August 21st, 1968, will go down as a day of infamy in the annals of socialism. The Russian bureaucracy, motivated by fear, demonstrated on that day, beyond all doubt, that they put their own privileged position above all other interests. Thus they have shown that stalinism is not dead - despite all the talk - and that it remains a cancer which has to be cut out of the labour movement. By deciding to invade Czechoslovakia, the Russian bureaucrats not only showed their complete contempt for self-determination and the equality of workers' states, they also demonstrated that nothing matters to them in comparison with their prime instinct: that of preserving their privileged position on the backs of the Russian workers.
Many have argued in the recent past that since the death of Stalin and the relaxation of international tension (in practice, a modus vivendi between the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A.) that the Russian leaders were becoming more civilised and that there would be a gradual democratisation of the Soviet Union. We doubt if there would be anyone who would dare argue that theory now!
In fact, the exact opposite is true: as the development of the means of production in the Soviet Union more and more undermines the economic backwardness that helped to give rise to the bureaucracy, the more parasitic it becomes. The lesson of history is that the more parasitic a social formation is the more brutal it has to be in trying to hang on to its privileged position.
BETRAYAL OF THE VIETNAMESE STRUGGLE
The invasion of Czechoslovakia is not only a terrible crime against the Czechs and Slovaks, it is a crime against the whole of struggling humanity, not least of all the heroic people of Vietnam. By its cynical action the Russian bureaucracy has given comfort to the American imperialists and right wing forces all over the world.
Johnson, Wilson and the whole gang have shed their crocodile tears about the "poor people of Czechoslovakia" - but secretly they are pleased that the Russians have invaded that country. Johnson - whose soul is as shrivelled up as the napalmed children of Vietnam - dares to talk of rights of the people of Czechoslovakia! In the inner sanctums of the White House he must have drunk a toast to the rulers of the Kremlin - they came to his aid just as evidence was piling to expose his hypocrisy about "relaxing the bombing of the North."
But times have changed: 1968 is not 1956, still less is it 1936. The Russian bureaucracy could strangle the Spanish revolution and scarcely anyone apart from the vanguard noticed; it could crush the Hungarian Revolution and still retain the semblance of an international following in the workers movement. But the smashing of the Czechoslovak people's bid for a democratic form of communist rule will end forever its pretension of being a progressive revolutionary force.
Today everyone who can think realises that the main danger to the socialised property relations in Czechoslovakia comes not from the efforts to "liberalise" but from the reaction to the Russian invasion.
THE FIGHT AGAINST STALINISM
It is no accident that the first people to protest in Britain against the Russian attack were the very same people who have led the fight for solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution. They did not have to have stalinism explained to them - they have been engaged in mortal struggle with it in its attempt to prevent a solidarity movement from being built. The slogan "Hands off Czechoslovakia" is completely consistent with the fight to build support for the Vietnamese revolution.
Both are aspects of the fight against what the Russian bureaucrats call "peaceful co-existence"; although we see that it is not so peaceful in its application to communist dissidents.
One of the arguments that we have come up against in fighting for solidarity is that the Russian had to be careful not to provoke the Americans... how does the invasion of Czechoslovakia fit into that argument?
The British Communist Party has come out against the Russian action. That is very good, but not enough. The British Communist Party must take ACTION to show its good intentions. But more than that, the leaders of the British Communist party must answer some questions about the past: why did they support the Russian invasion of Hungary? Unless they come clean on this one, we will be justified in assuming that their conversion to the principle of self-determination owes more to the fear of the consequences of isolation than to political ideals.
The leaders of the C.P.G.B. must answer some questions about theory, too. When the disclosures about Stalin were made, this was explained in terms of the cult of the individual. We know that Stalin was an extraordinary man, but not even Jesus could direct a state of 200,000,000 people some 15 years after his death.
SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION NEEDED
Unless the leaders of the Communist Party can give some sociological explanation of what has gone wrong in the Soviet Union, it is a very bleak prospect, indeed, that they hold out for their members. After 51 years of workers' power, according to these gentlemen, the first socialist country can act in a completely "big-power" way. Is this what they are asking their members to fight for?
We would advise all those members of the C.P.G.B. who are looking for a marxist analysis of what has gone wrong in the Soviet Union to read: "The Revolution Betrayed" by that much-maligned victim of stalinism, Leon Trotsky.
The Czechoslovak people are facing a terrible ordeal, many of their leaders are behaving in a most heroic manner. Whatever the outcome of the present struggle, the sacrifices of the Czech people will not be in vain. By their determination not be intimidated, to combine socialised property relations with freedom of expression and their refusal to flirt with the right, they have helped to dig the grave of international Stalinism. The C.P.s in western Europe will rue the day that their mentors in the Kremlin invaded Czechoslovakia. Already exposed as having no revolutionary potential by events in France, they will now have to break their close relations with the Soviet Union.
But the Czech people have achieved more than that - by their systematic attention to the Russian troops they are striking at the soft-under belly of stalinism. Stalinism will be destroyed when that sleeping giant, the Russian working class springs into action. The ideas of the Czech revolutionaries will seep through to the Russian intellectuals and then workers.
For our part we have the job of helping to expose and destroy stalinism. But this can only be done to the extent that we continue in our general fight against imperialism. This mean exposing the hypocrisy of all those who claim they defend the right to self-determination of the Czech people but who keep quiet about Vietnam and other victim of U.S. and British imperialism.
This is the best way to defend the socialised property relations in Czechoslovakia and continue our fight for solidarity with the Vietnamese people in their struggle against U.S. imperialism and its allies.