CZECHOSLOVAKIA Democracy for some
A critique of the HOS Manifesto
"I MIGHT characterize the HOS Manifesto, sine ira et studio [dispassionately], as a sort of amalgam including and promising almost everything, and therefore diffuse and vague (which may bring difficulties in growth or rather prenatal complications), if the authors did not pretend to speak in the name of all democrats and therefore in mine as well." 1
PETR N THE INTRODUCTION to the HOS Manifesto, I read that this movement
"unites people who care about the future of our homeland. People who are prepared, in respect for pluralism, for an open discussion of all the political problems and who have decided to get involved directly in the political struggle....' " That all applies to me, no one has ever doubted it. So, let us see how the authors of the Manifesto themselves respect the principle of pluralism.
In 1968-69, when all the critics and opponents of bureaucratic centralism and Stalinism expressed themselves relatively freely, there was a rather broad spectrum of opinion about how a society freeing itself from a dogmatic straitjacket and bureaucratic domination should evolve.
At one extreme of this spectrum were the champions of technocratic conceptions (essentially undemocratic ones in my opinion), who were fighting for a society of production, responsibility and discipline. They put competence to the fore, advocated that specialists rule, or at least have greater influence. Their slogan was "against leveling," and they were against it also in the regulations.
Champions of self-management
At the other end of this spectrum were the champions of self-management at the level of the society as a whole. They wanted the producers themselves to make the decisions or participate in the decisions concerning the means of production and working conditions. In this camp, various anti-authoritarian positions developed, with a critique of of the capitalist mode of 22 ) production and bourgeois democracy, and an attempt to understand the problems of International Viewpoint #160 • April 3, 1989
UHL the third world.
The two camps agreed more or less on the need for re-establishing market relations. For the technocrats this was a clear and welcome imperative. For the supporters of self-management, it was a problematic perspective, calling for development of effective compensatory mechanisms at the social level. Technocrats for a system of indirect democracy
In discussions on the political system, or rather on the structure of the government, the technocrats came out for a system of representation, for indirect democracy. In accordance with the maturity of their political conceptions, or rather the tactics they chose, they advocated the existence of several political parties or at least several currents or tendencies within the Czechoslovak Communist Party. This was the celebrated "opposition" line formulated in the Czechoslovak CP's April 1968 Action Program.?
Groupings were to rule alone or in coalition and be accountable to the parliament (and not directly to the workers). There was to be public supervision, a free press and so on. The technocrats accepted the possibility, and sometimes the usefulness of, or need for, an economic self-management that would reflect the interests of the workers in the enterprises. But this was not to affect the operational management or medium-term management of enterprises, which were to be given over to specialists.
The opponents of economic management and a multi-party parliamentary system wanted to bring economic power down not only to the level of the managerial teams but to that of the workers and the organizations the latter themselves would create to express their interests.
In the political sphere, they did not come out against representative democracy, but they called for introducing mechanisms of direct democracy from the beginning, and not only in the sphere of production but also in all areas of social life. Such mechanisms would not be very important at the outset, and would only complement the democratic representative system (a parliament, elected bodies). But they would grow stronger over years, over decades, perhaps over generations, and would progressively limit the manipulation of some by others. Underestimation of human nature and capacities
This evolution toward communist ideals obviously did not depend so much on the faith people would have in a doctrine that in itself would offer "salvation," but on the overall social situation and its dynamic, especially in the economic sphere (the elimination of want, increased leisure time) and culture (education, a choice of values, especially for the rising generations).
There was a lot of discussion. I still hear the reservations expressed about utopias, reservations owing to a lack of courage and an underestimation of human nature and capacities, which is a common feature of Stalinism, subsequent totalitarian currents and of technocratic conceptions.
However, as often in Bohemia, the extremes were not represented. We did not have anarchists championing an egalitarian and libertarian society (we still do not, unlike Poland). We did not have technocrats who wanted to halt, at least for a time, democratic mechanisms (parliament and parties) and suspend barely won democratic freedoms. The two camps were not even very well defined. Most of the opponents of bureaucratic domination took up an intermediate position between the two points of view that I have separated out for didactic purposes.
