World

frica’s most promi-
nent Communist,
Joe Slovo, has come
out against a one-
party state and con-
demned Stalinist
methods in. Eastern
Europe for distort-

ing socialist ideals.

In his recently-published pamphlet “Has

Socialism Failed?” Slovo argues that an

open and unsparing criticism of the past is

“an assertion of justified confidence in the

future of socialism and its inherent moral
superiority.”

Acknowledging that socialism is in crisis,
the leader of the Communist Party of South
Africa (SACP) uses the founders of Marx-
ism to demonstrate that the communist par-
ties of Eastern Europe deviated from the
principle of democracy and did not ensure
social and economic well-being.

Stalinism alone, says Slovo, is not an
adequate explanation for this situation. “It
Is not enough merely to engage in the self-
pitying cry: ‘we were misled’; we should
rather ask why so many communists
allowed themselves to become so blinded
for long. And, more importantly, why they

| behaved like Stalinists toward those of their

_ comrades who raised even the slightest
doubt about the ‘purity’ of Stalin’s brand of
socialism.”

The SACP itself, he notes, had to take
responsibility for the “spread of the Stalin
cult and fora mechanical embrace of Soviet
domestic and foreign policies, some of
which discredited the cause of socialism.”

He dismisses those in the communist
movement who “mourn the retreat from
Stalinism and use its dogmas to ‘justify’
undemocratic and tyrannical practices.

“Tt is clearly a matter of time before pop-
ular revulsion leads to transformation ...
those who still defend the Stalinist
model — even ina qualified way — area
dying breed; at the ideological level they will
undoubtedly be left behind and they need
not detain us here.”

_ The party leader, who also leads the
armed wing of the African National Con-
gress, lends impassioned support for Soviet

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leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s programs of

perestroika and glasnost.

Ina section titled “Blaming Gorbachev,”
he dismisses claims that reforms initiated by
the CPSU are responsible for the collapse of
communist parties in Eastern Europe.

“Despite the advantage of over 40 years
of a monopoly on education, the media,
etc., the parties in power could not find a
significant section of the class they claimed
to represent (or, for that matter, even a
majority of their own membership) to
defend them or their version of socialism.

“To blame perestroika and glasnost, for
the ailments of socialism is like blaming the
diagnosis and the prescription for the
illness.” Indeed, he stresses, “the only way
to ensure the future of socialism is to grasp
the nettle with the political courage of a
Gorbachev.”

_ Slovo poses some of the unsettling ques-
tions the Communist movement must
answer in tackling its arrogance towards the
class it claimed to lead to social change:
“Have we the right to conclude that the
enemies of a discredited party leadership are
the same as the enemies of socialism? If the
type of socialism which the people have
experienced has been rubbished in their eyes
and they begin to question it, are they neces-
sarily questioning socialism or are they
rejecting its perversions? What doctrine ...
gives a Communist party (orany other party
for that matter) the moral or political right
to Impose its hegemony or to maintain it in
the face of popular rejection?

“Who has appointed us to impose and

» defend at all cost our version of socialism

even if the overwhelming majority have
become disillusioned with it?”

The pamphlet, authorized as a discussion
paper by the leadership of the SACP, and
drafted by Slovo as a “launching pad for
further critical thought,” concludes that
perestroika and glasnost came “too little
and too late” in Eastern Europe. For social-
ism to show its true human face, he stresses,
these process “‘must be implemented with
all possible speed.”

He predicts that when socialism as a
world system comes into its own again, “the
Gorbachev revolution will have played a
seminal role.”

On the one-party state, Slovo says: “We
have had sufficient experience of a one-
party rule in various parts of the world to
perhaps conclude that the ‘mission’ to pro-
mote real democracy under a one-party sys-
tem is not just difficult but in the long run,
impossible.”

He argues that “within the confines of a
single-party state, the alternative to active
conformism was either silence or the risk of
punishment as ‘an enemy of the people.’ ”

Slovo writes that the suspension of -

democracy after the October Revolution of
1917 was necessary for the defence of the
new Soviet Union in the civil war and to
combat the accompanying Western inter-
vention. However, once this threat was
over, the instruments of state suppression
were strengthened, and democracy for the

majority of people was narrowed.

On the economic front, the European
socialist countries produced exactly what
socialism was mean to counter — economic
alienation of the working class.

“In general, the over-centralized and
commandist economies of the socialist
world helped to entrench a form of ‘social-
ist’ alienation. At a purely economic level
this form of alienation often turned out to
be the worst of both worlds.”

But Slovo also finds alarming the indul-
gence in self-criticism he says has become
prevalent in the socialist countries. This, he
says, has resulted in capitalism being let off
the hook. The offensive of the capitalist

ideologues, he argues, has resulted ina “uni-.

lateral ideological disarmament.”

“We firmly believe in the future of social-
ism; we do not dismiss its whole past as an
unmitigated failure,” Slovo stresses.

“Socialism certainly produced a Stalin
and a Ceaucescu but it also produced a
Lenin anda Gorbachev. Despite the distor-
tions at the top, the nobility of socialism’s
basic objectives inspired millions upon mil-
lions to devote themselves selflessly to build-
ing it on the ground. And no one can doubt
that if humanity is today poised to enter an
unprecedented era of peace and civilized
international relations, it is in the first place
due to the efforts of the socialist world.”

