Slaughter

THE argument betwee serious Communists is over!' This was the verdict, after the recent British Communist Party's Congress, of a worker who had . spent some 30 years in the Party, and has now decided for Trotskyism.

He was not referring to the discussion at the Party Congress, but to the role of the preparing for the Congress, bringing out the historical issues behind it, and fighting for the right to send reporters into it.

For many workers, including Communist Party members, the great attention paid by 'The Newsletter' and then the Workers Press to exposing Stalinism had previously seemed out of proportion. The main argument used by the Communist Party against Trotskyism has been 'you're always concentrating your attack on the Communist Yet now it becomes crystalclear Stalinism is the most necessar political preparation for tory over the enemy class.

Advanced workers all over Britain and throughout Europe 'suddenly' discover that must break out of the Stalinist ideology if the working class is to answer the problems posed by the capitalist crisis.

In this situation the Workers Press plays a unique role. Only Trotskyist part based or the whole historical struggl for Marxism can answer the questions which now come up follothed the Stalinist parties those workers who have If we look at the proceed ings of the Communist Party Congress it becomes clear that itself. a crisis as imperialism Stalinism has entered just This is of course because Stalinism represents the politics of a bureaucracy in the JSSR which leans on imperial sm to deal with the workins class.

In order to be able to do that, Stalinism had to physi cally wipe out the Bolshevik leadership, Including Trotsky and also to wipe out the rea history of Bolshevism.

Crisis point

Those Communist Party workers who now find themselves at a crisis point will find the road forward only restoring the connection with that past, with those forces which Stalin tried to destroy. That why Workers Press, organ of the Central Committee of the Trotskyis Socialist Labour League, had such an impact on the Com munist Party Congress licized division at the Con Past The biggest and most pub. was over Warsaw intervention in Czechoslovakia. Over one quarter of the dele ates voted against the Execu tive Committee's The Executive ha resolution. the intervention As the Workers Press has pointed out, much of the support for the Soviet intervention arises from opposition to the ultra-reformist line of Gollan and Ramelson and the EC majority Party militants, this leadership, and a statinot right-wing policies understanding source of these policies, to what they see as the 'hard line' of stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These workers cannot long in such a position. the first place, Palme Dutt, Party chairman, who came out Czechoslovakia, went vent out of favour of the his way to make clear that he supported Gollan leadership on their reformist policies in Britain.

He is in favour of their 'Parliamentary Road to Socialism' • VI their crawling subservience to the 'left' trade union leaders like Daly, Scanlon and Jones, he says :

'... I believe that our EC and the Editorial Board of the "Morning Star" are doing an outstanding job over so many left unity'. (Comment', Oct- issues, especially in promoting ober 11, 1969.)

This is certainly not the opinion of many of the Party members who voted with Dutt as a way of opposing Gollan.

More important is that Dutt is even more adamant than Gollan and Ramelson in opposing any historical settling of accounts.

In effect he has always considered. that Khrushchev showed unpardonable weakness in making his "revelations' about Stalin, and that it would have been better to leave everything as it was.

It is precisely this history, the history of Stalinism, which Communists need to understand before they can grasp the reason for the reformist degeneration of the British Communist Party and every other Stalinist Party.

It is because Dutt cannot provide this analysis that he will not retain the allegiance of the left elements among CP workers who voted for him at the Congress.

It is for this reason that the Workers Press articles on Stalinism before and during the Congress made such an impact.

But if we look at it from the other side, the historical aspect comes out in even sharper outline. Let us take the speech of Jack Woddis, who represented the views of Gollan and the EC on Czechoslovakia.

He says :

'What is the essence of the question which Congress is called on to debate and vote on? It is whether five Warsaw Pact countries were justified in intervening in Czechoslovakia.' He then devotes his speech to arguing that there was no justification for the invasion. But surely in that case 'the essence of the question' iswhy did the invasion take place?!

Woddis says, quite rightly, that the changes coming up in Czechoslovakia in 1968, before the intervention, arose out of a situation where previously, under Novotny, There had been gross violations of socialist legality, and false accusations and repressions against Communist Party members and others, involving thousands of victims, some of whom had been wrongfully executed' Now, Messrs Gollan, Ramelson and Woddis !

If 600,000 troops were sent in to prevent the Czech working class from making changes they wanted, and you consider the intervention 'unjustified', how can you avoid the conclusion that the Soviet leadership rejected any change from the Novotny regime of repression' and 'wrongful' executions' ?

How else do you explain the intervention? That 1S more important than denouncing it.

It is only a sign of bankruptcy to say, as Woddis does, "That is why interference from outside, even if dictated by the best of intentions, is harmful to the building of socialism. • (Emphasis in orginal.)

Where do 'good intentions' come into it?

The Stalinist bureaucracy repeated in Czechoslovakia in 1968 its line against the Polish and Hungarian workers in 1956. The task of Marxists is to analyse this line and its social and political basis, not to pass moral judgement on the 'justification' of actions and the 'intentions' behind them.

This theoretical bankruptcy is, in fact, identical with that of Dutt.

It is the history and analysis of Stalinism which is necessary in order to explain the behaviour of the Kremlin bureaucracy and to point the way forward for the working class: political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and social revolution against imperialism.

The supporters of Dutt found themselves meeting together in the intervals and sitting together during sessions, to such an extent that the Congress chairman had to remind them that such behaviour constituted a breach of the Party rules against 'factions' There was a bitter and significant irony here.

Trotsky and the Left Opposition, and later the Fourth International, have always fought for the right of organized political opposition on principled platforms within a Communist Party.