This was also reflected in the documents of the time, for example, in the proposed law on enterprises, in the positions of the trade unions.
Nonetheless, the two tendencies described — the self-management tendency, which stressed the development of direct democracy; and the technocratic tendency, which was not prepared to go any 1. The introduction to this article (which is published here in an abridged form) notes that the HOS signatories were called in by State Security for questioning about their writings. Petr Uhl was also called in to "testify," and of course refused to do so, because whatever his differences with HOS, "it is clear that champions and opponents of HOS will be in the same boat until the fall of the bureaucratic dictatorship that tramples on the rights of the entire Czechoslovak people." 2. A document adopted officially by the Central Committee that provided the framework for the Fourteenth Party Congress scheduled for August 1968. While making concessions to the democratic movement that was developing, it maintained the essential aspects of the system, including the leading role of the Party.
further than indirect democracy — did really exist in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. The authors and signatories of the HOS Manifesto cannot be unaware of this. Several of them were avowed supporters of self-management for the society as a whole.
If today they act as if the only possibility were indirect democracy, and this is not a lapse of memory but a conscious choice. The Children of Bohemia want a king? HOS can work for indirect democracy. That is in the order of things. But it would have to wipe out the ideas that were not only theoretically formulated in 1968 but also concretely implemented in the student movement, in other youth organizations, in a part of the trade-union movement, and in production itself, if in an embryonic way. In the sphere of culture in particular, everywhere a tendency toward direct democracy appeared. Pressure groups, sometimes effective ones, were formed. The rights of the active minority relative to the uncommitted majority were discussed.
Manifesto has nothing to do with socialism
However, in the Manifesto, the principle of direct democracy is mentioned only once. That is where the call is raised for referendums to decide some very important questions affecting the whole of society. The "self-evident" aspect of the formulations about the political system shows that the authors of the document did not doubt for an instant that there was no alternative to a parliamentary system of parties contending for power in elections (see section 3, paragraph 6). This is despite the fact that it says at the beginning that "We do not know yet how our country will set out toward democracy and what forms such democracy will take in the future." The worst thing, clearly, is that in deliberately putting the idea of self-management of the entire society out of their minds, as well as the idea of progressive development of direct democracy, the authors say unperturbedly in the introduction there is there is plenty of room in HOS for all those who respect the principle of pluralism. Over the last 20 years, political thought in Czechoslovakia has quite perceptibly shifted from democracy toward models founded on manipulation, from democratic ideas in production toward technocratic conceptions, from a sensitive study of the relationship between the rights of the individual and those of society toward an emotional populism reminiscent of the Czech renaissance, as well as toward a belief in the possibility of a just state standing above society. A part of all this is also found in the HOS Manifesto.
What is sad in this is that many of the signatories, who personally have a high level of culture and a socialist past (in the best sense of the term), have managed to shed their ideas so rapidly and support a docu-
CZECHOSLOVAKIA ment that has nothing to do with socialism. (By socialism, I obviously mean a socialism based on democracy. The "actually existing" socialisms and others are as alien to me as they are to my political opponents in HOS.) Have they come to this from taking account of public opinion that has shifted markedly to the right? Or have they rather yielded to some neo-conservative signatories to the Manifesto who would never have associated themselves with a statement that accepted, along with representative democracy, even the possibility of a direct democracy? I do not know. But in either case, the balance sheet does not look very good.
However, the abandonment of left positions has its own deeper causes. Basically, after years of fighting socialist ideas, people no longer believe in a better future for humanity. The horrors of Stalinism, the all-pervasive stagnation in the countries of the Soviet "bloc," the relative prosperity (whose more general causes have not been studied) of the Western European contries, and now the Gorbachev orientation, with its perceptible elements of "Westernization," which has become the main hope of the political veterans - all that is so depressing that people are now looking for a way out in denying everything that they previously believed....
"My views are somewhat unfashionable"
I am well aware that my views are somewhat unfashionable, but if I abandoned this vision of the prospects for humanity -which are not splendid or radiant but in any case are better than what exists - I could no longer work in politics or in the area of human rights.
