Eurocommunist Cps Shun Bahro Case

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On June 30 Rudolph Bahro, the East German dissident economist under house arrest since last August, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. His crime? Treason' and 'espionage' The trial was conducted in secret, as it nó doubt needed to be. Bahro was a member of the SED (East German Communist Party) from when he was 18 in 1952 until his resignation in August 1977.

A graduate in philosophy, he worked on the collectivisation of agriculture and then in journalism.

From 1967 onwards he held responsible positions concerned with industrial rationalisation and the scientific organisation of His 'crime' is in fact to have written and published a book entitled 'The Alternative-A Critique of Real, Existing Socialism' This 'socialism' Bahro considers to be "right now so far from communism that a real' revolution is necessary to set it on the road again"

The book is an attempt to gain an understanding of what the real, existing socialism' really is and also "what we could hope for from the entirely different premises of true socialism"

It lays bare the whole rotten system of privilege surrounding the bureaucracy.

It ¿calls for a political revolution to be built through the fight for a legal opposition, because '"today's party is the gravedigger of the party idea and of the individual party consciousness" • It calls for fundamental reorganisation of production, without the subordination which results from super-organisation.

He returns to , Marx's notion of the 'free association of producers' whereby unified social organisation can be maintained through co-ordination and juxtaposition.

An essential element in this would be university education' for all-though not in the elitist, academic sense.

Having tried for years to work for change through internal criticism in the need to be daring ded the to spread our ideas through every means possible"

He therefore published the book in West Germany, and, on August 23 1977, was interviewed on West German television. The following day he was arrested by East German security police.

His eight year sentence coincides with the resurrection of the ghost of Ulbricht, leader of the SED from 1950-71, at a graveside commemoration attended by a full turnout of the SED political bureau.

Butcher

Ulbricht, one of the worst butchers in Eastern Europe, most slavish follower of the Moscow line and responsible for the ruthless suppression of the Berlin uprising in 1953 has been a forgotten name since his death in 1973.

It is now ten months since Bahro's arrest. Sò far none of the main Eurocommunist parties has come out in support of him or taken up the political issues raised by his book.

After Stalinist individuals have sponsored the Rudolph Bahro Defence Committee, the silence of their parties shows the. hollowness of Eurocommunist liberalisation'.

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iberation fight David Whitfield traces the history of the struggle of the Eritrean people fe determination against both imperialist powers and a succession of repressive r CHAD / Eritrea_ holds a strategic location in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

Disease-the legacy of imperialist exploitation The British Labour government's policy of sabotaging and plundering the economy of Eritrea produced immediate and predictable results.

Already by 1944 the cost of living had increased to six times the level of 1940, while wages had risen by only 60%.

To add to this uncontrollable inflation, massive unemployment and wide-scale starvation developed in the towns during the post-war years.

This was intensified by the arrival of thousands of impoverished peasants and landless labourers from \ the rural areas, where the proceșs of change had been no less dramatic.

During, the period of industrial growth, the flight of villagers from rural poverty to the relative benefits of wage-labour had been more than offset by the internal growth in population and the arrival of nomads to settle.

Intense strain

The land originally seized by the Italian settlers had been greatly added to by the concessions of the British.

Not only were more Eritreans concentrated on less land, but that land was the poorest for cultivation.

The strain on the weak rural economy was intense, and a great mass of peasants became heavily indebted to landlords and money-lendBy 1944, whole villages had mortgaged their crops before they were even sown.

As unemployment came to the towns, remittances no longer came back to the families in the villages. Poverty, debt and starvation held sway.

With the colonial society ravaged by such crisis, a great upsurge of political development was inevitable.

But the speed at which jmperialism had transformed the old, divided feudal society, and the efficient repression of Italian rule, made it equally inevitable that the Eritrean population had almost no experience of organised political activity.

Trade unions and all labour organisations had been banned by the Italian administration.

The young proletariat was only now beginning to emerge into self-consciousness and to grasp for its political identity.

Workers looked to the intellectuals of the urban petty bourgeoisie for leadership.

Despite their massive grievances, the peasants were still politically dominated by the feudal chiefs and landlords.

Neither peasants nor proletarians were to dictate the political development of the national movement at this stage.

In 1940 the Mahber Fekri Hager had been in Ethiopia. Part Three LYBIA CON GO (ZAIRE)

formed. This Patriotic Organisation' was originally created in opposition to italian rule, but atter 1941 the party held to no clear political direction.

Radical splits developed under the pressure of rival imperialist designs on Eritrea, the incompatible interests of different sections of the bourgeoisie in its leadership, and the increasing demands of the Eritrean masses.

