Emest Mandel on the Socialist Outlook platform: determined to avold euphoria on any quick or easy polltical revolution
"Stalinism's historic defeat is our historic opportunity"
We reprint here extracts from the speech by ERNEST MANDEL, a leader of the United Secretariat of the
Fourth International, speaking to an audience of over 350 at the Socialist Outlook Rally in London on Friday
NDEPTH What is happening in East Germany and in Czechoslovakia is the beginning of a revolutionary movement which combines May 1968 and the Prague Spring multiplied, I would say by two or three times.
Sheer quantity transforms itself into quality, if you look at the figures. During three days in East Germany while I happened to be there, from November 4 to November 6, two million people took to the streets in a country with 16 million inhabitants. The equivalent for France, Italy or Britain would have been seven million demonstrators in three days: that has never happened in history.
In Leipzig, for eight successive weeks, every Monday night 200300,000 took to the streets in a town of 500,000: this means the entire working class and a large part of the high school and student youth were there.
To quantity you have to add quality. Rosa Luxemburg would have had tears in her eyes to see the Berlin working class on November 4 in the largest mass demonstration of German history. One million were in the streets, manufacturing for themselves - 99 per cent of them spontaneously - some 7,000 different banners with different slogans, each more anti-authoritarian than the next, and with a fine spirit of humour and insolence, scepticism and hope. Anti-bureaucratic and socialist to the core, they showed a self-confidence which it is rare to see in such large crowds.
This self-confidence is confirmed and strengthened by the rapidity of the conquests of the mass movement. Practically every day the masses make a new conquest. In addition there has been the tremendous outburst of opposition inside the East German Communist Party, the SED, which is the most unforeseen and gratifying aspect of what has been going on.
There is no precedent in the history of the Stalinist movement for anything of this type. The SED opposition asked first for the right to organise tendencies and even factions. This was not granted - but they started de facto to organise tendencies. Then they tried to combine among themselves to get an extraordinary congress of the party. 25,000
December 1. members assembled before the Central Committee building, shouting 'Extraordinary congress!'. The new leader agreed to call an extraordinary conference at the end of December - which cannot change the Central Committee, cannot change the rules and cannot change the party's programme.
People shouted him down, Two days later at a demonstration of 150,000, a majority took up the shout of 'extraordinary congress". Again the General Secretary came out, but this time he said OK, I have understood you, I will change the extraordinary conference into a congress". In all the provincial towns similar developments are taking place. I would say that today several hundred thousand members of the SED are involved in a genuine left opposition towards the party leadership, and want very radical changes in the party statutes, with the right of tendency and faction, as well as changes in the programme and the place of the party in East German society.
In Czechoslovakia things have not gone as far as that from the point of view of the duration of mass demonstrations: it was all much quicker. The traditional rule of the bureaucracy collapsed like a house of cards, but in a way significantly different from East Germany. The working class in Czechoslovakia has played the absolutely decisive role.
The students, spurred on by the very courageous work for the last ten years of a small group of oppositionists including our comrade Petr Uhl, took to the streets. They were very severely repressed, beaten up by the police. Then, for 48 hours we could say that the working class. the mass of the population, hesitated on whether to support the students. Then something extraordinary happened: the conservative wing of the bureaucracy sent delegations to the factories. The students, too, sent delegations to practically every large factory in the country, and a real debate started, which counterposed the positions in front of the workers. The workers decided in favour of the democratic revolution, against the bureaucracy. They were finished, and within a few hours the Politburo capitulated.
So we have the beginning of a political revolution today in East
Germany and Czechoslovakia, the two most proletarian countries of
Easter Europe. I say the beginning, because we are still at the beginning: there is no prospect of a rapid victory, but the revolution is developing under exceptionally favourable international conditions.
Lenin and Trotsky, and the
Communist movement before them have always looked upon the German working class, and especially the workers of central
Germany as the key element for bringing about a socialist world revolution.
This central German working class has the oldest, strongest and deepest socialist tradition of our continent if not the world. In the last general elections before
World War One, every MP but one in Saxony and Thuringia were Social Democrats. In 1923, the left Social Democrats and
Communist Party had an absolute majority in the parliament of Saxony. In 1946, in a free referendum, 86 per cent of voters in central Germany voted for the expropriation of the banks and large capitalists. That's the historic tradition of that working class.