I have already touched on the problem of ownership and the right to dispose of the means of production. It is not surprising
Czechs rally to greet Gorbachev in Prague, April 1988 (DR) that the proposals of the HOS Manifesto agree on this point with what has been recently introduced in Hungary and Poland, and what is being prepared on a still larger scale in the USSR and perhaps also in Czechoslovakia. HOS recommends a pluralism of ownership of the means of production. In cases where the means of production have been "state owned" up until now, it is for economic self-management. Measures must be found to reflate the economy
So, self-management penetrated into Manifesto, but obviously only in its economic (Yugoslav) form. Support for the cooperative movement (in services, retail trade and a section of production) is certainly quite necessary in present conditions in Czechoslovakia and also for small private enterprises that do not exploit outside labor (such as family businesses).
The economic situation in our country is bad, and according to predictions will get worse. In these circumstances, it goes without saying that the means must been found to reflate it. Given the continually growing lag of the Czechoslovak economy, foreign involvement is being proposed as a remedy, including foreign investment in various branches of Czechoslovak industry.
I do not share the opinion that this restoration of capitalist production relations, as it is being carried out in Hungary or in the USSR, as hinted at by Jakes and Adamec, or as postulated by HOS, would mean abandoning "the gains of socialism" or the 3. A surrealist and pacifist youth movement. One of the groups at the origin of the August 1988 23 demonstrations.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA "privileges of the working class," if only because no such gains and privileges exist, either in a relative sense (by comparison with the Western proletariat) or in an absolute sense.
Nonetheless, the fact that people are envisaging selling off the Czechoslovak economy and including it in the West European economic system raises a series of disturbing political and social questions.
On November 29, 1988, four independent groups in the German Democratic Republic — the Environmental Library, the Democratic Socialists, Socialism from Below and The Votes Against — sent us a statement of solidarity with the victims of political persecution in Czechoslovakia. I identify totally with the conclusion of their statement, which I quote in full (see box).
This is a different sort of language from that of the HOS Manifesto: "We are for pluralism of various forms of ownership and decision-making and for conditions that will allow the different sectors of the economy and the enterprises [who in these "sectors" and "enterprises"? — Petr Uhl] to look for those forms that best correspond to their specific needs, which allow the best utilization of an enterprising spirit and which, consequently, lead to their prosperity," the HOS Manifesto says.
Misuse of the term "pluralism"
It should be said clearly that the word "pluralism" is being misused here. The HOS has, of course, the right to propose such pluralism, in the same way as others may propose, in the framework of a "pluralism of punishments," that beating be included among them. Or, in the framework of "pluralism in education," it could campaign for private schools for those who can pay their fees.
But opponents of beating, of religious schools or the exploitation of others' labor cannot be accused of a lack of democratic spirit, insofar as they do not want to elimi-
Petr Uhl (DR) 24 International Viewpoint #160 • April 3, 1989 nate debate on these questions. Nor can the problem be overcome by arguing that the present penal, educational and economic systems are in such a state (here it is possible to describe factually the horrors of the prisons, schools and factories) that the measures proposed would represent a marked improvement. Rejecting enterprise based on exploitation
Having said that, there is always a possibility for seeking other forms of improvement. I would like today and for the future to convince my fellow citizens that the pluralism of forms of ownership should be more limited, for example, than that of opinions. (Even there, to a certain extent, it is necessary to restrict the propagation of racist and xenophobic views or advocacy and encouragement of terror, brutality and so on).
From the political standpoint, this is of course a matter of choice. For example, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, whose membership is by no means limited to socialists, has taken the following position on this question: "It rejects all social formations and organizations based on a monopoly, on the dependence of citizens and of the people, on their oppression and exploitation, whether this is in the name of private capital or the totalitarian state."
Not only socialist convictions but the conception of human rights that is propagated everywhere today can provide the motivation for rejecting enterprise based on the exploiting other people's labor (that is, when the workers do not participate in decisions concerning their work, the product of this work and the conditions on the job, but only sell their labor to employers, which is the case for the overwhelming majority of working people now).
If the right of free enterprise is not directly stipulated by the international agreements on human rights, it is nonetheless possible to deduce it from Article 17 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is necessary, however, to proceed from the principle that the exercise of a right is accompanied by legally imposed limitations that are indispensable, among other things, to protect the rights of others.
