From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marxist-Humanist Archives
August-September 1998
"Recollecting the legacy of 'Socialism with a human face'"
Editor's Note: August 20 marks 30 years since the Russian led invasion of
Czechoslovakia by some 660,000 Warsaw Pact troops crushed the
democratization movement that came to be known as "Socialism with a human
face." "Prague Spring," as it was also called, was one of the revolutionary
events of that momentous year 1968; the Soviet Union's invasion was one of
the counter revolutionary events that year that signaled a terrible
foreboding that the epoch had come to an end. There have been few
commemorations of Prague Spring, or retrospectives on the Russian invasion,
nearly a decade after the collapse of "Communism." For that reason we print
the August 1960 Editorial Statement Raya Dunayevskaya wrote for NEWS &
LETTERS two weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Prague, entitled "All
Eyes on Czechoslovakia, All Hands Off!" The editorial was reprinted in the
News and Letters pamphlet CZECHOSLOVAKIA: REVOLUTION AND
COUNTER-REVOLUTION. The pamphlet contained an extensive in person report
from a Czech Marxist-Humanist dissident, Stephen Steiger, whose
retrospective written this month can be found in the NEWS & LETTERS web
site under "Forgotten Heritage of 1968" by Stephen Steiger. The pamphlet
can be found in THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, #3993 97.
A new page in the history of freedom is being written in Czechoslovakia. It
is vividly described in the report, "At the Crossroads of Two Worlds," by a
participant in the dramatic events. We ask all our readers, here and in
Europe, in Latin America and in the Middle East, in Asia as well as in
Africa, to spread this analysis of events far and wide.
This is not just a report of what the Czechoslovak press calls
"democratization," and the New Left here would describe as "participatory
democracy." This is not only a description of the sudden birth of a genuine
public opinion (expressed almost totally without censorship in the mass
media) in a Communist land which is situated strategically at the
crossroads of two worlds. NOR IS IT ONLY AN EXCITING DRAMA OF A PEOPLE
STRIVING FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE WHILE THE "FRATERNAL COMMUNIST NATIONS"
OF THE WARSAW PACT ARE ENGAGED IN A GAME OF RUSSIAN ROULETTE AS THEY
CONDUCT THEIR MILITARY MANEUVERS ALL ALONG THE CZECH FRONTIER. THIS IS
ALSO, AND ABOVE ALL, THE DEPICTION OF A FLOOD OF IDEAS EMANATING FROM A
PEOPLE WHO HAVE "FOUND THEIR TONGUES."
Workers are openly questioning their conditions of labor and life. The
student youth are expressing their solidarity with East European youth like
the Polish, against whom the Communist rulers have struck out with slanders
interlaced with a strong anti-Semitic flavor, with firings and outright
arrests. And the youth are also expressing their solidarity with the rebels
in West Germany and the revolutionaries in France. The intellectuals are
demanding not only freedom of the press, but freedom to act, to create, to
build opposition parties.
Should anyone in the United States be so obtuse as to imagine that this
applies only to lands bound by a single party system, LET HIM TAKE A SECOND
LOOK NOT ONLY AT THE TWEEDLEDUM-TWEEDLEDEE CHARACTER OF THE AMERICAN
TWO-PARTY SYSTEM, WHICH IS OBVIOUS ENOUGH, BUT AT THE NOT SO OBVIOUS--AND
WHEN IT COMES TO THE FIELD OF IDEAS, FOR MORE IMPORTANT--FENCED-IN
PRAGMATISM AND ARROGANCE THAT IS SUMMED UP IN THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL
CONCEPT OF "THE END OF IDEOLOGY."
Now compare this ideological barrenness with the concepts of the Czech
historian, Milan Hubel, to whom a demand for a plurality of parties
signifies a demand for "a plurality which grants freedom to a flow of
ideas, competition of concepts, and an outline to get out of quagmireŠ" We
are in two different worlds.
It is all the more necessary, therefore, to emphasize that, in expressing
our solidarity with the Czechoslovak people, we are not doing something
"for" them; we have a lot to learn from them. In calling for all eyes to be
on Czechoslovakia, and all hands off, Marxist-Humanists have in mind not
only Russian state-capitalism calling itself Communism that had dominated
Czechoslovakia for the past 20 years. WE ARE ALSO EXPRESSING OUR TOTAL
DISTRUST OF AND OPPOSITION TO AMERICAN CAPITALISM WHICH HAS SEEN FIT TO
NURTURE THE MOST NOTORIOUS CZECH STALINIST GENERAL WHO FLED THE COUNTRY THE
MOMENT OF BIRTH OF DEMOCRATIZATION.
It is not, however, the escape of one general with secrets of the Warsaw
Pact that throws fear into the heart of the Russian ruling class. On the
whole, they know how to play those kinds of games better than "the West,"
as is evident from all the secrets they pried loose from NATO. What they
fear most of all are masses in motion.
MASSES IN MOTION
The Russians, for example, have learned well enough how to get along with
Rumania. Yet Rumania has officially questioned the whole concept of the
Warsaw Pact, which Czechoslovakia has not. Rumania is also flirting with
China, which again, is not the way of the Czechoslovak leaders. Rumania
displayed its dissidence before Czechoslovakia embarked on her
democratization experiment. Yet none of the threats against the latter have
ever been pronounced against the Rumanians. THEREIN LIES THE TRUE TALE
WHICH ILLUMINATES THE CAPITALIST CLASS NATURE OF PRESENT-DAY COMMUNISM.
