Georgian websites were defaced with the image of Mikheil Saakashvili appearing in a collage that juxtaposed him with pictures of Adolf Hitler, evoking the grand-daddy of all arguments: the Nazi comparison. What the cyber warriors, whether Kremlin backed or not, did on the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website is a telling sign of the maturity of Russian information war. Whilst the 58th Army steam-rolled the Georgian army, it was the latter who managed to win this war.

In the immediate conflict that started on August 7 this year, it was the Georgians who fired the first salvos – and that’s what they were. A single Ossetian shot did not set this off, as the overwhelming Georgian response showed. Whatever the true number of casualties in Tskinvali is, it is unquestionable that any force that uses rocket artillery systems such as “GRAD”, a less than precise weapon designed to turn large areas full of unarmoured targets into mince, on a civilian location is one step closer to being branded a villain and an aggressor by that every ephemeral “international community”.

But as soon as the Russian bear rolled into Ossetia and then Georgia proper it was clear who the villain was. The quick response should not be seen as a sinister movie – this war came to a surprise to the West because no-one pays that close attention to this region, and over the past few months the Kremlin surely was aware of what was about to happen at a point in the near future. Yet, the operations and also the reports in the media on all sides shows what the realities of modern warfare are.

Mr Saakashvili gave his speeches in front of EU flags, although the country is not even a candidate member yet. It was obvious to whom the Georgian leader was appealing as soon as the first bear paw fell on his face. He was in an almost win-win situation – thousands of Georgians went out on the streets of Tbilisi wrapped in national flags in support of their leader and the armed forces that were fighting for the territorial integrity of their nation. As soon as Russian bombs fell nearby nationalistic fervour was boosted – Georgians were now the victims. And they certainly were in the West’s eyes – not least when CNN uses footage of burning buildings in Tskinvali to sell us Georgian suffering in Gori. The misinformation and one-sidedness took enormous strides in this conflict.

Georgia was helped by the very fact that most Western journalists were stationed on their territory and that the Russians not only inadvertently killed media members but also completely shut the Western cameras out of the regions under their control. This didn’t help the inherent Russian disadvantage – that it was Russian. After the chaos of the nineties any show of force, especially a fairly competent one such as this, would be seen as a blast from the past, a Soviet-style takeover. Something that Saakashvili tapped into with his evocations of Budapest in 1956 and Afghanistan in 1979.

Furthermore, the hypocrisy and clever trickery of Moscow didn’t help. Defending Serbia’s territorial integrity one day, telling us to forget about such a thing in Georgia the next – surely not a way to win over international support (despite the fact that the hypocrisy ran both ways – isolated Serbia had no right to defend Kosovo, but friendly, NATO-armed Georgia has a right to Abkhazia and South Ossetia). The handing out of Russian passports to these citizens also gave Moscow a free hand in the region and whatever the true reason behind that, Georgia has successfully managed to spin it into a Russian attempt to get a foothold in all its former territories.

The aim of this article is not to say who is right or wrong and whether the territorial integrity of Serbia or Georgia is inviolable or not. It is just an attempt to highlight how a small nation managed to turn a disastrous war it started into a public relations victory whilst a former superpower still has to learn to even try and soften its negative image in the West. To say that the Russian media was any better is of course, false. Even the most balanced articles the author has read on Russian websites usually end with a variation of “my country, right or wrong.” But it is true that here in what we consider the freer nations of the world, we still get misinformed when a major news channel can broadcast footage of one side dealing damage out and then attribute it to the other.

What will now happen in Georgia is hard to predict. If the West steps in to shore up the infrastructure that the Russian aviation destroyed and Georgian freezers are not empty this winter, the nationalistic fervour that Saakashvili managed to whip up can, may be, save him from a new Rose Revolution. With US statements to the effect of “we are all Georgians now” it seems that the superpower (which declared the Caucasus an area of American national interests) will definitely try and prop up its darling – a leader that looked like a child in line for a spanking just a week ago when he was raining rockets down on Ossetia.

But when Russian tanks are refusing to leave the area around Gori it is clear that what matters these days is how you spin everything. Politics, don’t we love them!

Buzzwords abound in the rhetoric of politicians and never more so than when the talk is of public sector reform. Of the current phrases spewing forth ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ are two of the favourites but whose choice and whose empowerment? And while MP’s try to frame these words as synonyms of ‘public benefit’, is choice always a good thing?

Health and education are the main areas where politicians see choice as the best way of improving services. Choosing where and what treatment to have and which school to send your children to are policies which both the Labour and Conservative parties are pursuing. This year’s Darzi review made patients’ rights the focus of change, proposing that patients’ views on the quality of care should have an impact on future funding, with bonuses for those GPs and hospitals providing the best services. Furthermore, the results of patient satisfaction should be published creating a form of NHS league table allowing patients to choose at which GP or hospital they wish to receive their treatment.

