Power, Politics and Czechoslovakia (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dictators of state capitalist Russia have sent their armies into Czechoslovakia in a bid to impose a puppet regime which will carry out their orders to crush free speech and restore rule by torture and the secret police.

For hundreds of years, as Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, this was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Austria was on the losing side in the first world war and was punished by having its empire broken up. One result was the state of Czechoslovakia, set up in October 1918. As its unwieldy name suggests this was a completely artificial “nation-state”. Besides Czechs and Slovaks it contained within its boundaries sizeable minorities speaking German, Hungarian, Polish and Ruthenian, a language close to Ukrainian.

A glance at the map of central Europe will straightaway show the strategic importance of Czechoslovakia. Whoever controls it has access to Russia and the Balkans. This was why Germany wanted, and got it, before the war. But Munich was not the only time that hypocritical politicians like Sir Alec Douglas Home, who now cry crocodile tears over Czechoslovakia, betrayed that state. They did it again at Yalta. This time the buyer was Russia. When the Czechoslovak and Russian rulers met at Cierna and Tisou at the end of July they may have recalled that this was not always a frontier village. Pre-war Czechoslovakia stretched further east with the province of Ruthenia. In 1945 Russia grabbed this area, of some 4,000 square miles and a population at that time of three quarters of a million, and incorporated it into the Ukraine.

Russia may perhaps let Rumania go its own way without making too much of a fuss, but not Czechoslovakia, a dagger pointing right into Russia. No wonder the Russian rulers are worried. The Bratislava agreement confirmed that Czechoslovakia can never have an independent foreign policy. It was the artificial creation of the Great Powers and doomed always to be dominated by them, especially by one or other of its great neighbours, Germany or Russia. The compromise reached at Bratislava seems to have been this: complete subordination to Russian dictates on foreign policy but some freedom in internal affairs.

Even at home the Czechoslovak rulers did not have much choice. Despite what anarchists and Trotskyists believe, rulers cannot turn democratic rights on and off at will. Even ordinary press and radio commentators pointed out that the Dubcek government could not have suppressed freedom of speech even if the Russians told them to. As socialists have always argued: democracy is established and maintained by the working class, not a gift from our rulers. Freedom of speech is something that the Czechoslovak rulers are going to have to live with from now on, as the Russian military has found out. No doubt, in time, this will lead on to freedom of organisation. The Socialist Party of Great Britain wishes workers there every success in establishing the framework within which a genuine socialist movement can grow, namely, political democracy.

The crude power politics of Russia once again expose the myth of Socialism there. Russia is a great capitalist power and behaves like one.

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain abhors this latest display of imperialist brutality, all the more vile as it has been committed in the name of socialism, and calls upon the workers the world over to oppose capitalism, east and west, and to unite for Socialism.

August 21st 1968

Beating Racialism (1968)

Book Review from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racial Discrimination in England by W. W. Daniel, (Penguin Special 6s.)

In April last year PEP released its report on racial discrimination in England, based on a survey of six areas carried out by Research Services Ltd. Research Services used three methods to assess the extent of discrimination, defined as "a practice or policy which affects members of a minority group differently because of colour or country of origin in ways that are of significance either socially or to them personally". They interviewed immigrants (from West Indies, India, Pakistan and Cyprus) and persons in a position to discriminate (employers, landlords, estate agents, etc.) and. organised "validating situation tests" in which they sent a white man from England, an immigrant from Hungary and an immigrant from the West Indies to apply for the same job. room, or motor insurance. What was the conclusion of this thorough and objective survey, here written up by W. W. Daniel of Research Services?

  In the sectors we studied—different aspects of employment, housing and the provision of services-there is racial discrimination varying, in.extent from the massive to the substantial.

In housing it exists in private letting, in house buying and even in council housing. This means that in all sectors of housing only the worst is available to coloured workers. You would expect migrants, and not only from overseas, to live at first in the worst areas but then in time to disperse. The effect of the informal colour bar in housing is to prevent this dispersal. And the racialists have the insolence to accuse coloured immigrants of creating slums! Some employers will only give coloured people unskilled labouring jobs; others provide separate eating and washing places; some operate a quota system. The trade unions, to their credit, have generally opposed discrimination.

What can be done about all this racial discrimination? Daniel rightly says that it will not be overcome as "an inevitable consequence of contact and of time". If racial prejudice is to go it must be fought But how? Should the Socialist Party campaign with others opposed to racialism for laws against colour bar (useful as these might be educationally)? Should we support “black power"? Should we use "fists against the fascists?" None of these. Capitalism gives rise to working class problems and so to working class discontent and, as long as workers are not class conscious, they will remain open to suggestions that this or that conspicuous minority, not capitalism, is the cause of their problems. To give up our uncompromising struggle against capitalism for alliances with groups that openly or by implication support it would be shortsighted. For, in maintaining the system that gives rise to discontent we would be defeating our object—a world without racialism— and would indeed even be encouraging racialism. In the long run the only effective way of combatting racialism is by building up a strong, world-wide Socialist movement, and this demands uncompromising opposition to all pro-capitalist groups

Adam Buick

Socialism in one island (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is well-known that one of Stalin’s distortions of Marxism was to say that Socialism could be established in one country, thus rejecting the international nature of Socialism. Communist parties outside of Russia naturally fell into line with this and since 1935 have given their propaganda a patriotic flavour. The present programme of the Communist Party in Britain, for instance, is called the British Road to Socialism. In the Channel Islands, the programme of the Jersey CP is called Jersey's Way to Socialism. They have made a start, too. At the end of 1966 their leader, Norman Le Brocq, was elected to the States Assembly. Needless to say, he was elected not on a socialist, but on a capitalist reform programme. His party’s programme also is full of theoretical errors, the chief one being as to the nature of Socialism:

  “As there is much confusion as to the real meaning of the word Socialism, we must define what the Communist Party, which works for Socialism, means by this system. To us, Socialism means simply that political power is held by the working people, and that all factories and workshops, transport, banks and the land are publicly owned and worked for the benefit of all."

