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THE/MASION OF CZECHOSLOVAK A GRIME AAGAINST SOCIALISM STATEMENTS AND EC LAR ANS CUNTTED. TeAaTCNAR
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IHE MINCIOW OE NECHOBONKD CINE доситан
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Declaration of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International on the Soviet Occupation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic The United Secretariat of the Fourth International energetically condemns the military occupation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic by the troops of the Warsaw Pact nations.
The pretexts are cynical, the troops have been called, they say, by "statesmen" who have yet to be identified 48 hours after the event. The arrival of the troops they pretend, is approved by a majority of the Communist leaders at the time when the emergency Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia which, convened under the influence of the rank and file organisations, condemned the intervention by an overwhelming majority. The justification is no less scandalous; the "counterrevolutionary danger" which was invoked did not exist. There was without doubt the right-wing course of the Czechoslovak leaders which was fundamentally similar to that practised by the Soviet leaders themselves. Their brutal intervention is however not explained by the Czechoslovakian right-wing course but by their fear in seeing the first beginnings of a workers democracy which began to be timidly introduced in Czechoslovakia, stimulating the struggle of the young avant-garde, intellectuals and workers in Poland, Hungary, East Germany and above all in the Soviet Union itself. This intervention displays the fundamental weakness of their bureaucratic dictatorshipe
In fact what the Soviet bureaucracy demonstrated by its military intervention in the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia is that its dictatorship, its power, and its privileges ave incompatible with any form of workers democracy. The return to the Leninist norms of internal life in the Communist Parties mortally frightens the bureaucracy. The suppression of censorship; the open political discussion; the participation of the working masses in political life; the proposed statutes of the Czechoslovak Communist Party wiich contained the right of minorities to present their platform to the party congress and to defend their positions inside the party, this is the number one danger for the Kremlin. It knows only too well that when the workers conquor these rights, they enter onto the road of workers council democracy, on the road to the true power of the soviet type first forseen by "State and Revolution."
In intervening militarily in Czechoslovakia the Soviet bureaucracy trample on the elementary principles of proletarian internationalism, the Soviet constitution confirms the right of national minorities to separate themselves even from the USSR, if they so desire, but to the Czech people is now denied the right to elect the Communist leadership of their own choice.
It is impossible to throw more oil on the fire of anti-communist agitation, to feed more effectively the propaganda machine of imperialism. The Kremlin has not even hesitated to invoke in favour of its intervention "the balance of forces" in Burope, that is to say the Yalta agreements, confirming through this the justification invoked by American imperialism for its counterrevolutionary inter-— vention in its own "gone of influence,"
The occupation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic by the Warsaw Pact troops has delivered a blow to the cause of communism, to the socialist revolution in the entire world. Its first effect has been the disintegration of the internat~ional communist movement under pro-Soviet leadership. Even if this disinteg-
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ration will favour in the beginning the social democratisation of several large communist parties in imperialist countries it will bring the world crisis of Stalinism to its peak, out of . which develops and will continue to develop, more and more forces for the reconstruction of an authentic revolutionary Leninist vanguard in the world.
The impact of this counterrevolutionary act will thus be not what the rulers in Washington are expecting.
The world of 1968 is no longer the world of 1956. The heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people against the imperialist aggression has encouraged a world revival of revolutionary struggles. While condemning the crimes of the Kremlin, the workers must not forget for one moment the bloodier crimes committed by imperialism every dey in Vietnam. Let us tear away the hypocritical mask from imperialism, which sheds crocodile tears on the violation of the right of the Czechoslovak people to determine their own destiny, but which prevents through a rain of napalm and poison gas the Vietnamese people from determining the government and social regime of its choice,
The revolutionary uprising of May in France has encouraged the working class vanguard in Czechoslovakia, in favour of a true socialist democracy. The perspective which opens up following the May uprising is that of a Buropean Socialist Federation, the Socialist United States of Burope in the framework of which the Czechoslovak workers would be able to construct their society and socialist economy under much more harmonious conditions.
The Czechoslovak masses face a military occupation in a context, and with organisations and perspectives more favourable, than that in which the Hungarian workers were obliged to conduct their isclated struggle in November 1956.
The local and regional Communist Party committees which were basically renewed during the last months; the action committees which are being formed spontan— eously could constitute the backbone of a mass resistance.