Parents are continually told that by being able to choose which school to send their children to they are getting a better deal from state education. Government ministers eulogise choice as the best way to match a child’s educational needs to the school that is best placed to cater for them.

Choice as prescribed by this government, however, leads to centralisation, destruction of communities, privatisation and the marginalisation of the poorest from the process. Their legacy of choice will be less choice.

Polyclinics are a perfect example of this. Patients are told that these super-surgeries will lead to more choice but one key choice will be removed: the choice to go to your community hospital or GP. Elderly patients, who frequently need to seek medical advice, will see their relationships with their doctor destroyed and will be forced to travel impractical distances.

NHS league tables, while appearing to increase patient choice, are in reality just another way of imposing more targets. Moreover, if patients do utilize them to make decisions about which hospital to go to they will find that choice is removed. A hospital which scores poorly in the table will receive less funding, therefore their results will get worse and fewer patients will choose them. As this spiral continues services will have to be closed down as they will no longer be efficient and then you no longer have a choice.

Choices can also be confusing, stressful and in the end you can always make the wrong one. When it comes to medicine my knowledge is possibly not as comprehensive as that of a qualified and experienced practitioner. I would, therefore, rather know that all hospitals and surgeries are clean and friendly and then allow my GP to refer me to the nearest one where I could receive the required treatment.

The government's promise to give every parent a choice of secondary school for their child was proved a myth again this year with figures showing the number of pupils getting their first choice of school has dropped. As parents understandably clamor to get their children in to schools high up the league tables the idea of going to your local school is becoming a nostalgic notion, with over half of children not going to their nearest school.
Commuting to school is detrimental to community development and the environment. Worse still any benefits of the current policy are going to the wealthiest. A report by Bristol University found that disadvantaged families miss out in the current system and even in the same postcodes poorer families end up at the lower-performing schools. Expanding the better performing schools may not be possible as “giving popular schools the freedom to expand does not mean they will do so. To the extent that a school's position in the league tables depends on the attainment of its intake, schools may be unwilling to increase and potentially to dilute the quality of their student body,” said Professor Burgess.
Whilst ‘good’ schools cream off the best pupils the rest are left with lower league table results and less people ‘choosing’ to go there. Some of the best teachers may leave and in worse case scenarios the school maybe closed. As with hospitals the choice is then removed. Furthermore, expanding the best schools and shrinking or closing the rest as suggested will result in huge institutions where education suffers. American researchers are leading the way in analysing the impacts of school size. Craig Howley, of Ohio University, and Robert Bickel, of Marshall University, looked at whether smaller schools could reduce the negative effects of poverty on student achievement. They found that the correlation between poverty and low achievement was ten times stronger in larger schools than in smaller ones. “Everyone knows that there is a strong association between social class and achievement and that this association works very much to the disadvantage of economically disadvantaged students,” Bickel told Education World. “The California research, however, had the virtue of demonstrating that this disadvantage was exaggerated as school size increased.”

One in seven pupils in England are now in a secondary school with over 1,500 students and the number of pupils in schools of over 2,000 has doubled since 1997. Promoting choice is driving these figures ever higher.
If you thought a change of government would bring about a change of direction then, like in most areas, the differences between Labour and the Conservatives are negligible. In a letter this week to local residents, Philip Dunne, Conservative MP for South Shropshire wrote: ‘We believe that the best way to enhance the power of patients is through choice. We will allow patients to choose, in consultation with their GP, where they get their secondary care. And we will ensure that money follows the patient so that hospitals and clinics and other care providers are paid according to the results they deliver for that patient.’ Once again, it seems, Labour equals Conservative and the public is left without an alternative.

When ministers speak of choice what they really mean is installing the practice of privatised competition in the public sector. Not even the most ardent free-market Tory would openly pursue a fully privatised health or education service; it would be electoral suicide. All politicians know this so instead they are doing it under the radar masked by the promise of choice.

Genuine, useful choice and universal empowerment are great things which should be strived for but do not confuse them with current government policy. Next time you get excited by the prospect of politicians offering you a choice think again as it’s not always a good thing.

On the evening of September 11 2001, in a speech delivered from the Oval Office, US President George W. Bush described the 9/11 attacks as “acts of mass murder ... intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat.”
He added that the US “will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them.”

The rest of the world is expected to soak up this tough talk and answer to the call of fighting a global war on terror. Bush tells us that we have the blunt choice of being either with him or against him. However, the situation can be a little different if the victim of terrorism is not the US, or one of its allies. It would seem that those committing acts of terror which do not swim against the tide of US foreign policy, or even give a helping hand in destabilising countries the US considers rogue states, are less likely to face justice.

