CONTRADICTIONS
YUGOSLAVIA OF STATES WITH SOCIALIST CONSTITUTIONS by Mihailo Markovic The document we are reprinting below originally appeared in Vienna in the winter issue of the review Europdische Rundshau. Its author, Professor Markovic, is probably the best known, both in Yugoslavia and abroad, of the eight professors of the University of Belgrade whose expulsion from the philosophy faculty had been demanded since the end of 1973 for "political and moral unfitness in the execution of teaching functions. " A broad movement of solidarity developed around the eight professors, which for a long time prevented their expulsion; finally, the assembly of the Serbian Socialist Republic had to intervene to "dispose of" the "undesirables. " If Mihailo Markovic is the best known of the Yugoslav professors who have just been hit by this repression, it is especially because he was one of the most prominent authors criticizing Stalinist philosophical positions, even in the columns of the official review Socialist Thought and Practice, whose pages were generally open to him until the beginning of the 1960s. After that, he was one of the mainsprings of the review Praxis (created in Zagreb in autumn 1964). Markovic was not only one of those who provided the "philosophical" underpinnings for self-managed socialism; he was also, along with Liubo Tadic and Gajo Petrovic, his comrades on Praxis, one of those who succeeded in developing Marxist thought to a high level in a country in document Much! an introductory note which philosophical traditions and Marxism itself have been characterized by a certain poverty. The article below is an important document for an essential reason. It has the aspect of a "political manifesto" of the Yugoslav intellectual left, even if only a "temporary" or "transitory" one. In fact, most of the political documents of the philosophers of the Praxis school, while they presented criticisms of the bureaucracy, generally placed these criticisms within the framework of a critique of "statism, " a critique that was itself inherited from, or more exactly developed from, the critique that the League of Yugoslay Communists made of the situation in the USSR and the "people's democracies" during the 1950s. A good example was provided by the book of Svetozar Stojanovic, "Critique et Avenir du Socialisme" (Critique and Future of Socialism, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1971), which deals with the relationships that are allegedly "inevitably" instituted after a revolution and then are perpetuated and degenerate into a sui generis system. This book has the demerit of remaining extremely vague about the nature of the society and the character of the state. (Is it, for example, a third type of state side by side with the bourgeois state and the workers state?) Mihailo Markovic's document thus represents a new stage in comparison with these positions. Its title
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YUGOSLAVIA indicates great caution in characterizing the states and social forms prevailing in the countries of the East. As the author himself says, he is pointing to the contradiction that exists between the letter of the constitutional documents (which proclaim that socialism has been "realized"') and reality. The point is that the situation is not so simple and that these societies pose obvious problems. Is the "transitional society" really a step toward socialism or can it mark a stage of stagnation and then regression? Has capitalism been restored in most of the countries of East Europe, as the Chinese CP proclaims? Is it a question of a state capitalist system, as part of the far left in West Europe and North America asserts? Mihailo Markovic's document marks a stage in the resolution of these problems, but only a stage. He explicitly rejects the two extreme theses that these societies are "socialist" or "capitalist. " He also rejects the thesis, accepted today by many members of the Western Communist parties (in Italy, for example), that the relations of production are socialist (the "base" is socialist) while the institutions are not (the thesis of the contradiction between the "base" and the "superstructure"). Further, he clearly asserts that the program of the social revolution in the Marxist sense (the radical overturn of the relations of production) is very far from having been completed in these countries. Finally, on very important questions he shares the analyses that have been made by revolutionary Marxism. Professor Markovic's document is a very clear denunciation of the bureaucratic layer that dominates these societies, among which Yugoslavia, despite its peculiarities, is no exception. He concludes that it is only by vanquishing the bureaucracy that the contradictions of postcapitalist society can be overcome, thus indicating very sharply the bureaucratic regime's character as an "obstacle." This conclusion may appear to be rather general. But obviously, we should not lose sight of the fact that The expression "states with socialist constitutions" implies that we are dealing with social forms that are not easily classified. These states have undergone deep political and economic transformations, whether as a result of socialist revolutions or as a result of outside military interventions by states in which the socialist revolution had occurred earlier. The essential characteristics of this transformation are: the elimination of private property in the means of production and the institution of a statecontrolled economic system; the destruction of the 22