This resistance, beginning with a general strike and street demonstrations, could transform itself into a prolonged resistancee It could take on many different forms of action, harassing the Occupation troops through constant propaganda in their respective languages, reminding them of Lenin's teachings, and the right of self-determination and socialist democracy, on freedom of discussion and the rights of minorities within these Communist parties. This resistance must ostracise all the collaborators and quislings of the Occupation forces. It could use the weapon of unannounced demonstrations, of surprise strikes, of constant refusal by th* proletariat and working masses of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia to ascept a regime of bureaucratic dictatorship which the Kremlin seeks to impose by the force of foreign bayonets.
By conducting this struggle in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, by creating in the course of this resistance the committees which will be the organs of the free workers and peasants power of Czechoslovak socialism, the proletariat of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia will not only secure its own liberation, it will also make an exceptional contribution to the struggle for Soviet democracy in the USSR, Poland, and Hungary as well as trigger off the socialist revolution in capitalist Europe. conte
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The United Secretariat of the Fourth International appeals to the Soviet, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian and East German troops to immediately leave the territory of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia as the Czechoslovak working masses have asked them to do. Socialism is not endangered in Czechoslovakia, except by the crimes of the bureaucracy.
The United Secretariat demands the immediate liberation of Dubcek, of Cisar, of Smerkovsky, of the Czechoslovak Communist leaders, journalists, intellectuals and militants who have been arrested.e Woe to the henchmen of the Soviet bureaucracy who put in prison communists whose only crime is to have taken into account the opinions of the workers of their country.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International recalls the treachery of the Kremlin in Hungary in 1956 in the case of Imre Nage, who left the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest under a safe conduct guarantee of the Soviet leaders, and who nevertheless was arrested and executed by the agents of the Soviet bureaucracy. This crime must not be allowed to be repeated in the case of the Czechoslovak leaders.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International calls upon all communists, all Czechoslovak workers, to resist; do not give the occupiers and their agents a single day of peace. It appeals to the workers, intellectuals and students of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany to support with all their strength the struggle of the Czechoslovak masses for their right to socialist democracy.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International reminds the workers of all the capitalist countries that the best thing they can do to help the struggle of their Czechoslovak brothers is to redouble their efforts to overthrow the capitalist regime and to commit themselves even more to the road of socialist revolution.
Withdraw all occupaticn troops from Czechoslovakia!
Soviet Tanks to Vietnam!
Down with the Soviet bureaucracy which usurped the power in the USSR, and from whose hands the Soviet proletariat will retake the flag of communism.
Long Live the World Socialist Revolution.
Signed: United Secretariat, August 22, 1968 Fourth International
Study the root causes of the Russian aggression in Czechoslovakia: read The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky 21/- plus 1/- post.
Order from Pioneer Book Service, 8 Toynbee St., E.1 RR A ee
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DEFEND THE RIGHT OF SELF DETERMINATION FOR THE CZECHOSLOVAKIAN WORKERS AND PEASANTS !
Declaration from the United Secretariat, Fourth International
The escalating pressure which the Kremlin and its agents has exercised and continues to exercise against the leading bodies of the Czechoslovak Soviet Socialist Republic has rarely been surpassed in brutality. The insults and open threats in the press and on the radios the uninterrupted campaign of intimidation in the speeches and statements by the leading spokesmen of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Poland and the German Democratic Republic; the blackmailing threat of an economic blockade; the closing of the frontier to tourist travel from Poland and the GDR; the continuing military manoeuvers in Czechoslovakia itself and at its borders: all directed to force a capitulation of the present leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
The excuses with which the Kremlin justifies this pressure are as trans-— parently without basis as they are cynical. There is no imminent threat of "imperialist infilttaticn" or "aggression" against the CSSR. The num ber of West German tourists in the CSSR is lower than in other workers states such as Rumania and Bulgaria; the number of American visitors lower than in the Soviet Union itself. Imperialism caught in the wasp of the Viet— nam war has no intention of creating « second front in Central Europe. On the contrary, the leading spokesmen of world capital voice their anxiety lest the "international equilibrium of forces" be upset as a result of the Czech events, an anxiety, unfortunately, that matches that of the Kremlin.
Trade relations with the imperialist countries, and initiatives of collaboration with Western monopolies, are being expanded by the present CSSR regime, but on a more modest scale than in Yugoslavia or in Rumania. In fact, nothing similar tc the agreement between the Italian monopoly FIAT and the Soviet government has yet been proposed by the new Czech leadership.
