The pressure which the Kremlin and its agents have been escalating against the leading bodies of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic has rarely been surpassed in brutality. The insults and open threats carried by the press and radio; the ceaseless intimidation leveled by the leading spokesmen of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Poland and the German Democratic Republic; blackmail through the threat of an economic blockade; the ban on tourism from Poland and the German Democratic Republic; the continuation of military maneuvers in Czechoslovakia itself and along its borders -- all this is aimed at compelling the present leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist party to capitulate.
The excuses advanced by the Kremlin to justify this pressure are obviously as baseless as they are cynical. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is faced with no imminent threat of "imperialist infiltration" or "aggression." There are fewer West German tourists in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic than in such workers states as Rumania and Bulgaria. There are fewer American visitors than in the Soviet Union itself.
Imperialism, caught in the wasp nest of the Vietnam war, has no intention of creating a second front in Central Europe. On the contrary, the leading spokesmen of world capitalism voice anxiety lest the "international balance of power" be upset as a result of the Czech events, an anxiety which, ironically, matches that of the Kremlin.
Trade relations with the imperialist countries and bids at collaborating with the monopolies of the West are being extended by the present regime of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, but on a more modest scale than that practiced by the regimes in Yugoslavia or Rumania. In fact the new Czech leadership has as yet proposed nothing like the agreement between the Soviet government and the FIAT monopoly in Italy.
Undoubtedly reactionary former bourgeois political forces still exist in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, although their social basis is extremely limited. If these forces meet with any response in the working population of the country, the overwhelming majority of -710which consists of wage workers and salaried employees, this can be ascribed only to the tremendous discredit which Stalinism and the Novotny regime brought to socialism.
Any move in the direction of socialist democracy weakens this response. Any move reverting back to the bureaucratic dictatorship, so hated and despised by the masses, strengthens the influence of reaction among the more backward sectors of the populace. It is therefore necessary to stress that the sudden anxiety which the bureaucrats in Moscow, East Berlin, Warsaw, Sofia and Budapest display over the "counterrevolutionary danger" in Czechoslovakia has no basis whatsoever in reality. It is hypocritical through and through.
Far from favoring "imperialism," the upsurge of the Czechoslovak masses and the steps taken towards socialist democracy constitute powerful blows against the anti-Communist hysteria which the leading imperialist circles try to maintain in the West, and constitute revolutionary assistance to the anticapitalist developments there. Nothing would provide greater inspiration to the development of the socialist revolution in Western Europe than the emergence of true socialist democracy in Czechoslovakia. It is the brutal intervention of the Kremlin in Czechoslovak affairs that provides grist to the mills of imperialist propaganda.
What the Kremlin and its henchmen fear above all is not "imperialist" infiltration in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic but the infiltration of critical communist ideas into the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Hungary and the other bureaucratically deformed and degenerated workers states.
What they fear is the repercussions which the modest steps taken today in Czechoslovakia in the direction of socialist democracy might have upon the discontented students, intellectuals and workers in their own countries.
What they fear is the political revolution fermenting throughout the areas ruled by the Kremlin in Central and Eastern Europe under the influence of the Czech developments and the new rise in revolutionary possibilities in the imperialist countries as symbolized by the May 1968 revolutionary events in France.
For that reason, it is the duty of every revolutionist, of every socialist and communist, to demand the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the immediate cessation of all pressure, blackmail and threats against the Czech government and people by any outside force.
The Czechoslovak workers and peasants have the right to determine their own fate, without intervention by the Kremlin and its henchmen. They have the right to freely determine for themselves the way and the form to go forward on the road to building a socialist society.
They have the right to determine for themselves how far they are willing to extend the basic principles of working-class democracy to all the toiling layers of the population.
It is a sign of the complete degeneration of the ruling bureaucracies in the Soviet Union and the other countries allied to it, that what enrages them the most is not at all the presence of imperialist propaganda -- bourgeois newspapers are to be found in any East European capital -- but the freedom which European capital the Czechoslovak masses have conquered for communists, socialists, revolutionary intellectuals, students, and workers to express their own critical ideas about the building of socialism. Is a more abject caricature of "communism" to be found than a Brezhnev, a Gomulka or an Ulbricht clamoring for the reimposition of censorship on the Czechoslovak communist and socialist writers, journalists, intellectuals, students, and worker militants?
We maintain the basic appreciation of the political forces inside the Communist movement of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic indicated in our declaration of April 18. [See Intercontinental Press, May 13, p. 428.] We are convinced that "liberalization" is not identical with the establishment of socialist democracy, which means political and economic power in the hands of the working class exercised through a congress of democratically elected workers councils (soviets). We do not favor a regime of "liberal" technocrats and "efficient" bureaucrats any more than a regime of politically "conservative" and "inefficient" ones.
We want to replace both by true socialist democracy in the pattern outlined by Lenin in State and Revolution -- all power to a congress of democratically elected workers councils; full freedom for all working-class tendencies that accept the socialization of the means of production; self-management of the workers on a factory, regional and national level in the framework of a democratically centralized planned economy; elaboration and application of the plan under continual control of the workers; strict limitation of inequalities in income.
We call on the workers of Czechoslovakia to remain more vigilant than ever, to defend all the conquests obtained since February 1948 against capitalism, and all the conquests obtained since January 1968 against the bureaucracy, while constantly forging ahead towards the construction of real workers power.
This vigilance is all the more necessary since a real danger exists that the "liberal" bureaucracy will try to compromise with the Kremlin by slowly whittling away freedom of speech and the exposition of the views of the left-wing revolutionary tendencies.
Faced with the threats and pressure exerted by the Kremlin and its agents, it is perfectly admissible to form a united front with all those who defend the right of the Czechoslovak workers and peasants to freely determine the way they want to build socialism.
We call upon the revolutionary students, intellectuals and workers in the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, H u n g a r y and all the other European workers states to fully support the Czechoslovak workers right to self-determination. Taking inspiration from the Czech events, they should step up the fight in their own countries for the elementary rights of socialist democracy which the Czech vanguard is already conquering: freedom of the press, of assembly, of demonstration for all working-class tendencies!
We call upon the revolutionary students, intellectuals, workers and peasants of China, Vietnam and North Korea to take a clear stand against the archrevisionists of the Kremlin and their agents such as the revisionist Communist party leaders in Latin America, who have supported Moscow's use of blackmail against the toiling masses of Czechoslovakia.
It is possible to combine a struggle against right-wing opportunist deviations from the revolutionary Marxist line and for full and total solidarity with the heroic Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialist aggression with a parallel struggle in the bureaucratically deformed workers states of eastern Europe to win full socialist democracy, a parallel struggle against the hateful political and economic monopoly which the privileged bureaucracy in these countries -- profoundly discrediting socialism and communism -- has established on the exercise of power in society. The fight to reestablish a united front between the struggle of the Czechoslovak masses and the worldwide struggle against imperialism -- a united front made difficult today because of the crimes of Stalin and Novotny -- can and will be won if the revolutionists and anti-imperialist fighters the world over show principled solidarity with the struggle of the Czechoslovak masses for their right to self-determination.
Hands off the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic!
Long live the right of the Czechoslovak workers and peasants to self-determination!
Long live socialist democracy based on workers power exercised by a congress of democratically elected workers councils!
Long live unity between the fighters for socialist democracy in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the anti-imperialist fighters in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the vanguard of the anticapitalist revolution in the imperialist countries!
Long live the socialist world revolution!