The documents we print below are of some historic significance. They were brought back from Prague by Czech-speaking Dwarf correspondent the nature of the group which specific occasion they represent much more than merely propaganda documents - they are revolutionary socialist manifestos and proclaim the existence of seeds of left The Revolutionary Socialist Party (Czechoslovakia) the first definite formed inside and outside the party in Czechoslovakia in the Prague Spring' and thereafter. Before January 1968 opposition was confined to individuals or at most small groups, who might make criticisms which a few people heard sympathetically who had no perspective for action and no thought of uilding an organisation outside dreams. From January to August and beyond, the figure of Dubcek, the slogan "socialism with a human leading the country through revolutionary change. Many present members of the RSP joined of the central committee in the first few days of the occupation, only increased the solidarity with the gradual concessions Moscow, the reintroduction of censorship and the replacement of Dubcek by Husak in April that enough people started to listen to those who had been insisting all along that real students most active and conscious in the popular movement of 1968. They propose to continue/ the struggle of that period workers control o f economic decisions, for freedom of the press, television and radio and for a truly socialist education. At the same time they development orlay a leading seek to part in the new forms of struggle for the Czech and international bureaucracy controlled from Moscow. They do not have a differences, notably in the relative weight assigned to legal and illegal forms of struggle).
Some them reject the principle democratic centralism, feeling that each base mutual agreement, and still too small to have clearly worked out the practical organisational consquences of this.
They are, however, producing a basic course in revolutionary socialism under the general title THE SYSTEM has already been duplicated in Kollontai FAMILY IN COMMUNIST STATE; Trotsky, THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED (extracts);
Barbarie, the Workers' Councils in Hungary and Poland, 1956; Kuron and Modzelewski, Open Letter to ce of the Ith International, 1968, one chapter; H. Weber, The Nature of the Soviet Bureaucracy;
Mandel, Bureaucracy, Part III of the book; E. Mandel (Germain), The Cultural Revolution and Bureaucratic Degeneration; M. Barmann Stalinism Bureaucracy and Technocracy in the socialist and Reformism; Serge Mallet, possibilities of conquering bureaucracy in post countries, extracts; Mihail Markovic, The capitalist society, extracts; Vladimir Skalsky, Czechoslovakia and Socialism; Dragoslav Slejska, Views on the basis of the system in our Republic, extract from article; Josef Sykora, The State and Bureaucracy, a manuscript on eclecticism is not haphazard, accidental or due the theme State Revolution. The to confusion; the RSP wishes to educate its members as thinking revolutionaries. conscious, Their success in this confident, critically hitherto is reflected in the fact that the members are among the few in Czechoslovakia who are free from illusions about Western democracy and from the extremes nationalist anti-Russian sentiment.
The RSP has two main centres of activity, in the unofficial trade union committees and in the student movement. About half a dozen of so members of the Student the thirty Parliament of Charles University, Prague, are members, although the rest take a more moderate line with some dozen sympathisers, and they co-operate readily in activities. Members co-ordinating committees in Prague and in are prominent in the unofficial TU Metalworkers and university employees unions. factory committees, notably in the The RSP has connections with the Printers Union which enabled it to bring out 100,000 copies of the leaflet (described in the August 24 Observer articles, signed Workers, Intellectuals). This organic connection with the broad popular movement, their sense of being merely a part of that movement and not possessors of an absolute truth endowed with a historical mission, their realism about their capabilities, their willingness to learn from the masses, their humility in the best sense, their freedom from dogmatism and sectarianism and the extent to which their ideas have been formed in struggle rather than being theoretica abstractions are their strengths, and distinguis them from many Western revolutionary groups.
Their weaknesses are their isolation - they have few contacts in their own country outside at all in other East European Prague, none especially senious in face of the police terror their organisational weakness, which Czechoslovakia. They are well aware of the first seems rapidly growing weakness, but have hitherto devoted all too little attention to the second, and have not yet can rely on the same protection against the police from TU movement as other activists, though the fact that they are members of an organisation makes them more vulnerable, and if they can use this period to regroup and retrench they could play a very significant role in the movement which might make 1968 into the 1905 of a worldwide October.
Many groups duplicated versions of this text and distributed them, and the whole country was aware of it by the 21st and in the main observed the points. There was, however, no organisation of the resistance to the police on the 20th and following days by the RSP o any other group; it was a spontaneous response to police provocation.
It seems that the victories of January 1968 are still alive in the thoughts of the people: the breaking free from fear, the will of the workers to decide their own affairs, the free discussion without any censorship or restriction, the confrontation of different views, conceptions and programmes; the idea of trade-unions as a tool of workers defence and not as a tool of the bureaucracy serving to oppress them.
On the other hand we have been cured by illusions. We no longer believe in the many myth of legality, since we know that the bureaucracy uses the law to its own interests work in the trade-unions with illegal work and gradually, if necessary, abandon legal forms of struggle. We do not believe in the realisation of interests of our bureaucracy and the international bureaucracy and they will not abandon their privileges voluntarily.