Until the emergency ban on factions of 1921, this right was operative inside the Bolshevik Party. The ban was retained as weapon of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Faction rights When the Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, one of their purposes was to prevent the Czech Communist Party Congress due one month later.

Most of all, as the official Soviet Communist Party statement made clear, the Congress had to be stopped because it was intended that it would give freedom to factions and opposition platforms.

In other words, within the Communist Party there would appear a political reflection of the changes going on in the Czech working class and intelligentsia; the possibility was imminent of an organized and public expression of the movement towards political revolution against the bureaucracy.

This would have been a terrific blow to the Stalinist bureaucracy internationally.

Hence the irony: at the 31st Congress of the British Communist Party, a minority were warned that their activity was 'factional', and yet they were 'factionalizing' in support of a military action . .. to stop the right of factions in the The contradiction is not just a logical trick or something that can be ironed out, but a real and insoluble contradiction exemplifying the crisis of Stalinism.

In Woddis's speech no conclusions were drawn about the political and historical meaning of the intervention, and in so far as Woddis attempts any, they blow up in his face.

For example, he points out the absurdity of the Soviet claim that the intervention was to put down 'counter-revolu"They [the troops] did not occupy the premises of the K231 Club and KAN organization [said to be the seats of a counter - revolutionary plot] but they occupied premises of Commirer, and Rude Pratoal They did not produce or arrest a single counter-revolutionary or CIA agent-but they arrested the leaders of the Communist Party and the Socialist State, including the First Secretary of the Communist Party, the Prime Minister, the Chairman of the National Assembly, the Chairman of the National Front, and the Secretary of the Prague City Committee.' Why cannot Woddis conclude, therefore, that the Soviet bureaucracy intervened in its own interests, which are opposed to those being demanded by the working class in Czechoslovakia? Instead he returns to his generalizations:

'We can never accept the right of any Party or Socialist State to intervene in the affairs of another in this way.' To be sure. But does Woddis mean 'never'? What about Hungary, 1956?

Brutal repression Armed intervention and brutal repression smashed the revolution of workers' councils, murdered Imre Nagy, Pal Maletar and many others. The British Communist Party supported this counter-revolutionary intervention.

Stalinism is not just the record of Stalin's crimes.

At this Congress there could be no easy talk about the 'cult of the individual' as the 'explanation' of Stalinist This time the historical questions are decisive for any move forward from the crisis reached by Communist Party members.

Ignored by the Party leaders, because politically those questions mean their political death, nonetheless these questions dominated the Congress.

They did not dominate it only symbolically, as could be said at previous Congresses, but they were brought before the eyes of every delegate in the pages of the Workers Press, with a devastating exposure of the Stalinist record of the leadership.

What did the Workers Press represent at that Congress?

It represented not simply the fact that the past history exists and must be reckoned with; but it brought right into the Congress the force been movement, that has built on this history, built on the struggle against Stalinism, and that now poses the question of alternative revolutionary leadership for every communist.

Part two will appear in Tuesday's Workers Press.

Executive Committee. Roid: "Sibyl of anti-Trotskylers. comrades who so selflessly produce and sell your newspaper to have seen how each copy bought inside the Congress hall was passed along the rows to be read by the many delegates who themselves felt embarrassment at being seen buying it.

This interest was greatly helped by the way your application for admission was handled.

I did not speak to a single delegate who did not feel that the whole thing was dealt with in an absolutely hamhanded and incompetent manner.

What has however still to be grasped by most is that this 'boob' was not politically fortuitous. It showed that you do not have to scratch very deep below the surface of even such a King Street New-Look Technological-Age White-Hope as Dr Tony Chater to find an Old-Style Unreformed Stalinist consumed with hatred of Trotskyism and instinctively resorting to any lie, however laughable, to prevent firsthand Trotskyist coverage of the Congress.

What is however new and extremely significant is that with the growth of Trotskyist influence reflected in your production of the daily Workers Press the CP leaders were Wainwright assured the Congress that delegates wishing to go farther than the EC should be able to do so in the debates, a useful safety valve which could commit them to nothing.

When it became clear from the applause of delegates at attacks on the Husak regime and Soviet policies in the speech of Essex secretary Peter Sampson, followed by Johnstone's kite-flying demagogic speech, that many delegates wanted a stand on these lines, Matthews made his clever reply pretending to repudiate the Party's past kowtowing to Stalinist repressions.

This led the unwary to think that the leadership was accepting their points. The extent of Matthew's sincerity can be judged, however, by the fact that he prevented those passages from his speech appearing the next day in the 'Morning Star', which he edits.

Another example of King Street's double game, and the collusion of the 'liberals, is shown by the decision that Monty Johnstone should not go on the new EC. in their journals, and his "Tribune' and Labour 'left' friends like Michael Foot.

He is clearly of far more use to John Gollan concentrating on 'research', writing and speaking around the country against Trotskyism and for New-Look Stalinism than he would be working in his branch, which he can always get to support him and elect him to Congresses.

Nonetheless, Johnstone asked his supporters accept the 'validity' of Falber's points and dissuaded them from raising the matter from the floor at the closed session before the vote. Despite this, and the fact that he was not on the recommended list, his vote topped the 100 mark.

Although there is friendly co-operation between Gollan and extremely dangerous fake anti-Stalinists like Johnstone, King Street's relations with Sid French and his supporters are extremely strained.

When the 'affable' Monty walks into No. 16 there are smiles all round, but on the rare occasions that the 'disloyal' Sid is there for district secretaries' meetings, faces are grim and tense.

Obliquely and through a distorted Stalinist prism French and company reflect a deep-