Markovic has previously published other documents in which he has defined the program of such a fight. (See especially L'Homme et la Société, No. 19, January-March 1971, p. 42-46.) We must also emphasize the unfortunately current applicability of the remarks made in Markovic's article about the three subgroups of the intelligenisia; the apologists, the experts, and the critics. We are seeing in Yugoslavia today the rise of a swarm of sad gentlemen who are trying to win their stripes and gain favor with the regime by slogging away at their Praxis colleagues. Among this swarm we may simply mention Stipe Suvar, a not unintelligent sociologist, who partially owes his appointment last July as Croation Republic secretary (that is, minister) of culture and education to his antiPraxis enthusiasm. At the other extreme, there is Fuad Muhic, a lumpenphilosopher, this one totally devoid of intelligence, who is trying through the meanest sorts of attacks to become an important "Figure" not only in his native Bosnia, but throughouf the Yugoslav federation as well. (It was mainly he who attacked the philosophers of Praxis during the Tenth Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.) Where Markovic's text refers to the "charismatic" personality of Fidel Castro, one must also read, it seems to us, *...and Josip Broz Tito. " This observation points to the "Bonapartist" aspects of certain "socialist" regimes and is reminiscent of some very penetrating notes on "Caesarism" by Antonio Gramsci: Finally, let us end by mentioning an inaccuracy in Markovic's text when it brings up the "Menshevik" government of Mdivani. In fact, Boudou Mdivani was a Georgian Bolshevik with whom Lenin and Trotsky made a bloc against the brutal national policies of Stalin and Ordjonikidze. (See Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union, Harvard University Press, 1964.) political power of the bourgeoisie and the replacement of a parliamentary pluralism in which wealth played a considerable role by a one-party system in which political status is the sole source of power. The constitutions of these states are socialist; in them we find the expression of the long-sought goals of the socialist revolution: abolition of exploitation and all class differences; remuneration on the basis of the principle "to each according to his work"; assignment of the determining role in society's decisions to the workers; and considerable extension of human rights, with freedom of labor, social se-
curity, free education, and control of the factories being added to the bourgeois-democratic rights. But in all these countries there is a wide discrepancy between the socialist principles of the constitution and the reality of society, in which much social inequality, tyranny, and oppression that are characteristic of class societies continue to exist. This discrepancy is a consequence of the fact that in none of these countries has the socialist revolution been carried through to the end. In the Marxist sense, socialist revolution is the radical transformation of the relations of production. Connected to this is the elimination of all social structures that permit one social group to control the labor of another and to appropriate a considerable portion of surplus-value. According to Marx, the political seizure of power is the beginning of the process of the transformation of all existing social relations. A further explanation for the gap between ideology and reality is the fact that the political phase of the socialist revolution took place in backward societies in which the liberating forces of enlightenment and of the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not come to fruition. These societies had typical backward feudal institutions and models of social relations that had never been transformed; they were marked by privilege, inequality before the law, subordination of legislative and judicial systems to the executive power, recognition of the political leader by the public as an absolute ruler, transformation of the citizenry into ingenuous, obsequious vassals prepared to bow to any official policy dictated from above. Under these conditions, the vanguard of the revolutionary movement very soon became a new ruling elite. What had previously been unequal political status became unequal participation in power. Once hierarchical and authoritarian structures were fully developed, they led inevitably to typical class differentiations. To be sure, the means of production were nationalized. But they were never really social property: They are alienated from the producers and are under the complete control of the new ruling elite. To be sure, profit as the classical capitalist form of appropriation of surplus-value has disappeared; but many more or less hidden forms of exploitation live on and have gained much ground in recent years. Thus, these systems cannot simply be classified as socialist or state capitalist; they are special mixtures of varying elements - and while they present the appearance of great stability, many sharp latent conflicts and