be about developments in Czechoslovakia, military intervention was completely unjustified.” (Statement by Political Committee, 21.8.68. Our emphasis)
We might ask, if a “tragic error” of these dimensions occur, what other “errors” may have been made? The break with China? The suppression of the Hungarian revolution?
But the fundamental question is the nature of the Russian type regimes and the implications for communists, although the causes of Stalinism and its persistence under other names is too complicated a question to be dealt with here.
International Socialism has developed its analysis over a long period and since the test of theory is its power to predict, we offer a prediction.
The compromise between the Czech and Russian positions announced on August 27 will lead to an attempt by the Dubcek group to re-establish, over a period, precisely that “bureaucratic-police” rule they have denounced. Such an attempt may succeed, as a similar one succeeded in Poland after 1956.
If it fails, the result will be, depending on the balance of forces, either another Russian takeover followed by a Hungarian-style repression or the establishment of a genuine socialist regime based on workers’ councils.
The latter development would have a profoundly revolutionary effect on Europe, East and West alike. We do not make this prediction on the basis of any estimate of the intentions of the Czech leaders - Thes may be perfectly sincere in their dislike of Stalinist methods [line of text missing] -ist analysis of Czechoslovak society which leads to the conclusion that such a regime could not be stable in an economically advanced country.
The reactions of the different communist parties to the Czech events have underlined the degree of disintegration of the world Communist movement. Different parties have taken different sides, unrelated to other disagreements over policy.
The Chinese have lined up with the Yugoslavs and the Italians; the Cubans with the Russian’s and East Germans.
The stability that has characterised the western capitalist world for 20 years is beginning to break up too. The horror of the war the American ruling class has been waging against the people of Vietnam and the terror it was prepared to unleash in Chicago against the American people, is encouraging a new generation to look towards socialist politics.
The May Days in France gave us a glimpse of future possibilities. But the Communist parties have proved themselves completely incapable of grasping these. The French CP actually managed to lose votes after the May movement.
In this country the Party has not benefited from the workers’ loss of faith in the Labour Party.
The present tiredness and timidity of the Party can only be understood in terms of its past policies. For years, willingness to accept every twist and turn of Russian policy created an artificial gulf between it and many workers open to revolutionary socialist ideas.
Loyalty to a periodically changing party line was more important than revolutionary zeal or scientific insight. The result is that while new socialist perspectives are opening up throughout the world, the party membership is increasingly cynical, defensive and apathetic.
A new revolutionary socialist movement can be built to grasp the new opportunities. But only by those who have broken with the dead weight of mistaken ideas and irrelevant organisations.
All Communist Party and YCL members who are concerned with participating in such a development are invited to discuss with International Socialism the forms of common activity and organisation.
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Yours fraternally, |
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Last updated on 30 October 2020