Since 1959, almost 3,500 Cubans have died and more than 2,000 have been injured, as a result of terrorist attacks planned and perpetrated by right-wing paramilitary groups such as Alpha 66, F-4 Commandos, or CORU. These organisations, based in and around the city of Miami, Florida, have for decades been waging a war against Cuba, with the aim of destabilising the country’s economy and ultimately overthrowing its political system. Terror attacks carried out by members of these organisations have included the 1976 bombing of a plane belonging to the Cuban airline, Cubana, in mid-flight, causing the deaths of all 73 passengers. Bombs have also been planted in Havana in an attempt to damage Cuba’s tourism industry.

A lot of these groups were either set up, or have been supported, by individuals who fled Cuba after the 1959 revolution. Among these exiles were individuals who had enjoyed wealthy lifestyles under the US backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, at a time when the vast majority of the Cuban population lived in a state of poverty without access to either healthcare or education. Having lost their privileges after the revolution, they fled across the water to Miami and, together with the US government whose exploitation of Cuba’s natural resources also came to an end in 1959, have been plotting to bring back the good old days ever since.

Endeavouring to defend their citizens against these acts of terrorism, Cuban authorities recruited a group of Cubans to infiltrate the right-wing organisations and gather information about any impending attacks. The Cubans authorities shared the gathered information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the hope that action would be taken by the US authorities. They were left disappointed. Next, the Cubans provided the New York Times with the names and addresses of those involved in committing violent acts against Cuba. They even supplied information about the location of paramilitary training camps. However, the newspaper did not publish a word on the matter. Ironically, on September 12 1998, 10 members of the group were arrested by the FBI, while four fled to Cuba. Five of those arrested were pressurised into pleading guilty and received sentences of 3 ½ to 7 years. The remaining five of these fighters of terrorism maintained they were innocent. For doing so, they were to pay a heavy price. No action was taken against those responsible for perpetrating the attacks.

The five men, René González, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Gerardo Hernández, were repaid for their bravery with prison sentences of 15 years, 19 years, life plus 10 years, life plus 18 years and, two life terms plus 15 years, respectively. All five were tried with espionage as well as a mixture of other associated charges. These defenders of their homeland have become known as the Miami Five.

In November 2000, a seven month trial began. Even before the trial had started, each man had already spent 17 months in solitary confinement locked up for 23 hours a day in a cold and cramped cell. While solitary confinement is generally reserved for violent prisoners, none of the five men had broken any prison rules during their incarceration.

There was a virtual media blackout on the trial. Only the local Miami press covered the proceedings, while the mainstream media chose to, and to a great extent still does, shy away from covering the story of the Miami Five. The trial itself took place in the hostile atmosphere of Miami - in the den of those whom the Miami Five had tried to stop. On account of pressure from prominent and wealthy Cuban exiles, it was impossible for a fair trial to take place. Requests, made by the defence, to find an alternative venue for the trial were denied by the trial judge on five occasions. The five Cubans pleaded not guilty but were convicted on June 8 2001.

It was reported that members of the jury felt pressured into delivering a guilty verdict. They stated that both they and their licence plates had been filmed by a team from Television Marti, a well known anti-Castro organisation. Despite the fact that the Miami Five neither harmed anyone nor possessed any weapons while carrying out their mission, they were accused of seeking, in the words of Florida prosecutor Thomas Scott, “to strike at the very heart of our national security system and our very democratic process.” However, no credible evidence has ever come to light to indicate that the Miami Five posed a threat to the national security of the US. Even the chief prosecutor acknowledged that of the 20,000 pages of documents taken from the homes and computers of the Miami Five, none contained classified information about national defence.

Leonard Weinglass, the lead attorney of the Miami Five. He has stated that "It is part of the argument that the U.S. can do whatever it wishes to another country, but if that country dares to protect itself or tries to interfere with the process—such as the Miami Five trying to stop terrorist attacks against their homeland—then the US will deal with them most severely.” Unlike the US government’s knee-jerk response to 9/11, Cuba response was far more civilized and directed only at the terrorists themselves. Cuba has, as of yet, no plans to lead a ‘coalition of the willing’ on an attack upon Miami.

After 9/11, the Miami Five once again found themselves in solitary confinement. This time, the decision was taken by Attorney General John Ashcroft who made use of special powers that he had been granted after the bombing of the twin towers. Although, on this occasion, the Miami Five were to be held in solitary confinement for a year, an international outcry led to their release after 30 days. During this time, one of the five, Gerardo, was stripped naked and held in a windowless box, in case he tried to attempt suicide.

To add insult to injury, the families of the Miami Five have faced restrictions in visiting their relatives in prison. Two of the men’s wives, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, have on numerous occasions been denied visas to travel to the US to visit their husbands. They have not seen Rene and Gerardo now for eight and ten years, respectively. In one scenario, although Adriana was granted a visa to visit her husband in 2002, upon her arrival in the US she was detained, fingerprinted and questioned by the FBI. After eleven hours, Adriana was on her way back to Cuba, having been expelled from the US. On July 19 this year, Olga was denied an entry visa for the ninth time. Adriana's is still waiting to see if her ninth visa request will be approved by the US state department.

