Czechoslovakia ten years ago (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Czechoslovakia, as its unwieldy name suggests, was one of the artificial “nation-States” set up after the First World War, containing within its borders not only people whose mother-tongue was Czech or Slovak but considerable minorities speaking Hungarian, Polish, German and Ukrainian. These last two minorities provided the excuse, before the war, for parts of Czechoslovakia to be annexed by Germany (since restored) and, after the war, for parts to be annexed by Russia (where they still are today).

A mere glance at the map of Europe shows why, for strategic reasons, Czechoslovakia could never hope to pursue an independent foreign policy for any length of time. One end of the country points into the middle of Germany, the other (even more prominently on pre-war maps) into Russia. The victorious powers in the First World War who had set up Czechoslovakia in 1919 agreed twenty years later, at Munich, that it should form part of the German sphere of influence. After the war, at Yalta, it was agreed that it should be transferred to the Russian sphere, where it has been since the Stalinist coup d’etat in 1948, a position which was dramatically re-asserted ten years ago this month when Russian tanks rolled into the streets of Prague.

The Russian re-invasion of Czechoslovakia was motivated mainly by strategic considerations, the fear that the political changes begun by the Dubcek government would get out of hand and lead to Czechoslovakia trying to break away from the Russian empire.

Dubcek had succeeded Novotny, a hard-line Stalinist, as the leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in January 1968 as part of a process in which the “liberals” in the Party triumphed over the “conservatives”. The sort of state capitalist regime which exists in Russia and East Europe is based on a State monopoly over the means of production, but where the State is itself monopolised by a privileged group who thus own and control the means of production just as much as the more traditional capitalist class of Western countries.

This state capitalist ruling class monopolises the means of production as a class, but within it there are various groups with their own sectional interests such as the military, Party and managerial bureaucracies. In the classic Stalinist model, power is firmly in the hands of the Party bureaucracy — people as often as not originally from working-class backgrounds, who are basically politicians without technical qualifications; they make policy and it is to them that the military and managerial bureaucracies are subordinated. But because factory managers and other technocrats are also generally obliged to be members of the Party, conflicts of sectional interest within the state capitalist ruling class express themselves as conflicts inside the Party.

In Czechoslovakia the election of Dubcek as Party leader, and the “Prague Spring” which followed with the relaxation of censorship and talk of “socialism ( = state capitalism) with a human face”, represented the victory of the managerial section of the ruling class over the more strictly party-political section. The overcentralized state capitalism of the Stalin era, in which all decisions were taken centrally by the Party bureaucracy and industrial managers had merely to execute them was beginning to become inefficient even in Russia itself and various experiments in decentralization and so-called “market socialism” (an absurd contradiction in terms since socialism necessarily involves the disappearance of the market) were made. It was the implementation of such measures that in Czechoslovakia gave the managerial bureaucracy a certain degree of independence and allowed them to mount a challenge against and eventually oust the Stalinist old guard.

The Dubcek period in Czechoslovakia, then, represented the coming to power of a different section of the capitalist ruling class: the managers as opposed to the politicians. Some people were quite frank that this was what it was all about. The present writer recalls a Czech tourist at one of our meetings in Hyde Park in the summer of 1968 who somewhat arrogantly declared that Dubcek represented the end of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” by which he meant the end of “stupid workers”, i.e. political leaders from a working-class background) giving orders to more educated managers and technocrats like his father.

The programme of the triumphant Dubcek wing of the Czechoslovak Communist Party was essentially an extension of “market socialism”. This would have involved a further relaxation of centralized planning and more competition between enterprises for sales and profits. Enterprises were to be given the right to hire and fire, so turning the “hidden unemployment” (over manning) associated with the old system into an open reserve army of labour. There was even talk of enterprises being allowed to raise money by issuing bonds which would be traded centrally on a revived stock exchange! Ota Šik, the theorist of all this, now recognises, in exile, that the old system was a form of State capitalism but fails to realise that his “market socialism” was even more recognisably a form of capitalism.

Together with this economic liberalisation was to go a political liberalisation. Censorship in the newspapers, on the radio and television and in the arts was relaxed; the powers of the police were reduced. Here, as opposed to the economic reforms, was something from which the working class might have benefited. For freedom of discussion is the ideal, even indispensable, condition for the development of socialist ideas since it is only out of a full and frank discussion of their experiences under capitalism that the working class can come to acquire the majority socialist understanding necessary before capitalism can be replaced by Socialism. In the spring of 1968 a small, tentative step was taken in Czechoslovakia in a direction which might have led to the limited political democracy such as exists in Western countries, with its relative freedom of speech, more than one political party, collective bargaining between trade unions and employers, etc.

