Many trade unions that otherwise voted with the leadership broke ranks on the issue of lesbian and gay equality. The struggle will now be to turn the conference victory into a manifesto commitment.*
CZECHOSLOVAKIA Police move against independent publication ON October 12 Czechoslovak police arrested Jiri Ruml and Rudolf Zeman, editors of an independent monthly magazine, Lidové Noviny [People's News]. The journal attempts to be objective and non partisan, presenting material from a wide range of viewpoints. Many of the best Czech and Slovak writers and journalists, prevented since 1969 from own country, have
It has been appearing since the beginning of 1988 in small editions of up to 1000 copies — not for lack of interest but for lack of paper — and represents an attempt by the Czechoslovak democratic opposition to operate in the same open and legally accepted way as is now, at least to some extent, possible in Hungary or even the Soviet Union.
The arrest of Ruml and Zeman, who have been charged with against the socialist state and distribution of an illegal publication, is thus a deliberate anti-glasnost provocation.
According to a statement by Czechoslovak oppositionists this attack is aimed "not only at the free press of the opposition, but is also meant to intimidate the increasingly bold journalists and editors of official publications."
They call on journalists throughout the world to demand the release of Ruml and Zeman. *
Soviet Union - Two Russian nationalist
"This malice and bias extends to the groups formed RUC's response to the leaks. Our member was informed by a shoddy piece of photocopy paper pushed under his front door. Nothing could more clearly indicate the RUC's contempt for his rights and his life.
"The 'leaks' issue is not about pieces of paper but about the involvement of all sectors of the state forces in murder. Any serious proposal to end this threat would result, at minimum, in the immediate disbandment of the UDR and withdrawal of the RUC and British Army from nationalist areas".* GREAT BRITAIN Lesbian and Gay triumph at Labour Conference THE 1989 annual conference of the British Labour Party voted with a 62% majority to include an equal age of consent for lesbians and gay men and the repeal of all discriminatory laws in the Party policy, against the opposition of the party leaders and National Executive Committee. The Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights (LCLGR) had run a powerful cam18 ed to drop the full equality commitmen paign since May, when the Execuuve vor
TWO anti-perestroika organizations were founded in the USSR, apparently on the same weekend of September 8-9. The founding congress of the United Front of Workers of Russia was held In Sverdlovsk, where the local party leadership was defeated in the electiona for the Congress of People's Deputies. Reportediy, tha best known organization participating was the United Front of Workers of Leningrad, whose founding congress in June was attended by the notorious StalinIst and anti-semite Nina Andreeva and the since ousted Leningrad party leader Yuril
A prominent founder was Anatolli Pyzhov, who ran in Leningrad for the Congress of People's Deputies, getting only about 1% of the vote. Among othor things, he has clalmed that the only ones to benefit from parestroika have been the intellectuals. The new organization includes representatives of the so-called Internationalist organizations claiming to represent Russian-speaking workers that have organized strikes in the Baltic Republics and Moldavia. Consequently, the name chosen, "United Front of Workers of Russia" seems to have a Great Rusalan nationalist implication.
In Moscow, the United Council of Russia held its founding congreas, which was praised on September 14 by the neo-Stalinist dally Sovetakaya Roasiya. It was this paper that published the letter of Nina Andreeva, the manifesto of the neo-Stalinist opposition to perestroika and glasnost The meeting was also attended by representatives of the a0-called Internationalist organizations in the Battle republice and Moldavia, along with Russlan nationailet cultural groups, such as Otchestvo, the Brotherhood of Russian Artists and the All-Russian Cultural Foundation, *
Glasnost and the crisis of the communist parties
W E DEFINE glasnost as the
process of political change • underway in the Soviet Union, which in practice is widening the effective range of democratic freedoms. This process combines with the effects of the process of political reforms "from above," with a decline of repression and intimidation and de facto tolerance of autonomous activities and initiatives "from below," including those that do not conform to the laws in force.
Different motives for supporting glasnost
The leaderships of the following parties, among others, support glasnost, even if their motives are often different: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Hungarian and Polish CPs, the Italian Communist Party, the French Communist party (with reservations), the Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, British, Dutch, Turkish, Danish, Belgian, and Swiss CPs and the Communist parties of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico (which formally no longer exists but operates within the party of Cauhtemoc Cárdenas), Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Australia and Lebanon.
The Communist parties of West Germany (DKP), Syria and Israel have abstained from any public criticism of glasnost. It is known that the majority of their leaders are in reality opposed to it. Some of the CP leaderships that back glasnost have done so more out of the tradition of unconditional support for everything that happens in the USSR than out of real conviction. This is creating tensions with more sincere champions of glasnost, tensions that could lead to splits, both in the DKP and the Greek CP.
On the other hand, glasnost has been rejected by the official leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the Romanian Communist Party, the Czechoslovak Communist Party, the United Socialist Party (SED) of East Germany, the Vietnamese Communist Party', the Cuban Communist Party, the Bulgarian Communist Party (in a more attenuated way), the Japanese Communist Party, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the North Korean Communist Party, the Albanian
THE so-called World
Communist Movement is
more deeply divided today than at any time in its history. Above all, it is the attitude of the Communist parties to glasnost that is the indicator of this crisis.
### ERNEST MANDEL
Party of Labor and the Portuguese Communist Party, as well as by most proAlbanian and semi-Maoist groups.
The attitude of the US Communist Party has been hesitant. It has not declared itself one way or the other. We do not know the position of what remains of the Tudeh Party of Iran or the Communist Party of the Philippines. The South African Communist Party seems deeply divided on this subject, although it seems to be going along with Moscow, as its whole tradition dictates.
The situation is complicated by the fact that several of these CPs have substantial minorities, including in their apparatus, that do not share the majority position. Conservative minorities exist, notably, in the CPSU, the Hungarian CP and the Polish CP, while there is a "reformist" minority in the Chinese CP and the Dubcek tendency in the Czechoslovak CP Dubcek is not formally a member of the
COMMUNIST PARTIES CPC but he is supported by hundreds of
On the other hand, the differentiations at the base do not necessarily follow the same lines as at the top. More "left" tendencies are also emerging in several CPs, notably the Greek CP (KKE), alongside tendencies at the base with even more far reaching social democratic inclinations than are to be found in the leaderships of certain CPs.
Profound divisions over repression in China
Another indicator is the attitude taken toward the Deng Xiaoping faction's bloody repression of the Beijing Commune. On this question the division is profound. It largely, though not entirely. parallels the lineup on glasnost. In the camp of those who have condemned the Tiananmen Square massacres are almost all the parties favorable to glasnost, plus the Japanese CP. But, in the case of the USSR, the Gorbachevite leadership of the CPSU has taken a very reserved attitude, while unconditional rejection of the Chinese action has been left to the radical wing. The US CP has not condemned the repression, and thus in this case slipped toward the neo-Stalinist conservative camp. The Cuban CP has kept quiet.