The unnecessarily callous behaviour of the US authorities breaches even the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted in 1955. Part 1, Section 37, states that ‘Prisoners shall be allowed under necessary supervision to communicate with their family and reputable friends at regular intervals, both by correspondence and by receiving visits’. Amnesty International has consistently condemned the treatment of the Miami Five and in May 2005 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions issued a report that concluded ‘the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality which is required in order to conclude on the observance of the standards of a fair trial, as defined in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States of America is a party’.

August 9 2005 saw a glimmer of hope for the Miami Five when, a panel of three judges overturned their convictions at the Court of Appeal. A new trial was ordered, one that would take place outside Miami. This decision was challenged by the US government and the case was put before a full panel of 12 judges. On August 9 2006, precisely one year later, the Court of Appeal’s decision to have a retrial was overturned by the panel, 10 votes to two. Most recently, in June of this year, a court in Atlanta upheld all five convictions. However, the court decided that the sentences of Fernando, Ramon and Antonio were disproportionate. The three men are currently awaiting re-sentencing.
During their time in prison, the Miami Five have gained the respect of prisoners and guards alike. Mr Weinglass has referred to this as the ‘Mandela effect’. Like Nelson Mandela, the five Cubans are political prisoners. They were unjustly imprisoned for daring to protect their fellow citizens from terrorists who have long acted with impunity on US soil. The case of the Miami Five is just one example of the double standards and vindictiveness of the US government, bowing to the pressure of a powerful Cuban-American lobby. (About 650,000 Cuban Americans, many of them possessing anti-Castro sentiments, reside in Miami-Dade County in the state of Florida. Florida is considered to be one of those key states that each presidential candidate needs to secure in order to win the race to the White House).

The Miami Five have another thing in common with Nelson Mandela. Just like the brave fighter of apartheid, particularly during the latter years of his imprisonment, the Miami Five enjoy widespread international support. Nearly 300 solidarity groups exist in 90 countries, all calling for the release of the five Cubans. For example, this year the US based National Committee to Free the Five paid to have billboards, calling for the release of the Miami Five, erected in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. In Canada, the 500,000 strong Canadian Federation of Students passed a motion calling for the immediate end to the imprisonment of the Five. June 5 to 7 saw a wave of demonstrations taking place from Scotland to Peru.

In the UK, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign has for years been at the forefront of the campaign to free the Miami Five. A number of large trade unions, lead by Unite, have thrown their weight behind the campaign, as have MPs from all three major parties.

In spite of the possibility that three of the Cubans may have their sentences reduced, the fact is that the five fighters of terrorism remain political prisoners. (All are held in separate prisons). They stand the best chance of release once sufficient international pressure has been mounted on US authorities to embarrass them into overturning the convictions. With the 10th anniversary of their imprisonment approaching, there is much that can be done, here in the UK, to support the campaign to free the Miami Five.

1. Write a letter to the Miami Five to show your support and solidarity. The addresses can be found on this website http://www.amicustheunion.org/default.aspx?page=8764


2. Sign a petition calling for visiting rights to be granted to the families of the Five by e-mailing your name and address to campaigns@cuba-solidarity.org.uk


3. Attend the vigil outside the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London (Bond St tube) on Tuesday 7th October from 6-7:30pm. Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez will be speaking at the event. Bring your friends and family.


4. Encourage your Student Union or Trade Union to organise events that publicise the plight of the Miami Five. Get in contact with your local Cuba Solidarity Campaign branch to see how they can help by e-mailing office@cuba-solidarity.org.uk or calling (0)20 8800 0155.


5. Donate towards an advertising campaign. Adverts in the national press will have a big impact in raising support for the campaign to free the Miami Five. Cubs Solidarity aims to raise £15000 for this purpose. You can donate by calling (0)20 8800 0155 or send a cheque to
6. 
   

Photo by Tony & Yo, used under the creative commons licence from Flickr.

It’s a novel way to commit suicide. Just as Russia demonstrates what happens to former minions which annoy it, Poland agrees to host a US missile defence base. The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by kindly offering to turn the country into a parking lot. This proves that the missile defence system is necessary after all: it will stop the missiles Russia will now aim at Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK in response to, er, their involvement in the missile defence system.

The US government insists that the interceptors, which will be stationed on the Baltic coast, have nothing to do with Russia: their purpose is to defend Europe and the United States against the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran and North Korea don’t possess. This is why they are being placed in Poland, which, as every geography student in Texas knows, shares a border with both rogue states.