contradictions smolder under the surface. One of the fundamental weaknesses of these systems is that they have yet to sufficiently develop strategies for resolving conflicts democratically and nonviolently. This is not only because of the lack of democratic traditions derived from an original progressive-liberal bourgeois era, which never existed for these societies. An additional explanation can be sought in the character of the revolutionary movements before they took power. Given the colossal superiority of the ruling regime, the movement had a chance to bring down the regime only through the development of monolithic unity, the strictest discipline, and an uncompromising militant spirit. Under these conditions, formed over decades, the adherents of this movement looked for the enemy everywhere, even when he was nowhere in sight, and it was always easy to manipulate the movement so that it saw in every dissident opinion a veiled form of the class enemy and reacted accordingly. Where differences and conflicts of interest cannot be tolerated and handled flexibly, two other forms of reaction are possible: occasional violent collisions, which are always presented as destruction of dangerous conspiracies, or suppression of conflict whereby the facade of unity is preserved and, of the same time, a desperate attempt is made to mobilize all inner forces against a dramatic, very exaggerated danger. The sharper the inner conflicts, and the less confident the ruling elite is of being able to eliminate them, the more warlike the incantations against the "class enemy" become. This mechanism explains at least partially both the increasing repression within each country and the occasional sharp increase in aggressiveness among states. Three basic contradictions Although there are many differences among the various societies of the type we are considering, without exception they suffer from the following three basic contradictions: *Permanent, although most often latent, conflict between the ruling bureaucracy and the powerless working people. *Constant warfare among the various layers and factions of the bureaucracy. *Finally, despite the great efforts of the central powers to establish full control over the leading groups in the national republics and in the regional and local areas, these other groups are continually trying to broaden their own autonomy and power in their own domains; this produces divisive tendencies and particularist orientations on the one side and centralist countermeasures on the other side: orches-
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YUGOSLAVIA trated campaigns against national minorities, purges, and military interventions that take on a clearly imperialist character on the international arena. Politics and bureaucracy The most important concepts with which this analysis is concerned are politics and bureaucracy. According to Max Weber, politics is the totality of efforts that are undertaken in order to participate in power or to have influence in the sharing of power, either among states or among various groups within a single state. Second, this activity is fundamentally the domain of states; and third, the state is a power relationship of people over other people, sustained by the resources of legitimized violence. In this sense, politics in comparison with praxis was defined by Marx as a province of alienation. Political activity becomes praxis under the following condi*Application of the rule of men over men becomes the rule of men over things. Political praxis is in essence self-administration, conscious and rational coordination and mastery of social processes without any professional rulers. *The criterion of the worth of various alternatives in this process is the satisfaction of real human needs, not the increase and preservation of power. *Therefore, political praxis has universal significance and concerns every person. *Political praxis is not unconnected to other forms of creative activity, nor is it inconsistent with them; it contains within it elements of philosophical understanding, scientific knowledge, and even beauty; it must not violate moral norms. *Such activity - without subjugation, tutelage, and fear - is especially attractive and offers all people a chance for common control and for the development of an important dimension of their social being. Politics is a province of alienation when it becomes an activity monopolized by an established group of professional rulers. That sort of politics reduces men to things, to passive and apathetic objects of manipulation; it serves the special interests of a privileged social group; it is conducted behind closed doors, becomes pragmatic, irrational, and immoral, and develops various meaningless rituals aimed at stirring up primitive aggressive passion as a means of binding its practitioners together. While the concept of political praxis expresses an optimal historical opportunity of our epoch, the con24 cept of politics managed by professionals clearly expresses a negative moment. It implies that an essential limitation exists that can and must be overcome. Viewed in this way, the bureaucracy is not merely a group of officials, experts, and managers; under given conditions charismatic leaders also belong to it, the shapers of politics whose positions are connected