There is a third indicator that is just as significant — the attitude toward the dogma of the single party. Once again, almost all the pro-glasnost CPs reject it, except the Gorbachev leadership itself for the USSR. But, again, within the CPSU there are radicals who reject it. A growing number of Gorbachevites are beginning to question this principle. The Japanese CP in turn has rejected it. The anti-glasnost CPs including the Cubans are champions of the dogma of the single party.
The simultaneous expression of these positions and their political implications, 1. Reports have been multiplying about this for several months. The International Herald Tribune of Sepiember 7, 1989, confirmed them, referring to a speech by pibished in the a Nig central organ, han a nice 19 published in the party's central organ, Nhan-Dar.
ПОСМОТРИ В РОДНУЮ СТОРОНУ в ХАТЫ ШКОЛЫ,
International Viewpoint #172 • October 30, 1989
COMMUNIST PARTIES seem to justify talking about a veritable faction fight taking place within the so-called World Communist Movement. Doubtless, it is not (yet?) an organized factional struggle. But "informal" consullations are multiplying. The conservatives in all the CPs mentioned want the elimination of glasnost in the USSR, since it is causing them big problems in their own parties and/or countrics. Whether or not they are plotting together with the Ligachev-Chebrikov-Zaikov tendency to eliminate Gorbachev from the leadership of put him in a position the CPSU or to where he cannot "do any harm" depends on each individual case.
The choice of glasnost as the indicator of the main differences within the so- всс ЧИТАНТ НАшУ БОРОНУ® called "World Communist Movement" is neither arbitrary nor unilateral. There is и ЖУРНАЛ .БОРОНИЙ ЗУБ hardly any opposition to economic perestroika within the CPs and the antiglasnost factions in power, quite the contrary. "Conservative" declared themselves enthusiastic champions of it. They are, moreover. applying it in their own countries?
### Albanian regime makes cautious opening to EEC
Likewise, practically all the antiglasnost CPs approve of the projects for "peaceful solution of regional conflicts"
collaboration with imperialism and even the cessation of aid to the liberation movements that they imply?. So, it is glasnost that emerges as the real source of division. Leaving aside the Albanian Party of Labor, whose leadership is beginning to make a cautious opening to the EEC, the only substantial exception is the Cuban CP, whose opposition to glasnost is combined with a rejection of further compromises with imperialism and of a major recourse to market mechanisms.
Broadly, we can say that there are three international tendencies that claim in one way or another to represent communism the pro-Gorbachev tendency that accepts glasnost, perestroika and "regional accords" with imperialism; the conservative tendency that rejects glasnost but accepts perestroika and the "regional accords"; and the revolutionary Marxist tendency that accepts glasnost but rejects perestroika and the "regional accords."
The fact that glasnost divides the so-called World Communist Movement has deeper roots. The bureaucratized postcapitalist societies (bureaucratized workers' states) are going through a social crisis of exceptional gravity. Everyone is aware of this in the countries concerned as well as internationally. The bankruptcy of bureaucratic dictatorship in all its variants is manifest. It is going hand in hand with a no less deep moral and ideological crisis.
Everyone therefore poses the question:
How could it come to this? How can the 20 way out of it? Has socialism failed, if nol, situation be turned around? What is the what?
Glasnost is the beginning of a frank and open debate over these key questions. This is an indispensable precondition foi seeking and finding a proper solution. Inasmuch as this debate cannot fail to challenge the very nature of the bureaucracy, its power, its privileges and its main ideological devices, all factions of the bureaucracy are opposed to total glasnost. The differences concern the limits to be imposed on this debate over the causes of, and remedies to, the crisis. However, for 60 years the socio-political system of bureaucratic dictatorship as it functioned in the USSR and similar societies and the equation of this with socialism have been the basis of the identity of all Communist parties throughout the world.
Iron unity buffeted by new socialist revolutions
Of course, this "iron unity" was strained by the victory of new socialist revolutions (Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua), which gave the CPs in these countries and the Sandinistas a material and political base independent of the Kremlin. Certainly also, the growth of "Euro-Communist" and similar phenome. na after the crushing of the Spring" severely buffeted this identity.
Nonetheless, in general — with the possible exception of the Italian CP — the
"actually existing socialism" and the "socialist camp" remained a reference point for the great majority of cadres of the CPs, even if this allegiance did not exclude criticisms, which times quite sharp. Moreover, even the harshest critics did not fail to repeat that, in any case, Khrushchev (the Twentieth Congress) and Gorbachev (glasnost, perestroika) came from inside the CPSU.
However, the revelations and dynamic of glasnost are dealing blows to the most sacrosanct underpinnings of this reference point and identity. There are terrible injustices, inequalities, poverty, grave forms of oppression in the USSR. Crimes no less terrible have been committed there. Glasnost has opened the way for exposing them and fighting them. This is an exceptionally grave blow to all the CPs. Their divisions are essentially over how to absorb it.
Lost legitimacy of "actually existing socialism"
Some try to make the best of a bad batgain. They hope that Gorbachev will be able to bring about an improvement in the USSR and thereby get them out of their predicament. The old lost legitimacy of "actually existing socialism" could be replaced by a new legitimacy of a "socialism with a human face in the process of being built." The others try, instead, to deny or to minimize the crisis so as to avoid the repercussions in their own coun tries and/or parties of disclosing it and of the attempts to overcome it.
To this end, they stress heavily "the pos itive gains" of the Stalin and Brezhnev eras. They furiously oppose damaging revelations. They continue to defend the methods of "actually existing socialism" and the idea that "the party is always right" against all odds. Hence their fierce hostility to glasnost.
However, denying the crisis of the system afflicting the USSR, East Europe and the People's Republic of China means denying the obvious. Opposing a frank airing of it means opposing an honest discussion of its origins, underlying causes and the means of overcoming it. This is a 2. Sec, in particular, a statement by an SED theoretician that you would have to be suffering from a "fit of madness" to oppose perestroika in the USSR (in an interview in the Zürich Wochenzeitung of September 1, 1989.) Perestroika-type reforms have been applied St in Vietnam, Bulgaria and other such countries 0.
It should be added that economic collaboration between the USSR, China and North Korea has increased considerably in the framework of perestroika. According to Pravda of July 6, 1989, 70 industrial er complexes furnishing 25% of all industrial production to in the Democratic Republic of Korea are now operat- ar ing with Soviet aid.