They permit us to look forward to a glowing future, in which missile defence, according to the Pentagon, will “protect our homeland … and our friends and allies from ballistic missile attack”(1); as long as the Russians wait until it’s working before they nuke us. The good news is that, at the current rate of progress, reliable missile defence is only 50 years away. The bad news is that it has been 50 years away for the past six decades.

The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn’t know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency: the word “success” features more often than any other noun(2). It is true that the programme has managed to hit two out of the five missiles fired over the past five years during tests of its main component, the Ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense (GMD) system(3). But sadly these tests bear no relation to anything resembling a real nuclear strike.

All the trials run so far – successful or otherwise – have been rigged. The target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins. Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn’t have a hope in hell of knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its GMD system.

This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state could fool the system(4). For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch a host of dummies, with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable. You can reduce a missile’s susceptability to laser penetration by 90% by painting it white(5). This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete. Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise missiles, against which the system is useless.

Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of counter-measures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the United States.

The US has spent between $120bn and $150bn on the programme since Ronald Reagan relaunched it in 1983(6). Under Bush the costs have accelerated. The Pentagon has requested $62bn for the next five year tranche, which means that the total cost between 2003 and 2013 will be $110bn. Yet there are no clear criteria for success. As a recent paper in the journal Defense and Security Analysis shows, the Pentagon invented a new funding system in order to allow the missile defence programme to evade the government’s usual accounting standards(7). It’s called spiral development, which is quite appropriate, because it ensures that the costs spiral out of control.

Spiral development means, in the words of a Pentagon directive, that “the end-state requirements
are not known at program initiation”(8). Instead the system is allowed to develop however officials think fit. The result is that no one has the faintest idea what it is supposed to achieve or whether it has achieved it. There are no fixed dates, no fixed costs for any component of the programme, no penalties for slippage or failure, no standards of any kind against which the system can be judged. And this monstrous scheme is still incapable of achieving what a few hundred dollars’ worth of diplomacy could do in an afternoon.

So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I’ll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. The programme persists because it doesn’t work.

US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries which give millions in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding which won’t run out however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.

To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations which have no means of nuking it and ignore the likely responses of those which do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week, who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance their power and demand bigger budgets. Poor old Poland, like the Czech Republic and the UK, gets strong-armed into becoming America’s groundbait.

If we seek to understand US foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

This article first appeared in the Guardian 18th August 2008. For full reference links and other comments from George Monbiot please visit [www.monbiot.com]

Picture copyright Soldier's Media Center used under the Creative Commons licence from Flickr.

The recent intervention by David Miliband and the resulting manoeuvrings reveals much about the febrile state within the Labour Party. Beyond the Blairite-Brownite soap opera, which goes on even after one of the protagonists leaves the stage - rather like Ernie Wise continuing to define himself after poor Eric passed away - this is an existential crisis for Labour.

What does Labour now stand for when ‘economic growth and social justice' has become so hollow, and ‘for the many, not the few' sounds meaningless? Who does Labour give voice to and who does it claim to represent?

The Miliband intervention invoked ‘change' and radicalism', but there was a sense of continuity and conservatism in his message. New Labour have got used to an Orwellian world of words, where ‘community empowerment', ‘double devolution' and ‘localism' are used as attractive window dressing, while at the same time, the remorseless centralism and march of the market agenda on public services goes on.

For those New Labour supporters who doubt this account lets examine the record in a few areas. First, the post office network. Under New Labour, the government has been waging a slow, deliberate war against the post office network, first, dividing it from Royal Mail, and then stripping the offices of their profitable services.

The government's intention for all its rhetoric of ‘localism' is to reduce the network from 14,000 offices two years ago to 7,500: a brutal cut of nearly half the post offices in the country reminiscent of Beeching in scale and style. This is a once in a generation change and attack on the vibrancy and sustainability of communities up and down the land by the narrow mindset of New Labour accountancy.

Second, where are the senior New Labour voices denouncing the James Purnells and Andy Burnhams of this world as they propose considering top-slicing the BBC licence fee, which can only give sustenance to the forces of commercialism (ala Murdoch and company?).

Third, who in New Labour dares to disown the determinist view of the world offered by the recent government commissioned Julius report, which following Nicholas Ridley, argues that you can outsource all government actions apart from the commissioners? A party venturing into such terrain is one which no longer understands its historic mission of protecting people from the power of the market.

Then there is the issue of inequality and what to do about it. A recent revealing set of focus groups with a select group of the new rich in London's legal and financial worlds showed that they have no idea what life is like in modern Britain. These astute, finely-tuned minds thought the starting point for being in the top 10% of incomes in the UK was £162,000 when it is £39,825, and believed poverty wages began at £22,000, just under the median salary in the country.

What do the Blarities and the Brownites have to say about this? Phil Collins and Richard Reeves, two uber-Blairite insiders, got it partly right when they railed against the ‘poisonous' long shadow of Fabian centralism which has like an Upas tree killed off Labour's older decentralist traditions.