It was precisely a fear that such a system might eventually lead strategically-important Czechoslovakia out of the Soviet bloc that led the Russian ruling class to decide to send its troops in to overthrow Dubcek and install the puppet regime under Husak which is still in power today. The Dubcek regime itself had never suggested leaving the Soviet bloc (they had learnt the lesson of Czechoslovakia’s brief history: that it can’t have an independent foreign policy but must be dominated either by Germany or by Russia), but, as far as the Russian ruling class were concerned, this was no guarantee as to what, with the advent of a measure of political democracy, some future Czech government might try to do.

Socialists are naturally concerned about whether or not political democracy exists under capitalism. For the existence of some political democracy, limited and distorted though it must be by the class structure of capitalism, is central to our case for the peaceful propagation of socialist ideas culminating in the peaceful establishment of Socialism by democratic political action based on majority socialist understanding.

The Dubcek regime represented a section of the state capitalist ruling class and would have proved to be just as anti-working class as the previous Stalinist governments of Czechoslovakia. So no tears needed to be shed for it. But this split in the ruling class was beginning to allow workers in Czechoslovakia (just as had happened in Western Europe in the 19th century) a certain freedom to manoeuvre, both on the political and industrial fields and the continuation of this process might have led to a situation in which the open propagation of socialist ideas in Czechoslovakia became possible.

Adam Buick

Czechoslovakia's brief Spring (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month Russian. East German. Hungarian and Polish tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and put an end to the "Prague Spring", an attempt to liberalise the state capitalist regime there.

The process of liberalisation had begun in January when the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party voted to replace the ageing Stalinist Novotny as General Secretary with Alexander Dubcek. This represented a decisive victory for the liberalising elements within the Party over the conservative elements. In April the Party published a 24,000 word Action Programme entitled Czechoslovakia's Road to Socialism. On the political field, it proposed an end to censorship, the introduction of freedom of assembly, the expression of minority opinion and various other reforms of a democratic nature. On the economic field, it sought to move away from the centralised, bureaucratic kind of state capitalism that existed in the country towards a more decentralised, market-oriented kind that came to be known as "market socialism" (despite the contradiction in terms). Under a plan drawn up by a professor of economics. Ota Sik, who became one of the deputy Prime Ministers, individual state enterprises were to be given a wide measure of autonomy and forced to compete for markets and bank loans; in addition, elected works councils were to be instituted as a means of preventing management from slipping back into lazy, bureaucratic ways.

Real steps were taken in the direction of freedom of expression and assembly: censorship was actually abolished and views critical of the regime could be freely expressed. Outside Czechoslovakia, intellectuals who had always been sympathetic to Russia but secretly felt guilty about its totalitarian nature welcomed the changes as the coming of "socialism [read: state capitalism] with a human face".

The changes were less welcome to the Russian ruling class and indeed to elements within the Czechoslovak ruling class too. As the statement we published in the Socialist Standard at the time made clear, the main concern of the Russian ruling class was strategic: they were afraid that political liberalisation might get out of hand and lead to Czechoslovakia escaping from the Russian sphere of interest. As this was not a development they could risk, they sent in their tanks to restore a political regime that was potentially less dangerous.

Leading role of the party
Basically, the sort of political regime the Russian ruling class wanted to see in Czechoslovakia was one similar to their own. where "the leading role of the Communist Party" was firmly entrenched. Because of the nature of state capitalism in Russia and similar countries the ruling elite needs to be tightly organised to exercise its control over the means of production. Any weakening of "the leading role of the Party" is therefore a weakening of the position of a ruling class made up of those who occupy the top posts in the Party, the government, the armed forces and the nationalised industries and who in Russia are known as "nomenklatura" after the list of posts filled by party appointees.

Liberal elements within the Czechoslovak Party had begun to waver on the question of the leading role of the Party and it was this that led the Russian rulers to defend their strategic interests. The Party's Action Programme, published in April 1968, had declared that "the leading role of the Party was too often understood as a monopolistic concentration of power in the hands of the party organs" and in a questionnaire prepared with the collaboration of the Party's Central Committee and published in the Party's journal Rude Pravo on 13 May, readers were asked to answer such questions as:

Does the internal democratisation of a Communist Party provide a sufficient guarantee of democracy?
Can you speak of democracy as being socialist when the leading role is held only by the Communist Party?
Should the Communist Party carry out its leadership role through serving devotedly free, progressive socialist development, or through ruling over society?