The international and German capitalists were aware of the explosive strength of these workers, and have made sure that a powerful gendarme would weigh down upon them: first it was the imperial German army; then the Reichswer, then the Wermacht and SS; then the victorious armies after World War Two; then the Stalinists through the
Soviet army and later increasingly the repressive forces of East Germany.
Now for the first time in 100 years a situation has evolved as a result of all the changes on a world scale, in which there is no longer a gendarme capable of intervening in the short term against that working class. The Soviet army cannot (I will not say because Gorbachev does not want to; he doesn't but that's neither here nor there. The Soviet people would not permit it). NATO troops cannot (the American population would not allow Bush to embark on an adventure in central
Europe four times larger than the Vietnam war). The West German army won't for the time being: the West German population will not allow it. And the East German amy can't because the regime is in a state of total political and moral disintegration.
So we have a set of exceptionally favourable circumstances: the two revolutions have the big asset of time to unfold. Of course I don't mean unlimited time - nobody can really make predictions whether it be two years, three years, I don't know. But they have time to mature, time to achieve decisive conquests. Their revolutions are not inevitably doomed.
But to avoid any danger of euphoria I would also add that this is not a revolution that stands a great chance of success. I think the chance of victory is very limited, because it has great weaknesses. I will mention three, but I could mention more.
• There is a lack of ideological clarity: it is less advanced than either May 1968 or the Prague Spring, which were clear anti-capitalist movements.
• There is a lack of self-organisation. In Czechoslovakia it is a bit better than in East Germany, and there are some committees being formed, and it seems some strike committees being formed in some factories. In East Germany there is little self-organisation at rank and file level, though there are oppositional groupings springing up and a
IN DEPTH remaining in the hands of the bureaucrats.
years or three: that is impossible.
and a retreat from what seems possible today.
of restructuring to make it viable.
years many other things could change, too.
cially characterised by two factors:
lot of political activity. might come quicker than we think, but for the moment it is not there. • The political power objectives are extremely unclear for the masses in both East Germany and Czechoslovakia. They want to get rid of the Stalinist-dominated state institutions - that's absolutely clear - but they have no clear view of what they want to replace them. Generally they are vulnerable under such circumstances to all kinds of manocuvres and compromises that will be advanced by the reformist wing of the bureaucracy. Both in East Germany and in Czechoslovakia the reformist wing of bureaucrats have some powerful reserves. In Czechoslovakia they have the popular figure and prestige of Dubcek; in East Germany the reformist wing around Modrow is a group of clever manoeuvrists who know all the tricks of the social democratic and trade union bureaucracies. They can present themselves as a 'lesser evil" in the eyes of opposition forces who do not know exactly what they should be fighting for. Free elections, the establishment of a multi-party system and the elimination of the leading role of the CP are all OK, but they don't take us very far, or prevent the real power of the apparatus
Under these circumstances the movement may become tired out. I think tiring out the movement is the strategy of the liberal wing of the bureaucracy. You can demonstrate in the streets in millions for one, two three even four weeks, but you cannot sustain this for a year, two
What we have seen in Poland could repeat itself. When a turning point comes, the people become disappointed that the situation is not shaping up in as radical a way as they had hoped, there could be some repressive move - not of the 1956 or 1968 or Tienanmen Square type, but of the Polish type. Some opposition movements might again be condemned to illegality; there could be some restrictions on the freedome of the media. This would not destroy the movement - it is too broad to be destroyed - but it would inflict a big, deep disappointment
Combined with that danger is the economic danger - the pressure from the western capitalist economies, especially the West German and EC economies and behind them the whole capitalist world market.