However, their remedy is even more ‘poisonous' than Fabianism: an anti-political, dogmatic and narrow view of politics and economy, one which is bereft of any idea of political economy, and filled with a notion of ‘change' shaped by management consultants and buzzwords.

Labour desperately needs to change how it thinks of the world, and see the reality of the world as it is outside of the Westminster village. To do so it needs to weave a path between the pitfalls of Fabianism and the labourist impulse, and the zealousness of the new conservatives.

The new terrain it needs to explore is not the Blairite time warp shaped by the battles of the 1980s, or the Brownite world of fear and caution, but can be found in the discussions within ‘Compass', and within the politics of the new devolved bodies in Scotland and Wales, about what being progressive really means.

This can be seen in the discussion between Neal Lawson and Robert Philpot of the loyalist ‘Progress', where the former wants to address inequality, tackle the super-rich and think of the public good, and the latter is stuck in the language of the last decade, unwilling to move on. If we are being honest there are still numerous omissions and silences in the progressive agenda being outlined by ‘Compass', along with a wider crisis of confidence about what a progressive politics entails thirty years after the Thatcherite counter-revolution began.

There are in my opinion only two really influential books written on Labour in the last fifty years. The first is Henry Drucker's ‘Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party' which argues that Labour's culture mattered as much as its policies. Drucker argued that examining the ethos of Labour's culture was the key to understanding the conservative, ‘us' versus ‘them' attitude in the party.

Ralph Miliband's ‘Parliamentary Socialism' is the second, which made the case that Labour throughout its history has always put its allegiance to parliamentarianism before socialism. Ralph, of course was David and Ed Miliband's father, and it seems to be a book neither son has read, for if they had they would understand a bit more the predicament they are in.

Writing in the early 1960s, Ralph dismissed talk of Labour's problems as being of recent import. ‘Like Hobbes and fear', he wrote ‘crisis and the Labour Party have always been twins - Siamese twins.'

He then went on to outline his disappointment at Labour's role as ‘a party of modest social reform in a capitalist system.' How times change and don't change.

Ralph Miliband had heady hopes of a different social order long banquished from the mainstream left and that vacuum has left a lingering sense of loss and lack of direction in Labour and politics generally.

In many respects, what David and Ralph Miliband show is that we are back to the political style of Old Labour pre-Blair, of crisis, plot and disunity, but in the setting of a world old Ralph could only have dreamt of in a nightmare: of a Labour Party institutionalised as the party of alternative business. Indeed, it is worse than that for New Labour have bought into a caricature of what business is and does informed by accountancy firms and consultancies.

It is a situation his eldest son David seems to want to do nothing about beyond challenging the captain of the ship rather than its course.

This article first appeared on Compass.

In January 2007, Hugo Chavez announced his "Bolivarian Socialism" project for the 21st century and explained its dependence on five revolutionary "motors:"

• constitutional reform;
• "Bolivarian popular education;"
• redefining and changing the organs of state power;
• an explosion of communal power at the grass roots; and
• the "mother (Enabling) Law to make all other "motors" possible.

Under Venezuelan constitutional law, Enabling Law power is legal but limited. So despite media and opposition claims, it doesn't grant Chavez sweeping "rule by decree" authority or make him a "dictator." When the National Assembly (AN) passed the law (unanimously), even US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas Shannon, admitted that it's "valid under (Venezuela's) Constitution. As with any tool of democracy, it depends how it is used." Chavez had it two other times and used it responsibly by any standard or measure. He's also the fifth Venezuelan president to request it under the 1961 Constitution and the 1999 one under Article 203. It runs for 18 months and then expires.

The current one ended July 31 and empowered Chavez in the following areas, all related to the country's internal functioning:

• to transform sclerotic bureaucratic state institutions to make them more efficient, transparent, honest and allow for greater citizen participation;
• reform the civil service and eliminate entrenched corruption - still, a major problem;
• advance the "ideals of social justice and economic independence" through a new social and economic model based on equitable national wealth distribution in areas of health care, education and social security;
• modernize Venezuela's financial sectors, including banking, insurance and tax policy;
• upgrade science and technology areas to benefit all sectors of society;
• reform public health, prisons, identification, migration regulations, and the judiciary to improve citizen and judicial security;
• upgrade the nation's infrastructure, transport and all public services;
• improve and enhance the nation's military;
• establish territorial organization norms in states and communities relating to voting and constituency size; and
• permit greater state control over the nation's vital energy sector.

In all the above areas, Chavez was given limited constitutional power for 18 months - over only National Assembly (AN) authorized areas. He had no power to harm civil or human rights, weaken or remove his opponents, expropriate private property, or interfere with the legal right of citizens to rescind all laws by popular referendum if 10% or more of registered voters request it and only 5% for laws passed by decree. In addition, the AN may change or rescind decree-passed laws by majority vote. Unlike in America, checks and balances work in Venezuela - but not according to the hostile US media. More on that below.

