nist Parties which took place in East Berlin last week ended without singing the Internationale. This was reasonable enough, since the chorus of the Internationale talks about uniting the human race, while the conference was a witness to just how far the once iron unity of the world Stalinist moveThis conference was first floated by Moscow nearly three years ago. The intention was to re-assert the leading role of the CPSU in the world Nation of the Chinese CP. Early calls or the conference from Hungary and Bulgaria were coupled with attacks on the Maoists as an 'anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist The Stalinist parties worldwide, however, showed a complete lack of enthusiasm for the idea. The only CPs to take up the call in the first Cuban CPs (the latter heavily dependent economically on the USSR), and the West German and Austrian CPs, Unfortunately for Moscow, most of the West European CPs-in particular those in Spain, Italy and France, who may soon find themselves running their own bourgeois states -had no intention of re-affirming the respective ruling classes would be much less likely to choose them as a strategic option if they were seen to be still at the beck and call of a foreign and non-capitalist power; while the stench of repression that leaks out of the Soviet Union was parties, eager to prove their devoBerlinguer and brezaney agree to alsagre They were joined in their opposition to Moscow by the ruling parties of Rumania and Yugoslavia, for whom the reassertion of the leading role of the CPSU carries with it a real threat of military intervention or lesser sanctions to try to bring them back to the fold. A conference of CPs would only be desirable for them if it ratified their independence.
Since the holding of the conference was not of vital importance to the *independent' parties, they were from the beginning in a strong bargaining position with Moscow. For the Soviet bureaucracy, their position as the leader of a world bloe is really ve important indeed - both because gives them vital bargaining count with imperialism, and also at an ideological level within Soviet so itself, where the nationalist pret to be the leader of international socialism acts as ideological ceme Thus the independent parties ly threatened not to turn up if M refused to agree to their demand. If it was going to get its conferen Moseow would have to give in ev ually. Which it did.
Nevertheless, the protestation
SM Fne British Communist Party nas always called the East European states 'socialist'and by doing so, they have provided the capitalist class with a tremendous weapon do dinst te sociaiist movement. Gieeruly the bourgeois porticians agree and proceec to 'prove' that socialism equals what exists today in Eastern Europe: labour camps, psychiatric prisons for oppositionists, and a one-party state; the suppression of indep endent trade unions, of the right to strike, to organise mass meetings, produce indep endent papers, issue political leaflets and so on.
Recently the Western CPs, including the British Party, have distanced themselves from the most obnoxious practices of the regimes in Eastern Europe. But they still say that the political set-up in these states is democratic, they still hail the lead ers of these states as Communists, and they still claim that the working class still has real political power in these societies.
•All that is needed there, according to people like John Gollan in his recent article in Marxism Today, is more of what already exists: more 'democracy" and more "socialism' Commenting on the bloody shooting down of striking workers in Poland in 1970, Gollan tells us: "This is the price wrich any socialist society may pay for any breakdown in its proper democratIC TUNCTIOn.
Gollan does not explain when the supposed democracy in 'socialist' Poland had broken down. And has it been restored since 1970? Gollan does not tell us.
But the record of the last couple of months is instructive. In March elections were held in Poland, and the CP list gained a truly staggering majority: more than 98 per cent of the vote. What a mandate! Yet two months later, when the new Government puts forward a central plank of its economic porcy, some tens or inousands of workers go on strike against it.
Does the Government say to the Polist workers: we have the democratic backing or 9o per cent of the Polish masses to carry through our programme? Not on your life, nobody believes the Polish Government has been democratically chosen-the Prime Minister certainly does not believe it. That was why the Polish Government cancelled the price rises in 24 hours. Gordon McLennan, General Secretary of the CPGB arrives at the conference of European Communist Parties.