Technocrats and bureaucrats
Actually, in questioning the leading role of the Party, the liberal elements within the Czechoslovak ruling class had no intention of abdicating power. As the last question above shows, they still wanted the Party to play this role but in a less authoritarian fashion.

They had been forced into this position by the economic situation that had arisen in Czechoslovakia. Leading economists like Ota Sik realised that in the context of world capitalism what Czechoslovakia needed was a competitive economy whose products were able to compete in terms of price and quality with those of other countries. According to Sik. the only way to revitalise the Czechoslovak economy to this end was to move away from centralised, bureaucratic control to decentralised, market control. This would naturally involve taking power from some of the bureaucrats and giving it to industrial managers. It was in this sense that the leading role of the Party was questioned: not that the Party should give up power, but that it should no longer seek to take all decisions centrally.

This — a struggle between technocrats and bureaucrats — is how the struggle between liberals and conservatives was seen, inside as well as outside Czechoslovakia. The present writer recalls a discussion at one of our outdoor meetings in the summer of 1968 in which a Czech student argued that Dubcek was working, quite correctly in his view, to end "the dictatorship of the proletariat" in Czechoslovakia, by which he meant the rule over competent technocrats like his father by (as he put it) "thick workers" appointed to management posts on the basis of their Party loyalty!

It was in fact such ex-workers whose position and privileges were threatened by the Dubcek reforms and who welcomed the Russian tanks with open arms. The conservative elements within the Czechoslovak ruling class were restored to power in August 1968 (Dubcek was not finally removed from office and demoted to a forestry worker until April 1969). but this did not mean that the country's economic problems went away. The new government the Russians installed tried to solve them by introducing a certain measure of "market socialism" while strictly upholding the "leading role" (or political monopoly) of the Party

From Prague to Moscow
Ironically, twenty years later Russia is facing the same sort of economic problems as did Czechoslovakia, and Gorbachev has embraced the economic analysis and solution proposed by Ota Sik in 1968: the granting of autonomy to individual state enterprises to swim or sink in a competitive market situation.

For this is what the much-vaunted perestroika, or restructuring, amounts to. And like Dubcek. Gorbachev has met with resistance from conservative elements within the ruling class, those whose power and privileges are threatened by a relaxation of central, bureaucratic control over the economy. To overcome this Gorbachev too has appealed for support among the population in general, but unlike Dubcek has not for one moment questioned "the leading role of the Party"; and he has no intention of doing so. since he firmly believes that the Party should retain its monopoly of political power. All he wants is to overcome conservative resistance to the economic perestroika that has become necessary to revive Russia's stagnating economy. The furthest he is prepared to go in permitting activity outside Party control is local pressure groups over local issues such as preserving some historic building or opposing a road going through their back gardens.

Gorbachev would answer the three questions posed by Rude Pravo in May 1968. "Yes. the internal democratisation of a Communist Party does provide a sufficient guarantee of democracy”; "Yes, you can speak of democracy being socialist when the leading role is held only by the Communist Party", and "Yes. the Communist Party should carry out its leadership role through ruling over society". On this issue he is in complete agreement with his alleged rival Ligachev. who has declared that "the guarantee of the irreversability of perestroika is the Communist Party" (Observer, 5 June)

For Gorbachev does not believe in democracy. What he believes in is what used to be called "oligarchy". the rule of the few, in his case the leaders of the Communist Party. Nor do the constitutional measures he proposes — limitation on length of terms of office, secret ballots for the election of Party leaders, more power to Party members in Soviets — amount to a "democratisation" of the Party. All he is trying to devise is some method for renewing the cadres of the vanguard party so as to avoid a repetition of the recent government of Russia by sick and tired old men. The Communist Party will continue to be run from the top down even if those at the top are chosen differently (and even that remains to be seen: Khrushchev proposed the same sort of measures in 1960 and the Central Committee used its new powers to vote him out of office).