On the Enabling Law's final day, Chavez enacted 26 new laws by decree - related to the armed forces, public administration, social security, agriculture, tourism, reform of the National Banking and Finance Law, and to nationalize the Bank of Venezuela. It was privately owned until 1994 at which time the government became its majority stockholder. Then in 1996 it was again privatized when Banco Santander, Spain's largest bank, bought a controlling interest.

The company wanted to sell it and asked permission as required by law. Chavez responded by reclaiming the bank's resources for all Venezuelans. He assured Santander it will receive fair compensation as was done for previous nationalizations and told bank depositors not to worry: "You will be more than guaranteed in the hands of the Republic (and) You know the banking sector of Venezuela is one of the most solid in the world." Perhaps good as gold compared to shaky US banks in serious trouble.

Chavez announced that the new laws will enhance the "great public sector," long "subordinated" in the past, to prioritize social areas in line with national and international standards. But opposition leaders weren't convinced. They called the measures "autocratic" and "non-consultative" and urged their followers to respond in the upcoming November regional and local elections.

Despite opposition claims, all the new measures comply fully with constitutional provisions and are entirely legal. Many were proposed early in the Enabling Law period, debated for over a year in the AN, and 16 additional laws weren't enacted because they're still under consideration. In all, 67 new laws were decreed from January 2007 through July 2008 covering a broad range of areas, including:

• monetary conversion;
• steel, cement, oil, banking, and electricity sector nationalizations;
• the new Law on Intelligence and Counterintelligence - now revoked and to be rewritten to eliminate potentially controversial provisions;
• promoting small and mid-sized industries as well as new types of state and community-run enterprises;
• reorganizing the military;
• national finance institutions as well;
• reforming public administration laws; as well as measures on
• price controls, agricultural policy, and food security and sovereignty.

Staged Venezuelan Street Protests Erupt

In what's now common under Chavez, "Venezuelans protest(ed his) new socialist push," according to the AP, but it was hardly a resounding denunciation. In Caracas, at most 1000 turned out chanting "freedom," and "Riot police used tear gas as they blocked hundreds of Venezuelans protesting what they call new moves by President Chavez to concentrate his power." Their charges were baseless and ludicrous and cited "blacklists barring key opposition candidates from elections and socialist decrees destroying what's left of their democracy."

The so-called "blacklist" was, in fact, a Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) August 5 ruling barring 272 government and opposition candidates from running in the November elections because of corruption charges and convictions. The Court held that their ruling "is acceptable in accordance with the laws that are given for reasons of general interest, for the safety of others of society and for the common good, in accordance with the provisions of Articles 30 and 32.2 of the American Convention on Human Rights. This requirement is fully compatible with the provisions of Articles 19 and 156....of the National Constitution." The TSJ also affirmed the constitutionality of Article 105 regarding the Comptroller General's office because it assures defendants have full due process rights.

Comptroller Clodosbaldo Russian is legally empowered as Venezuela's top anti-corruption watchdog. He submitted a list of 368 names to the country's National Electoral Council (CNE) and asked that they be barred from running in November because they're being investigated for or were found guilty of corruption and misuse of public funds. CNE approved the list and asked the Supreme Court to rule on it. The Court then disqualified 272 of them.

The (2005-launched) UK-based Venezuela Information Centre (VIC) stands "in solidarity with the people of Venezuela." Its members include NGOs, academics, students, members of the media and trade unionists. It aims to provide "objective and accurate information about all trade union, social movement and political organisations in Venezuela," counteract distorted reporting, and "support the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their own future free from external intervention."

VIC's assessment of the Comptroller General's disqualification process was as follows:

• it was "conducted strictly on legal and administrative grounds;
• carried out as part of the constitutional and legal obligations of the Office of the Comptroller General;
• taken following" TSJ 2005 rulings;
• authorized under Venezuela's Organic Law of the Comptroller General's Office and Venezuelan Constitution; and
• those on the list were kept fully apprised throughout the process.

The Corporate Media Responds - Hostile As Always

In the lead was The New York Times and its on-the-scene reporter Simon Romero in an August 5 article headlined "New Decrees From Chavez Mirror Spurned Measures." Romero reported that Chavez "is using his decree powers to enact a set of 'socialist-inspired' measures that seem based on a package of constitutional changes" voters previously rejected. It sets the stage for new "confrontation between his government and the political opposition."

He quoted opposition publisher Teodoro Petkoff saying: "When the government acts, as it has now, without respecting the Constitution, and the word of the president is the law, then an act of tyranny is being committed." Romero seemed to agree.