This is not Socialism, but state capitalism. Socialism is a system of society based on the common (not state or “public”) ownership and democratic control of the means of living by and in the interests of the whole community. The state, or political power, would be replaced by the administration of things and banks would disappear as the aim of production would be use, not sale with a view to profit (even state profit).

Socialism must be world-wide for the simple reason that capitalism, the system it will replace, already is. Frontiers and national boundaries are artificial and irrelevant. The Jersey CP is not so stupid as to think that “socialism” could exist in Jersey alone but they still think along national lines:

  “Socialism in Jersey would owe its existence to the inspiration and protection of a Socialist government in Britain. Linked with the other Channel Islands, it would form an autonomous unit of a British Socialist republic.”

The important part of the programme is a list of immediate demands — slum clearance, higher pensions, unemployment benefit, price controls, comprehensive education, etc, etc. — some perhaps useful but justified thus:

  “This fight for better housing, better social services, lower rents, and so on, becomes a fight to change the system that cannot give these things.”

But is this so? Do reform struggles lead to a desire to change society? Rather, they attract to the party with a reform programme those who only want reforms, not fundamental social change, and so ruin that party as an instrument for such change. This is confirmed by Le Brocq’s report-back meeting (Jersey Evening Post, 22 May 1968). His record has been a determined and persistent fight for the reforms he was elected to get. That is what those who voted for him are interested in, not Socialism.

The Jersey Communist Party, like similar parties everywhere, is a nationalist and reformist party that stands for state capitalism.

The Decline of Coal (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coal played a great part in the development of capitalism in Britain. Wood used to be the main fuel but in the 18th century coal mining was stepped up as coal was needed for smelting iron. Many mines were in fact owned by the ironmasters. Coal was also used for steam-raising and, with the expansion of steam driven locomotives, ships and machines, in the second half of the 19th century, production increased from about 50 million tons in 1851 to over 240 million in the first decade of this century. The peak year for the British coal industry was 1913 when 287 million tons were mined, of this nearly 100 million were exported or went into bunkers for ships sailing to overseas ports. In the nineteenth century coal had no serious rival as a source of fuel and power. Coal was and still is used to raise steam for electricity generation and also in the manufacture of town gas.

Because of its importance as a source of fuel and power for modern industry, coalmining was particularly hit by industrial depressions, as our graph shows. It also placed coalminers in a strategic position. The miners played a major role in the development of the working class movement in Britain. Their history was one of continuous struggle against rapacious mine owners, often involving bloody clashes with the military. The first working class MP’s, elected for the capitalist Liberal Party, were miners. The Miners Federation of Great Britain, set up in 1889, was at one time the largest trade union in the world. The General Strike of 1926 was called by the TUC in answer to a lock-out of miners. Although the strike was called off after nine days, the miners heroically held out for nine months before being defeated by hunger. Between the wars, and specially at the beginning of the thirties, almost the whole adult male population of many mining villages was out of work. It is probably fair to say that, as a result of their experiences and of living in their own communities, the miners reached the highest degree of industrial class consciousness of any group of workers in Britain; at least this is true of the South Wales miners. 

Coalmining was an industry in whose efficiency all capitalists were interested as they wanted the cheapest energy they could get. The old owners were notoriously inefficient so that nationalisation was advocated by many besides the Labour Party and the MFGB. The Tories nationalised the coal before the war, and Labour the mines after. On vesting day, 1 January 1947, every one of the thousand collieries displayed a large notice proclaiming: THIS COLLIERY IS NOW MANAGED BY THE NATIONAL COAL BOARD ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE. Many miners thought that this was Socialism or at least a step toward it but it was only state capitalism. The miners remained exploited wage-workers even though nationalisation allowed an improvement in working conditions. There has been no official strike in mining since nationalisation; so-called unofficial strikes have been frequent however. The main union is the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), as the MFGB became in 1946. The NUM has rivals organising clerks in the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union (CAWU) and various underground supervisors in the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS). Management grades are in the British Association of Colliery Management (BACOM).

For the first ten years of nationalisation the miners never had it so good. They were in a strong bargaining position as the demand for coal far exceeded its supply. Industry wanted every ton that could be produced but it was not until the early fifties that pre-war output and productivity levels were reached. As a useful reminder that even militant unionism is based on sectionalism, it is worth quoting from an agreement reached in 1947 between the NCB and the NUM on the employment of Polish workers. This agreement, after reasonable provisions about any Polish workers being employed on the same terms as everybody else and on union membership, went on:

  In the event of redundancy Polish workers shall be the first to go. They shall be transferred or dismissed wherever their continued employment at a particular pit would prevent the continued employment or re-employment of a British mine-worker who is capable of and willing to do the work on which the Polish worker is employed and who might otherwise be displaced by redundancy at that pit or at another pit.

Then, in 1957, the bottom dropped out of the market for coal. The change was dramatic. In its report for 1957 the NCB declared:

  Total coal output in 1957, including that from opencast sites, was 223.6 million tons. This was 1.4 million tons more than in 1956 and the highest annual output since 1952.

But in 1958 it was a different story:

  Total coal output in 1958 was 215.8 million tons, including 14.3 million tons from opencast working. For the first time, the Board had to take steps to restrict production to meet a decline in demand; the years output was 7.8 million tons less than that of 1957 and was the lowest for eight years.

The following table illustrates the change:

What had happened, then? The table shows that consumption fell drastically in 1957. It had in fact been falling since 1955 and this represented increasing competition from oil. But an event at the end of 1956 hastened the switch to oil. Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt and the Suez was blocked. Oil supplies from the Middle East could not get through to Europe. The oil companies opened up new sources to meet the shortage so that, when the canal was cleared, they found themselves with a surplus. They brought down their prices and were able to beat coal. Coal production has fallen every year since 1957. It has been the same story in France, Germany and Belgium. Oil use as a proportion of total fuel rose in the period 1957-67 from 15 per cent to over 37 per cent. The government’s Fuel Policy White Paper, published last November, foresees that this trend will continue though oil will be under pressure from natural gas and nuclear energy. By 1970 coal production, they guess, will be down to 155 million tons; still nearly 50 per cent of fuel use in Britain though. Lord Robens has gone further: he says it will be 120 million by 1975 and perhaps only 80 million by 1980. This coupled with increasing mechanisation will mean a huge reduction in manpower. The areas worse hit by the closures are and will be the older coalfields in Scotland, Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and South Wales. Already there are workers in these areas who have been unemployed for over a year and so are on “supplementary benefit” (the old National Assistance) being subjected, perhaps for the second time in their lives, to a means test. The government has announced fairly generous, by capitalism’s standards, redundancy payments for those who have lost their jobs since July last year—this of course is a reflection of the strength of the workers organised in their unions.