Undoubtedly reactionary former bourgeois political forces are still present in the CSSR, although their social basis is extremely limited. But these forces can find an echo in the working population of the country - of which the overwhelming majority are wage and | salary earners - because of the tremendous discredit which Stalinism and the Novodtny regime has brought to socialism. Any move in the direction of socialist democracy weakens this echo. Any move which reverts towards a bureaucratic dictatorship hated and despised by the masses stfengthens the influence of reaction among the more backward sections of the people. It is therefore necessary to emphasize: the sudden anxiety which the bureaucracy in Moscow, East-Berlin, Warsaw, Sofia and Budapest displays as to the "counter-revolutionary danger" in the CSSR is entirely without foundation. It is hypocritical through and through.
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Far from favouring “imperialism", the upsurge of the Czechoslovak=:.- masses and the steps towards socialist democracy are powerful blows against the anticommunist hysteria which the leadin; imperialist circles try to maintain in the West, and assist rev>2lutioncry anti-capitalist developments there. Nothing would assist develowments cf socialist revolution in Western Burope as much as an emergence of true socialist democracy in Czechoslovakia. It is the brutal intervention of the Kremlin in the Czechoslovak developments which is grist of the mills of imperialist propaganda. What the Kremlin and its henchmen fear above all is not "imperialist" infiltration in the CSSR, but the infiltration of critical communist ideas into the USSR, Poland, the GDR, Hungary and the other bureaucratically deformed and degenerated workers states.
What they fear is the effects which the modest steps in the direction of socialist democracy achieved today in the CSSR might exercise upon the discontented students, intellectuals and workers in their own countries.
What they fear is the fermont of political revolution, which the Czech dev— elopments are sowing in th: whole of Central and Eastern Europe under the Kremlin's rule, increased uy the sparks which the new rise of revolutionary possibilities in the imperialist countries -— symbolised by the French May 1968 revolutionary events - are spreading everywhere. For that reason, it is the duty of every revolutionist, of every socialist and communist, to demand an immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from the CSSR, and immediate stop to all pressures, blackmail and threats against the Czech government and people by any outside force.
The Czechoslovak workers and peasants have the right to determine their own fate, without intervention by the Kremlin and its henchmen. They have the right to freely determine themselves the ways and forms ir which they want to go forward on the road of building a ~" socialist society.
They have the right to determine themselves how far they are willing to extend the basic principles of working class democracy to all the toiling layers of the population.
It is a sign of the complete degeneration of the ruling bureaucracies in Moscow, and the other CPs allied to it, that what makes them most furious is not .at all the presence of imperialist propaganda — you can today find bourgeois newspapers in any Eastern Buropean capital - but the freedom which the Czechoslovak masses have conquered for communists, socialists, revolutionary intellectuals, students and workers, to express their own critical ideas about the building of socialism. Can one find a more abject caricature of "communism" than that of the Brejnev, Gomlka and Ulbricht, clamouring for the reintroduction of censorship upon Czechoslovak communist and socialist writers, jour— balists, intellectuals, students and workers militants? We maintain our basic appreciation of the political forces inside the comm unist movement of the CSSR as expressed in our declaration of April 18, 1968. We are convinced that "liberalisation" is not identical with the establishment of socialist democracy, which means political and economic power in the hands of the working class, through a congress of democratically elected workers councils (soviets). We do not favour a regime of "liberal" technocratic and
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"efficient" bureaucrats any more than a regime of "conservative", political and "inefficient" ones. We want to replace both by true socialist democracy, after the pattern laid down by Lenin in "State and Revolution": all power to a congress of democratically elected workers councils; full freedom for all working class tendencies, which accept the socialisation of the means of production; self-management of the workers on factory, regional and nat~ ional level, in the framework of a democratically centralised planned economy; elaboration and application of the plan under constant control of the workers; strict limitation of income inequalities. ;
We call the workers of Czechoslovakia to stay more vigilant than ever, to defend all the conquests ol tained after February 1948 against capitalism, and all the conquests obtained after Jamary 1968 against the bureaucracy, while constantly forging ahead iowards the building up of real workers power. This vigilgce is all the rore necessary as there is a real danger tha* the "liberal" bureaucracy will try = compromise with the Kremlin, by slowly whittling down the freedom of speech an. publication of the left-wing revol-~ utionary tendencies.
Fac°i with the pressure and threats by the Kremlin and its agents, it is per..ectly admissable to form a united front with all those who defend the rigit of the Czechoslovak workers and peasants to freely determine the way in which they want to build socialism.