not simply to their abilities and expert knowledge, but also to their rewards in the past. In spite of all the differences between these two groups of professional politicians in postcapitalist society, both belong to the privileged elite that holds a virtual monopoly on political and economic power and consequently plays the role of subject in history. This elite consists not only of influential functionaries of the party and state apparatus, but also includes the top managers, the leading personalities of the mass media and cultural institutions, and, definitely, the military leaders. The overwhelming majority of these people were appointed or "elected" to their posts because they held high status in the party; or in some cases they achieved their high positions thanks to specialized knowledge and were then co-opted by the party and became responsible and accouniable to it. The interests of the bureaucracy obviously come into conflict with the fundamental aspirations of all other social layers, all of which are ruled-over and more or less exploited. The peasants' opposition The peasants were the first to rebel, and to a high degree they are still a foreign body for the bureaucracy, and even for socialism as such. To some extent this derives from their class position. They are individual producers, small proprietors who are naturally interested in the survival of the market economy and the extension of their own property. During the early phases of the revolution, they were always ready to take part actively, so long as the revolution was associated with agrarian reform, resistance to foreign rule, the war of national liberation, and the elimination of gross inequality in the distribution of goods. The opposition of the peasants to the new revolutionary regime during later stages was the inevitable result of a certain development: The shortage of capital meant that the limited industrialization could be carried out only through an immense draining of the resources of the rural economy. The policy of compulsory delivery of agrarian produce at fixed prices, the expropriations, the high tax burdens, forced collectivization - all these things repelled the peasants and led, especially in the USSR, where the pressure was strongest,
(the interests of the comrades rafi other to dozens of armed uprisings that never had a chance of success. The reason why the peasant resistance was condemned to failure from the outset lay in its mistaken historical perspective: A society of small landholders using primitive technology belongs to the past. (It would have a future only in the event of the total breakdown of contemporary industrial society.) On the other hand, the state cannot industrialize the rural economy overnight and must reach a modus vivendi with the peasantry over a period of decades. The solution that has been generally adopted today satisfies no one: Provided that he accommodates himself to the compulsory model of the collective economy in which his rights are extremely narrow, the peasant may own a tiny plot of land which he works as an individual producer. His social existence is thus divided; he lives in two worlds: in a private one in which he is free but remains subject to the fetters of the precapitalist past, and in a public one, extolled to him as the form of the new life, in which he feels powerless and alienated. The peasants are eliminated from the political stage; they are treated as second-class citizens. They react to this with low productivity and passive resistance. The Chinese communes and the Yugoslav rural-industrial self-managed enterprises seem to offer a better solution. The only way out of the conflict is the loosening of state control and the creation of technologically well-equipped and relatively independent enterprises and local communities in which the peasants become workers, collective producers with the right to participate in decision-making and control. What the workers were promised During the early stages of the postre volutionary development, the new state enjoyed the unlimited support of the workers. It was the duty of the new state to free the workers, and it really did free them from capitalist rule. It spoke and ruled in their name. It offered them considerable social security, better chances for development, a higher standard of living. All these improvements in the social position of the workers clouded the picture of social reality and resulted in the workers' not yet seeing through the real character of the bureaucracy, even when the objective interests of the bureaucracy had long since come into conflict with those of the workers. The revolutionary vanguard promised to free the workers from exploitation and to give them full command of the surplus-value of their labor. Only later did the workers learn that a large part of this surplus-value would be appropriated by the state and would flow mainly into the pockets of their former leaders. The enormous material privileges that these leaders command, much more than their high salaries, become a new form of exploitation. The workers were also told that after the revolution they would rule the country. Afterwards, it turned out that in the best of cases they were granted some say in the factories; in the worst of cases the workers remain completely under the thumb of the managers even here. The only area in which initiative can develop is production; it is permissible to increase it. In all other things, all that is expected of the worker is that he follow the party directives, obey the orders of the state, and contribute his physical strength to the attainment of the various five-year plans handed down from above. The workers were also promised the highest level of democracy that had ever existed in history: socialist