Of course, in an economy of scarcity, based on monetary and market relations, all economic activity treads on the rights of someone else, since underlying the principle of competition on which such an economy is founded is economic warfare, conflict of interests. Unrealistic ideas about jumping over this state of affairs into an egalitarian society have long been abandoned by socialists. They now take account of the violations of the rights of others that occur in the economic mechanism where there is a re-establishment (or more exactly, a modification) of capitalist economic relations. And they try at the same time to set up socio-economic structures and institutions in which the economic interests of the associated producers (enterprises) can coincide, and where their conflicts can be resolved by compromises that can also satisfy society as a whole. That is the task of economic and social self-management in which everyone can participate.
Free enterprise must be limited by law
However, what socialists can never give up is their opposition to the principle of employer/employee relations in its legal aspect (the right to work), as we know it in its entirety from the capitalist economy or from the situation of ordinary employees in Czechoslovakia today. In fact, the right of free enterprise (a right included the model proposed by the HOS) should not be based on the utilization of others' labor.
Violation of the employees' (hypothetical) rights of free enterprise in order to favor those of employers is so marked that it is essential to limit this right by law to individuals or to family businesses (under public supervision).
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Statement of the
East German Independent Movements
THESE repressive measures demonstrate the depth of the crisis afflicting the bureaucratic leaders of both our countries. They reject public discussion of the necessary democratic and economic political reforms.
They avoid facing up to real history. They refuse to give an accounting to the workers.
Instead of that, the bureaucracy is taking refuge in escalating repression at home, while abroad it is trying to plug into the mechanisms of the imperialist market, hoping in this way to go in the direction of the interests of capitalism, which is trying to penetrate into new countries with low wages, outlets for goods, raw materials resources and promises of profit.
They also go in the direction of the interests of the bureaucracy, which is trying to maintain its material privileges and role at the least as manager of an economy henceforth directed in the framework of new production relations, market relations.
However, this can only mean a sharp decline in the living standard in our gains. We do not see any solution in the restoration of the capitalist economic mechanisms, in which wealth for some always means poverty and oppression for others. Moreover, the high living standard in the West is made possible to a large extent by the poverty of the third world.
The economic progress of the country and getting the benefit of an increased effort by the workers to achieve such progress cannot be accomplished with a government of apparatchiks and those co-opted by the apparatus. It can only ers themselves, on condition that democratic rights are fully assured. Some circles in the East and West are coming closer and closer in their attempt to maintain their privileges of power.
This is why only one road remains for us -deepening our mutual relations and international solidarity with all those who are struggling for their rights and against the repressive apparatuses in their countries, whether in Gdansk, Reinhausen or South Africa, who are fighting for international democratic socialism and the right of resolve its economic difficulties. These attempts countries, inflation and the selling out of social political rule of the work-
8880 peoples to self- determination.
economy — especially in the spheres of small production, commerce and so on, individual and family cottage industry, alongside cooperatives where it is possible to assure democratic management of labor - will be a sufficient framework for those who want to start businesses with their own labor. The HOS's postulation that "the full re-establishment of private enterprise is inevitable in the areas of commerce, cottage industry, small- and medium-sized enterprises, a section of agriculture and in the cultural domain" (not just in a part of culture but in culture as a whole) is one of the most important phrases in the Manifesto.
A liberal democratic platform
It shows clearly the direction that HOS wants to take. By the way, what could the demand for a total commercialization of culture mean exactly? If that were achieved, it would be a world first, a sort of Pol Pot Cambodia in reverse, because there is no country in the world — fortunately — where culture depends exclusively on private enterprise.
However, the last sentence of the section of the Manifesto entitled "Roads to Economic Prosperity" frankly took my breath away: "The Czechoslovak economy should be integrated naturally in the world economy, founded on an international division of labor beneficial for all." A friend explained to me that I should read this as "in a world economy that should be founded on an international division of labor beneficial to all." 4
But, if that is what the authors had wanted to say, they would certainly have done so. I read what is there in print. Throughout the Manifesto, there is of course not a word on the North-South problem, on the exploitation and plundering of the third world, in which, by the way, Czechoslovakia also participates through world prices, even if to a lesser extent because of its shortage of capital. HOS, apparently, would like to increase the Czech share of this booty. There is not a mention either of the economic inequalities within the "first world," either between the different countries or within individual countries. What more need I say?