We call upon the r volutic .cry students, intellectuals and workers in the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and all the other European workers states to fully support the Czechoslovak workers right of self-determination. Taking inspiration of the Czech events, they should step up their fight in their own countries for the elementary rights of socialist democracy which the Czech vanguard is already conquering: freedom of the press, of association, of demonstration for all working class tendencies!
We call upon the revolutionary students, intellectuals, workers and peasants of China, Vietnam and North Korea to take a clear stand against the archrevisionists of the Kremlin and their agents like the revisionist CP leaders in Latin-America, which supported Moscow's blackmail against the toiling masses in Czechoslovakia.
4 struggle against the rig..t-wing opportunist deviations from the revolutjonary marxist lines «<s «4 stx:.ggle for full and total solidarity with the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people against US imperialist aggression, is possible in the bureaucratically deformed workers states in’ Eastern Europe with a parallel struggle for full socialist democracy, with a parallel struggle against the hateful political ard economic monopoly which a privilegec tuieaucracy in these countries has established over the exercise of power in society, thereby profoundly discrediting socialism and communism. The fight to reestablish a united front between the struggle of the Czechoslovak masses and the worldwide struggle against imperialism - a united front which is made dif-— fic.ilt today, as a result of the crimes of Stalin and Novotny -— will and can be
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won if the revolutic.ists a:.d anti-imperialist fighters the world over show principled solidarity with the struggle of the Czechoslovak masses for their right of self—determination.
Hands off the Czechoslovak Socialist Repubiic!
Long live the right for self-—determination of the Czechoslovak workers and peasants!
Long live socialist democracy, based upon workers power exercised by a congress of democratically electeca workers councils!
Long live the unity of the fighters for socialist democcracy in Eastern Burope and the USSR, with the antiimperialist figuters in Asia, Africa and Latin-America, with the vanguzrd of anti-capitalist revolution in the imperialist countries!
Long live the socialist world revolution!
August 1, 1968 The United Secretariat of the Fourth International
For publications and declarontions of the Fourth International, United Secretariat contact:— Picneer Pook Service, 8 Toynbee Street, London E. 1
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FOR A GOVERNINT OF WORKERS COUNCILS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
(The following statement was issued April 18 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. This is the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.) . The United Secretariat of the Fourth International salutes the students, intellectuals, and workers of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic who for mouths have been the driving force in a powerful movement for socialist democracy in their country. We salute the initiative of the students, who by going into the streets in support of their immediate demands and to protest the brutali ies of the police, havs considerably speeded the process of differentiation withi:: the Czechoslovak Communist party. We salute the intellectuals who have cailed for creative freedom in the arts and culture, as well as freedom of the press and criticism. For currents respecting the socialist constitution and collective ownership of the means of production, these free~ doms must be a basic right in all countries which have abolished capitalism. We salute the workers' efforts to eliminate the trade-union bureaucracy and elect their own union leaders in the plants and industrial divisions.
We salute the "March for Vietnam" and the actions in support of the students in West Berlin and West Germany which the Czechoslovak students have organized in recent weeks and their solidarity with the Polish students and intellectuals; these clearly differentiate them from their false "friends" both in the bourgeois press and public opinion in the West as well as in the pro-~Moscow parties and open the way for a renewal of the internationalist spirit.
Czechoslovakia is Ripe for Genuine Socialist Democracy Of all the states which have abolished capitalism, Czechoslovakia is, along with the German Democratic Republic, the one whose social makeup is most favourable to socialism. The peasantry constitutes only a samll minority of the working populations; the proletariat represents the great majority of the people and has a long-established class tradition and consciousness. The remnants of the bourgeois order are weak, scattered, and demoralised.
Of course, in this industrialised country the Stalinist attempt to impose a dictatorship, not of the proletariat but of the bureaucracy -- with the help of infamous procedures such as terror, witch-hunt trials, the imprisonment of oppositior’ sts, brutal suppression of all the workers and students' demands, manipula.vion of the state apparatus by means of corruption and farcical elections —- has profoundly discredited Marxism-Leninism among important sectors of the youth and even of the workers. But resolute action by @ vanguard determined to fight for socialist democracy has begun to change this situation.