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YUGOSLAVIA democracy. But the bureaucracy, acting in the name of socialism, has robbed the workers of many of their traditional rights: the right to organize, to agitate freely, to have their own press, to assemble with others and express their critical opinions freely, to fight for the improvement of their working and living conditions, to demonstrate, to strike. Most of these rights are guaranteed in the constitution; in real life they exist only on paper. The gap between the theoretical and actual status of the worker is truly vast. If the workers became conscious of all the possibilities opened up by the new historical situation after the elimination of the capitalist class, their open conflict with the bureaucracy, which prevents the realization of these possibilities, would be inevitable and would take the form of a class war. The bureaucracy successfully utilizes a whole range of means to prevent the development and maturing of this consciousness. The bureaucracy makes use of all possible symbols of the revolution in order to feign an unbroken continuity between the former revolutionary vanguard and itself. It develops an ideology that justifies social inequality and lays heavy stress on law, order, economic growth, and efficiency - typical values of all contemporary ideologies based on maintaining the status quo. If diverts all workers demands for organization and participation through the cynical assertion ad absurdum that the workers already have their organization, which is the party, that they already participate in controlling society indirectly through their leadership, and that in any case the right of the workers to demonstrate and strike - against themselves — is unnecessary. Any attempt at selforganization or expression of public criticism is punished as a political crime. Comparisons with other social systems are prevented because traveling abroad is prohibited or at least made very difficult. Finally, one of the bureaucracy's most important methods in maintaining control is the constant discovery of new enemies. The omnipresent, ever lurking and scheming enemy, like the old Christian devil, plays a unifying and mobilizing role, leads errant lambs back to the path of righteousness, reestablishes order, and keeps the regime on its feet. But when the living conditions of the workers worsen beyond certain limits, all these smokescreen maneuvers prove useless, as is shown by the well-known and bloody workers revolts in Berlin (1953), Poznan and Budapest (1956), and Gdansk (1970). The bureaucracy is determined to drown such rebellions in blood; after that, preparations are made to improve the elementary living conditions of the workers. The fact that these conditions are gradually improv26 ing and that a considerable section of the bureaucracy actually does possess a revolutionary past and has erected a mythology around its person confuses most of the workers and conceals their real position in society. Only an adequate new revolutionary theory can bring greater clarity to their consciousness. Apologists, Experts, Critics That is the reason why those intellectuals who devote themselves to developing a theory under the new conditions immediately become targets of bureaucratic repression. It is not simply a conflict between intellectuals and polificians, between pragmatism on the one side and idealism on the other. As a social group the intelligentsia can be divided into at least three subgroups: apologists, who are prepared to serve, defend, and prettify any social order; experts, who, operating from a position of pure, neutral knowledge, have no desire to commit themselves to anything; and critics, who analyze the limits of the given social form and seek possibilities for building a freer, more just and human structure of society. The bureaucracy cannot rule without the ideological and technical services of the apologists and the experts. On the other hand, their rule would be seriously threatened by the free development of critical social thought and the consequent higher political consciousness among workers and youth, especially students. This sort of thought threatens and demystifies the bureaucracy's authority. The deep crises of the system in 1956 and 1968 were brought about through conditions the basis for which had been prepared by the critical ideas of philosophers, social scientists, and writers. The bureaucracy has since resolved not to take any broader risks and is presently utilizing the full arsenal of repressive measures -from bans on publications to arrests and expulsions of dangerous intellectuals. During the period in which the opposition between the bureaucracy and the outside world is pushed to the background, is in a lull, or is well under control, the internal contradictions of the bureaucracy burst to the surface: The history of the countries that call themselves "socialist" is in large part a history of struggles within the established elite. The major role that interests us here is that played by the highest state functionaries, the party leaders, the factory and bank managers, the top experts of the regime, the highest leaders of the army and security services, and the leading personalities of the mass media and the cultural establishment. The status of these layers varies. It is charocteristic of the so-called socialist societies that the highest