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БОРО КРАСНЫЙ КЛУБ
rearguard battle destined to failure, even if it may temporarily score some points, as occurred in China after the crushing of the Beijing Commune. This is neither a struggle of "the right against the left" or of "revisionists" against "defenders of Marxism-Leninism." Neither of the two opposing camps in the "World Communist Move ment" is "more right wing." more "revisionist" or more "pro-imperialist" than the other, or conversely, more "left," more Marxist-Leninist" or more "anti-imperialist." To reach this conclusion, 1 am applying the golden rule established for politics by Karl Marx. That is, you have to judge people and tendencies not by what they say, and especially not by what they say about themselves, but by In the light of this criterion, the judgement 1 have just made is based on solid The Dong Xiaoping faction has never, not for one day, not even on the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre, stopped colcloscly with imperialism. In fact, there is a radar station in China for recciving signals coming from the USSR, run jointly by the Americans and the Chinesc. This same faction has never stopped backing some of the most repressive pro-imperialist regimes in the third world, just as it supported the Zia regime in Pakistan. Il collaborates militarily with the Thai diclatorship. It was involved in providing military supplies to the Contras in Nicaragua. In what respect is its behavior any more "anti-imperialist" than that of Gorbachev and his allies? bf
West German subsidies to Honecker The Ceaucescu regime in Romania is the one in Eastern Europe that has collaborated most systematically with the Zionist state. The Honecker regime in East Germany is the one most integrated into the Europcan n"' (EEC). Il gets fat subsidies from West
German imperialism. The "reformers" in Hungary and Poland would be happy to There is nothing "orthodox" from the nd standpoint of Marxism in rejecting glasns nost, especially the right to strike and freedom of association and above all free. dom for the workers to form unions and bodies, or rejecting fredom of expression, cultural pluralism and freedom to demonstrate in the streets. ret- these freedoms with it of geois democracy"
whole Marxist tradition in this regard, aber lied slarting with the clearly expressed views of Marx and Engels themselves. ation Democracy is bourgeois when it serves has troi- lo protect and defend the power and propsinal eny of a bourgcois class. It would be hard ction o demonstrate that the political pluralism crat- and ideological debate in the USSR are
COMMUNIST PARTIES today serving that function. It would be information proves the contrary. Still still harder to demonstrate that the right to worse. The aggressive wing of the conserstrike and trade-union freedom defend vatives in the USSR, notably, the famous capitalist property. Nina Andrecva, are adopting clear and
The idea professed by Ligacher that publicly proclaimed Great Russian chauhaving several parties would equal bour- vinist and anti-Semitic positions. (Sce the geois democracy contradicts positions interview with her in the International clearly expressed by Marx, Engels and Herald Tribune of August 2, 1989) Are Lenin himself, at least up until 1920. It is such positions less revisionist than those also a distortion of history. of Gorbachev?
This wing, moreover, is overily StalinMultiparty system compatible ist. It minimizes, if not justifies, the with socialism crimes of Stalin, the great purges of 19341939 and 1945-52 and the military repres
Was the Paris Commune bourgeois sion of the Hungarian workers in 1956.5 democracy? Nonetheless, there were sev- There was a big portrait of Stalin at the eral parties. Was the Russia of the soviets last congress of the Communist Party of from 1918 to 1921 a bourgeois democra- India-Marxist (CPI-M). A group of old cy? Nonetheless, there were several par- Stalinist cops and prison warders have tics, and in the midst of a civil war too. Is made a film entitled "Stalin is with us" 10 Nicaragua a bourgcois democracy? None- support Nina Andreeva. (El Pais, August theless, there are several parties.
An instructive example is offered by freedom of the press. It is bourgeois when Russian conservatives the bourgeoisic holds the capital necessary to buy, corrupt and manipulate the organize press and the media. Since this power is The congress of the United Council of never total under a regime with frecdom Russia held in Moscow on September 8-9, of the press — as opposed to a dictator-
1989, brought together conservatives in ship - and the workers can also enjoy the apparatus, admirers of "the strong this freedom, even if in a limited way, the authority" symbolized by Stalin, tradition. workers' movement has an interest in al anti-modernist and anti-Western pan defending even the freedom of the bour- Slavists and fiercely anti-Marxist rightists geois press against attempts to restrict or and even semi-fascists. (Le Monde of Sep.
tember 16, 1989.)
However, when the bourgeoisie has lost This significant linkup was symbolized its economic and political power, when by Aleksandr Zinoviev, the virulent antithe power of capital to take over the print Soviet satirist, in a striking interview in and TV has disappeared, Nouvelles de Moscou. Al the same time as freedom of the press ceases to be bour- fulminating his hatred of socialism and geois and becomes frecdom for the popu- democracy, he declared that the age of
Stalin was, after all, a "great" one. He also guaranice access to the press and media accused Gorbachev of wanting 1o "Westfor all working people, as Lenin demand- ernize" Soviet society. His desires go in ed. "All workers", of course means not the direction of another voluntarist, Stalinjust those who express themselves the way the leaders of the "party" or any insti- What does this repugnant cocktail have tution want. Restricting such frcedom of to do with "the left," "Marxist orthothe press is not repressing the bourgcoi- doxy," "defending socialism"? sie; it is repressing the proletariat, the toil- The Cuban CP occupies a place apan.
Up until now, the Cuban revolution has
Glasnost's social content is revealed all not experienced a comparable degree of the more clearly because the conserva- burcaucratization to that of the USSR, the tives of the anti-glasnost camp do not just People's Republic of China and the Eastcall for restricting, or eliminating political em European countries. This is the result pluralism, do not oppose just frecdom of of a dialectical relationship between the the press, frecdom of association and free- origins of this revolution, its principal dom to demonstrate. They also and une- social gains — which are outstanding. quivocally oppose trade-union freedom from any point of view — the role of the and the right to strike (see especially the Cuban leadership and a continuing partiinterview given by the chief of the Hun- cipation of the masses in the process of garian conservatives to the weekly maga- building a new society, although the extzine Der Spiegel of August 21, 1989). ent of this fluctuates and remains confined The statements of Ligachev and Chebrikov are no less cloquent. And even Fidel Fidel Castro continues to enjoy real Castro has not hesitated to say that the imperialists rejoice at strikes in the Soviet 4. All the references to Fidel Castro's July 26, 1989. Union, which are therefore in some way speech have been taken from the Granma Weekly "anti-socialist." 4 Review of August 6, 1989.
Where are the capitalists who rejoiced S. You find this same justification of the 1956 and at the Soviet miners' strike, and still more the present strikes in Poland? All the 1968 repressions among the Czechoslovak and Hun- garian "conservalives," as well as among those in East 21
Germany. October 30, 1989 • #172 International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint #172 • October 30, 1989
COMMUNIST PARTIES prestige in the eyes of the masses. The Cuban revolution, moreover, laces con stant economic aggression from the imperialists, as well as a military threat that has never ended. Only the Nicaraguan revolution finds itself in a more threatened situation.
