From The Militant, Vol. 42, No. 34, 15 September 1978, p. 31.
Transcribed: Duncan Chapel.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Earlier this year Ernest Mandel, an internationally prominent Marxist economist and a leader of the world Trotskyist movement, spoke in New York. He was asked about recent developments in the struggle for workers democracy in Eastern Europe. His reply follows:
In these countries today, there is a growing dissatisfaction with all the most oppressive signs of bureaucratic dictatorship – not only among intellectuals, but also among sectors of the working class, oppressed national minorities, youth, and women.
I will give three examples:
The first – and by far the most modest – is the birth of a very small, independent Trade Union Association in the Soviet Union. This is a purely working-class phenomenon. All of its members are industrial and service workers, wage earners. They advance very modest and moderate demands, but one of these is absolutely explosive under current Soviet conditions: the demand for an independent trade union controlled by the workers themselves.
This group is small – no more than 150 or 200 people. But the fact that they have spoken out, signed a declaration, and issued a call to the international labor movement for support is of enormous historical importance. Some of their leaders have already been thrown into mental asylums and subjected to the same inhuman repression the bureaucracy has used again and again against any opposition.
We should not have illusions about an immediate mass breakthrough from this group. But as the first form of purely proletarian opposition arising in the Soviet Union, it merits our support. We must do everything possible to make their case known to the global working class. We must confront Soviet and East European bureaucrats wherever they go with this simple, elementary demand:
The second breakthrough – more significant than the first – is the emergence of semi-legal opposition activity in at least two Eastern European workers’ states: Poland and Czechoslovakia.
In these countries, there are now united-front opposition groupings that include revolutionary Marxists, Social Democrats, liberal bourgeois, conservatives, and left-wing Catholics. They are united by a common goal: democratic rights for all citizens. They are not fighting to overthrow the government by force, to reintroduce capitalism, or to start a civil war – only for the basic democratic right not to be imprisoned for expressing one’s thoughts.
I believe revolutionary Marxists in these countries are absolutely right to participate in this movement. History – confirmed by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Czechoslovak movement of 1968 – shows that when such movements succeed, the working class benefits far more than any pro-capitalist minority.
We can be proud that some individuals associated with the world Trotskyist movement have taken the initiative in building these movements. It shows great political insight – knowing how to link the common struggle for democratic freedoms with a firm defense of Marxism, socialism, communism, and the economic foundations of the new society already present in these countries.
The third important development – so far limited to Poland – is that a significant sector of the working class, as a class, has entered the struggle against bureaucracy.
The Polish working class, beginning with the major strikes in the Baltic ports in 1970, has mobilized in the tens and even hundreds of thousands to fight for just class demands. They have scored important victories – not only economically, but politically as well.
They fought for and won the release of jailed strikers, and for the reinstatement of fired workers – successfully in many, though not all, cases.
If you take these three developments together, you can say:
“We are not yet on the eve of a victorious political revolution. But something is changing. This is a real movement – not just wishful thinking or hope for a distant future.”
And that change brings tremendous responsibility – not only for revolutionary Marxists within those countries, but for those around the world.
Last updated on 16 June 2025