Outlook East German protests initially reflected strong socialist content FOR THE bourgeois, history, we are variously told, is a backward-looking science, whether as "a way of accurately predicting the past" or in the words of Henry Ford, simply listing "one damned thing after another" But as a marxist journal, Socialist Outlook sees the analysis of the past as a means better to understand the motor forces of history, and grasp the new situation and the potential for change today. And we also have to attempt to forecast how events will develop: it can be useful to look back and see if we were right. Ten years ago the fall of the Berlin Wall represented a watershed in the collapse of the power of the Soviet Union - and with it the ability of other Stalinist bureaucracies with Soviet military and economic backing to control the working class in the grotesquely deformed "workers' states" across Eastern Europe. Everyone now knows that the pro-market, restorationist forces won the day. Even now the brutal impact of this is being felt by the working class in Eastern Europe. In Russia, average life expectancy has fallen by over 10 years; in many East European countries living standards have fallen. Global capitalism has in general been reluctant to invest the capital required to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure left by four decades of stalinist rule. It is comparatively easy to look back now at the changes which have occurred in Eastern Europe since 1989 - not least the reunification of Germany - and to see them as somehow inevitable. It is easy with hindsight to identify the stronger forces at play in what may at the time have been a less obvious situation: according to this reading of events, the ossified bureaucracies were toppled by a movement demanding market freedoms - summed up at the time as "shoppers' rights" -and capitalist restoration.
But this reading of events loses sight of the apparent strength, especially in East Germany, of socialist currents among the opposition forces which mobilised to challenge - and defeat Eric Honecker's Stalinist regime. Had these currents persisted they would potentially have opened up a very different way ahead for the struggles throughout Eastern Europe.
It is this possibility of things being otherwise, the possibility of a coherent, anti-capitalist, working class, internationalist response - and the need to build an organisation and a leadership to take it forward - which must be the starting point for This is why we are reprinting here our original analysis of the events drafted as they were unfolding, and seeking to address the issues for socialists on the ground. The document was drafted in the autumn of 1989, before the fall of the Romanian Causescu regime, and published early in 1990 in Socialist Outlook magazine. Extracts from a resolution unanimously adopted by Outlook supporters in January 1990. 1990 will be the year of elections in at least, Hungary, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and probably Bulgaria as well. In each once count c tions will in effect be a picoiscile on the continued rule of the Stalinist parties. In cach or taem, toe staists will certainly suffer crusning acicals. It 1s tac end of an era.
The cruption of the East European masses 1n attempt to overthrow together with the events in the Soviet represent the most world politics since the vicChinese revolutory of the continued existence of Stalinism as a significant force in world politics.
The world order Nazi finalised at Yalta and Potsdam, is now in question. Inc European Living History working class imposed by the 'great powers' is rapidly being swept away. The *bipolar character of world politics, dominated by two armed camps. has been shaken to its foundations.
As we approach the 21st century a fundamental turning point has been reached: there Is historic opportunity for the victory of the political revolution, but also sical dangers that the work ing class could be robbed of the social gains inherent in states.
The revolution underway the Trotskyist critique of Stalinists called actually existing socialism. Trotsky's watchword of defiand victorious Stalinism -that the laws history are stronger than the turned from a siozan to dramatic reality. turn crisis into working class vic. cern - the "crisis of working class leadership' must be The roots of the crisis The mass upsurge against every cast European country.
has clearly sparked this crisis is tac growing Polish leader Lech Walesa with the friends who helged steer Solidarnosc comands market reforms realisation that the Gorbachev regime in the USSR lacks either the will or the canacity to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe to save Stalinist rule as happened in Germany in 1953. Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
December's meeting of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow was SHES Gorbachev in effect told the Past suropcans to co their own way: the Soviet Union can no longer afford its huge subsidies to the other Comecon countries.
The removal of the protective cover of the Red Army rapidly revealed the fundamental weakness and instability or burcaucratic rule As a parasitic layer, and not class the bureaucracy lacks the deep social roots and not enove ovoc rialist bourgeoisies. Its rule has relied entirely its TODODON imposed by force.
Compelled face their own working masses onc party apparatuses and police forces have SCLECE crumbled.
While the last military revolt - the December 1981 coup by General Jaruzelski in Poland - was carried out by domestic forces, it the perceived threat of - direct intervention under the Now that doctrine is at an end.
Underlying the revolt is the dreds of millions of East European citizens at the failure of the bureaucratic system to deliver either material For political and cultural freedom.
Despite repeated subventions from the Soviet Union, and vast borrowing from in the 19701 Western banks (especially by Hungary and Poland), the East European beyond basic industrialisation and the provision of a With the exception of Bast Germany and Czechoslovakia, even these gains have been put in question. Every understands thoroughly the waste, inefficiency and sclerosis Cone SCH bureaucratic command coonThese failings have been especially highlighted in the 5 years. as the between these countries and the advanced capitalist coun terms of productive techthe standard of nique and living of the employed sections of the working class.
unlike capitalism in boom periods, fundamental