The attempts at decentralisation also tend to evoke the self-activity of the people and thi constitutes a danger for the bureaucrati regime, and arouses a tendency to a takeover of power in the factories and workplaces by workers' councils, which will no longer be answerable either to ministries or to the bureaucratic centre. We do not believe in the Action Programme of the CPCZ we know that it is humane, that it was written with the best intentions and that we can agree with it in many respects, but we are aware that it is the programme of the liberal wing in the leadership of the CPCz, and that its aims must align - we all saw this in August - with the interests of the international bureaucracy, led by the rulers the Kremlin. The August invasion demonstrated that this programme is not correct, for it is unworkable, We no longer believe in a system where the leadership, even when it is as humane as Dubcek, decides for the workers without them, for only the workers themselves have the right to decide their own destiny. We do not believe in socialism in one country, or that the power of the bureaucracy can be broken in a small isolated country like Czechoslovakia, which would from then on have "gone its own way" had its own 'not socialism. We do not believe in neutrality, since in a world of social struggles we cannot be neutral, as we were in 1956, and as the Poles, Hungarians and Germans were in August 1968 - that is not neutrality, that's a crime. We do not believe in help from UNO, we do not coexistence"
believe in "peaceful and the Kremlin counter revolutionaries.
We believe only in ourselves, in our own our own understanding and powers.
reason, we say ourselves, we are not thinking When only of the workers, technicians, farmers, students and intellectuals in our country, but of all these who are in a similar social position anywhere in the world, for we have understood that our struggle and our organisation must have an international character. Our position is very little different from the position of the democracies" and it is above all with them what workers neighbouring "peoples we must link up, and it is finally little different from that of the people in the USSR, where social oppression- is often joined to oppression of nationalities/in the Ukraine, the Baltic Republics, Transcaucasia etc. Even if the political awareness of the people of these countries is often lower than here - and it is lowest in Russia itself - they are our allies, our brothers, comrades in struggle, just like the French and who are gradually becoming Italian workers, just like the oppressed people of Africa and Latin America, just like the workers of the whole world.
The 21st of August and the days following it must not remain the only period of resistance;
opposition to Husak's police terror, which is increasing and enveloping the entire country, must become (otherwise it would lose all its out and each one of us must link himself to this work, for otherwise our perspectives will be lost for many years. That is why it is necessary gradually to work out a programme for your factory, your workplace, because it will be YOU who will decide the future economic policy as the supreme and sole owners of the means of the means of production with which you work (tools, machines, equipment, means of transport, soil, etc.
The ideas which from your discussion about the economic, social and written down, up posters/wall about in town districts and villages. It is your exerted on higher trade-union leadership, ministries, party apparatus etc. You should know the prices o raw materials, the prices of the products and how they are determined. It is your right and know whether you responsibility working for consumption or for furthe This is your right and you should try and attair it through RTUMFC REVOLUTIONARY TRADE UNION MOVEMENT FACTORY COMMITTEE, an official organisation. Yo you discover and inform all the workers. An form of "participation" of the workers i factories and enterprises must b rejected. Councils of workers which do not an under the existing system cannot have any re heading for total collapse PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT, BU WORKERS' TODAY WORKERS' MANAGEMENT TOMORROW That is our slogan for the attainment POLITICAL power by the Czech people. In th respect it is very important to link up wi workers from other actories; both from t same industry and same trade-union and als outside irrespective of what trade-union yo the RTUMFC full rights our
----- pull-quotes -----
and translated by him. In this brief introduction our correspondent outlines
distributed the documents. Though they were distributed as a leaflet to mark a
opposition in Czechoslovakia. Editor Introduction
organisation to have crystallised out of the numerous discussion circles and groups which
face, and the April Action Programme of the CPC made the public at large see the CP as again a genuine popular organisation capable of
the CP in the Dubcek enrolment. The invasion, and especially the clandestine August plenum
change could not come from above. The RSP then formed is made up of the workers and
national liberation and the eventual attainment of true workers' power after the overthrow of
single party line (readers of the Proclamation and the appeal to the youth will note several
unit or individual should be free to hold its own opinions and act on its own initiative, and that orders should be replaced by co-ordination and but the group is too new
of BUREAUCRACY NO - REVOLUTION YES, of which the first volume THE BASIS OF
about 1,000 copies. It contains summaries of Bukharin's 1918 programme forthe Bolshevike:
Milovan Djilas, The New Class; Socialisme ou programme statement; demands of
countries, and only very tenuous ones with the revolutionary movement in the West - and
acquired the habits of clandestinity which will be necessary to preserve them through a period of severe repression. But for the moment they
and against the people and we are prepared to break these anti-people laws, to combine legal
our demands within the framework of the existing system, since their dynamic threatens
"socialism with a human face", for socialism is only one and its face is human, otherwise it is
political programme of your factory together with your views and experiences should be
newspapers/ distributed as widely as possible passed on to workers of other factories, spread
right and responsibility to know how the managers run the factory and what presses
production, or whether you are producing fo storage. It is essential to know what rewards shares, prizes, etc., the economic leaders get
should make use of this right of workers control of your own initiative. Publish the fact
influence on economic management should no in the name of the workers accept a share in th responsibility for an economic policy which
belong to. Horizontal links are forbidden but is up to you to defy this prohibition: workir