Cuban revolution must still be defended
In these conditions, the duty of the international workers' movement and of revolutionary Marxists is more than ever to defend the Cuban revolution against imperialist and its regional agents. It is also to denounce the economic pressures that Gorbachev is putting on the Cuban leadership to get it to accept the "regional accords" and adapt its economic system partially to perestroika. These pressures are unacceptable, even if they cutting off of aid 880 so far as a drastic undoubtedly not
This duty is not affected by one might think of the Cuban CP's course or the concrete steps taken by the Cuban leadership. While we disagree with some of these measures and attitudes?, it has to be stressed that alone among all the components of the so-called World Communist Movement, the Cuban CP combines its opposition to glasnost with a condemnation of an excessive recourse to market mechanisms, a condemnation that we sympathize with, even if we think that the alternative proposed — voluntary work
— is insufficient and in the long run unrealistic.
Moreover, we support unreservedly the thinly veiled criticisms of the proposals to
"resolve" "regional conflicts" at the exp ense of the liberation movements in the regions concerned. At the same time, we fear that the Cuban leadership itself may end by bending in a similar direction, at least in Latin America.
As long as there is no separation between the state and party, the needs of government realpolitik dictate the party's attitudes, contrary to what happened in
Soviet Russia under Lenin. The state leaders are already saying, contrary to "Che,"
that a socialist revolution is not on the agenda in Latin America. But the defense of the Cuban revolution is ill served by an of complacency and uncritical admiration of the sort typical of "the friends of the USSR" or "the friends of
China." Criticising what is wrong in the behavior of the Cuban leadership does not harm Cuba. It serves the revolution. Hiding the truth or prettifying it harms the
From this standpoint, the open attacks by Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership on glasnost, that is, on the process of partial democratization underway
USSR, are contrary to the interests both of 22 the Cuban revolution and the working the international proletariat and those of masses in Cuba. They threaten to provoke a grave crisis of the legitimacy of the Cuban leadership itself among a section of the masses, especially the youth.
These attacks were already included in the speech that Fidel Castro made on July 26, 1989. 8 They led to banning the distribution of iwo Soviet publications
Novedades de Moscu (Moscow News/ and Sputnik. These measures have to be condemned unreservedly. They threaten to put Fidel Castro and the Cuban CP leadership in a de facto alliance with the conservative tendencies in the "World Communist Movement," the most retrograde and corrupt tendencies and those most inclined to repress the masses. ' publications, the Cuban CP organ Granma claimed that they advocate capitalist methods in the economic field, that they defend bourgeois democracy and "bourgeois values," that they distort the past and thus threaten to exert a negative influence on a part of the Cuban youth. The charge of "distorting the past" parent allusion to the systematic exposure of Stalin's crimes.
Covering up for Stalin's crimes
In this respect, Fidel Castro talks about "errors" committed by the CPs in power. Was the murder of a million communists and in particular of 90% of the Red Army commanders an "error""? Is it necessary to continue to cover up the scope of Stalin's crimes for the sake of political conven-
The accusation that advocates capitalist methods in the economic field is out of place. '° At most, one could say that this weekly paper has published a few articles favorable to certain capitalist mechanisms, just as it has published some articles that put in question the legitimacy of the October Revolution. I have not read a single article advocating
6. It should be recalled that the Khrushchev Icadership totally halted all economic and military aid to the Peo.
ple's Republic of China overnighi, which had disastrous effects for the Communist movement as a whole and the mass movement in the third world, especially in Asia and Africa. It split the CPs and gave rise to the notorious realignments of the Maoist leadership. Il should also be recalled that the Brezhnev leadership went as far as aiming nuclear weapons at the big Chinese cities. Nor should the scandal of the Kremlin dealing out aid with an eye-dropper during the Indoch-
In their their scope and practical effects, all these betrayals went beyond what Gorbachev is doing today.
7. See the article by Janette Habel in / No. 167.
8. He even goes as far as to evoke the possibility of a
"great civil war" in the USSR, or even a disintegration
9. I might cite the example of Ceaucescu in Romania, who has established a veritable family regime. Most of the working poople lack necessities, and cannot even heat their homes in the winter. But this despot gives an absolute priority to paying off the debt to the capitalist countries by pushing exports at the same time as pursuing a scandalous policy of investing in luxurious and grandiose prestige projects. This, no doubt, is another proof of his "Communist orthodoxy." (See the indictthe restoration of capitalism. But alongside the sort of articles mentioned, there are many others that say exactly the opposite. The truth is that the Cuban Icadership has banned a forum of debate and discussion, not a pro-capitalist organ. "
To say that Moscow News defends "bourgeois democracy" is just as false. I already pointed out that fighting for the freedom of expression, for political and ideological pluralism, for a free contest of ideas, has nothing in common with fighting for "bourgeois democracy." The opposite view assumes an all-knowing and infallible leadership. This idea scems 1o show through in the formula that Granma of July 9, 1989, used in commenting on the execution of Ochoa: "When the party speaks, not a single word, not a single comma, departs from the truth."
A bureaucratic caste in Cuba?
Unfortunately, in the 1970s the Cuban party proclaimed the value of "market mechanisms"; today, it condemns them as "capitalist methods." Just recently, the party condemned as "imperialist slanders" any criticism of the Ministry of the Interi or (that is, the police). Today, it is loudly denouncing the abuses of this same ministry. Recently, an editorial in Granma of September 10, 1989, went so far as to say that there was a "bureaucratic caste" in Cuba. Not so long ago, Cuban Communist activists who expressed much more mod est criticism in documents not circulated publicly were imprisoned. Would it not have made it easier to correct such errors if critics had been allowed to express themselves freely, if their views had been freely debated?
In his specch of July 26, 1989, Fidel Castro said that "socialism is a science to win the people to this great cause." But a science is never complete for all time. Il is always open lo new problems. To advance, it requires practical experimenment written by a former member of the State Security Council and top party leader Professor Dumitru Mazilu in The Times of August 22, 1989.) Amnesty International has just denounced cases of torture in Romania.
The vice president of the People's Republic of China,
Wang Zhen, for his part, has not hesitated to call for
"totally eradicating... the bourgeois liberals, rioters and counter-revolutionaries..to get rid of a large number of them, kill them or reeducate them, as the various cases call for, send a lot of them to the labor camps." (Le
10. Behind this thesis, there is an equation by Fidel
Castro of commodity-market relations (which anyway survive in Cuba) with "capitalist methods." This is wrong from a theoretical standpoint. Market relations existed a long time before capitalism without leading automatically to it. They will survive a long time after the disappearance of capitalism, as Lenin, Trotsky and all the classical Marxist theoreticians maintained on
11. Paradoxically in his July 26, 1989 speech, Fidel
Castro said: "Are we secing a peaceful transition from socialism to capitalism? That is possible.
against it." As for us, we do not think that this is possible, just as a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism is not. And in any case we would have to be
October 30, 1989 • #172 International Viewpoint tation and a confrontation of different interpretations of a constantly changing reality. As Friedrich Engels said in a letter
10 the leadership of the German social democracy, science can only develop through free discussion. This is why he condemned this leadership's severely altempt lo introduce censorship and exclusion of documents in its own publications.