status, and with it the greatest power, is linked to the commanding positions of the party. Under this system, even the highest state functionaries, generals, and top officials of the security services can be only second-rank figures. The status of the technocrats is even lower; they do not belong to the inner circle that makes the most important decisions. The bureaucrats of the mass media and the cultural and educational system fulfill the function of transmission belt prepared to serve and contribute the necessary decorum, but in periods of acute struggle between the separate factions their support can have great significance. Hard-liners and liberals As far as the line-up goes, the spectrum is broad, ranging from the hard-liners-champions of order, monolithic unity, and centralized leadership—to the liberals, who press for greater multiplicity and for local autonomy within limits. The struggle between the hard-liners and the liberals represents at bottom the contradiction between the advocates of two different political and economic models, both allegedly "socialist. " The classic example of the first model is the system built by Stalin: tightly planned economy, unchallenged rule by the party bodies over all social life, total centralization of decision-making, ruthless oppression of ony intellectual opposition, special stress on extensive economic growth. The liberal model, the goal of many attempts at reform after the death of Stalin, recommends to a certain degree the principles of the market economy and attempts to combine planning with competition and profitability, it favors the loosening of party control over the economy and culture and allows some room for decentralized decision-making. Finally, it wants to replace hard administrative measures against unwanted tendencies with more subtle methods, namely, elimination and political counter-offensive. The Yugoslav model, with its original forms of self-management and its wide-ranging decentralization, goes even further in this direction, although it likewise reestablishes under altered forms and conditions the conflict between the party of order and the liberal faction. This struggle is waged essentially in the central bodies of the party, although no Communist party allows formal factions. But their social roles predestine many groups to adhere to one or the other faction. Thus, as a rule the highest leaders of the army and the security services support the party of order, while general sympathy for the liberal faction can be expected from the technostructure and the top functionaries in cultural spheres. The situation is additionally complicated by personal relationships and loyalties and by the fact that principles and convictions play a much less important role in this struggle than considerations of ufility and effecfiveness. The existence of a charismatic leader complicates the entire situation still further. Himself undecided as to which solution is best, he chooses sides from time to time in the vague feeling that he can strengthen his own power in this way. and he thus contributes to the victory of this or that side in a manner that is unpredictable. Castro's behavior during the 1960s provides a good example of this. Chances for new development This sort of struggle may go on for a long time behind closed doors, deep beneath the surface of public life. The evolution of society will normally not be seriously influenced by its results. Nonetheless, it does happen that conflicts within the bureducracy are resolved in some manner that actually opens up the broader development on a new field. One of the necessary conditions for this is that there be a solid core within the liberal faction, personalities who actually think democratically and have not lost their revolutionary character. This character may sometimes be submerged in the attempt to accommodate the new way of life. But it can reappear again as soon as conditions permit. A more important precondition is the existence of a more or less spontaneous movement, or at least a need among the masses for greater changes in sociely. These are the preconditions for the evolution of these social systems. The Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Dubcek era in Czechoslovakia after January 1968 are two striking examples. There are other, less favorable alternatives. One is the freezing of conflicts on the basis of the formation of a strong bureaucratic center, which can only perpetuate the stagnation of the system. Another unfavorable, retrogressive development would be the altering of the character of the contradiction: In place of the unresolved social conflicts, their surrogate, the national conflict, comes to the fore. From the standpoint of Marxist theory national conflicts are unthinkable after a victorious proletarian revolution. Only capitalists have an interest in the exploitation of the people: the workers are interested only in liberation, and the road to liberation passes through the elimination of all forms of exploitation. Lenin proposed that within a state with many peoples the workers of the ruling nation should fight for the right of all nations to full self-determination, including separation, while the workers of the oppressed nation should fight to remain within the