We should be clear on one thing: a short-term restoration of capitalism is completely impossible - even the capitalists do not want it. Who wants to buy bankrupt factories? The overwhelming majority of the East European state sector is bankrupt, and needs a long period
There is talk, for example of privatising 2,000 state enterprises in Poland, which is a lot. But that is out of 20,000 - only ten per cent. They say it could take 20 years before things tum decisively: in 20
What we are seeing in Poland and Hungary is a strong deterrent to the workers in East Germany - a process of gradual social and economic decomposition without a real radical restoration of capitalism, involving the dismantling of some of the traditional aspects of the socialised and bureaucratically planned economy. This is espe-
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A tremendous corruption, phenomenon of theft and pillage of national wealth - partly by the bureaucracy itself becoming involved in privatisation, but mostly by international capital. One example is the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, to be bought by an American bil lionairess for $100m. All experts know that the real assets of that shipyard are worth between five and eight times that much. Every single project of privatisation by international carries capital this same hallmark of sell-out, theft, pillage of national wealth.
Poland is being treated exactly like a Third World economy.
• The other aspect is the tremendous growth of poverty and social misery in the country. I have just returned from Poland, and it would make
Soup you weep.
kitchens are being government's official figures show 4-5 milion living below the poverty line, twice as many as there were before the electoral victory of Solidarnosc. If old age pensioners spent every penny they receive on meat they would be able to afford only four kilos a month: so they don't eat any.
When I was in Wroclaw the pensioners had just begun a hunger strike supported by our friends in the PPS(RD), under the terrible slogan Die from hunger together, don't starve one by one".
The International Herald Tribune says this:
"As they dismantle the pervasive and intricate Stalinist economic system, encourage a new private sector and seek out Western investment, the East European governments must plunge their societies into a whiriwind of dislocation, in which high inflation, high unemployment and the emergence of sharp social and economic inequality will be painful but inevitable features. This process, already well under way in
Poland and Hungary, will invite the emergence of radical political movements or even new popular uprisings"
Exactly so. Before you can restore capitalism, before you can bring this disintegration to its final completion you will have to move against these new radical movements and new popular uprisings. This means that the real battle is still before us. The East German and Czech working classes are much stronger than the Polish and Hungarian: and seeing all this, they will think things over ten times before going down
I must add, however, to counter any euphoria that if there is mass disappointment, it cannot be excluded even in East Germany that the blandishments of the consumer markets of the West could win a mass base of support even for the idea of a capitalist reunification of Germany.
(...)
The demands of political freedom have taken an absolutely central place in this anti-bureaucratic revolution. And the successes they have achieved have had an absolutely historic significance if they can be institutionalised and maintained. They mean that for the first time since the Spanish revolution and Stalin's bloody purges freedom is now more and more coming back into our camp, becoming more and more as
E P T H A workers paradise? East Berliners crowd into West Berlin shops - while their money lasts sociated with socialism - an unbeatable combination.
The main political objection against socialist revolution will start to disappear if this combination can be consolidated. Capitalism is increasingly vulnerable and losing credibility as a haven of political and personal freedom - not only because so many despotic capitalist regimes have ridden roughshod over democratic rights in the Third World, but also because capitalism is increasingly restricting rights in the imperialist countries themselves. The deeper the economic crisis of the bourgeois states, the more the capitalists will have to attack social security and real wages, the more the unrest will grow, and the stronger will be the attacks on trade unions, the right to strike, freedom of the press; the more Big Brother will be looking over your shoulder not now in Eastem Europe but in Western Europe, the USA and Japan.
In East Germany over 11 million visas have now been issued for travel: but what is happening to the right to travel in the capitalist countries? We know that in one country after another - France, West Germany, Japan, Britain, Hong Kong and the USA - the bourgeoisie is restricting the right of entry, restricting immigration, expelling immigrants, in most cases in blatantly racist ways. The Berlin Wall has fallen and will not be re-crected, but the capitalists" racist immigration laws will be toughened.
So let's imagine an East Germany with a freedom of demonstration much greater than West Germany (not very difficult!); with a much more liberal electoral law (full proportional representation, while in West Germany you need five percent to get into parliament): with a press, radio and television system much more critical of the authorities and open to people such as striking workers than the West German media; with locally elected committees of citizens having the right to veto any project threatening the environment: with elected women's councils having the right to veto any management decision concerning women in factories, shops, and offices; which qualitatively reduced militarism - even disbanding the standing army to implement Lenin's definition of soviet power as having "no bureaucracy, no police and no standing army'. Imagine an East Germany in which there would be
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 21, February 1990 Page 25