A collectively-owning state capitalist class such as exists in Russia recruits its members and leaders in a different way from the individually-owning private capitalist class in the West. The latter renews itself through inheritance and also by some small businessmen becoming richer, while the administration of its political affairs is left to politicians elected by a capitalist-minded populace. In Russia the ruling class is organised as a hierarchy — the Party — renewed by recruitment and promotion.

Gorbachev's concern is to provide mechanisms to enable younger and more dynamic people to rise to the top of the hierarchy without having to wait for their predecessors to die. so as to allow the Russian ruling class to pursue its interests at home and abroad more efficiently. This has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy, not even with the limited political democracy that exists in some Western countries. It is not a process of democratisation. but one of reorganisation of the promotion procedures within the Russian ruling class.

Adam Buick

Ten years on (1978)

Editorial from the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

This issue of the Socialist Standard deals with the August 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia which overthrew the Dubcek government and installed another which was more in line with the interests of the Russian ruling class.

In no sense do we celebrate this event; but as it will be a matter of wide comment it is essential that the unique socialist attitude be heard.

The Russian invasion was a shock to many people but there is little indication that the lesson has been drawn from it. To begin with, it exposed again the hypocrisy of the Russian government’s championing of movements for national self-determination and showed that, when they saw their interests threatened, the Russian ruling class were as quick and as ruthless in their response as any of the more traditional imperialist powers.

In that way the invasion was an exposure of the true nature of society in Russia; if former events like the invasion of Hungary had left anyone still thinking that Russia is anything other than a typical capitalist state, the sight of the tanks rolling into Prague should have been more than enough to convince them.

Of course the hypocrisy did not flow in only one direction. The western capitalist powers were weeping crocodile tears for poor little Czechoslovakia while they were conveniently forgetting their policies in places like Cyprus, Aden, Malaya, Suez and Vietnam.

In fact, imperialism and conquest, of one sort or another, are an inescapable part of capitalism. This social system produces wealth with the object of selling it to make a profit and that holds good in Russia just as it does in Britain or America. One consequence of this is that markets are vital to capitalism, as the places where the wealth can be disposed of.

A large part of the story of imperialism is the story of the grabbing, or the protection, of markets which one power has cornered. Another is of the fight to annexe, or keep rivals away from, sources of valuable raw materials like oil or uranium. This is very much the story of the Middle East and it may one day be the same for the North Sea.

To protect their standing in the markets and the raw material fields of the world, the powers of capitalism have built up numerous diplomatic fortresses in which the interests of one power tend to predominate over the rest. The decline of the former great empires of occupation has stimulated the development and the refinement of the technique of erecting these spheres of influence.

Under these policies a nominally independent country can in reality be part of the empire of one of capitalism’s great states. This was the case with Czechoslovakia and with Hungary and it was the decline of the British sphere of influence in the Middle East which provoked the disastrous invasion of Suez.

The simple fact is that war is unavoidable as long as capitalism lasts and with it the hypocrisy and lies which are fed to the working class the world ever. The Suez venture was justified in this country by picturing Nasser as a madman who wanted to rule the Middle East and cut “our” lifeline to the oilfields and the markets of the Far East. The American intervention (and their atrocities) in Vietnam were justified on the grounds that if they did not hold fast there the whole of Indo-China, and perhaps eventually the entire Pacific area, would collapse into Russia’s camp like a line of dominoes.

On the other side, the crushing of the Dubcek government was described as a necessary move against a counter-revolutionary subversive, which saved a little bit of socialism (as if this were possible).

The working class should not be deceived by such propaganda, pathetically transparent as it is. No capitalist power ever invades another country in order to save lives or protect anything which is in the interests of the working people of the world. They do so to foster their own sordid interests in the profit making, exploiting economy of capitalism. In the process they are usually exposed for what they are, so that only the most gullible can believe the official stories about the reasons for their actions.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia showed up the Russian ruling class but to anyone able to read, or hear, or see, this had already been done. It was done at the time of Hungary or at the time of the second world war or at the time of the Russo-Nazi pact and the subsequent invasion of Finland.

There is a clear lesson in this and it is this that the socialist standard is concerned to spell out, this month and every month. Capitalism cannot work in the interests of the majority of its people. It must produce, among other horrors, war. But naturally the mouthpieces of the capitalist class cannot be expected themselves to tell us the reasons for these events; to understand capitalism, to know what the system is bound to impose upon us, is the work of a conscious working class.