The Rumanian "deviations" have all been handed down from above. No freedom
has been allowed the masses. The lid is kept firmly down on any free
expression. Though the Rumanian nationalists, like the Russians themselves,
no longer bow to the name of Stalin, as China does, Rumania remains
completely totalitarian. Hence, the Russians and the Rumanians understand
each other perfectly. They can horse trade in capitalistic fashion,
practice class compromise and can turn the full state-military fury against
intellectuals who would demand freedom of expression and workers who would
demand control of production.
Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, though it is a long distance from
allowing the exercise of workers' control of production, has released
public opinion from censorship. The result has been that not only are
intellectuals raising existential questions, and returning to their origin
in the Humanism of Marxism, but masses also are in motion. The Russian and
East European hard-liners' attacks on the Czechoslovak leadership have only
solidified the nation, including those far to the left of the [Alexander]
Dubcek leadership.
TWO DECADES: PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION
East Germany is vying with Russia as to who can be most Stalinist in its
vitriolic attacks on Czechoslovakia. With its Berlin Wall and unchanged
Stalinist leaders, it has reason to fear the fresh air of Czechoslovak
democracy. By contrast, Yugoslavia, which was the first to break from
Stalin's empire in East Europe, seems the model of "democracy" and that,
indeed, is the most the present moderate Czechoslovak leadership plans to
allow.
It is all the more essential to remember the true facts. One is that
Yugoslavia remains a single party system that continues to jail Left
opponents. The other relevant fact is that it was not the nationalist
breakaway of Yugoslavia in 1948 which inspired serious rebellions against
Stalin's Russia. RATHER IT WAS THE PROLETARIAN REVOLT IN EAST GERMANY IN
1953, SHORTLY AFTER STALIN'S DEATH. THE GENERAL STRIKE ON JUNE 17, 1953,
AGAINST SPEED-UP AND LOW WAGES, AND FOR "BREAD AND FREEDOM," PUT AN END TO
THE TWIN MYTHS OF THE INVINCIBILITY OF STALINIST TOTALITARIANISM AND THE
ALLEGED INCAPACITY OF THE WORKING CLASS TO RISE IN REVOLUTION IN A
COMMUNIST LAND. AT THE SAME TIME IT INSPIRED THE REVOLT IN THE VORKUTA
FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN RUSSIA ITSELF.
It is against similar inspiration emanating from Czechoslovakia today that
Russia and East Germany are trying to insulate the masses. All in vain.
Already there is clandestinely circulating in Russia a 10,000 word essay by
the Nobel prize-winning Russian physicist, Prof. Andrei D. Sakharov, which
states: "We must, without doubt, support their (Czechoslovak) bold
initiative, which is very important for the fate of socialism and the whole
of mankind." Furthermore, Prof. Sakharov condemns the imprisonment of
Russian writers who oppose the regime, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniels,
and others. The latest group of rebellious writers who were sentenced to
labor camps include Yuri Galanskov, Alexander Ginzburg, Aleksei Dobrovolsky
and Vera Lashkova.
No wonder the Russian ruling clique worries about the consequences, FOR
RUSSIA, of Czechoslovak democratization. No doubt Brezhnev and Kosygin
remember that de-Stalinization did not begin in Russia from above, but in
East Germany, from below. Moreover, Bertolt Brecht's winged phrase, "to
think is to change" notwithstanding, the intellectuals did not lead, and at
first were in no hurry to follow, the spontaneous revolt of the East German
proletariat. For the most part, the intellectuals then stood on the
sidelines.
IT TOOK ANOTHER THREE YEARS PLUS KHRUSCHEV'S OPEN DECLARATION FOR
DE-STALINIZATION BEFORE THE INTELLECTUALS IN COMMUNIST LANDS WOULD REBEL IN
SUCH MASSIVE NUMBERS AS TO BRING ABOUT NOT ONLY A REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY,
BUT A PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION. BUT ONCE THE INTELLECTUALS AND WORKERS DID
FINALLY UNITE INA STRUGGLE AGAINST REPRESSIVE COMMUNISM, THEY DID INDEED
INITIATE THE BEGINNING OF COMMUNISM, THEY DID INDEED INITIATE THE BEGINNING
OF THE END OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EAST EUROPE. What the Polish
intellectuals and youth pioneered in 1956 as they turned from purely
economic to existential questions-and with it the humanist character of
genuine Marxism-the Hungarian Freedom Fighters brought onto the historic
stage in open revolution.
THE PARTY, THE PARTY
Without engaging in revolution, the Czechoslovak New Left did touch the raw
nerve of Communism-in this case, Czechoslovakian as well as Russian
Communism. They did this by questioning the concept of the vanguard, not to
mention omniscient, role of the Communist Party. Here Dubcek refused to
budge. On the contrary. He was not only adamant about the "leading role" of
the Party. He not only claimed total credit for the new road of
"democratization." And he not only opposed the creation of new opposition
parties. He also staked out the claim that "the greatest majority of the
best creative minds in the country is in the Party."
This, then, defines the next battleground of ideas. Hence, the importance
of the fact that the philosopher, Ivan Svitak, and others, who raised the
question of opposition parties, the role of the Communist Party, raised
them as inseparable from their philosophic foundation, on the one hand, and
the needed unity of worker and intellectual, on the other hand.
In raising the fundamental question of philosophy and revolution, the party
and spontaneity, the unity of worker and intellectual, they have indeed
laid the foundation of a new relationship of theory to practice. Thereby
they have gone far beyond anything raised by the New Left in "the West."
The reporter from Prague whom we print in this special issue of NEWS &
LETTERS rightly stresses that the events he describes are but the first act
of a live drama whose ending cannot possibly be known in advance. Show your
solidarity with Czechoslovakia!
August 4, 1968
Raya Dunayevskaya
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