What would he have said about banning organs of a
"sister party?"
To believe that newspapers could lip a part of
Cuban youth into the pro-imperialist would have to camp, you believe that the revolution's arguments were no longer able to counter those of the counterrevolution and believe that administrative measures
(bans, repression) were the only effective means of fighting wrong ideas. This reflects a loss of confidence in the superiority of revolutionary thought and propaganda over bourgeois thought and propaganda.
It reflects a loss of confidence in the capacity of the masses and the youth to distinguish truth from falsehood, reason and justice from lies and injustice, their own interests from those of the exploiters and oppressors. '
In the 1960s, at the time of the fight against Aníbal Escalante's faction, Fidel
Castro's burcaucratic positions reached their peak.
Castro delivered a speech with the striking
'The Revolution Must Be a School title, of Unfettered Thought." This was neither a "normative" nor a "utopian" position. It was an eminently practical one that corresponded to the interests of defending the revolution, which made possible greater effectiveness in building socialism.
But today fetters on free thought are multiplying in Cuba. They are being justified theoretically. Abandoning the correct thesis of former years in favor of a substitutionist view represents a damaging ideological regression for the Cuban CP, a suicidal one in the long term.
Fidel Castro seems now to be focusing on the danger of a bureaucratic degeneration of the Cuban state. But he rejects glasnost, pluralist democratization, institutionalized mass inspection at all economic, political and social levels. To eliminate this danger, therefore he has no recourse left but a bureaucratic (administrative, repressive) struggle against the bureaucracy, with at most occasional and stage-managed interventions by the masses. This is destined to certain failure, as we have seen in the USSR and the People's Republic of China.
The factional struggle between the
"reformist" and "conservative" wings of the CPs in power is an inter-bureaucratic conflict. It reflects essentially a difference of judgement and political options over the best means for salvaging the burcaucratic system in these countries. But in most of these countries (Cuba and Nicare special cases) bureaucratic struggle is intertwined with social conflicts between the following
• The top levels of the bureaucracy, who enjoy enormous material privileges and base themselves on a broad layer of less bureaucrats. Both pro and anti Gorbachev factions have their roots here. But the majority of the bureaucrats are antiGorbachev and above all anti-glasnost. 13
• The toiling masses, essentially wage earners, but still including a majority of small peasants, as in China and Vietnam.
• The petty-bourgeois forces and the initial nuclei of a middle bourgeoisie both in the countryside and in the towns.
• The salaried "new middle classes," that is the intelligentsia, which have a real weight, especially in the USSR, East Germany and Czechosiovakia but to a lesser extent in the other bureaucratized workers' states and in Cuba.
This way of approaching the conflicts underway in the USSR and the other bureaucratized workers' states gives precedence, as a Marxist analysis must, to the real interests of the social forces present over the ideological or verbal aspect of political positions. This in no way involves underestimating the role of ideology in the political struggle.
By codifying the neo-social democrat
COMMUNIST PARTIES gradualism already in fashion in the CPs for decades, by sowing illusions about the potentially "peaceful" nature of imperialism, by suggesting the possibility of resolving the major contradictions of our epoch not by class struggle but by class collaboration, by uncritically singing the praises of the market, Gorbachev's "new thinking." and still more that of the outright anti-Marxist wing represented by his advisors, is giving grist to the mill of the international social democracy, and even to the free enterprise offensive of the international bourgeoisie.
This is disorienting the orga nized workers' movement. It is an impediment to a workers' fightback against this offensive, which is a material need of the class.
It is necessary to distinguish the effects of this ideology the "new thinking" - from
Gorbachev's outright counterpressures and revolutionary with regard io specific strug gles underway, which are a continuation of a practice that was already the rule under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhideological factor in the real unfolding of the political conbureaucratized workers' states remains subordinate to the confrontation of real social interests. It is the latter that will be deci-
However delighted they may be by Solidarnoso's spectacular political
Jaruzelski's attempt to climinate their organization by a military coup d'etat at the end of 1981 and however great the real ideological influence (often exaggerated abroad) of the church and nationalism, the Polish workers will act decisively to defend their standard of living, their jobs and even the miserable social security that they have gained when any government, even one led by Solidarnosc, attacks them. It is their interests
12. The Czechoslovak CP chief, Jakes, said in an interview in the July 30 issue of the Spanish-state daily El
Pais that 99% of the population is against ideas of
Vaclay Havel and Charter 77. If that is really so which is far from proven -- why fear and forbid their dissemination? Why does dissemination of these ideas
"impose" anything on anybody?
13. A study by Peter Reddaway in the August 17,
1989, issue of the New York Review of Books confirms that the majority of the bureaucrats are very hostile to glasnost and, at bottom, hostile to Gorbachev. See also a similar study in the weekly Die Zeit of September 29,
1989.
'14. Sec a significant commentary by the Solidamosc senator and famous Catholic writer Andrzej Szczyplorski: "There is a paradoxical mentality among us. People also say that they are against communism. That's those in the at with unemploymen." (Die Zil. 23 true. But at the same time they do not want a state like
September 8, 1989.)
International Viewpoint #172 • October 30, 1989
COMMUNIST PARTIES and not any "ideological values" that in the last analysis will determine their day-to-day behavior, even if they may give a "period of grace" to the first government in 40 years not led by the Stalinists and which, undoubtedly, better reflects the political preferences of the popular masses than the preceding governments.
### Solidarnosc faces new dilemma
One of the main theoreticians of antiMarxism on a world scale, the ex-Marxist Polish professor grasped perfectly the dilemma facing Solidarnosc as a result of this situation:
"The new government has inherited a bankrupt economy and the discontent flowing from this. Before, Solidarnosc existed to defend the workers. Now, if the more and more widespread feeling of despair leads to rebellions -without provocations from the Stalinist forces of the Party and the police [Solidarnosc] will be in an ambiguous position." (The Times of August 22, 1989)
However, an ambiguous line of action is incompatible with the tole that the nomenklatura and the IMF has assigned 1o the Solidarnosc-CP coalition, which is to get the working class to accept austerity in order to receive new imperialist credits, to assure "order" and "stability" at any price, as a precondition for so-called "economic reflation."
