Text of leaflet distributed to delegates to 31st Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain by the International Marxist Group.
The 1969 pre-conference discussion of the Communist Party of Great Britain has been the most bitter in its history. All over the country the party is divided on the question of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The columns of Comment and the Morning Star have been filled with letters for and against the leadership's position on the invasion. It is an open secret that the work of the party, especially in the industrial field, has suffered from this conflict.
Those who have opposed the leadership's line have sought to blame the party's "lack of internationalism" (their quaint phrase for opposition to the invasion) for the decline in membership and the difficulties of the Morning Star. Those supporting the leadership have pointed to the damage done by the invasion to the party and say that even more would be done if it came out in support of the Russian-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The International Marxist Group believe that neither the supporters nor the opponents of the leadership have the answer to this problem.
First it must be said that we, together with virtually every other section of the left, completely condemn the invasion. We support the right of the Czechoslovak people to self-determination and to choose their own leaders. Saying this in no way implies uncritical support for Dubcek & co.; there is no doubt that the policies of Otto Sik would have led to greater differentials in wages and unemployment. The latter, of course, is very different from the restoration of capitalism. On the other hand, we feel that the condemnation of the invasion by the leadership of the CPGB fails because it is not linked to analysing the reasons for that invasion. This is why opponents of the condemnation have been able to gain ground. The Palme Dutts, Sid Frenchs & co. have also been able to link that condemnation to an increasing drift to the right by the leadership. For these reasons many industrial militants in the party support the opposition to the leadership.
Furthermore, your leadership is extremely vulnerable because of the whole-hearted support it gave to the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, to say nothing of its support of the Russian leaders' campaign against Yugoslavia (to the extent of publishing a book by James Klugmann which condemned Tito as a police agent and fascist!) The invasion of Hungary was indeed, in some ways, a worse crime against socialism. Dubcek, so far, has at least not suffered the fate of Nagy and Maleter.
Just to oppose the Russian-led invasion of Czechoslovakia without making a fundamental examination of how this could happen plays into the hands of anti-communists.
Socialists and Marxists have always accepted that wars, aggression, etc, are the products of capitalism. To say that one "socialist" country can commit the crime of invading another "socialist" country without saying that something is basically wrong is to place a question-mark over our whole conception of the socialist future of mankind. Did Lenin and the Bolshevik party make their revolution to create a state which would, 51 years after its inception, commit such a crime? Are you, today, working for a socialist Britain which, decades after its establishment would, for example, invade socialist Belgium? To pose these questions demonstrates [the] gravity [of the] problems facing socialists when [we] consider [this].
An analysis has to be made of this event in Marxist terms; if we cannot do this we implicitly reject the Marxist method. We cannot take refuge in "of their" explanations (the fears and misconceptions of the Russian leadership). This explanation rejects the Marxist method for the bourgeois theory of an individualistic [and] gloomy theory: [illegible] Britain [would] not be led by leaderships with paranoid fears? We ask all members of the Communist Party to [consider] the Trotskyist explanation of this phenomenon; one which does not reject Marxism nor take refuge in the psychology of Russian leaders.
This theory states that the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, together with all the other crimes of the Soviet leadership, can be explained in terms of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The essence of this view is that because of the isolation of the Russian revolution and the economic backwardness of the country conditions were favourable for the rise of a bureaucratic caste. This caste, by getting control of the party and the state apparatus in the fight against the left opposition, usurped political power in the Soviet Union. Since its victory, the Soviet leadership, whilst resting on nationalised property relations, has defended its own privileges at the expense of the interests of the Russian working class and world revolution. We do not accept, as some do, that the rise of this bureaucracy was "inevitable" or even progressive. Had the left opposition won its fight, policies would have been pursued which would have rapidly ended the isolation of the revolution.
This theory has nothing to do with the anti-communist idea of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. We believe that just as socialists must always defend trade unions, even if trade union bureaucrats control them, so long as they remain workers' organisations, so socialists must always defend the workers' states against the attacks of capitalism. However the task of communists is not to blindly follow these bureaucratic leaders: on the contrary they should be criticised constantly and the workers of these countries should be assisted to overthrow the bureaucrats.
Looked at from this point of view, we can see that the Russian leaders invaded Czechoslovakia because they were frightened of the Czech example inspiring the workers and intellectuals of the Soviet Union. Just as the Czech students and workers managed to get rid of Novotny and the worst aspects of the repression, the Russian people would be encouraged to struggle against their bureaucratic leaders. Hence the invasion.
Once this theory of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union, best explained in Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed, is grasped, such monstrous crimes as the Moscow trials, the forced collectivisation of Russian agriculture, the treatment of Yugoslavia, the purges in Eastern Europe, the invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Sino/Soviet dispute, etc., are explicable. In each case what is involved is not the aberration of a particular Soviet, Chinese or East European leader, but a case of these leaders, representing social forces, putting their own privileged bureaucratic interests before those of socialism and world revolution.
But more is involved for British communists:
Members of the British Communist Party must often ask themselves why it is that their party despite the obvious devotion and militancy of its members—has been so unsuccessful after nearly fifty years of struggle. [Despite] the great advances of world revolution in this period [and] the resources of the party (having a daily paper for nearly 40 years, for instance) the CPGB remains a relatively small group. In the past half-century there have been four Labour Governments which have attacked the working class, British Toryism was utterly exposed by the second world war, and [yet] the [membership] remains certainly no greater than when it was formed; its influence among including young workers and students is less. To blame all this on to capitalist propaganda is to say the fight is unwinnable.
Again we believe that this state of affairs can be explained by the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union.
When Stalin conducted his struggle against the left opposition he also gained control of the third international for the bureaucracy. Systematically the leaderships of the world's communist parties were changed or bludgeoned until they carried out the wishes of the Soviet leadership. It is worth noting that Palme Dutt played a leading role in replacing the original leadership of the CPGB with Russian nominees in the 1929-31 period. This is the basic explanation of all the shifts, zigzags and 180-degree turns of the communist parties. This is why your party could change its policies so drastically on such questions as the attitude towards the Labour Party, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the second world-war, etc. It is the explanation of why your party's leaders could throw Marxism-Leninism out of the window by adopting the "peaceful road to socialism" when this suited the "peaceful co-existence" policies of the Soviet leadership.
Because of this behaviour big sections of the working class do not trust the CPGB—they regard it as a party which does not decide its [own policies] [illegible] this [party] because of [illegible] policies [illegible] instance are still adhered to. Members of the CPGB should demand a return to the teachings of Lenin on revolution, as outlined in his State and Revolution. These ideas have been absolutely vindicated; nowhere in the fifty-odd years since this book was written [has] the working class won state power by peaceful means; on the contrary where capitalism has been destroyed it has been through revolutionary action.
Today there are big forces on the left, especially among the revolutionary-minded youth, which reject reformist illusions. The future of members of the CPGB lies in unity with these forces rather than "dialogues with Christians" and holding the hands of Tribunite MPs. We appeal to you to work in your party for a united front of revolutionary forces:
for [an end] [illegible] [workers'] control;
against all anti-working class policies of the employers and [illegible];
for solidarity with all national liberation and [illegible] socialist movements — especially the Vietnamese and Palestine revolutions;
for a Britain with a socialist foreign policy—against imperialism [illegible] and in alliance with all anti-imperialist forces.
Such a front could be built which would be smaller but more effective than more amorphous formations. Such a front does not mean full programmatic agreement: the success of the VSC proves this. [If the] present discussion in the CPGB assists in clarity on such questions, it will have been positive.