When the working class have come to that understanding it is but a small step for them to grasp the other side of the equation. The only way to abolish capitalism’s problems is to get rid of the system itself, entirely. There is only one system which can replace it and that is socialism, a world of common ownership and free access, where all the world’s people will live in harmony because for the first time in history we shall be able to express a common interest.

Background to the Czech Crisis (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy is vitally important to the working class. Socialists maintain that it is the experience of working men and women under capitalism which will drive them in the end to understand the need for socialism and, as we see it, this process is enhanced by the degree of democracy which workers have won for themselves. Recent developments in Czechoslovakia before the Russian invasion have a real interest for the working class and the question arises whether socialists should support Dubcek and the ‘liberal’ wing of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party against the conservative forces there and in the other state capitalist countries. But first, to understand what is taking place in Czechoslovakia, it is necessary to know something of the background to the recent reforms.

The Czechoslovakian economy has been in difficulties for some time. These first came to a head in August, 1962 when the five year plan (1961-65) had to be abandoned because of balance of payments difficulties and an all-round failure to increase productivity. As a stop-gap measure an interim plan was devised for 1963 but this resulted in another disaster, with both industrial output and gross national product slumping even further than they had done the year before. Faced with this situation the government was forced to postpone the new five year plan and instead the then President — Novotny — concentrated on exposing the failure of certain key industries to meet their production targets. Yet the .Czechoslovakian economy was in sufficient of an impasse to provoke a more radical approach from many quarters. It was pointed out that trade was heavily oriented towards the Comecon countries, especially Russia which had a virtual monopoly in supplying Czechoslovakia with many of its raw materials. In fact, some of the statistics quoted were quite staggering; Russia was the source of almost all Czechoslovakia’s oil, 80 per cent of its imported iron-ore, 63 per cent of its imports of synthetic rubber and so on. The clear implication was that this in itself was an unhealthy state of affairs and this view was reinforced when the prices paid by Czechoslovakia for some of these raw materials were pointedly compared with those paid by Western countries for the same commodities. Thus, while Italy was known to be getting its crude oil from Russia at 8 roubles/ton, Czechoslovakia was buying the same for 20.8 roubles/ton. There was also criticism of Czechoslovakia’s role within Comecon, since the supranational plans laid it down that Czechoslovakia would concentrate on heavy industry. In 1963, for example, this sphere was accounting for 28 per cent of total investments and this emphasis on heavy industry was said to be helping to produce a lop-sided economy.

These sort of arguments all led in a direction which, for political reasons, Novotny and his colleagues were not prepared to go. However indirectly it was argued, the pressure was for a loosening of Czechoslovakia’s dependence on Comecon and Russia and for an increase in trade with the West. Although the recent struggle in the Praesidium and in the Central Committee of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party has appeared to be focused on an organisational and ideological dispute, it is this clash over economic problems which has formed the real battleground for the upheaval and which led to Novotny being eased out of first the first-secretaryship of the Party and then out of the Presidency. This explains the fact—which has baffled many observers—that in the split in the Praesidium in January, 1968 when the two factions were equally balanced (5-5), the pro-Dubcek camp included such arch conservatives as Hendrych (chief of the Party’s ideological department, who was chiefly responsible for hounding the Czech writers in 1967) and Dolansky (now described as a “reformed Stalinist”) while several so-called liberals voted for Novotny.

The overriding importance which the new leadership attaches to the economic reforms was hinted at by Jaromir Balcar—the vice-president of the Czechoslovakian Chamber of Commerce—when he issued a statement that “the process of political demonstration must, as far as trade is concerned, run in close harmony with the economy of the country as a whole.” In fact, important adjustments to the economy have already been pushed through—such as a reduction of investments in heavy industry by over a third to 18 per cent of total investment. Despite political difficulties, the new Czechoslovak leadership has also been making encouraging noises towards Western powers for intensified economic relations. The Prime Minister, Cernik, has said that Czechoslovakia wants to cooperate with the Common Market and EFTA and there has been a lot of talk about working towards convertibility for the Czech crown. Coupled with this, there has been some forthright criticism of economic relations with Russia, a good example being that involving the $500 m. credit which the Czechoslovakian government originally agreed to advance for the development of the Tyumen oil fields in Siberia. The agreement here was for Czechoslovakia to advance the capital and for Russia to eventually pay it back with oil products from the new Siberian fields. But a controversy has developed over the quantity of oil which Czechoslovakia's $500 million entitles it to. As a commentator on Prague radio put it:

These are precisely the problems Where the interests of the individual Socialist countries clash.