The artificial unity of the Mahber Fekri Hager was exposed by the gathering tension of class forces within Eritrea.

Along with a number of smaller parties and factions, three major political tendencies emerged: the Unionist Party, the Moslem League and the Liberal Progressive Party.

The Unionist Party was shaped and financed by the Ethiopian monarchy; its aim, of course, was the union of the two countries.

The British government had promised Haile Selassie a free hand in Eritrea, but the emperor had strong grounds for suspecting that honour would not be observed between these imperialist thieves.

Haile Selassie first moved to win the Coptic Church to his support. The Italians had dispossessed the church of its rich lands, and the British refused • to return them.

By 1942, every bishop and priest had become an energetic agent of Ethiopian imperialism.

The Unionists had two other main bases of support. Firstly, those sections of the urban petty bourgeoisie who had gained privileges by services to the Italian LEBANON SYRIA ARTO ESTINE JORDON ASMARA• SUDAN ETHIOPIA JUGANDA KENYA administration were attracted by the promise of a comfortable niche in the state bureaucracy of an expanded Ethiopia.

Secondly, large numbers of the feudal aristocracy assisted Haile Selassie's plans, particularly in the western lowlands.

Rebellion

Here the total power of the landlords was broken during the 1940s by the extended rebellion of the serfs.

The considerable gains made by the serfs, and the British colonialists' policy of appeasement, drove the feudal landlords to the Ethiopian autocracy as the only force that could restore their former might.

It was this powerful antifeudal movement that gave base to the Moslem League, founded in 1946 SAUDI ARABIA ERITREA N. YEMEN ASSAB Ibra bou the pror Chri brot nati In Libe was 'Eril men coul supI letai lay bour the lecti cam dem for with oftl

IRAN

DIJIBUTI SOMALIA INDIAN ÖCEAN er the leadership of thim Sultan, a petty rgeois intellectual. The League supported serfs' demands for land, claimed that Moslem and istian Eritreans were iners, and demanded onal independence. n the next' year, the eral Progressive Party formed out of the trea for 'Eritreans' moveIt.

Ilthough this group ld count on some port from the urban proriat, its main strength amongst the rural petty rgeoisie.

Ifter some wavering in earlier period, the inteluals in the leadership e out in 1947 with the and of independence Eritrea, to be united 1 the 'neighbouring lands he Tigrai in Ethiopia. 'hese developments were najor setback to the Unionists. Previously they had been able to present unity with the 'free', noncolonised state of Ethiopia in opposition to the continuation of European colonial rule. • In fact Haile Selassie had been installed entirely. by the power of British and American imperialism, and could not have survived for a month as Emperor without it.

As American finance poured into Ethiopia, the BBC Two faces of repressio British troops garrisoned there brutally crushed the opposition of rival autocrats, dissatisfied liberals, and above all the risings of the masses who had no desire to see their struggles against Italian colonialism end in neo-colonialism and a despotic dictatorship.

The Unionists' propaganda tasks became more difficult after 1943, when the national liberation struggle of the Somalis in the Ogaden was suppressed, and the revolt of the Tigrai smashed by British fighterbombers from Aden.

Even in their own wildest flights of exaggeration, the Unionists never claimed the support of more than 40% of the population.

With the rapid spread of the independence movement, their mood became desperate.

In Asmara Unionists launched terrorist attacks against leading figures of the Moslem League and the Liberal Progressive Party.

Escalated

Over the next few years this violence escalated in the rural areas, with savage attacks on the lives and property of those supporting independence.

Amongst other murders, five Eritrean men had their heads cut off with swords in front of their families. in: Attlee (top) and Mussolini It was the Ethiopian government which financed the barbarous atrocities of the Shifta, as they were known. Only false charity could describe these gangs of hired thugs as guerillas.

But they found a bizarre ally in Sylvia Pankhurst. Her chequered career had by now led Pankhurst into dedication to Haile Selassie. In the pages of the New Times and Ethiopian News, which she edited, the Shifta MArA decAmhad ao 'notrinta? "patriots.

For most of this period, the victorious imperialist powers and the Soviet Union were engaged in arguments over the re-division of the post-war world and the establishment of a new balance of forces.

Divided

• The disposal of the former Italian colonies was one aspect of this bargaining on which the Allies could not agree-their fate was later to be imposed by the United Nations.

The imperialist powers were divided by their own interests, variously proposing at different times a vast range of 'solutions' But whether they proposed the partition of Eritrea, its federation with Ethiopia, a return to Italian rule or whatever, the last people, ever to be consulted were the Eritreans themselves.

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sday I= July 1978