The post-war history of coal-mining in Britain bears out the socialist case: trade union action, though essential, cannot do much more than work with or against market trends. For the first ten years of nationalisation the demand for coal exceeded the supply; for the next ten the position was reversed. All the NUM is doing now, and of course it can do no more, is “retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction” as Marx put it in another context.

Adam Buick

Economics (1968)

Book Review from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Economics and Ideology and Other Essays by Ronald L Meek, (Chapman and Hall, 40s.)

Meek’s essays were originally written over the past twenty years, during which he changed from an orthodox supporter of the so-called Communist Party to the more ordinary kind of reformist, believing that the tendencies Marx saw for capitalism can, and have been, overcome by "social legislation, trade union activity, State intervention, etc.” But he still thinks there is somewhere a “socialist sector of the world”. 

Nevertheless, Meek knows his Adam Smith and Ricardo as well as his Marx. Classical Political Economy, on which Marx built, started its analysis from the relations men entered into when producing wealth and saw the distribution of the social product as between the classes of landowners, manufacturers and labourers. This led them to a labour theory of value. Meek, in his essay on the Scottish Historical School (of which Adam Smith was a member, for he was not just an economist) shows how they had evolved a materialist conception of history, similar to Marx’s, which saw productive and property relations as the basis of societies.

After Ricardo, by about 1830, bourgeois economic thinkers turned away from this approach and began to see economic activity from a businessman’s point of view. Why was this? Meek, following Marx, suggests that this was because the Ricardian labour theory of value implied that capitalism was based on the exploitation of the workers. This indeed was the conclusion drawn by men like Hodgskin and William Thompson. Marx ironed out the inconsistencies in their theories (chiefly by distinguishing between “labour” and “labour power”) and showed how the source of rent, interest and profit was the unpaid labour of the workers.

Meek claims that “it is obvious that the particular 'laws of motion' " developed by Marx can no longer be used today as a guide to what is actually going to happen as capitalism develops further". He takes these laws to be: the falling rate of profit, the increasing severity of cyclical crises, the concentration and centralization of capital, and the increasing misery of the working class. Only the third, he says, has been proved valid. However, it is open to question whether Marx expected the rate of profit to go on falling in practice (remember that it had been falling, and Marx was only trying to solve a problem which Adam Smith, Ricardo and others had already had a go at) and whether he even held that crises would get worse and worse (in any event this view has been rejected by Socialist Party of Great Britain). As for increasing misery, Meek argues that this means that the standard of living of workers would grow worse and worse. We cannot accept this and refer those interested to the discussion of the matter in the Socialist Standard of January 1957.

Though socialists cannot agree with all he writes. Meek is a Marx scholar worth reading.

Adam Buick

Without Comment (1968)

A quote from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A minute gesture or item, such as the pencil reproduced in actual size on this page, can sometimes acquire great value. That is just what happened when a voluntary organisation asked G.I.s in Viet Nam what their most-wanted items were. Those needs were modest—such things as a pair of dry socks and some writing material. Time provided the tiny pencil, which the Christian Reform Laymen’s League included in 200,000 packets to Viet Nam. Surprisingly, the mini-pencil is serving purposes far beyond postcard writing. Its wooden shaft, wrote one Marine, is being used to clean the hard-to-get-at rifle sights, while the graphite helps sliding parts of the M-16. Hearing of this, the volunteer group asked Time for more of them to be included in a second shipment. This week another 200,000 pencils are going to the men.

Time, April 26, 1968

Activities in Wales (1968)

Party News from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Swansea branch had an unofficial literature stall at the annual conference of the National Union of Mineworkers which was held in Swansea at the beginning of July. Many pamphlets [and] a few Socialist Standards were sold to the delegates and visitors.

Debate with Young Liberals

The merits and demerits of capitalism and Socialism were discussed on 16 July when our Swansea branch debated the local Young Liberals. Our comrade Buick, for the branch, said that as capitalism was the cause of workers' problems, a Liberal government would no more be able to solve them than Tory and Labour governments had been. Capitalism was based on the exploitation of the workers and could not be made to work for the good of all. The Liberal policy of co-partnership would not work as there was an irreconcilable conflict of interest between workers and their employers, which could not be bridged by giving workers shares or putting a few on the board of directors. The Liberal party was a capitalist reform party. The solution in fact lay in Socialism, a world community, without frontiers, based on common ownership, with production solely for use, not profit.

David Davies, for the Young Liberals, said that Liberals supported capitalism as this system was in the interests of all. Socialism was all very fine but it wouldn’t work because there would be no incentive to produce. Abundance for all was not possible. Capitalism accepted scarcity and that human beings were motivated by self-interest. The profit motive ensured that the maximum amount of wealth was produced. There were inequalities in sharing out this wealth as some people were more able than others. But the Liberal Party did not believe in complete laissez-faire. Their policy could be summed up as controlled capitalism.

Obviously, Jeremy Thorpe has nothing to fear from Swansea YLs!

Caerffili by-election

The voice of Socialism was heard, if not heeded, at the by-election at Caerffili on 18 July at which the nationalists reduced Labour’s majority by 19,000. Over 60 copies of the May Socialist Standard (which puts the Socialist view on Scottish and Welsh nationalism) were sold mainly to members and supporters of Plaid Cymru.

Scandinavian Tour (1968)

Party News from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

During a recent tour of Scandinavia four members—our comrades Assirati, Cox, Garnham, and Zucconi —came upon a ‘Free Speech Tribune’ in the concourse next to the Central Station in Stockholm. Needless to say, they required little encouragement to take advantage of this opportunity, newly provided by a considerate City Council, and Dom Zucconi eagerly mounted the raised pulpit.