Jacek Kuron merits respect for the years he has spent in prison in Poland. Without his tenacious efforts, which at the beginning were confined to "grouplet" activity, working-class explosion would not have happened, or at least it would have appeared much later.
But the respect that we owe him cannot cover up the nightmare that awaits him. As minister of labor in government, he risks becoming the minister of the police and anti-working class, anti-pluralist repression, if he agrees to drink to its dregs the cup of an "cconomy open to the world," that is, the rules of the game of international capitalism.
A realistic estimate of the social forces present in the USSR and in the other bureaucratized workers' states, of the relationship of strength among them and of the dynamic of the princileads to a clear conciusion.
The main question in the political struggles underway is not the restoration of capitalism. The main question is whether these struggles head in the direction of an anti-bureaucratic political revolution or of a partial or total elimination of the democratic freedoins acquired by the masses under glasnost. The main fight is not between pro-capitalist and anti24 capitalist forces. It is between the bureaucracy and the toiling masses, that is, except in China and Vietnam, essentially the working class.
In none of the burcaucratized workers' states does the petty bourgeoisie and middie bourgeoisie represent more than a small minority of the society. This element is undoubtedly operating in an international context favorable to it. It enjoys support, although quite limited, Irom international big capital. ' But overall this convergence will be insufficient impose any restoration of capitalism in the short or medium term.
No serious bourgeois observer believes in the possibility of such a "restoration" through political initiatives coming from right or far-right forces, or even a "spontaneous" restoration of capitalism as a simple result of a widening of the market mochanisms. The only minimally realistic possibility for arriving at such a result is relying outright on the "reform" wing of the bureaucracy. The fears of the dogmatic tendencies point in the same direction.
No Soviet "capitalists" are expected to "restore" capitalism in the USSR. This is a sinister design attributed to Gorbachev (and in Poland and Hungary to his local
Some have also attributed this objective to Deng Xiaoping in China.
At the root of this interpretation of the social dynamic operating in the USSR is a misunderstanding of the nature of the bureaucracy as a crystallized social caste holding enormous power over the entire society and enjoying enormous material privileges. It is not a new ruling class. I! has neither the stability, nor the underpinnings nor the capacity selfreproduction of its rule over the long term that typify ruling classes historically. But it nonetheless has a real capability for self-defense in the short and medium term, when its power is threatened.
Bureaucracy opposed to capitalist restoration
For the majority, in fact the very great majority of the bureaucracy, the restora-
ЛЕНкИЗ
ПЕНГИН
tion of capitalism would reduce their power and privileges. Only a small minority would or could transform themselves into real entrepreneurs of big industrial or financial firms, firms genuinely independent from an economic point of view, that is, into private owners able to pass on this status to their children. For the great bulk of the bureaucrats - not just the small and medium-rank ones but members of the nomenklatura, which can be estimated at some 300,000 houscholds in the USSR - the restoration of capitalism would involve a loss of power and material advantages. 16
Assuming that the bureaucracy is heading in this direction means assuming that it is ready to commit hara-kiri as a crystallized social caste. This is an error parallel to the one of thinking that in an acute crisis it would go over bag and baggage into the camp of the proletariat. Trotsky pre dicted that in in an acute crisis, a "Reiss wing" favorable to a political revolution and a "Butenko wing" favorable to the restoration of capitalism would emerge from the bonapartist bureaucracy.!? he never said that the whole burcaucracy would divide into a Reiss wing and a Butenko wing.
Two decisive historical tests for bureaucracy
Two decisive historical tests have taken place in this regard in the USSR. The two gravest crises experienced by the bureaucratic dictatorship were in 1927-1933 and in 1941-1943. In both cases, the majority of the bureaucracy and its bonapartist leadership opted neither for the proletar ian solution nor capitulation to the bour geoisie. It clung, by the most desperate means and at a terrible cost to the Soviel masses, to the defense of its own power. It did so successfully both times.
All those who failed to understand this possibility - starting with the unfortu nate "capitulationists" Opposition around Pyatakov — paid with
ПО ВСЕМ ОТРАСЛЯМ ЗНАНИЯ
ХВАТДИТЕСЬ
ЗА ЗТОТ
СПАСАТЕЛЬНЫЙ
КРУГ!
COMMUNIST PARTIES nisms, can transform the social nature of the state without the active intervention of political forces pursuing determined ends. Today, whatever impressionable journalists or people who confuse their desires with reality may say, in Poland and Hungary it is the bureaucratic nomenklatura and not "the pro-bourgeois forces" that control the state apparatus. They have the support, to be sure more discreet than in the past but no less real, of the Kremlin. Before the Mazowiecki government was installed in Warsaw, the chief of the KGB made a much noticed visit to give his approval to the new coalition government (in office, not in power - there is a big
BCE
ДЛЯ
BCEX difference). Gorbachev's speech in East Berlin on the fortieth anniversary of the German Democratic Republic left nothing to the imagination in this regard.
Paul Sweezy, for his part, thinks that, except for Cuba and East Germany, things are moving in the long run toward a restoration of the market (Monthly Review, September 1989). Let us leave aside the fact that "in the long run," a lot of things are going to change, both in East and West Europe, in the USSR and in the world. Let us also leave aside the fact that Sweezy is
ДОБРОКАЧЕСТВЕННО ДЕШЕВО! ИЗ ПЕРВЫХ РУК! their lives for this error in judgement, after committing terrible political mistakes. 18 There is hardly any point in repeating this crror today. The political and social strug gle in the USSR and in the other bureaucratized workers' States 1S, and will remain, for a whole period a triangular and not a bipolar one.
This analysis, moreover, has just gotten a resounding confirmation in the People's Republic of China. Deng Xiaoping unquestionably played the role of sorcerer's apprentice in pushing economic "libcralization" as far as he did, much further than Gorbachev. But when a grave economic crisis of "overheating" resulted, with the beginning of a breakdown of planning, an uncontrollable budget deficit and galloping inflation, his response was not "restoration of capitalism" but to restore firm bureaucratic control of the cconomy. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats were sent into the provinces and the enterprises to re-impose state control of the economy. ' This came before the massacre in Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese bureaucracy did not commit hara-kır either in response to the "spontaneous market forces" or the masses. It clung desperately to its power and privileges. Historically, in the very long run, the bureaucracy has neither a future or a destiny of its own. But for a certain period, it is capable of defending its bonapartist position. That is the verdict of 60 years of historical experience. It will only disappear from the scene when it is overthrown by the conscious political action of another social force, either a real bourgeois class or a real working class.