The defeats which American imperialism has suffered in Vietnam and the upset in the capitalist world's temporary economic stability increase the chances of a rebirth in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic of revolutionary~—inter— nationalist communism firmly based on socialist democracy. In the months and weeks to come, the workers and the youth will quickly relearn that real Marxism-Leninism has nothing in common with the repellant caricature that the
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Novotnys and Lenarts have made of ite They will rapidly go to the sources, above all to Marx and Lenin themselves, to rediscover the true and profound meaning of socialist revolution.
Objectively and subjectively, Czechoslovakia is becoming ripe for the creation of a real socialist democracy which could exercise a profound influence on the evolution of all the workers states and give a powerful impetus to the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggles in the West.
It would be illusory, however, to think that such a socialist democracy will be established automatically; that it could be produced by the struggle of cliyues within the bureaucracy; that it could be definately secured against its foreign and domestic enemies by mere petty reforms in the system of government in force in the country since February 1948. The Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky, who was Lenin's closest collaborator in the victory of the October revolution, and who held high the bamer of Leninism and of Soviet democracy in the darkest years of Stalinist reaction, warns in the most urgent way against such illusions. Consolidating socialist democracy -- which has nothing to do with bourgeois democracy -— means preserving the positive conquests of 1948: collective ownership of the means of production and exchange, economic planning, and the state monopoly of foreign trade. If any impairment of these conquests is permitted, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic would be in danger of reverting step by step back under the sway of international capital. The Czechoslovak workers would again be in danger of working to enrich the trusts of the Ruhr, Wall Street, Paris, and the City of London. To consolidate socialist democracy by no means signifies giving back part of the power to the representatives of the old bourgeoisie and the bourgeois parties which remain firmly opposed to the country's socialist economic structures
But the consolidation of socialist democracy does mean allowing freedom of critcism, press, organisation as well as the freedom to demonstrate for all tendencies and parties which st=nd within the framework of the socialist constitution — all those parties and terdencies whose programme defends the socialised mode of production and which cannot be charged before the courts, on the basis of written law, with acts of collusion with the domestic or foreign counterrevolutione The consolidation of socialist democracy means above all assuring direct exercise of power by the working people. This means putting into practice the programme which Lenn formulated in State and Revolution and giving all power to a congress of wickers councils (soviets) elected in all the plants in the country. Only a government of a firmly soviet character will rally the great majority of the people around the workers state; only this will constitute an insuperable barrier to any counterrevolutionary attempt from within or without.
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The ers Threateni the Birth of Socialist Democracy in Czechoslovakia
The Czechoslovak counterrevolution is extremely weak, and the international situation is hardly favourable to reenforcing it. A counterrevolutionary danger could, however, develop from the disappointment of the immense hopes which have arisen today in the Czechoslovak people — if the movement for soc ialist democracy does. not broaden and spread, if it does not move from the stage of reforms to that of profound revolutionary transformations in the state and the superstructure as a whole, but is stifled and crushed in embryo.
The Soviet bureaucracy's cirect representatives in Czechoslovakia, the men of Novotny and the Kremlin, uxderstand this perfectly. Their aim is to arouse skepticism and distrust for socialist democracy in the popular sectors, to seek a justification, even in entirely isolated phenomena, for an intervention and the crushing of the mass movement. The manoeuvers which the Soviet army carried out on the borders of Szechoslovakia are an eloquent warning on this Scores
The Soviet bureaucracy fears the contagion which could result for the toiling masses of the other workers states, above all Poland, East Germany, and the USSR itself, from an uvowal or a triumph of socialist democracy in Czechoslovakia. The veritable panic in face of the Soviet nonconformist intellectuals ref'ected in Brezhiicv's speeches in Moscow and the deliberations at the rcvent pleaum of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union can hardly be explained by the extent or strength yet attained by the movement for soviet democracy in the USSR. This movement today is still embryonic and weak. Such a reaction, however, can be explained perfectly by the Kremlin's fear of a full-scale snowballing movement, above all after the 1956 experience and the Sino-Soviet conflict, in the rest cf what only yesterday was still its "camp".
Today, the Soviet bureaucracy has already lost its control over one-half of the countries which have abolished capitalism: the People's Republic of China, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the People's Republic of Korea, Cuba, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Albania. This development, of course, has not always been uniformly favourable. Alongside authentically revolutionary forces like those in power today in Vietnam axd Cuba — or forces which have introduced certain reforms historically favourable to socialist democ-— racy -—- not a few forces that are regressive or favourable to compromises with imperialism have mani’ested themscives in the above-mentioned countries.