Introducing the Party to the groups of bystanders, who quickly reformed into a solid audience of 200, our speaker was able to present our case—in English. It was soon apparent that there was no language barrier when the all too familiar, questions and objections were raised.

Although a five or ten minute speech is usual for this democratic innovation, Dom ably upheld the party traditions in resisting one vociferous objector “. . . why don’t you go back to your own country?” and another who actually joined him in the box to insist he’d spoken enough. With the support of the audience, indicated by an overwhelming show of hands, he continued his exposition of the Party’s attitude for an hour.

The four members subsequently engaged in discussion with a number of those interested One promised to pass around, as he finishes with it, the considerable amount of literature sent to him.

It is to be hoped that this outdoor facility, so convenient for our purposes (no lugging around of the platform), will be used by any other Party speakers visiting the delightful capital city of Sweden.

We should also mention the other 'aid to democratic practice’ provided at the same spot—a large expanse of white painted wall on which can be written or stuck slogans, messages and political statements. Another of our group took advantage here of a prominent space to mark up a concise statement of what Socialism is and is not. But the message should be renewed as the authorities periodically re-paint the wall, presenting a 'fresh page’ to cater for the sloganeering of each new spate of alliances, protests and 'immediate demands'.

Although these 'outlets’ may have overtones of civic paternalism and don't compare with Speakers’ Corner, they have their uses and are certainly better than nothing in a country previously devoid of such recognised speaking spots.

Louis J. Cox

Party Names Swindle (1968)

Party News from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Should party names appear on the ballot paper? This has been much discussed in recent years. There can be no objection in principle to it as it might clear up some confusion, but in practice problems would arise over registering parties and over who should use what name. A group of Labour MP's, led by Denis Coe, recently brought in a private members Bill on this subject which was discussed in the House of Commons on 22 March. However, their remedy was worse than the disease. Had it not been talked out it would have discriminated against minor parties, and in particular against the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The Bill provided for a register of political parties in which the Registrar of Friendly Societies shall "register any political party or association which applies for registration and has a paid-up membership in excess of 1,000 members”. Candidates of non-registered parties would, as all are today, in law be regarded as "non- party”. This would not have presented us with an unsurmountable problem, but another clause was more disturbing. It gave first choice of names to those parties with members in the House of Commons: they register their names first, other parties after a month. This would seem to have allowed the Labour Party to register its own name, and perhaps all variations on "Labour” and "Socialist”. If this was so, and the Labour Party took advantage of it, when after a month we came to register our name we would be refused. Further we would also be barred from using our name on any leaflets and posters we produced for any election in which we had candidates.

We can say then that, in its present form, this Bill would have penalised at least one bona fide political party. Our experience over broadcasting time suggests that this would not unduly worry the larger parties. Nevertheless we take this opportunity to make our views known. 

Nobody can deny that we are a bona fide political party. We have been called "the Socialist Party” or "the Socialist Party of Great Britain” or "S.P.G.B.” since our foundation in 1904. We are not a breakaway group from the Labour Party. Indeed we were formed before them and have been in continuous and active political existence for over sixty-four years. We are a nationwide party and have had branches, at one time or another, in all the major urban and industrial areas of England, Scotland and Wales. Before 1914 we put up candidates in local elections in London and Burnley. Since 1945 we have stood for parliament eleven times and have contested local elections in Hackney, the old LCC, 14 in the GLC last year, many times in Glasgow and again this May in Haringey. We think this is proof enough of our genuiness.

At the end of July the government announced that they agreed that in principle party names should be shown on nomination and ballot papers. 

Confusion (1968)

Party News from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ted Crawford, business manager of the Socialist Worker, spoke on August 7 at our Westminster branch on “International Socialism”. After tracing the origins of the group in Bolshevism and Trotskyism, he went on to explain the “permanent” arms economy and what IS was trying to do. He confessed that he was dissatisfied with the “class composition” of the group; there were too many lecturers, teachers and students and not enough workers.

Pressed to define Socialism, Crawford said “democracy”, “man in control of his environment”. Asked if this was compatible with the existence of banks, he said he could not give a blueprint but he expected that there would have to be some credit facilities in a “socialist state”. One of his supporters, coming to his rescue, pooh-poohed the idea of a society without money or government.

Socialists present pointed out that his concern about the class composition of IS showed that he did not know what the working class was; as lecturers and teachers were, and students soon would be, forced to work for wages they too were members of the working class. Discussion also centred on whether democratic institutions could be used by the working class to achieve Socialism (we said yes; they said no and thought there would have to be a civil war—but then they don’t aim at Socialism) and as to whether the ruling class could suspend democracy and unleash fascism at will (we said no; they said yes). The Chairman pointed out that there was not enough time to discuss our differing views on nationalism.

Another Lot of Insurrectionists (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the Labour Party and the so-called Communist Party become discredited and workers become more and more disillusioned with these parties in their futile efforts to run capitalism, it is vitally important to clearly present the socialist alternative. The emergence of self-styled leftwing groups is as dangerous to workers as that of their right-wing counterparts. If workers get bogged down with these organisations another generation could be wasted in the futile pursuit of petty issues and in swapping leaders.

One such organisation operates under the unwarranted title of "International Socialism". Their errors are basically the same as those of the Bolsheviks fifty years ago.

During the general elections of 1964 and 1966 they were urging the return of the "biggest possible Labour majority". For them this was a tactic because they knew that a Labour government would act "against the organised working class movement", but they argued that out of the struggles against the attacks made by the Labour government "can and will come the development of a powerful force for socialism". After four years of Labour government we are witnessing 17 per cent swings to the Tories in by-elections. Far from developing socialist ideas the confusion and despair resulting from Labour-run capitalism has helped to foster racist attitudes.

In 1966, even though they knew what the Labour Party's policy was, they lamely suggested:

Every Labour candidate should be pressed to give commitments on at least the following four points:
1. All out opposition to shackle the unions through new laws.
2. Total opposition to the leadership’s support for the Americans in Vietnam.
3. Opposition to the Immigration White Paper and its support for controls.
4. Full support for workers fighting a coercive incomes policy in defence of their living standards.