This sort of evidence would seem to be fairly conclusive proof, then that the Czech-Soviet confrontation leading to invasion is rooted in the conflicting economic and strategic interests of the ruling classes of these two countries. This means that workers in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere have no direct stake in this continuing struggle, but it does not mean that they should adopt a completely passive role. Whichever faction in the Communist Party assumes eventual control, the class struggle in Czechoslovakia will continue and the Czech workers should take advantage of any embarrassments which the ruling class is subjected to by pressing ahead with their own demands. And they have done this remarkably well in some respects. Although Dubcek and his followers have found the liberalisation campaign a convenient weapon to hammer their opponents with, it is the working [class] (at least for a time) which has taken over the agitation for democracy and which has already pushed the demands much further than the most 'liberal’ apparatchniks would like to go. Whereas in countries like Russia and Poland recent opposition to the regime has tended to be focused on dissident members of the ruling class (Pavel Litvinov is the grandson of Stalin's foreign minister, for example; Karol Modzelewski is also the son of a late foreign minister) in Czechoslovakia discontent with present conditions has been actively expressed by millions of working men and women. While there is nothing reveloutionary about this—according to opinion polls in the newspapers, over 90 per cent of the Czech population imagines that capitalism has already been eliminated in that country—socialists do not belittle the reforms which workers in Czechoslovakia have been campaigning for. Moves for relaxing press censorship and for establishing something approaching free speech on the streets are important gains for the working class and in the end they will have to rely on nothing but their own efforts to maintain them.

But there are obvious weaknesses as well in this reform movement. The famous '2000 Words' manifesto has underlined these better than anything else. Here the problems confronting working men and women in Czechoslovakia are explained by the 'mistakes’ committed by the previous leadership:

   . . .  the reins of government did not fall into good hands. The incorrect line of the leadership transformed the Party, which had been a political and ideological force, into an organisation of power and it therefore attracted all types of would-be dictators, rogues and charlatans.
   Parliament disregarded parliamentary procedures, the government forgot how to govern and the leaders how to lead. 

Against this was opposed the need for a restyled communist party which would base itself “not on force but on popular support”.

Other workers have a much clearer grasp of the situation and some have been discussing the possibility of forming new political organisations, independent of the regime. Already an independent ‘Non-Party Club' is functioning in Prague and this trend is obviously causing a lot of uneasiness in official circles. This is a development which socialists consider of the greatest importance, for what is desperately needed in Czechoslovakia now is a group of socialist propagandists who can explain that political democracy is not enough, that the working class will only be free when there is common ownership and democratic control over the means of production. For this purpose the Communist Party is useless; it can no more be converted into a socialist workers' party than could the Conservative or Labour parties in Britain. In Czechoslovakia the Communist Party is the organ of the ruling class. Its programme is geared to the interests of state capitalism and inevitably this brings it into conflict with the workers.

This is what the majority of Czech workers have to learn about Dubcek and his party. At the moment his image is one of the humane and good-natured ruler, intent on building a just society in Czechoslovakia. But the problems which harried the working class in Novotny’s days are not going to be eliminated by the new leadership. Superficially the techniques of ruling might be different, but the aim of any capitalist government is always the same—to increase the exploitation of the working class. Novotny realised that the Czechoslovakian economy was in a bad way and sought to use traditional, Stalinist methods to extract more work from the labour force. Dubcek is being more successful with his more subtle approach. Inspired by the call for ‘national unity', employees at the engineering plant of Komorany have decided to create a ‘Fund for the Republic' and to work an extra day without pay in an effort to revive the economy. This move has been taken up elsewhere and at other plants workers have volunteered to give up 1 per cent of their monthly salaries. Already miners in Lezaky (Bohemia) have donated 1,950,000 crowns to the Fund.

The case against men like Alexander Dubcek and Josef Smrkovsky is the argument which socialists apply lo all reformists. However radical the reforms which the new leadership sponsors, they will never allow anything approaching common ownership of the mines, factories and other means of producing wealth. The initiative for this social revolution will have to come from the working class. No socialist, then, could think of supporting Dubcek. Socialists do not take sides in struggles between sections of the ruling class. Socialists in Czechoslovakia will have to form their own party, hostile to “all sections of the master class” and based on principles similar to those of the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten across the border in Austria.

John Crump