Yet, says Slovo, some Soviet journalists
have become so exclusively focussed upon
self-criticism that the social inequalities
within capitalism and the continuing
plunder by international capital of the
resources of the developing world through
neo-colonial manipulation, unequal trade
and the debt burden, receive little emphasis.

“Middle class elements, including many
journalists within socialist societies, seem
mesmerized by pure technocracy; the glitter
of Western consumerism and the quality of
up-market goods appears to overshadow
the quality of life for society as a whole.

“In some contributions,” he notes, “capi-
talism is prettified in the same generalized
and unscholarly way as it used to be con-
demned, i.e. without researched statistics
and with dogma taking the place of infor-
mation.”

Reverberations of Europe in Caribbean

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Aselse-
where throughout the world, the deep pol-
itical changes in Eastern Europe brought
about by glasnost and perestroika in the
Soviet Union have had an effect on the
Left in the Caribbean.

Socialist and Marxist political parties
and organizations from Cuba in the north
down to Guyana in the south have been
called on to make their views known on
the far-reaching and often mind-boggling
developments in the socialist world.

In a New Year’s Day message last
month, Cuban president Fidel Castro of
the only Communist Party-led nation in
the Caribbean stated bluntly that “nothing
and nobody” would make Cuba turn back
from the path of socialism.

Shortly before this, he described capital-
ism as a system created by “bandits and
thieves.” Speaking against the back-
ground of the introduction of certain
market-type economic measures in social-
ist economies like Poland and Hungary,
Castro also termed the capitalist system as
one which “creates people who get rich at
the expense of others.”

Cuban government officials, including
Castro himself, have said that the changes
taking place in the Soviet Union and other
Eastern European countries are peculiar
to those areas and are not necessarily
needed in other countries.

However, it is known that a process of
what is called “rectification” has been
underway in Cuba since the 1970s. As
Sergio Plasencia Vidal, Director of Finan-
cial Studies at the Cuban National Bank,

told me last year while attending a confer-
ence here in Barbados, the efforts are cen-
tered on how to improve people’s attitude
to work and their overall commitment.
Commenting on a draft report deli-
vered at the 16th Congress of Cuba’s Cen-
tral Organization of Trade Unions held
last month, the newspaper Granma
termed the ongoing “rectification process”
to be “decisive and historical.” The CTU

Norm
Faria

FROMTHE
CARIBBEAN

report said in part that the process harshly
criticizes the utilization of material incen-
tives “almost exclusively.”

In the former British colony of Guyana,
leader of the Opposition People’s Progres-
sive Party (PPP), Cheddi Jagan, said in
mid-December that his party will not
renounce its Marxist ideology.

“We are not renouncing our beliefs.
Marxism-Leninism is a working-class
ideology. We are wedded to liberating the
working people ... from the shackles of
exploitation and plunder,” he told the

media in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown.

Jagan continued: “The PPP has no
intention of forcing any model or ideology
on anyone. Those who see the party as
being steeped in orthodoxy and as a pawn
in big power politics, cannot make any
claim to seriously understanding Guya-
nese politics.”

Jagan, whose PPP government was
overthrown by the British army in 1953,
further remarked that his party “stood
firmly behind those forces of democracy
and renewal in socialist Europe as it has
always stood for democracy in Latin
America, Guyana and other parts of the
world.”

The ruling People’s National Congress
(PNC) has, in the view of some political
analysts, tried to make cheap political
gains by equating a PPP government with
the repressive, Stalinist rule like that in
Romania under Ceausescu.

In a Tribune interview, the political
leader of one of the opposition parties in
St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Uni-
ted People’s Movement (UPM), said the
changes in Eastern Europe were “over-
due.” Adrian Saunders added that what
was happening was a deepening of the
democratic movement in the socialist
countries.

He gave no indication if such political
developments had any impact on the
organizational structure or political line of
the UPM. Another Vincentian opposition
party, the Movement for National Unity,
led by barrister Ralph Gonsalves, is a
splinter of the UPM. Breaking away in

1982, Gonsalves cited the dogmatism and
hardline “democratic centralist” organiza-
tional principles of the UPM.

In Grenada, a statement issued by the
Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement
(MBPM), the Spice Isle’s major Left party,
argued that the changes were for the better
to create more democracy. MBPM leader
Terrance Marryshow cautioned however
about “going overboard” into too many
capitalist economic measures. They could
well undermine the hard-won benefits of
workers under socialist planning, he said.

An interesting dimension of the discus-
sion in the islands is the look at possible
economic ramifications. Economists of
the Organization of Eastern Caribbean
States (OECS) and officials from Barba-
dos’ Central Bank have expressed concern
that any gung-ho drive by Western powers
to pump so-called aid money and invest-
ment into the “newly-freed”’ socialist
economies could well siphon away much-
needed assistance to the developing world,
including the Caribbean islands. It could
weaken the process of creating self-reliant
economies in the Third World, they con-
tend.

Cuba, whose economy could be much
healthier if Washington lifted its embargo
against Cuban goods, has already sug-
gested that there could be “possible com-
plications” in trade with the socialist
countries. Despite continuing problems
with the availability of freely convertible
currencies, Cuba’s economy is being
counted on by Havana to grow by one to
two per cent this year.

Pacific Tribune, February 26, 1990 « 9