They knew there would be laws to shackle unions. They knew that Labour supported the American government in Vietnam. They knew there would be race laws. They knew there would be a coercive incomes policy. Now we have all these things and IS are helped to give the Labour government its big majority to be able to enforce them.

How naive they were to ask Labour candidates to give "commitments". Labour candidates are already committed to party policy and vetted by Transport House. If the working class are prepared to vote Labour they vote for official policy. Any undertaking outside this is worthless. IS admit that Labour candidates are controlled by Transport House as they give instances of two whom the party executive refused to endorse because they would give no "written undertakings to make no public criticism of any aspect of government policy until after the General Election".

Referring to racist attitudes, they say:

  If Enoch Powell has done one thing he has revealed just how little socialist consciousness exists today. We have to go back to square one and argue the ideas and theories of socialism to the people in the factories, the docks, the offices and on the vast council estates.

F or socialists it did not take Powell to reveal the lack of socialist consciousness among workers. This has been evident all along and voting Labour has been one aspect of it. As to arguing socialist ideas this is just what IS consistently fails to do. Despite the admitted lack of socialist consciousness they claim, in the same issue of their journal, in a reference to France "revolution in the advanced countries is the order of the day". But the first lesson to be learned at square one is that there can be no Socialism without Socialists. 

During the last election in discussing war preparation they said

   The Defence Review follows the pattern of the whole Labour policy, complete subservience to the most reactionary capitalist interest. Despite the fact that one in six of the population of this country live in poverty, the government like its Tory predecessors has callously decided that defence should continue to be the largest single items of government expenditure, over 26 per cent.

Knowing this they still urged the suicidal folly of voting Labour. They also stated quite clearly, on the penal clauses of the Prices and Incomes Act, that these involved fines of up to £500 and possible imprisonment for trade unionists who threaten to strike while a pay claim is in the hands of the Prices and Incomes Board. And yet, confronted with this outrageous piece of anti-working class legislation, they still worked and voted for Labour's return.

So far as IS are concerned, all this support of Labour candidates is just so much mockery and make-believe anyway as they have only contempt for political democracy and contempt, therefore, for the workers’ ability to understand Socialism. Socialist Worker, for June 1968, looking at the local council election results declared:

  It is clear that working class voters who have probably never voted for a Tory in their lives before consciously crossed the party line last month. Socialists now have a major battle on their hands if they are to recapture these working people for Socialism—for a real socialism that goes beyond the ballot box and the empty ritual of parliamentary elections and poses the question of workers' power in Britain.

What utter confusion! Workers who vote Tory were never socialists in the first place so cannot be "recaptured". When they start to understand Socialism it will be for the first time. This is the aftermath of their "big Labour majority”. Now. it's back to bloodshed on the street!

Like all who dismiss the idea of a socialist working class democratically organising for Socialism IS go along with the idea of leadership. Despite the experience of generations of leaders of all kinds, and their total inability to solve the problem confronting the working class, IS still maintain that out of the present struggle "a new political-industrial leadership has to be crystallised, a new labour movement created, and a new strategy for working class power forged". Where this “new” leadership and strategy will differ from the old they do not say, and they are equally quiet about what they will be able to do do in a situation where the majority of workers are non-socialist and aspire as yet to nothing more than reforms and leaders.

As is to be expected it is when such people as IS try to apply their false assumptions that they really expose themselves. In the June Socialist Worker they show that they thought Socialism could emerge from what was happening in France. Although they had eye-witnesses on the spot they do not seem to have seen very clearly. They thought that even without a socialist majority revolution in the advanced countries was “the order of the day". They said: 

   factory occupation is a crucial feature of the situation in France. . . . When the plant is seized the means of production are recognised by the workers as social property, as theirs to have and hold.

We can but wonder where de Gaulle’s massive landslide came from if workers wanted “social property". As IS sees it, “what is needed is a decisive thrust from the revolutionary left, providing the initiative to get the workers on the streets and expropriate the capitalists". What dangerous nonsense this is! If workers followed this line capitalist governments would not only use their control of the state against the workers (as they did in France) but could use the chaos as a pretext for making inroads into the hard-won rights of demonstration, assembly, organisation and free speech.

For Socialists the task remains one of expounding Socialism. If one thing emerges clearly from the confusion of the “left”, it is that until a majority of the world’s workers understand and vote for Socialism we are stuck with capitalism and all it implies.

Harry Baldwin

The "New" Theory of Insurrection (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The French political scientist Maurice Duverger, whose books have been reviewed from time to time in these columns (see, for instance Socialist Standard of July 1966), wrote an interesting article published in Le Monde on 12 July. Duverger would say he is a socialist but, as we have pointed out, he really only stands for a mild form of state capitalism. Nevertheless his comments on the May events in France are very pertinent.

In his article, entitled “Une Révolution Impossible”, he. says that before May 1968 even those who stood for violent revolution had written off the developed capitalist world. Hence the popularity of Mao, Castro and Che Guevara. But after May they worked out a new theory of revolution. Duverger describes it thus:

   The first impulse will be given by the young who are less integrated into the present order than their elders, even those belonging to the working class. Among these the students will play the vanguard role. Their growing number and concentration at certain points, similar to the nascent proletariat in the nineteenth century, gives them a power of intervention which the barricades of Paris and the battles at Flins fully show. Further, their intellectual environment gives them a high degree of political consciousness.
   In the second phase, the detonator of the student revolt will embrace the mass of the workers. By means of a general strike they will then paralyse all activity of the bourgeois State and so reduce it to impotence. At the same time they will begin to replace it with a socialist State, themselves taking over the managements of the enterprises and services and putting them in motion again: this will be the third stage. Thus the old power will become more and more unreal and artificial, while a new power progressively takes its place. Finally, the former will collapse and the latter will completely control society.

Only the second stage was reached in May, they argue, because the Communist Party and its trade union wing, the CGT, restrained rather than encouraged the movement.

Duverger’s comments on this are the same as those we have made and are those which one would have thought were the obvious lessons of May: the new theory ignores the great repressive power of the modern state and fails to realise that most workers don't want violent insurrection. The more extreme student organisations have been outlawed and the Gaullists have won a sweeping victory in the elections by playing on popular fear of civil war.