In view of the relationship of forces existing today at least in the USSR 20, it is much more likely that the bureaucracy will be eliminated by the working class than by a new bourgeoisie. I say conscious political action, because state power remains the decisive factor. No spontancous economic process, no "inherent logic" of the market mecha15. The imperialists fear above all the destabilizing efforts of grave political and social conflicts in Eastern Europe on Europe as a whole, or even on the world situation. This is why the most representative leaders of big capital, not just West German but also American, insist strongly that no major change should take place without the Kremlin's agreement, or without taking the Kremlin's interests into account. 16. An interesting article in the June 17, 1989, issue of the Indian Economic and Political Weekly refers to a lecture by Nobel-Prize-winner Vassili I contiev, in which he maintained that no coherent market economy is possible without a market of the means of production and a labor market, that is, without capital [in other words, capitalism]. But, at the same time he reported, that in all of the USSR there were hardly 100 managers. 17. Ignacy Reiss, a Polish Communist in the service of Red Army intelligence, brake publicly with Stalin and the Comintern after the first Moscow trial in 1936, and announced that he was going over to the Fourth International. He was Switzerland. Fedor Butenko, a Soviet diplomat, also broke with Moscow in 1936. He went over to the Italian fascists. 18. Pyatakov, one of the main Bolshevik leaders at blithely forgetting that until recently he claimed that a new non-capitalist ruling class was in power in all these countries. (Here is a "new ruling class" climinating itself — that is really an adventure in dialectics.)
The essential thing lies elsewhere. Not once does Sweezy make any allusion to the role, the activity, the reactions or the interests of the working class. It is not even a pawn on the chessboard. It does not exist - 350 million people are wiped off the world scene. This theorem should be turned upside down. No change in the system in any of these countries is possible without violent social conflicts, in which the working class will be the main actor.
It will defend its interests. Unless it suffers a severe defeat at the outcome of these conflicts, no restoration of capitalLime of the revolution, and a member of the Left Oppor sition, capitulated in 1928 after the Stalin leadership's "left tum." He was executed in 1932, after the second Moscow trial. 19. Sec Neuer Zürcher Zeilung of July 22-23, 1989, on the bureaucratic apparatus' firm resumption of control over the Chinese economy. 20. Even in Poland, where there is a lot of talk about the "privatization of the nomenklatura," you have to look behind the verbiage. In its September 11, 1989, issue, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeirung soberly noted that it would take 20 to 25 years to re-privatize industry, which is 95% state owned. Who could buy this industry, except foreign capital? And why would foreign capital buy up enterprises that are generally subsidized, that is, unprofitable from the capitalist point of view? Le Monde of September 2 ran the headline: "The Polish nomenklatura reserves the better part of the private sector for itself." But on looking closer you see that what was involved was an agricultural consortium, a swindle, against which the population has already begun to protest. 21. See Catherine Samary, Le marche contre l'aulogestion, Paris, La Brèche, 1988; and Notebooks transion scarch, Amsterdam, on the problems of 25 transitional society.
International Viewpoint #172 • October 30, 1989
COMMUNIST PARTIES ism is possible. For the moment, it is necessary to prepare for these struggles, and prepare without for them assuming that defeat is inevitable when the battle has not even been engaged.
The whole foregoing analysis leads to two political conclusions.
Revolutionary Marxists strive in all circumstances to defend the immediate and historic interests of the proletariat. They do not identily either with the
Gorbachev or the conservative wing of the bureaucracy.
They independent form an political tendency, independent of any faction bureaucracy.
of the
They seek to base themselves in the working class and among its allies, that is among the sections of the intelligentsia and the youth that defend the interests of the proletariat. They see politirevolution — "revolution from cal below"— as the only positive road to a resolution of the problems facing the
USSR, the People's Republic of China and the East European countries.
However, this position of intransigent anti-bureaucratic class independence does not by any means involve an attitude of
"neutrality," that is, de facto abstentionism, in the concrete political and social conflicts unfolding today in the USSR and in the other workers' states, including less bureaucratized ones such as Nicaragua and Cuba. In every case, it is necessary to take a position in accordance with what is really at issue in the conflicts and the practical implications for the cause of the struggle to emancipate the working peo-
From this standpoint, the following guidelines emerge regarding the attitude to be taken toward the factional struggle rending the "World Communist Move-
1. Revolutionary Marxists support fully the concrete measures of glasnost, that is, every extension of freedoms that the toiling masses can enjoy. The idea that glasand benefits only intelligentsia is an inept myth.
You only have to look at the size of the vote for opposition candidates in the elections for the Congress of People's Deputies. You only have to study the scope, the organizational forms, the demands and the consequences of mass strikes culminating in the miners' strike to see to what extent the toiling masses are using glasnost to their own advantage.
The main result of glasnost in fact has
26 been the deeslopment or she activia.
The most important thiny is that we constently ter in Mink the leaching role f the Party! politicization and self-organization of growing layers of the working class. This is what emerges in a dramatic way from a Washington Post Service feature that appeared in the International Herald Tribune of August 29, 1989;
"Everything has changed since the strike,' said Aleksandr Kalinin, a Soviet journalist with long experience in the Donbass minefield. 'The workers have stopped being afraid of the chiefs. It is as if they had suddenly thrown off their chains and become free.'
Workers accuse management of corruption
"Now that the strike is over, the 5,700 workers of the Gorky mine have begun to use their political muscle. During a tenhour meeting this month, they accused the mine management of corruption and bad administration, and after a vote the 17person strike committee led by M. Boldirev was transformed into a new workers' council. Not a single manager, Communist Party leader or leader of the official union was elected."
The criticisms that revolutionary Marxists make of glasnost are that it does not go far enough; that the censorship has not been entirely lifted; that freedom of assodemonstration restricted; that the right to strike is regulated, that is, limited; that elections are not entirely free.
However, the advances with respect to the past regimes are enormous and qualitative. Any restriction of the democratic freedoms gained would be a very grave defeat for the Soviet working class and a very severe blow to the world workers'
2. Revolutionary Marxists combat all those perestroika measures contrary to the interests of the working class, which it rejects or to which it takes a skeptical attitude. This applies in particular to all those measures that can bring cuts in jobs or plant closures without reemployment with a guarantee of the same wages and housing; any speed-up or reorganization of production without workers' control (that is, the right of veto for the Which Party! workers); any increase in the prices of necessities not compensated for by a sliding scale of wages under workers' control; any violation of the principle of free health care and education, and in general any reduction of social services in the lives of the workers. 3. It is necessary lo denounce any widening of social incquality, any maintenance of the nomenklatura's privileges; any increase in the benefits of the small and middle bourgeoisie beyond a certain limit.
