The 'Pearly docker reflects on

TO SPEND 15 minutes talking about the founder of the modern revolutionary movement without once mentioning the problems and struggles of the working class today is some feat.

Jack 'Pearly docker' Dash managed it without any difficulty in London Weekend's Saturday night programme 'On Reflection', when the Communist Party veteran and former London docks' leader gave viewers his reflections on the life and work of Karl Marx.

Like all Dash's public performances, this one was Frank admission on Czech invasion THE FRANKEST admission yet on the Kremlin invasion Czechoslovakia was made on December 30 by Bratislava home service.

Of the mass movement against the old Stalinist leadership, it said:

"To oppose this unity in 1968 was almost to become an outcast of society' The broadcast then described in some detail how these 'outcasts' went about saving their bureaucratic skins:

'In the summer of 1968 ... an increasingly powerful stream of letters and demands to save socialism [Stalinism] in Czechoslovakia were sent in the direction in which the hopes were directed-to the fraternal socialist countries, mainly the Soviet Union.' The broadcast then went on:

'These were demands for help, written in a most difficult moment, a moment full of despondency, but also a moment of The authors of these letters, old supporters of the ultraStalinist Novotny group ousted by Dubcek's "liberals' in January 1968, were obviously utterly isolated from the working class in the summer of 1968.

Own demands

They were prepared to coexist with Dubcek's leadership, even with his dangerous policy of seeking extensive economic aid from the World Bank and other imperialist sources, so long as the working class remained But in the summer of 1968, the workers began to forward their own demands, through the trade unions and factory organizations, for workers' control of production and the right to political freedoms.

It was at this point that the old guard turned to their allies in the Kremlin, as the broadcast makes very clear:

•.. these were appeals and requests addressed to the Soviet people and their party asking them not to hesitate, but to help, with armed as there was no other way out.' (Emphasis added.)

The broadcast then lists the organizations whose members had sent such requests for armed intervention against the Czech working class.

There is not a single trade union body on this list.

their overwhelming majority, interventionists were drawn from bodies 'elected' under Novotny National Assembly, the Party Central specially tailored gently to turb the consciences of middle and ruling classes.

Dash presented Marx as a humane liberal, opposed • to capitalism on moral grounds.

Pastimes

Scraps of information about his drinking habits and other pastimes were tossed in to complete the picture. No honest bourgeois could possibly take exception to such a man.

Neither do they. Dash has laid on just this act at businessmen's luncheons, public school open days, village fêtes and numerous other social functions' of the British ruling class and its soft, petty-bourgeois underbelly.

A good natured 'ticking off" by a real live 'dockers' leader' a six course meal and a glass Committee, etc.).

They knew that unless the process of radicalization was haltéd, their political careers would be at an end.

This, and not any concern for the right-wing course of the Dubcek leadership, was the réason behind their appeal to the Kremlin.

For the new Stalinist leadership installed under the Soviet Productivity drive splitting Soviet bureaucracy BY A FOREIGN CO INEFFICIENT production methods were under attack in Monday's 'Pravda', official paper of the Soviet Communist Party.

The target of the criticisms were government ministries who ignored Party proposals on how to improve management methods.

The sharp tone of the article underlines the serious nature of the charges.

The issue involved is the adoption of a new productionboosting system pioneered at the Tula Shchokino chemical works is allocated between a fund reduced number of workers as productivity increased.

'Incentives'

This system, using the traditional Stalinist bait of 'material incentives' to break up workingof wine round off the whole thing in very good style.

After the feast comes lecture on morality and greed of the rich.

Far better than being sent to sleep by the inaudible meanderings of some platitudinous old vicar.

Dash's attempt to present Marx as the forerunner of present-day 'protest' movements met with about as much success as his brief summary of Marx's theory of capitalist crisis.

According to Dash, capitalism breaks down because the worker cannot buy back all that he produces.

In fact, this theory 1s demolished in the very book that Dash handled so lovingly at one point in his programme. occupation has recently begun to carry even further the Dubcek policy of restoring 'normal' relations with W German imperialism.

Recognition

It has also extended diplomatic recognition to the fascist Franco regime in Spain, and genrally proved itself a keen supclass solidarity, inevitably leads to small wage increases for a majority of the workers in a plant at the expense of those that are being sacked. Party Second One factory, Secretary Viktor writes Moscow Paputin, has boosted output by Il per cent, productivity by 23.3 per cent and reduced its work force by 244 employees.

The Moscow Party. was constantly drawing attention to the virtues of the new system, said Paputin:

'Surplus' 'Howevér our proposals sometimes fail to find active support on the part of ministries and lepartments.' Adoption of the new system involves giving plant managements powers to dismiss workers' 'surplus' to the plan requirements, and it is possibly this Marx's 'Capital' shows that capitalist crises are prepared, not by the poverty of the masses (this is a typical "moralistic' distortion of Marx), but by periods when the working class, by dint of strong trade union organization and favourable economic conditions, is able to deny the employers a considerable slice of what had previously been going to the ruling class in the form of profit (surplus value).

Outcome

A sharp fall in the employers' rate of profit is the inevitable outcome of a successful wages offensive by the working class.

Any attempt, such as we have seen over the last 25 years, to offset this process by the printing of paper 'money' unbacked by real value only porter of the Soviet bureaucracy's policy of convening an allEuropean conference to maintain 'collective security' throughout the continent.

British Stalinists have absolutely nothing to say against the continued occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Even their mealy-mouthed protest at the time of the invasion obviously went further than aspect of the problem that is creating divisions within the Soviet leadership.

The same article attacked the Ministry for the Chemical Industry and the State Committee or Labour and Wages for taking line months to consider a pro osal from a chemical fibri plant that it should boost productivity and sack a part of its work force.

Coming as it does so soon after the Polish strikes, this attack on high-level leadership in the Kremlin suggests that elements of the bureaucracy are very wary of provoking the working class at this particular time.

Speed-up

The widespread adoption of the 'Shchokino would lead to mass sackings and speedup for those still at work.

would give even more postpones the crisis and renders it even more devastating.

All the processes Marx analysed in his immortal works are now coming to fruition in the crisis of the British capitalist system.

Yet this truly historic 'turn finds Dash distorting, misrepresenting and discrediting the theoretical foundations of Marxism. No surprise And that should be no surprise. For despite his contrived proletarian' style-which has an old 'Music Hall' ring about it — Dash epitomizes middle-class 'protest' politics at their most bankrupt.

Stalinism has trained him to protest at the inhumanity of capitalism-and wine and dine with his declared class enemies while he is doing it.

Gollan and company would have liked.

In view of the Polish crisis, it is all the more necessary to raise this question once again inside the British labour movement, and insist that all violation working-class rights Czéchoslovakia be the subject of a trade union inquiry.

The fight for workers' rights does not stop at the English channel or the frontiers of B Europe.

Draconic powers to plant managements than they already possess, and so heighten tenSIons between the mass of the working class and the bureaucracy.

The Kremlin also has the growing problem of the intellectual opposition, which is reaching out to embrace layers, such as musicians, previously regarded as non-political.

The anti-Jewish campaign must also been seen in this context.

What predominates in the Soviet _ Union, as throughout both the imperialist world and the rest of the Stalinist states, is a mortal and growing fear of the power of the working class.

The bureaucracy desperately wants to boost lagging production, not just to satisty its own indulgent tastes, but to buy off rising discontent in the working class against inadequate housing and living standards.

Poland was a warning the bureaucracy simply cannot afford to ignore. But the very methods it adopts to solve the crisis create even deeper problems!

This is the reality of 'socialism in one country.