Duverger concedes, and so would we, that there is plenty of working class discontent which could explode if the students gave a lead. But, he says, this discontent should not be confused with a desire for violent revolution. The absence of this, except perhaps among the young, “is not the result of the reformism of the CGT and the Communist party. On the contrary, the reformism of the CGT and the communist party is a reflection of this absence". Most workers, for various reasons are opposed to violent insurrection.

It is this that makes the new theory dangerous:

  The student movements cannot by themselves overthrow the present order. But they can sufficiently threaten it—or give the impression of threatening it—to sustain and increase a feeling of insecurity amongst the mass of society, which will push society towards authoritarian regimes when they can see no other way of avoiding anarchy.

Thus the new strategy could serve to undermine established democratic institutions and to strengthen the repressive powers at the service of the state.

Duverger says that some students are beginning to realise this and

   are today trying to work out a long-term strategy for the transformation of society, keeping their revolutionary ends, but using means better adapted to the conditions of the developed countries.

We are pleased to hear that some lessons have been learned from May (we only wish they would get through to some of the arm-chair insurrectionaries in Britain who want to repeat the French débâcle here). Duverger does not say on what lines they are thinking but he himself points out that nothing can be achieved without the support of the mass of the people.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has something to say on this since, following the lead given by Engels towards the end of his life, we have worked out a policy for social revolution suited to modern capitalism based on the revolutionary use of democratic institutions. Given the growth of the repressive power of the state, insurrections with barricades and street fights are useless. However, thanks to past struggles (including France in 1848 and 1871) in which the workers played a prominent role another way to political power has been opened up: universal suffrage. It is customary in some student circles to dismiss this as a trick, to talk about “parliamentary rubbish" and to call for a boycott of elections. People who speak in this way are refusing to face up to the fact that the great majority of workers do not at present want a social revolution. It is not universal suffrage and the other democratic institutions that are at fault, but the use to which they are put. As long as workers are not socialist-minded (as they are not at the moment) they will use their votes to elect supporters of capitalism, including social democrat and “communist" reformists, and so in effect will hand over political power to the capitalist class—a power, we might add, which can be used to crush student uprising. Elections are the best gauge there is of popular opinion and, unfortunately, they clearly show that only a handful now want Socialism. The task of those who are socialists should thus be clear: not to try to provoke violent clashes with the state in the hope of triggering off a more general uprising, but to carry out an intensive programme of socialist agitation and education. This will involve denouncing the “new" revolutionary theory as dangerous as it could undermine the very institutions which will allow a socialist workers' movement to win power.

We are not advocating that parliament be used to pass a series of social reform measures which are supposed gradually to transform society. We are as opposed to reformism as to insurrection. Compromise with capitalism can be avoided by the socialist party only seeking support on the basis of a socialist programme. In other words, in having no programme of reforms or “immediate demands" to be achieved within capitalism. For such a programme would attract the support of non-socialists and so lead the party towards compromise and reformism. 

We suggest that the twin dangers of insurrection and reformism can be avoided by building up a socialist party composed of and supported by convinced socialists only. When a majority of workers are socialist-minded and organised into such a party they can use their votes to elect to parliament and the local authorities delegates pledged to use state power for the one revolutionary act of dispossessing the capitalist class and converting the means of production into the property of the whole community. This is the long-term strategy for the transformation of society suited to the conditions of modern capitalism that Duverger's students would do well to consider.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: The Invasion of Russia (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nor is this by any means the worst. Fearful that if the Bolshevik enterprise should meet with success it might prove contagious, they have determined to crush it and restore their friends and allies, the Russian capitalists, to dominance. So we have a “league of nations” in being against the Bolshevik Government. Under the plea that f they are going to save Russia from the Germans they invade the country at various points. “We come as the friends of Russia." they declare, and disown any intention of interfering with “the internal politics of the country.”

Now with regard to the ludicrous statement that there is no intention of interfering with Russian internal politics. Everyone knows that it is openly admitted that one of the main objects of the Allies in invading Russia is “to save Russia from the Bolsheviks.” The capitalist Press has made no secret of it. Capitalist agents, both here and in Russia, have striven for it. In particular one may instance Dr. Harold Williams, when special correspondent to the “Daily Chronicle" in Petrograd. and since his return to this country. His filthy diatribes against the Bolsheviks leave no doubt as to their object — the overthrow of those against whom he inveighed.

What sort of game has been played is unwittingly revealed in an eulogy of Capt. Cromie which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle" on Sept. 14th. wherein after retailing some of Cromie’s activities in favour of the capitalist interests, it is stated that he went to Petrograd and strove to hold the forces of “sanity and reason" together. Needless to say, in the capitalist view, neither sanity nor reason can reside in Bolshevik craniums, and to scheme their overthrow is not interfering in internal politics, of course!

From the "Socialist Standard", September 1918.

Myths about Munich (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Diplomacy is a business not famous for its honourable men, but even the diplomats have to admit that Munich was a classic of deceit. And it was not only the men in the Foreign Office who were deceived; many of the myths which were popular thirty years ago are still accepted today and even those which have been discarded have been replaced by others.

According to the myths, the Nazis in 1938 were a cunning and treacherous lot and against them Chamberlain, because of either a secret sympathy with Nazism or a weak and simple personality, was helpless. Cowardly, he delivered Czechoslovakia to the Nazis’ tender mercies and then allowed Hitler to trick him by signing a meaningless declaration of friendship. He came back from Munich claiming peace with honour in our time when in fact he had betrayed Europe, and the war which might have been averted by a firmer stand became unavoidable.

Those are the myths. Now what are the facts?

It is true that between the two world wars Germany broke many pacts. The injured innocence of the Foreign Office was meant to hide the fact that there was nothing new in this; in fact part of the Munich story was the unilateral revoking by the French, with British support, of their 1925 alliance with Czechoslovakia. A state usually breaks a treaty arrangement when it is under some sort of pressure, as the Germans were during the Thirties.