But the Kremlin's representatives lie, and lie deliberately, in claiming that this disintegration of their authoritarian control over all the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist forces in the world is weakening them vis-a-vis imperialisme The example of Cuba and Vietnam —— two countries whose leaders do not accept Moscow's ideological and political ukases and which did not participate in the recent Budapest conference —~ clearly show the contrary. What weakens the vigour of the revolutionary forces vis-a-vis imperialism above all is tie lack of a world-wide anti-imperialist strategy; and the greatest responsibility for this lack is borne by the Soviet bureaucracy with its policy of "peaceful coexistence" and defense of the status quo. It is weakened as well by the narrow egoistic nationalism of a number of bureaucracies in power in the workers states, which prevents the creation of a real firmly revolutionary antiimperialist united front against the Yankee aggression in Vietname
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It is this whole international context which explains why the Kremlin so fears the movement for socialist democracy in Czechoslovakia and why it is getting ready to halt and stifle this liberation movement with all the means at its commands And among such means, a favourite weapon is the attempt to turn the workers against the students and intellectuals who have set the present reform movement in motion. The Czechoslovak vanguard on the fighting front for socialist democracy must recognize the realities on which this manoeuvre is based and find the means for countering it in time.
For Democratically Centralized Workers Self-management The workers have little sympathy for Novotny and the Clique of profiteers who helped him run the country by systematically stifling all expression of the workers' will for such a leng time. But at the same time they distrust the technocrats who a= prepaz.ng to take the reins of the economy as a consequence of the "economic reforms" advocated by Ota Sik. Both the Novotny clique's spokesmen and the Kremlin's agents, and the representatives of the "liberal" technocratic tendency present things as if the Czechoslovak workers had no alternative but to choose between a hypercentralized and bureaucratic kind of socialist economic management and return to the "market economy", rebaptised "socialist" for the occasion. The Novotny clique is sabotaging this "market economy" because it wants at any price to return to bureaucratic centralization. And the foes of this system, sincere or not, say that there is no alternative but "the market economy."
In reality, the workers are attracted by neither of these two models, In the first case, they know that what they can expect is a poor standard of living, scarce and shoddy consumers goods and few ov no rights in the plants. In the second case, they correctly fozr ( as the example of Yugoslavia proves) the return of unemployment, hijh prices, and increasing social inequality. Furthermore, the economic reforms extolled by the present leadership threaten to increase the powers of the plant managers, including the power to fire workers and reserve the bulk of the anticipated bonuses for the professional personnel.
But the solution does not lie in a chcice between these two evils. A movement whose object is to institute a real socialist democracy in Czechoslovakia can and must completely overturn the system of bureaucratic and conservative managenent established in the Stalin era. But it can and must do this basing itsel.’ on the initiative and power of the producers, the workers, rather than by seeking management by a highly privileged technocracy.
The real solution ~*~» Czechoslovakia's economic problems, a solution firmly on the path of social.st demusrvacy, is election of workers councils in all the plants; exeicise by these councils of the supreme economic power in the plants, including the hiring and firing of plant managers and management personnel}; sharing by the factory collectives in the results obtained not through conpetition on the market but by a systematic striving to reduce production costs; guaranteed full employment for all workers; the formulation of the plans through free debate by a congress of workers councils with the right to modify any drafts drawn up by the plants which are contrary to the collective interests of the Czechoslovak working masses; subordination of the planning authority to this congress, a large majority of whose delegates must be workers earning no more than a skilled worker's wages, so as to prevent it from being manipulated by the technocrats; the launching of a vast movement of inspection and
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accounting by the rank-and-file workers of the economy's stocks and reserves; a guarantee that the workers' living standards will increase proportionally with the increase in the national income; and, on the basis of all these transformations, the launching of a vast movement of working-class initiative and creative enthusiasm.
For the Rebirth of Leninism, of Genuine Revolutionary Marxism The Czechoslovak masses struggling for socialist democracy have instinctively understood that their victory cannot be assured if the people do not competely Wipe out all of the crimes end injustices which have stained Czechoslovakia's recent past. Revolutionary peoples have a good mem ry. That is why it is right and proper to shed full light on the Slansky trial and all the injustices against worker militants committed since 1948 (including by Slansky himself). That is why it is right and proper to zehabilitate all of the victims of the Stalinist terror. That is why particular importance must be attached to rehab— ilitating revolutionary militants like Kalandra who criticized the regime from the left; the present rulers are much less in a hurry to rehabilitate such militants than they are to concern themse!lves with representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie.