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multinational society. This principle was put into practice in 1918; Lenin delegated his young coworker Stalin to go to the first congress of the Finnish Social Democratic party, where in the name of the Russian Council of Peoples Commissars he was to explain that the Finnish proletariat was free to choose whether to live together in the same state with the Russian proletariat or to separate from it. The Finnish Social Democracy wanted state unity, but the Finnish bourgeoisie was of another opinion and launched a bloody civil war with Russia. When a similar situation later developed in Georgia, where the Mdivani brothers set up a separate Menshevik regime, Stalin sent his army and annihilated the separatists physically. Since then, the socialist world has been haunted by national conflicts. The roots of this conflict are manifold. Historical traditions, injustices committed, and uneven levels of development inherited from the past certainly play an important role. But the factor that is relevant for us is the role of the bureaucracy in the generation of nationalist tension in multinational federations. The bureaucrats of the federation, like those in the national units, are responsible for the rise of nationalist forces: the central bureaucracy because it usually insists on centralism, unity, and a uniform, undifferentiated treatment of all the national units and on the right of the central power to intervene; the national bureaucracy because it wants to be the master on its own turf and toward this end exaggerates differences with other nations. The national bureaucracies condemn nationalism, but at the same time they are inclined to foster it. The reasons for this attitude are important. The first is that it is the only possibility the national bureaucracy commands to free itself from the tute28 lage of the central bureaucracy. Second, the nafional bureaucracy seeks to strengthen its own material position, for which it requires the redistribution of national wealth. It is quite characteristic that in its struggle against such centers of alienated economic power as investment funds, right of control over the banks and the big import-export firms of the federation, only the question of redistribution comes up, not the question of real socialization. Third, the national bureaucracies seek through mobilizing indigenous forces for declared national goals to awaken the political interest of the apathetic workers and peasants, to place a veil of forgetfulness over the real social problems, and to elevate itself to the leading power of a real mass movement: The usual strategy in building a nationalist movement lies on the one hand in stirring up hatred for another nation, the "main oppressor, " and on the other hand in fostering self-sympathy for one's own nation, the "main victim," Once the initiative is taken by the bureaucracy, a whole army of national-minded economists, statisticians, historians, and journalists takes up the task of digging up corresponding data and opinions and hammers them into people's heads. In order to compensate for the damage done by this, a vast conscious effort is required. The central bureaucracy does not bother about such fine points. Its strategy in fighting nationalism (as in fighting anything else) consists in simply defining it as a conspiracy of the class enemy and crushing it as The bureaucracy is not capable of resolving all these conflicts. The fundamental contradictions of postcapitalist society can be eliminated only through the elimination of the bureaucracy itself. •
news of the workers movement & the international Comrade André Henry, leader of Glaverbel strikers, confronts BS director Riboud during occupation of BSN. Paris headquarters Feb. 17. Since January 16, 1975, some 600 workers of the Glaverbel glass factory in Gilly (Charleroi) have been on strike, occupying the factory in struggle against the threat to close it down that had been announced by the owners: the French multinational trust BSN which, along with the French trust SaintGobain and the British trust Pilkington, controls the entire European glass industry. This tenacious strike, which is now in its fifth week and opposes 600 workers to a superpowerful trust that exploits a total of 73,000 wage workers and salaried employees, has been exemplary in several respects: *It is led democratically by the workers themselves. They have elected a strike committee that includes two or three strikers elected by the workers of each sector, recallable at any time by rank-and-file assemblies and regularly accountable before general assemblies. *It has combined the broadest workers democracy with concern for preserving the permanent trade-union structures. The leader of the strike committee, Comrade André Henry, is also a main delegate to