At that time German capitalism had resumed its expansion, which had been abruptly halted by the first world war. L. S. Amery once said to A. L. Rowse “Germany came so near to bringing it off the first time that it was only to be expected that she would have another try.”[1] Since that first “try” Germany had been stripped of her colonies; she had lost the valuable raw materials of the Ruhr, Silesia and Alsace Lorraine. Partly from her allies Austria and Hungary the state of Czechoslovakia had been created at the Versailles Conference. The German attempt to break the stranglehold imposed at Versailles was the infamous March to the East. First Austria was annexed—then Czechoslovakia stood in the way.

The expansion of a capitalist state is never a peaceful or honourable business. The expanding state meets with opposition from the established powers, who often try to control the situation with pacts and alliances which they are more or less forced to try to keep. The expanding state is under no such compulsion. This is not a matter of honour; where capitalist interests are concerned there is no good and bad but only an irreconcilable clash. The Nazis—brutal, intractable, ruthless—were apt expression of the expansionist ambitions of German capitalism and this gave them the role of double crossers which other ruling groups have occupied at other times.

The Nazi record provided convenient evidence for the fallacy that Hitler was an evil historical accident, whose personality (he actually did chew the carpet) was solely responsible for Munich and what followed. But the Nazis did not cry in the wilderness; in 1932 Hitler won over 13 million votes in the election for the Chancellorship; by the time of Munich Henlein’s pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party had virtually all the German vote in Czechoslovakia and forty four members in the Czech parliament.

This sort of support is no accident. The Nazis were men of their time, personifying the interests of German capitalism as it struggled to re-assert itself, and the patriotic hysteria and mob violence which that re-assertion needed. Nazi theories were hardly new; they were a ferociously extreme version of ideas which had been around for some time, in similar circumstances in other lands—for example in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and Tory Imperialists in England.

Complementary to the Hitler personality myth was that of Chamberlain. The British Prime Minister looked like a late Victorian gentleman and in fact he did express a preference for living in that age, before the motor car and the telephone. Modern art roused him to a fury and the intrusively ample nudes of Berchtesgaden disturbed him enough for him to mention them again and again in a letter to his sister. Chamberlain’s wing collar about his scrawny neck, his pouting moustache and his umbrella, made him look dull and narrow-minded. He suffered, like all self-respecting Victorian gentlemen, from gout.

He provoked many cruel epithets. Churchill, who said that in twenty years he had only one intimate social conversation with him, accused him of looking at world affairs “through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe". Masaryk raged about the " . . .  calamity that this stupid and ill-informed man, a nonentity, should be Prime Minister of Great Britain".  [3] 

His was certainly an arid personality but just like any other politician Chamberlain expressed himself within the confines of his job of representing the interests of his ruling class/ He may have been duped by Hitler; he did allow himself, in an emotional moment which he later regretted, to appear to believe in the durability of the Anglo/German agreement of Munich. But his general policy was quite clear. In the House of Commons on 24 March 1938 he listed the places which Britain would fight for—France and Belgium (to protect the Channel coast); Iraq (to protect British oil investments); Egypt (to protect Suez); and Portugal.

These were places where the interests of British capitalism were immediately and vitally involved. Czechoslovakia was not among them; Chamberlain had already ". . . abandoned any idea of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia, or to France in connection with her obligations to that country."[2] This was not his policy alone; a lot of the press, including the Times, Express and Observer, supported it and, according to Sir Samuel Hoare (as he then was), it also had the backing of Chamberlain's colleagues.

The British policy of appeasement, which included the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, was the product, not of any man's personality but of the European situation at the time. Behind the more publicised examples of political appeasement, out of the public eye, the policy was carried out in the fields of economics and trade. In the Thirties both Britain and Germany were trying to protect their economies with high tariffs and rigid exchange controls. The British Imperial Preference system denied Germany access to the markets of the Empire but Germany had to expand into somewhere. This they threatened to do by military conquest and a lot of their war equipment included imported materials paid for with exports financed by credits in the City of London. (There were £36 million of these outstanding on 3 September 1939.) [4]

The British solution was twofold. First, they would allow Germany to expand into an area where British interests were not vitally at stake and, by thus encouraging Germany’s economic development, ease the pressure of her re-armament, which would have allowed British industry to stay out of an arms race. This amounted to nothing more than a carve up of Europe; Dirksen, the man who succeeded Ribbentrop as Ambassador in London, wrote of the soundings which preceded Munich " . . a delineation of economic spheres of interest was mentioned as a point in the programme."[4] (Dirksen regarded Chamberlain, rather than Hitler, as the farsighted planner of foreign policy). In this carve-up South East Europe was recognised as Germany's sphere; Halifax wrote on 1 November 1938 "Henceforward we must count with German predominance in Central Europe" which, he said, “once Germany recovered her normal strength .. .was inevitable for obvious geographic and economic reasons."[4]

The second part of British policy was the development of her own trade with Germany; the declaration of friendship signed by Hitler and Chamberlain at Munich, which the British Premier flourished so triumphantly on his return, was supposed to be a start to this. In December 1938 the Board of Trade got negotiations going between the British and German Federations of Industry, with the object of reaching a comprehensive agreement on prices and markets. In January 1939 the Anglo/German Coal Agreement was signed. On the very day in March 1939, that the Germany Army marched into Prague, British and German industrialists put their signatures to another commercial pact.

The carve up meant that Czechoslovakia, in spite of the French guarantees to her, had to be swallowed up in the German expansion; the Czech coal and iron was a very acceptable bonus to German industry. It meant that millions of people were handed over to the Nazi dictatorship, to suffer and die in the concentration camps. But it served the purposes of capitalism. Munich was no accident. It was no historical turning point, when a different policy might have stopped the German expansion and avoided the second world war. The only other policies (apart from Socialism) which were on offer would have had a similar result. Munich was a chapter in the long story of capitalism's economic disputes, a stepping stone towards the next war,

At the time, the agreements of Munich were greeted with hysterical relief. Chamberlain was honoured as an old man (he was sixty-nine) who braved an adventurous journey by air to try what was then the unusual method of face-to-face diplomacy. (Halifax said it “rather took his breath away"). This was why M.P.’s were in tears, when Chamberlain announced the invitation to his third visit to Hitler. It was why the people lined the roads from Heston to Buckingham Palace when he came back. It was why George Lansbury told him “You have done a most wonderful piece of work and done it under the guidance and providence of God."[2]

It might have occurred to Lansbury, or Halifax, or somebody, to tell those people what treaties were worth; they might have told them that Czechoslovakia was itself created by a “peace” treaty, as part of “collective security" and that the disputed areas of that country had been deliberately tacked onto it to provide a natural, mountainous barrier to invaders from the west. Chamberlain might have mentioned that he was anything but a peace lover; he had written that he wanted to avoid a war with Germany " . . .  unless we had a reasonable prospect of being able to beat her to her knees in a reasonable time."  He was making his preparations; he said in the House of Commons on 3 October 1938 “For a long period now we have been engaged in this country in a great programme of rearmament. which is daily increasing in pace and volume."

