Pierre Frank
MARCH 4 -- Since the Budapest conference, which opened Feb. 26, has not yet ended, and the full texts of the speeches have not yet been published, judgment must be deferred on the work of the conference as a whole. Nonetheless, it can be said for certain that no matter what the final decisions may be, the walkout, February 29, of the Rumanians signifies a defeat at the conference for Moscow and the leaderships backing the Kremlin. The attendance of the Rumanians had been considered a successful first step on the road to rallying the Communist apparatuses against divisive tendencies encouraged in part by the Chinese.
Did the Rumanians participate with the intention of finding a pretext for making a scandal? Or were promises made to them and then broken as they claim? In the absence of anything but the press releases, it is difficult to say. However, I would incline rather to the second supposition. Indeed, I cannot see how it would serve the interests of the Rumanians to act in such a devious way as to further embitter relations with the Soviets, which are already not the best. On the other hand it would not be out of character for the Kremlin, after luring them to Budapest with reassuring promises, to try through indirect means to pressure them on a point where they are particularly vulnerable -- the question of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The Syrian, Bagdash , is an old Stalinist (trained in the school of Maurice Thorez) and this would not be the first time he has lent himself to an operation of this sort.
A conference will probably be held around the end of this year. But after the walkout of the Rumanians, other delegations -- among them the Italians -have spoken against any more criticizing of other parties and against any decisions binding on all the participants, etc. In other words, after the walkout of the Rumanians, greater reservations have been indicated, signifying that nothing will come out of this conference but vague, empty declarations, with the participants free to interpret them as they see fit.
The Budapest conference was an attempt at limiting the breakup of monolithism and giving an appearance of unity among the apparatuses of the majority of the Communist parties. The outcome was the opposite of what was sought. And this was not simply the result of an incorrect maneuver that can be made up.
We have gone into the reasons for
the breakup of Stalinist monolithism many
times. Fundamentally, Stalinist monolith-
ism resulted from the consolidation of
the bureaucracy around the Kremlin in a
period of revolutionary retreat. Today,
despite the inevitable ups and downs in
the confrontation between revolution and
counterrevolution, this period is over.
Those directly pitted in conflict with
imperialism, like the Vietnamese, the
Cubans, and the Koreans, were not at the
conference. The Cubans, who do not con-
ceal their intention to aid the revolu-
tionary forces in Latin America, orga-
nized an international conference, the
OLAS (Organization of Latin-American Sol-
idarity]; and there they did not bother
about diplomatic niceties. The Chinese,
despite their monstrous bureaucratisn,
are not ready to come to an understand-
ing with other bureaucrats whom they are
not sure, to say the least, of having on
their side in the event of an imperial-
ist attack.
In these circumstances, only the
partisans of "peaceful coexistence" came
to Budapest, and not all of these. Some, |
like the Yugoslavs, and now the Rumanian
are taking "socialism in one country,"
the concept that constitutes their common
denominator, to its final conclusion.
Since they are all traveling the
road of reformism, headed toward a sort
of "social-democratization," their inter-
national conference could not fail to ex-
hibit the features of the old Socialist
international -- this "international"
which has no purpose, whose members main-
tain relations of a diplomatic nature;
that is, amiable hypocrisy until such
time as a conflict breaks out among then.
The failure at Budapest found its
most glaring expression in regard to the
Vietnam war. The conference was preceded
by a verbal turn on the part of the Conm-
munist party leaderships in favor ofa
Vietnamese victory. The conference sent
the Vietnamese a lukewarm message of
greetings.
But these parties encompassing
millions of workers did not even decide
to do what the students and organizations
composed mostly of youth have been doing
for the whole past: period in the United
States, in Japan, and in Western Europe,
to say nothing of the colonial countries.
The