The struggle for socialist domocracy in the context of a society which has ab- Olished capitalism, combincd with a revolutionary and internationalist orientation, also has a long tradition. The Czechoslovak masses will only be able to fight effectively for their progressive aims if they thoroughly relcarn the lessons of the paste The youth, above all, who are hungry for knowledge and truth and who reject the official fables, myths, and lies, seek to return to the revolutionary and internationalist tradition of a regenerated communism.
They must demand reproduction of and free access to all the historic dccuments of the Czechoslovak Communist party. Not only all of Lenin's works must be published and widely studied but also the works of Trotsky, the author of the manifestos adopted by the first four congresse of the Communist International; of Rosa Luxemburg, the first to raise the standard of revolutionary and democratic socialism in central Europe before the first world war3 of Zinoviev and Bukharin, the first two chairmen of the Communist International; of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the symbols of tod:..y's revolutionary spirit in the semicolonial co:mtriese No work of Marxist ov socialist inspiration must fall under a ban. As the great Soviet atomic scientist Kapitza said, the younger generation must relearn the art of polemics from its grandfathers who made the October revolution. And these grandfathers recognized no censorship of theoretical and political works inspired by Marxism.
The essential elements of the action programme which the Fourth International proposes to the Czechoslovak working masses are: a soviet—type political regime; democratically centralized workers self-management in the economic sphere; freedom of organisation, of the press, of assembly for all tendencies in the workers movement; critical examination of the ideological legacy of the great thinkers and great currents of thought in the international communist movement; full light on the trials and repressions of the Stalin era; the right of selfdetermination for al’ nationalities and the establishment of a genuinely federal statutes solidarity with tho Polish and Soviet students, intellectuals, and work-~ ers who are struggling for socialist democracy in their respective countries; and active solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution and all the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist movements in progress throughout the wor?d. By adopting this programme and resolutely mobilizing behind it, they will make the socialist dem— ocracy which they seek to win invinciblee
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The Russian Ageression is a Cruel Blow Against Socialism: take the tanks out of Czechoslovakia and send them to the Vietnamese to fight imperialism. The brutal aggression launched by the Russian bureaucracy against Czechoslovakia stands in stark contrast to their timid policy before imperialism in Vietnam. It reveals the complete moral and political bankruptcy of their contention that the intervention is to prevent a "capitalist restoration." In Vietnam the Soviet leadership have at each stage in the American escalation of the wax bent over backwards in search of an accommodation and have therefore offered ; tacit encouragement to the imperialists to risk a World War. When the Penta-— gon aired rumours i«cently about the possibilities of an attack upon China, the Soviet bureaucrats remainei shamelessly silent. ; Yet their invasion into Czechoslovakia was swift and vicious against a small country which in over twenty years has a history of friendship with the USSR, and in which of all the Warsaw Pact countries there has been until now, the least anti-Russian sentiment.
The immediate consequence of the Russian actions will be a set-back for the cause of socialism on a world scale. They hand on a silver platter an oppor tunity for anti-communist propoganda by the publicists of a European capitalism reeling under the blows of the May revolution in France. I+ will tend to undercut the advance made by the Left on this issue. It will cut across the mass support that has been developing for the Vietnamese struggle in the advanced capitalist countries. It certainly takes the heat off American imperialism in Vietnam and it makes support for the Vietnamese revolution even more crucial than beforee
The reason for the intervention is patently obvious. The gains established because of the pressure of the masses, especially the students, in January of this year, notably those reforms which tended in the direction of dismantling the bureaucratic structures grafted onto the cocialised economy with the essis— tance of Stalin when the Czechoslovak workers state was first established, became a threat to the ruling regime of the USSR itself. The reforms opened up a veritable floodgate of criticisms and demands. For the first time freedom of debate existed, challenging Stalinism in its totality. Not one single nationalised enterprise however had been dismantled and sold or handed back to its former capitalist owners. In fact, none of the elements in the Communist Party leadership, i:cluding those right-wingers who support the Yugoslav economic model, challenged .e basis of property relations in Czechoslovakia. All defended the conquests of the socialist transforma tion. The danger existed for the Russian bureaucracy in that the political changes underway would rapidly develop into a political revolution establishing wor kers management and a workers democracy that would have acted as an examp.ic of tremendous attractiveness to the working class and intellectuals of the USSR and East Buropean countries who indicate an increasing restlessness under the bureaucratic restrictions and inefficiences of their respective regimes. In the campaign against the hard-line Stalinist wing of the Czechoslovak party, they saw in their minds-eye their own future. In our anger over the Russian aggression, we have nothing in common with the anti-communists who have never stopped crying since the expropriations by the Czechoslovak state of privite enterprise in the late forties and who today couldn't care less about the fate of the Czechoslovak workerSe We are also
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unalterably. opposed to all like those social democratic leaders in the labour Government who, silent or acquiescent over the American aggression in Vietnam and the American's violation of the national self-determination of the Vietnamese people, now with philistine anguish discover "self-determinatiqi" anew in Czechoslovakia: an attempt to refurbish tncir own much tattered and morally. discredited image.