September 1938 was not a pleasant time to be alive. There was the rising nationalism on all sides, the gruesome stories from the concentration camps and the start of an official campaign to condition the people who would have to fight the war into accepting its necessity. The government had people digging trenches in the parks and commons, often by floodlight at night. They distributed the gas masks which they knew would be virtually useless. They circulated a masterpiece of bureaucratic waffle—a leaflet which told us that falling bombs could be easily recognised (and presumably dodged) because they looked like silver arrows.

And in the end it came down to the day when the deceits and the fallacies of the diplomats had to be suspended for a short time, as Chamberlain told us that war had been declared. Appeasement was dead but it didn't take them long to think up the next trick, which went under the name of Unconditional Surrender.

Ivan.

Books Cited:

[1] The Hollow Men, by Margaret George.

[2] Neville Chamberlain, by lain Macleod.

[3] Munich, by Henri Nogueres.

[4] The Appeasers, by Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott.

The Review Column: American Conventions (1968)

The Review Column from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

American Conventions

The gaudy ballyhoo of the Democratic and Republican Conventions in America, coming live onto British television screens, gave many people over here the impression that American politicians do not take their business seriously.

This is an amusing notion, considering the record of the men who got the nominations, of the outgoing President and of all their predecessors. All are or were tough, ambitious men, testifying to the fact that the political fight for power over American capitalism is a savage and ruthless affair.

Nobody should think that this does not also apply elsewhere, as a study of the career of Harold Wilson will show. In other countries, too, the political knives are wielded under a cloak of ballyhoo. This is what happens every time a Labour leader makes a speech at a miners’ gala, every time a Tory leader stands up for Land of Hope and Glory.

It is happening when a foreign head of state is paraded through London with the Royal Family, and at almost every public appearance of almost every leader of capitalism.

The alternative to this ballyhoo would be for them to tell the truth. There have been many satirical pieces written, on what would happen if ever a politician publicly dropped the mask. Even when one or other of them has involuntarily come near to doing this — for example George Brown—nobody takes them seriously.

Perhaps, then, the working class not only accept the ballyhoo—perhaps they actually need it. Capitalism is a system of class power, in which conflicting interests and ruling groups struggle for a dominant place.

This struggle is considered important enough to justify almost anything, of which ballyhoo is perhaps among the least offensive. Its existence simply proves something which workers should ponder, as they watch it all happen on the screens in their homes—that capitalism is such a society that it cannot bring its affairs into the light of day but must needs hide them under a cloak of false enthusiasm and optimism.

Why fuss about Scientology?

Is Scientology a fraud? It is difficult to understand anyone being taken in by this religion—for that it what it is— unless they were beyond the boundaries of hope, were ready to grasp the last tuft of grass as they felt themselves going over the cliff edge.

Some people like that are attracted by the cult, as they are by ail sorts of peculiar theories outside the orthodox medical profession (who have had some pretty queer theories themselves). But none of the other unorthodox ideas has come under such a weight of official suppression as Scientology has recently.

Home Secretary Callaghan has refused entry to Britain of the cult’s leader. Minister of Health Robinson has described Scientology as “socially harmful”.

But the leader in this has been the Australian state of Victoria, which has a total ban on the movement. The practice of Scientology there carries a fine of up to £100 for a first, and imprisonment for a later, offence.

This ban followed a report which condemned Scientology as “perverted . . . debased . . . fantastic . . . impossible . . .  evil . . .” which is a pretty exhaustive vocabulary of abuse.

However justified these descriptions may be—and the scientologists have several libel actions on the go—the obvious question they provoke is why all these august politicians and institutions should suddenly want to protect us against socially harmful theories.

If they are anxious to expose and prevent fraud, why not start with their own parties, which consistently appeal for votes on fraudulent election promises? Why not denounce the social system which legally robs millions of people of the results of their work?

We do not need men like Callaghan and Robinson to protect us from social harm, but if they are worried about it there is plenty of scope for them. They might make a speech about the distorting effect which capitalism has upon peoples’ lives, which so often goads those people into the despair which makes them easy prey for the medical (as distinct from the political) quack.

The Pope and the Pill

The unsurprising Papal edict on birth control brought the deepest anguish only to working class Catholics. The rich ones—like the Kennedys—can raise large families without any economic problems.

One thing the Encyclical has not done is to end the long dispute about Catholicism and contraceptives. Thus we have recently been entertained with some arguments whose sophistry makes the old one about the number of angels dancing on the needle point look positively clumsy.

For example: did not God give man the ability to make artificial contraceptives in the same way as he gave him the rhythm method which the Pope approves?

For example: if it is sinful to destroy life in human spermatazoa is it not also sinful to destroy it with pesticides, or with anti-biotics, or with the weapons of war?

Through all this the Catholics did not pursue an undeviating course. The Encyclical kept open an escape route by implying an approval of contraception by means of an artificially induced menstrual regularity—which might be taken to include the Pill. And there was Cardinal Heenan’s double act of approving the Pope’s decision while saying that Catholics who practised birth control could also accept the sacrament.

These sophistries are typical of those needed to bolster religious dogma, especially when it is under pressure from the material facts of life.

Intellectual dishonesty and hair-splitting is an unsettling business, much as the Church must be accustomed to it. For the rest of us, the simple way out of the difficulty is to recognise the overwhelming evidence against religion and to look at life in terms not of bigotry but of human 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