One might observe that this is a liberal democratic platform close to that of the West German Liberal Party (the FD)) or the English liberals. It is a platform clearly demarcated from any element of socialism, except perhaps the demand for self-management in the big enterprises (the small and middle ones are supposed to go to the private sector). It is a platform of opening toward the right, toward neoconservatism.
It was certainly because of them, the neoconservatives, that the fine words about trade-union pluralism were not complemented by the quite simple demand for the right to strike, even if the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights introduces this right in the framework of the laws of the individual countries. The right to strike might well upset the functioning of the small- and medium-sized private enterprises. This is no oversight. I know that when the document was being drawn up, there was a proposal for including the right to strike in the Manifesto.
The proposal for widening the responsiis to be elected by universal direct suffrage, also comes from the conceptual stock in trade of the right.
Shutting their eyes to totalitarian danger
Taking into consideration only representative (indirect) democracies, you have in general a choice between two systems — the presidential system as we know it in the United States and in many Latin American countries (and in Europe to a lesser extent in France) and a system where the president (or the monarch) has only a symbolic function, as is the case in West Germany, the Scandinavian or Benelux countries, and so on. Governing through presidential decisions (decrees) resembles the idea of a Fuehrer, and conceals a totalitarian danger to which the neo-conservatives willingly shut their eyes.
Another concession to the neoconservatives is that the Manifesto does not come out against the death penalty, although Czechoslovakia is one of the last European countries where this legal reform still is still on the agenda at the end of the twentieth century. The International Pact on Civic and Political Rights, however, provides a good basis for a struggle against the death penalty. 4. This formulation is different from that of the document we republish in this issue, which says "based on the intemational division of labor, which generally has a stimulating effect." Maybe this is an amendment by HOS, which, while attenuating the sentence with which Petr Uhl polemicizes, does not modify the positive judgment of this economy and therefore does not inval- 25 idate Petr Uhl's argument.
April 3, 1989 • #159 International Viewpoint be achieved with the
The stagnant sectors of the Czechoslovak bilities of the president of the republic, who
CZECHOSLOVAKIA Some details illustrate well the authors' lack of competence. For example, there is a demand for a law not only on elections but also on political organizations (including parties) that would make it possible to "concretize the means by which different kinds of civic representatives could submit themselves to the verdict of the electorate and participate in the management of public affairs." (Note that soliciting the approval of the electorate comes before managing public affairs.)
Question of laws regulating political parties
In the legal framework, post-war Czechoslovakia has inherited the conception of political parties that existed between the wars, and which was borrowed from France after World War I. That is, political parties exist and operate, and no law (except a possible ban) places any constraints on them or limits them or concretizes anything. What is not prohibited is allowed. Even in the USSR, today people are beginning to understand this. This is a very simple view. Political parties are a natural phenomenon, and the less they are regulated, the better it will be.
The present situation, it is true, is a bit complicated by the National Front law that dates back to the fall of 1968. But calling in such a way for a law on political parties (l am not talking about an electoral law) reflects a misunderstanding of the problem. As far as I am concerned, I recommended that there be rules in the constitution preventing political parties — in the form of a one-party monopoly or coalitions - from concentrating all the political power in the society into their hands, or rather into the hands of the leadership of one or more parties, even if freedom of expression, of press and so on were assured and where the government would be subordinate to parliament (where such a party or coalition would have the majority).
Other than this, I would not want to restrict the activities of political parties by any law. I even think that-outside of charitable works and fairs to which they want to relegate the Children of Bohemia - parties could play an essential and prominent role by presenting various proposals to the society as a whole. They can and must become the organizers and leaders of political life. This is, of course, without seeking any exclusiveness or even predominance. In no case must they monopolize power, because then we would be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Political power should be "diluted" as much as possible among the population, and if, for many reasons, that is not possible today, we should nonetheless think about a model of society going in the direction of a progressive dilution of power.