At the same time, we must take issue with those -socialists who use this opportun~ ity to promote the idea that there is no qualitative difference between the societies of the workers states -nd American imperialism. They now see a chance to resurrect their much worn Menshevik theories of "state capitalism." Secing the necessity, correctly in our opinion, for socialists to demarcate themselves off from the professional anti-communists' attitude to Czechoslovakia, they are now ‘mable, because of the incorrectness of their theories about the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, to identify with, and defend against the Russians, all tha’: is progressive and anti-cazitalist in Czechoslovak society. They ure unable to see thai on the issue of Russian intervention, in their basic analysis they have » conservative position. Coupling the demand for Russian troops to get out cf Czechoslovakia with the demand for the Americans to get out of Vietnam, they claim that there are two imperialisms.
They sow confusion about the important and different reasons why each respective country invades another smaller country, and they fail to recognise the positive feature of the aid which the USSR is giving the Vietnamese. It is easv to under— stand why many well-meaning people would put this notion forward, but we think for Marxists to do so. is impermissible. Thinking that they are guarding themselves on their right flank, inadvertently they find themselves in the uncom fortable company of the pacifists, the "neutralists" of CND and liberals who could not give two hoots about socialism in Czechoslovakia.
To distinguish ourselves from those who are hostile to socialism in this country, we think it would be much more consistent for Marxists to show the hypocrisy of the Russian bureaucracy by juxtaposing its criminal occupation of Czechoslovakia with its cowardly attitude on Vietnam where its material assistance has been on a lower technical level than that which it gives to Egypt. But to do that, one must start from the position of being the foremost defenders of the historical conquests established by the Russian revolution and the workers states of Eastern Burope, recognising the existences of the planned economies in these countries as a revolutionary fact. By rutting our »oint of view forward, we are secking to make clear in the spirit of fraternal socialist discussion where we stand so that when we come to build a united opposition composed of the Left, against the Russian action, we will all know where we disagree. The Czechoslovak people neec. the broadest possible front of all those who will fight to defend their right to build théir own form of socialism free from Russian domination. We think it would b- utterly wrong to give credence in any form, to the notion that somehoy there :s an element of truth in the Russian Claim that they are intervening to "prevent the restoration of capitalism." Our support for the Czechoslovak people is unconditional. We have no hesitation in giving our full support to the Czechoslovak government and the Communist Party in its resistance to the Russians — by doing this we carry out our elementary duties, even if elements inside that party are of a right-wing conte
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Communist character and even if the Czechoslovak governme i thi all the workers states, would be considered to Gam: © he os Gua we don't think is the case), It is a complete violation of elementary principles of socialism and the proletarian internationalism of Lenin and Trotsky, for workers states having political or other differences, to abandon ee ea eee or discussion and resort to military aggression to settle those fferences.
Down with the Stalinist occupation of Czechoslovakia!
For a united bloc of 211 those forces which support the right of the Czechoslovakian people to build their own form 0.” socialism!
International Marxist Group, August 23 9 1 968.
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Table of Contents Declaration of the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationa] on the Soviet Occupation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic August 22nd, 1968 ee-page 1 fe % Defend the Right of Self—Determination for the Czechoslovak Workers and Peasants! Declaration from the United Secretariat, Fourth International August 15+,1968 e.opage 4 For ' Goverr ont of Workers Councils a in Corchoslovakia -— Statement of the United Secretariat of the Fourth Inter-— national April 18th, 1968 eeepage 8 The Russian Aggression is a Cruel Blow Against Socialism: take the tanks out of Czechoslovakia and send them to the Vietnamese to fight imperialism - statement of the International Marxist Group, Britain (Fourth International) August 23,1968 ...page 13
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