Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

BELGRADE United stand against socialist revolution

Socialist Press no. 91, 15 March 1978 · scan pp. 3–4 · about 1,493 words

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and America, Eastern Europe and Western Europe have been engaged in prolonged manoeuvres in Belgrade at the follow-up conference to the Helsinki agreement on European Security and Cooperation.

The Conference whose opening was accompanied by i campaign led by President Carter against violations of 'human rights' in the USSR, seems set now to end in a con-controversial and unanimous joint resolution reaffirming the 'principles' of Heisinki.

Is yet it is difficult to neate in any detail what *as emerged from the smokeseen of diplomatic hot-air and double talk which has hrouded the whole proceesings.

But one thing is clear.

Representatives The Stalinist bureaucrats of Russia and Eastern Europe and the imperialists of Europe and America have brought together their diplomatic representatives in Belgrade, not out of any concern for 'human rights', but to discuss the threats which the deepening of the world Black Thursday' is the name Tunisians now give to the day of the general strike on January 26.

But the different classes ==: sections of society see :: blackness in different * i! i of course.

The bourgeoisie was ..=ronted by the massive ** clutionary potential of the ::catariat, while the workers ex-erienced the full brutality ::: bourgeois state.

L=ion leaders and -tants remain in prison, - * the police have now gen:: sis promised to release *asse who are not proved The Bonapartist government of President Bourguiba =-i Prime Minister Nouira -as now clearly recognised == he necessity and the aunty to press on with SilEng attack against the inderendence of presents both to the stability of capitalism in Western Europe and the future of the parasitic Stalinist caste in the degenerated workers states.

Mutual fear Though the social formations on which the Stalinist bureaucrats and the imperialists rest are entirely counterposed, yet both are drawn together by their mutual fear and hatred of the working class as a revolutionary force.

In Helsinki and Belgrade they have sought to reach agreement on a clear limitation and demarcation of the conflicts between them so as not to sharpen by precipitate action the contradictions which threaten to tear apart both the post-war balance of power in Europe and the stability of their own regimes.

At the 1975 Helsinki Conference the formal declaration ratified the national and political boundaries established in post-war Europe and endorsed the 'principle' of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states.

The content of this formal declaration was an agreement to preserve the political status quo within Europe.

Though nowhere mentionon the agenda, the prewho opposed the workers' strike have now eagerly volunteered as the ready lieutenants of the ruling class in its new offensive. With 11 of its 13 executive members still in prison, the UGTT has held an extraordinary congress to 'reconcile' the union with the ruling Destour Socialist Party that is imposing repression throughout the country.

Tijani Abid-a reliable henchman of the DSP-has been installed by&the state as secretary-general; a range of bureaucratic 'reforms' has been imposed on the constitution, and the UGTT has apologetically withdrawn from its earlier militant positions.

But even this large offering of humble pie will not be enough to satisfy the appetite oftha hanraan im.

Stalinist leaders -against revolution revolutionary crisis in Portugal was foremost in the minds of both sides. The Stalinist bureaucracy by its actions and the guidance it gave to the Portuguese Communist Party gave positive assurance to the imperialist powers that it stood firmly upposeu to any revolutionary nanaand ta 1.1: hostility might again find violent expression in the near future, the government has conceded a paltry increase in wages.

Achour has also extorted a considerable price for this in a renewal of the social pacta piece of thorough class-collaboration.

The government has also moved against the Tunisian youth, who formed the determined core of the strike movement and protest demonstrations. With unemployment an acute problem that the regime has done nothing to resolve, Bourguiba's son and special advisor now solemnly declares that these youth 'refuse' to work, because they suffer from the mandarin complex of long fingernails and hands which they prefer not to soil' This reactionary cant is movement in the European working class.

The spontaneous strikes against price rises which swept Poland that same year gave clear notice to the bureaucracy that the unleashing of the proletarian revolution would present a grave challenge to its own existence. 1L - -drafted on forced projects to disperse them from the cities.

At the same time others will quite simply be exiled to rural areas.

Repressive in themselves, these measures will be fully exploited to break up any groups which emerge in hostility to the government.

Students, who have continued academic strikes and attempted demonstrations in the last few weeks, will be an obvious and immediate target.

Calls for the restoration of democratic rights and for the independence of the UGTT from the state are dangerously inadequate to counter these far-reaching attacks.

Syndicalists can derive only the negative lessons of disillusionment and hactility ta nolitinal ..To from defeat för a altern: geois subtle But the limited agreement reached between the Stalinist Bureaucracy and imperialism could not in any fundamental way dissolve the class antagonism between the proletarian revolution on whose degenerated conquests the bureaucracy rests and world imperialism.

Neither the limited agreement reached between the Stalinist bureaucracy and imperialism could not in any fundamental way dissolve the class antagonism between the proletarian revolution on whose degenerated conquests the bureaucracy rests and world imperialism.

Neither did their agreements with imperialism serve in any way to defend the gains of the October revolution.

obstacle Indeed the events of the last few years have shown clearly that the Stalinist bureaucracy and its deals with imperialism stand as the most serious obstacle not only to the extension of the socialist revolution but as the gravest internal danger to the socialised property relations.

The contradiction between the nationalised property and the parasitic caste of bureauprevent that setback becoming a historic , it is necessary to fight revolutionary socialist tive to petty bournationalism of every hue.

Independence

Crucially, Tunisian workers must be led to understand the nature of the state as the instrument of bourgeois dictatorship. Such an understanding can be developed only through the struggles to assert the political independence of the working class.

For subjectively revolutionary elements in Tunisia today, the urgent task now posed is the building of a workers party, based on the struggles of workers, independent of bourgeois nolitical crats and state managers is obstacle to the development of conscious planning which requires the active participation of the organised working class.

Massive defeat

The last decade has seen a marked slowing down in the rate of economic growth in the USSR, now less than a third of what it was in 1951, while deficiencies in the plan are increasingly made good by a turning to the world market.

The Soviet grain purchases are the most outstanding example of this. Soviet trade with the advanced capitalist countries has increased from under 1% of GNP to around 5% in 1975 and the USSR now runs a massive trade deficit with the USA, a mounting to 12 times its exports in 1975.

The dependence of the Eastern European countries on Western agricultural and industrial imports is even more marked with many now dependent on massive loans from foreign banks.

Rumania is now a member of the IMF and Poland has applied for membership.

Penetration

All these developments threaten the monopoly of foreign trade, opening the way to penetration of the economy by imperialist companies and undermining the socialised relations of production.

At the same time from within parts of the ruling elite a growing number of rightwing dissidents have been spa spawned who look to the capitalist West both for an economic model and political philosophy.

The right wing exiles Solzhenitsyn and Bukovsky who admires the Chilean junta are only the more extreme examples of a definite trend.

'Human rights'

By calling for 'human rights' the 'democrat Carter who sends state troops to break the American miners' picket lines and gives aid to the most repressive anti-working class dictatorships from Chile to Iran, does not in any sense mean the granting of greater political freedoms to the working class in Russ and Eastman rigops.

that Carter is seeking, but the rights for right-wing dissidents to organise to fight for the restoration of capitalism and for bourgeois democracy.

That the Stalinist bureaucracy has, as far as can be seen, made no concessions to the West on these points indicates that they fear that the social consequences of such concessions to the right would undermine the entire stability of the ruling caste.

But the Stalinist bureaucracy is itself capable only of temporarily holding back the development of these contradictions.

The only way which the social gains of the October Revolution can be defended against imperialism and Its supporters within is by the working class ізгіпе

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← Contents of Socialist Press no. 91, 15 March 1978