and to reveal the depths of the crisis produced by the Novotny regime. The main lines of its strategy were soon drawn together in the Action Programme of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, which was published in NOT A CLEAN BREAK The Action Programme was by no means a clean break from the previous positions of the party. In its lack of any perspective for world revolution, the programme remained in the same frame work of immediate state interests that has characterised the policy of the East European regimes since the Stalin era. At the same time, the programme was quite blind to the fundamental conflict between the capitalist world economy and the planned economies of East Europe. On the contrary, it seemed to look forward with enthusiasm to the growing integration of the Czechoslovak economy into the world capitalist market; indeed, it saw this as the main means for solving the crisis of the Czechoslovak economy.
Similarly, the only alternative to the bureaucratically centralised plan was posed as the gradual re-introduction of market forces, presented in some of the writings of the reformers of this period as having a basically more rational character than planning! In their talk of 'progressive forms of international collaboration' with imperialist countries and in their theory of a "socialist' (!) market, the Czechoslovak party leaders were, of course, merely giving voice to a trend that has greatly increased throughout Eastern Europe since 1968. The latest "forms of collaboration' between the Soviet bureaucracy and US imperialism point up the total cynicism of the Brezhnev clique in their attacks on Dubcek for deserting the socialist cause.
There is no doubt, however, that the Action Programme did contain one new and striking featute - its loosening of the grip on the channels of political communication. The primary concern of the technocratic forces was to replace economic management by the central bureaucracy with a market structure giving much greater responsibility for economic decisions to plant management. This move by the technocrats required a fight for freedom of discussion and personal accountability within the bodies of the party and state apparatuses themselves. At the same time, the reformers had to confront a still powerfully entrenched layer resisting this technocratic programme. To defeat this layer they had to enlist popular sup port for their struggle: hence the move to dismantle press censorship, bureaucratic control of the arts and the restoration of rights of freedom of association, etc. In these proposals, the Action Programme makes a break with the traditional methods used by the bureaucracy in Eastern Europe to preserve its rule. To be sure, by April 1968, the working class masses of Czechoslovakia had not yet appeared as an already active force which had to be won to the Action Programme. It was this absence of a genuine mass movement which gave the programme its unreal character, its air of being suspended above the real political forces which were going to burst into open conflict a few short months later.
POLITICAL REVOLUTION The political rights granted by the Dubcekites represented a great opening for the Czechoslovak working class. They made possible, for the first time since 1968, the re-entry of the masses on to the political arena - the opening up of a struggle for genuine socialist democracy. The whole post-war history of the workers' states shows clearly, however, the extreme fragility of reforms granted from above without the creation of a direct state apparatus of the working masses to guarantee, institutionalise, and greatly extend these basic measures. The years of fragmentation and impotence under Novotny made the working class rightly suspicious of the new party leadership. After the appearance of the Action Programme, a new danger grew - the changes seemed so sweeping that the problems of the masses seemed capable of solution by the bureaucratic self-reform. It was only gradually that the newly-emerging revolutionary vanguard began to gain the necessary self-confidence. Of tremendous importance were such bold mae pendent intanives as me acuon or te Brno students in organising a 'March for Vietnam. Similarly, the police repression of the Polish students' movement in March evoked a wave of sympathy with the latter in Czechoslovakia. Particularly active were the small groups of revolutionary militants, such as the Club of the Revolutionary Left and the group around Petr Uhl that later formed the Revolutionary Socialist Party. Increasingly, these militants saw that the struggle for socialist democracy could not but come into sharp conflict with the interests of the bureaucratic reformers. They also grasped the indivisibility of the world socialist revolution as against the national-centredness, which was one of the great weaknesses of the Czechoslovak Spring. In general, then, the objective pre-conditions very rapidly developed in Czechoslovakia for a victorious political revolution which would sweep away the bureaucratic monopoly of power and instal a regime of democratic workers' power. But the inexperience and subjective weakness of the workers' movement were only beginning to be overcome when the Russians moved in.
From the removal of Novotny until the publication of the Action Programme in April, the Soviet press remained very cautious in its assessment of developments in Czechoslovakia. The projected technocratic reforms, for instance, represented a major extension of reforms operating in the Soviet Union itself, and were seen by the technocratic wing of the Soviet bureaucracy as a test for their future wider application. From April onwards, however, the dynamic of events appeared more and more clearly to be directed against the domination exerted by the Kremlin over the workers' states of Eastern Europe. Of course, the only way in which the bureaucracy can justify its material privileges and monopoly of power is precisely by denying its existence as a social caste, precisely by identifying its political dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus, when its positions are threatened, the only ideological recourse open to it is to brand its socialist opponents as anti-socialist, counter-revolutionary elements. The most serious charges made against the Czechoslovak Communist Party concerned its alleged tolerance of anti-socialist forces plotting a counter-revolutionary coup. The press and TV revelations of the anti-working class mass terror of the 1950s under Russian direction were held up as 'proof that the media had been infiltrated by anti-communist agents! The formation of clubs such as the Club 231 of former political prisoners was held up as 'proof of the existence of counter-revolutionary centres. What these professional forgers and slanderers could not produce was any evidence that anti-communist (as opposed to anti-bureaucratic) forces of even minimal impact were at work. But, perhaps the greatest slander of all was to suggest that the Czechoslovak working class would sit by and watch itself being robbed of the historical conquests of the 1948 revolution.