Bourgeois parliamentarianism of the type 26 vails, does not permit this. To the contrary. • in which the "rule of political parties" preInternational Viewpoint #160 • April 3, 1989 it leads to indifference, to apathy, to manipulation by the specialists and the politicians, and therefore to political stagnation followed by cultural, moral and social stagnation.
I find it a bit peculiar for people to demand that a lawyer (in criminal cases) have the same rights before the court as the Ministry of the Interior. Even though it often (but not always) happens that practice does not correspond to the principles of the law, defense lawyers today have more rights than the Ministry of the Interior. For example, the attorney general is obliged to collect evidence pointing to the innocence of the accused or diminishing their guilt, while defense lawyers in principle are forbidden to present evidence incriminating their clients who have not yet been found guilty.
Lawyers can defend their clients by all means (even by lying, and naturally by remaining silent), although prosecutors do not have the right to do this. Defense lawyers also get perfectly justified advantages from the order of pleas, in which they get the last word, from the right to read testimony against their clients before it is presented to the court and so on.
The demand for equal rights for defense lawyers and the prosecution reflects a certain striving for "privatization" of trials, in which two equal partners — the state and the accused, represented by a lawyer — appeal to an impartial and independent judge (or a court, a jury) to decide the issue. I think that would be a step backward.
### Ignorance of current criminal law
What is more, while it is a good thing to aim for greater independence of judges, the result will never be perfect (even if it is possible to achieve a much greater degree of independence than exists today), because judges do not live in a void but in a society divided into classes.
If today judges express the "class" interests of the bureaucracy, they will also express tomorrow, if to a markedly lesser degree, the interests of the leading social groups (for example, the managers of the big enterprises and the owners of small and middling enterprises, if things evolve according to HOS's proposal — let us hope this is not the case).
The demand for creating civil courts and transferring a part of the cases now handled by state prosecutors to them - limiting the function of the district attorneys representing the state in criminal cases — also reflects ignorance of the present rules of criminal law and the position to the prosecution. The authors of the Manifesto probably want to take general supervision of the operation of the legal system away from the attorney general.
I would agree with taking this function away from the state bodies (the prosecutors) and that it be taken over by newly constituted social institutions (such as the VONS [The Committee to Defend the Unjustly Persecuted] and ISO [Initiative Group for Social Self-Defense]). But this is not in the Manifesto. It is not stated either who will replace the prosecutors' offices in pre-trial imprisonment, supervision of the prisons and correctional educational institutions and so on; or who will have the right to bring appeals to the Supreme Court in cases of disregard of the law (in criminal cases or others). It is not explained how the supervision of the prosecutors' offices is to be replaced in civil law litigations and so on. Someone has just written something without bothering to reread the law on the function of the prosecutors' offices. And, nonetheless, the Manifesto has been signed by at least three jurists. HOS is clearly demarcated from genuine democracy
I cannot rid myself of the impression that with the emergence of the HOS, I have been swindled. The Manifesto is couched in the terms of a basic document for a general democratic platform on which all can find a place if, over and above their own democratic ideas, they agree to discuss other ideas that might, from their point of view, be less democratic.
With its postulates, HOS is clearly demarcated from genuine democracy, which follows from the creation of material and morale conditions for the fullest development of every individual and thereby of the society as a whole. Such genuine democracy tends toward democratic principles in production, whose objectives are the ending of exploitation and the reduction of manipulation, the progressive transformation of economic objects into economic subjects. It stresses the free association of producers as a precondition for the democratic economic development of the human community. It struggles, at least in the long term, for the liberation of human beings, for the replacement of the power of human beings over other human beings by the power of human beings over things. Instead of all this, HOS offers us easy solutions, apparently acceptable and tested ones, borrowed from the bourgeois world - and, what is more, without the slightest criticism or modification.
In the circumstances, HOS's claim to coordinate all independent democratic political activities, a claim that seems to flow directly from the preamble of the Manifesto, has a totalitarian character. I hope that independent democratic thought will develop in Czechoslovakia also outside HOS. Many indications give us grounds for thinking that this is already the case. * 5. An organization manipulated by the CP, to which all political, trade-union, cultural and other associations and organizations are obliged to affiliate.