4. On the other hand, inasmuch, as the workers themselves express the view that resorting to market mechanisms in the sphere of services facilitates the solution of the problems of daily life, revolutionary Marxists accept this opinion. It is up to the working people themselves and not to the ideologues to decide questions affecting the material life of tens of millions of
5. Revolutionary Marxists support any struggle for the right of the minority nationalities in the USSR to determine their own destiny in full sovereignty. At the same time, they fight against chauvinism in all its forms. They reject in particupogrom-type developments such as have been seen in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
6. Revolutionary Marxists are opposed to all deals between the Kremlin and the imperialists to restrict the action of liberation movements in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, notably in southern Africa and in Palestine, where such movements are confronted with bloody repression and the denial of elementary political rights, including that of self-determination.
They are opposed to any intervention in the world workers' movement aimed at making it more "moderate," either with respect to its forms of action or its goals under the pretext of "deepening peaceful coexistence" with the international bourgeoisie. They denounce the reduction of aid to the revolutionary movements and of economic aid to Nicaragua and Cuba.
7. Revolutionary Marxists look favorably on the withdrawal of Soviet troops
October 30, 1989 • #172 International Viewpoint from Afghanistan; the USSR's disarmament initiatives; the abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrinc of "limited sovereignly" of the East European countries; on the re-establishment of normal state relations between the USSR, the People's Republic of China and North Korea, and on greater cconomic cooperation among them on a basis of cquality, without using economic aid to put on political pressure.
8. Revolutionary Marxists defend the validity of the fundamental theses of Marxism, intransigent condemnation of capitalism and imperialism and the validily of of the socialist project. They defend these principles both against the neosocial democrat conciliationist theses and the conservative neo-Stalinist ones, which are simply two variants of the revisionist bureaucratic ideology.
Neither faction has unified project
Such a concrete attitude toward the main problems raised in the faction fight within the "World Communist Movement" stands in contradiction to any thesis altributing a "coherent unified project" to Gorbachev or the conservatives. The first of these theses implies rejecting glasnost as indissolubly linked to perestroika. The other implies critical support for perestroika and especially for the Gorbachev team, out of fear that otherwise glasnost would be doomed.
Let us leave aside the fact that none of the factions of the burcaucracy is distinguished by any ideological or theoretical "coherence." They operate in an essentially pragmatic way.
The Chinese experience has already confirmed that, far from going hand in hand, cconomic "liberation" and political democratization in time come into contradiction, inasmuch as economic "liberaliand thus leads to explosive clashes and reinforces the tendency of the bureaucracy to respond by repression. 21
No fundamental "turn" in cconomic policy in the USSR toward genuine democratic planning or real self-determination of the toiling masses, is possible without the bureaucracy's power. Nor is any fundamental "turn" in the USSR's foreign policy toward supporting the world revolution possible without
But no overturn of the burcaucratic regime is possible unless the masses acquire, through a process of widening democratization, a growing capacity for self-organization and the necessary political experience to achieve such a revolution. That is why glasnost is vital for the future of socialism in the USSR.
The Soviet workers, moreover, understand this themselves. The chair of the
Kemerovo strike committee in the Kusbass has said: "Perestroika (he might more accurately have said glasnost) has shaken people up, especially the youth. Over the last few years, the development of people's consciousness has moved ahead particularly quickly."
As David Seppo has added: "Two important changes have occurred in the workers' relations with the political and bureaucracies. On the one hand, having tested the waters in small-scale strikes, workers have gradually shed criticism which the central authorities and the press have been directing at the economic administration has also had the effect of encouraging worker protest." 22
Concretely, this means that when the workers fight in defense of their immediate interests, you have to be ready to support them regardless of the possibility that they might weaken the Gorbachev wing Any other attitude would be opportunist and counter-productive.
But parallel to this, in the event of concrete threats to glasnost, that is, to the real democratic frecdoms that the workers are enjoying today in practice, you have to be ready to unite in action with all forces ready to act, including "Gorbachevites," to prevent the advent of a more repressive
Any rejection of such a united front would represent a irresponsible sectarian attitude comparable to that of Third Period Stalinism. 23
If the conservatives gained a temporary victory, those guilty of such sectarianism in the Soviet Union would have lots of time to consider the consequences of their errors in the prisons, the Gulag and the psychiatric hospitals?, or at best in the isolation of their apartments. It is no accident that the demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square started with placards saying, "Long live glasnost." That prece dent will not fail to have further repercus-
Three positions in Supreme
The debate in September in the Supreme Soviet over restrictions on the right to strike has made it possible to clarify these options carlier than we expected. There were three clear positions. The conservatives opposed the right to strike, and especially the exercise of it. 22. See David Seppo's Article on the miners' strike in 23. Before the coming to power of fascism in Germany in 1933, the Communist International had refused to follow a united-front policy toward democracy, which it characterized as "social fascist." 24. According to Nouvelles de Moscou of July 23, 1989, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, a worker delegated by his fellow citizens in Koluna (a section of Moscow) went to see Brezhnev to complain about the local authorities. Later, after adding to his reputation as a "secker of justice" by critical remarks at a factory meeting
COMMUNIST PARTIES
They hardly bothered to hide this. The "radicals" were in favor of a limited right to strike and against repression of strikes. The Gorbachevites wavercd these two positions, but tended, with moderation, to move toward the first. Gorbachev proposes ban on
Gorbachev introduced a proposal for a decree banning strikes for 18 months and severely regulating the exercise of the right to strike (which, on the other hand, he was rcady to legalize for the time) through compulsory arbitration.
Then, something happened that has not been seen in the USSR since 1919. Under the pressure of the workers' movement and the reflection (still very limited and contradictory) of this movement in the parliament, the majority of members of ihe Supreme Sovici rejected Gorbachev's proposal, that is, the proposal of the government and of the Politburcau of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
They forced Gorbachev to make a com-
— one that is still not acceptable for intransigent defenders of workers' interests, but which is still a far cry from banning all strikes for 18 months.
Above all, this spectacular result of the Supreme Soviet debate will encourage the workers to pursue their actions and their strikes to press their demands, without worrying about any legal rules.
Millions went on strike in the USSR in 1988, and 2 million in the first half of 1989. And millions more will in the coming months and ycars. This was inconceivunder Khrushchev, under Brezhnev and under Andropov. It is
Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Vietnam and Cuba. It represents an enormous step forward that has to be defended tooth and nail.
No progress toward socialism in the USSR and in the world is possible unless this movement grows, unless the self and self-organization of the workers develop to the point of becoming a real "revolution from below," a real political revolution. Political democratization is a powerful encouragement to this pro about the first secretary of the city committee, he was brought before a court on the charge of "spreading notorious lies slandering the present Soviet system and state." He was sent to a special psychiatric hospital, where he was held for two years, after spending a year in prison. Three years in captivity for verbal criticisms of a party secretary! Should you he "neutral" on the question of whether such methods should never again be applied in the USSR? Is not their elimination now an enoron step formacd? Does this gain of glasnoss favor 27 "bourgeois democracy"?