No, the spectre that was haunting the Soviet bureaucracy in August 1968 was not that of counter-revolution, but the spectre of workers' power. The impact of the Czechoslovak Spring on the other workers' states and, in particular, the Soviet Ukraine raised the spectre of a new rise of the working class in the Soviet Union itself. It was to smash this threat that the advance-guard of the invasion force swept into Prague, kidnapped the party and state leaders at gun-point, and flew them off to a Ukrainian prison. And it was for this 'heroic act of proletarian internationalism' that the Kremlin bureaucracy then demanded the support of the international working class. INTERNATIONAL REACTION This was not slow in coming from the tiny Communist parties isolated from the masses. For those Communist parties with any real working class support, however, approval of the invasion would have condemned them to a massive decline in influence. Moreover, many parties were already deeply committed to support of Dubcek. Only three months earlier in France, the Western CP leaderships had shown clearly the terror with which they regarded genuine revolutionary mass mobilisations. The 'reform movement' of the Czechoslovak bureaucracy appeared to them as a model of gradual socialist development in which the party apparatus would remain in overall control. They refused to admit that the really explosive contradiction lay between the working masses of Czechoslovakia and the ruling bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. It was these illusions in the smooth completion of the technocratic reforms without any mass upsurge that were so rudely shaken by the entry of the five Warsaw Pact armies. The dominant reaction was one of bewilderment that such an action could take place. The statement of the Executive Committee of the CGB spoke of the military intervention as a "tragic error' that 'cannot be justified'; nor, it might have added, could it be explained with the categories at the disposal of the CPGB Even Monty Johnstone, who, in his pamphlet on Czechoslovakia, attacks with some fervour the policies of the Soviet leadership, is reduced to talking about the mis-information reaching Moscow.
It soon became clear that the Czechoslovak leaders were prepared to engage in far-reaching compromises with their captors rather than place themselves at the head of the popular resistance to the occupation. Already, in early August, as the Soviet propaganda offensive was mounting, they had betrayed a peculiar "naivety" in their expectations that truth would prevail' once the real facts of the situa tion became known throughout Eastern Europe Once the masses had taken up the struggle with tremendous ingenuity against the occupation forces, the political role of the Dubcekites became clear for all to see - a centre bloc moving backwards and forwards between the two major contending forces, the working class and the Soviet bureaucracy. It was this lack of a decisive leadership which led over the coming months to a growing demoralisation within the mass movement. In turn, this enforced impotence of the masses prepared the ground for the pushing aside of Dubcel and his replacement the following spring by the servile opportunist - Gustav Husak. After more than four years of Husak-style "normalisation, there is, at least, no longer any ambiguity. Whilst the relation of forces is not favourable to the unleashing of a new mass terror, the tactic of widespread purges in the party and dismissals from jobs, combined with the selective trials of socialist and communist oppositionists, has succeeded for the moment in giving an appearance of stability to the bureaucratic regime in Prague. Of course, the active revolutionary forces in Czechoslovakia are now much smaller, but also much clearer. They have lost their illusions in the gradual reform of the party apparatus. Of particular importance was the manifesto of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, drawn up in 1969 and widely distributed abroad. This remains an historical gain for the international revolution in its clear definition of the tasks facing the revolutionary vanguard The struggle for socialist democracy can no longer be posed simply in terms of Czechoslovakia; the 'internationalist' military intervention puts on the agenda ever more urgently an international fight to overthrow the bureaucratic caste that rules Europe today. It is only in this way that the interests of the workers' states and the world revolution can be effectively secured against imperialism. The cause of world communism can only be under mined by continued silence and half-truths, spoken in the name of international unity Only by calling things by their name will it be possible to achieve international unity in the struggle against imperialism.
Red Weekly 24 August 1973 Page 5
ships were forced to launch the huge strikes of 1969 - although the actual development of the struggle went far further than they wished. In Britain the old openly reactionary duo of Deakin and Carron in the TGWU and the AUEW were replaced by the 'left' duo of Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon. Of course these new leaderships had enormous limitations and were not in any sense capable of dealing with the problems of the class struggle, but they did represent an important shift. This trend has continued, until now even the 'lefts' are under pressure from their left - the forcing of Scanlon to withdraw from the TUC-government talks being just one example of this.
this pressure. At the recent congress of the Italian metal workers' union the union leadership was more than usually honest. It stated openly that if they did not take up an 'intransigent and leftist' stance, forces to the left of the Communist Party would take over the union. These fears were brought to a head at the recent election of union delegates at the enormous Fiat plant in Turin, the largest single factory in Europe, where a majority of the delegates elected supported political organisathe CP is increasingly being forced to make concessions to them.
If the immensely well organised PCF could not stamp out the movements to its left, then the chances of any other party doing so, in particu-