He then objected to "a wave of takeovers of private companies," including nationalizing "a large Spanish-owned bank." He was unconcerned about "relatively minor" decrees but took aim at more far-reaching ones and some he called efforts to "formalize socialist-inspired policies on the margins of the formal economy, like a measure declaring barter a legitimate system of payment." Romero seems hopeful that "the coming regional elections have the potential to erode the president's power base," and we'll be hearing more from him in its run-up.

AP reporter Fabiola Sanchez criticized Chavez's "move(s) toward a social economy," plans "to set up neighborhood-based militias....state control over agriculture," new powers over the military, small business loans, and quoted critics saying laws were "pushed through" without "consult(ing) major business groups."

AFP reporter Carlos Diaz referred to "Chavez enact(ing aggressive) new laws with (an) iron fist increasing the state's power over the economy ahead of key regional elections." It's a resumption of his "drive to create a socialist state, significantly increase his power and resemble proposals included in a constitutional reform narrowly rejected by voters in a December referendum."

Even the Financial Times (FT) weighed in with Caracas reporter Benedict Mander headlining "Chavez accused of reviving old reforms" and citing government opponents "up in arms over a raft of decree laws they say replicate constitutional reforms" that voters rejected. He mentioned critics "warn(ing) that they'll "further scare off private investment," claimed they're "typical of Mr. Chavez's authoritarian streak (and will let him) expropriate private property without the need for the (AN's) approval." Mander also (on August 2) criticized the disqualification of opposition candidates and quoted Carter Center director of the Americas Programme, Jennifer McCoy, worrying about perceptions of clearing the way for government-backed candidates.

The Wall Street Journal was even more hostile in a Jose De Cordoba, Darcy Crowe article headlined "In Enacting Decrees, Chavez Makes New Power Grab." They called them "ambitious....decrees which formalize the creation of a popular militia and further consolidate state control over key areas of the economy such as agriculture and tourism." They referred to his "bypass(ing) Congress in making laws (and being) back on the offensive after suffering a humiliating defeat in December (that might have let him) stay in power for life."

They cited "accusations that Mr. Chavez is evading the will of the people" and quoted opposition figure Luis Miquilena saying "We are in the presence of a dictatorial government which has given a coup d'etat to the constitution. Here we have no constitution, no law and the president does exactly what he wants." It sounds like he's confusing Chavez with George Bush because he describes conditions under him accurately in stark contrast to Venezuelan democracy.

The Journal writers see things differently. They compare Chavez's government to Iran and take him to task for it. They also cite public opposition to the "Cuban Model," suggest he follows it, and quote Peter Hakim of the Inter-American Dialogue saying "Everything (he's doing) is related to the upcoming election, and it's hard to imagine he doesn't see this as important in his efforts to keep power."

Far and away the most outlandish and unfounded Journal diatribes show up in Mary O'Grady's columns. Her latest was on August 11 headlined "Chavez Sees Cuba as a Model" in which she states "The Venezuelan dictator acts more and more like Fidel" and lots more. Her accusations include "annihilat(ing)" his political competition, "put(ting) down all challengers to (his) power forcibly if necessary," transforming the country into "a centrally planned economy," using "his own version of the law," declaring opponents "guilty (of corruption) by fiat," "expanding (his) collection of political prisoners," and near excoriating Jimmy Carter and Senator Chris Dodd for calling "Chavez's Venezuela a democracy." According to O'Grady: "Get in the way of Mr. Chavez's caudillo aspirations at your peril."

These type comments aren't surprising from someone with her background: years at Wall Street as an options strategist for Advest, Inc., Thomas McKinnon Securities, and Merrill Lynch & Co. She also once worked at the hard-right Heritage Foundation before joining the Wall Street Journal in 1995 and becoming a senior editorial page writer in 1999 for her weekly America's column. It's long on the worst kind of agitprop and very short on reporting the truth.

No wonder then that neither O'Grady or other Chavez critics explain Venezuelan law or how TSJ rulings interpret it. Nor do they report how the Enabling Law works, that the nation's Constitution authorizes it, that four other presidents used it, that Chavez scrupulously complies with its provisions, and that the National Assembly (by majority vote) and Venezuelan people (by referendum) can override his decrees. How can they? It would expose their false accusations and discredit their entire argument that will heat up soon again in the run-up to November's state and local elections. Stay tuned.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

This article first appeared in Venezuela Analysis.

Forty years ago, on the night of August 20th-21st Russian and other Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia, thus putting an end to the ‘Prague Spring.’

“Lenin wake up, Brezhnev has gone mad.” This was one of the slogans chanted on the street of Prague 40 years ago. The upheavals in Czechoslovakia had begun with a stormy session of the Writers Union which passed a resolution supporting Soviet author Solzhenitsyn's protest against censorship.

This ferment amongst the intelligentsia rapidly spread to the students who demonstrated against power failures in their hostels. The demonstration was brutally attacked by the secret police, who wounded several of the students. The bureaucracy was so rattled that they tried to pacify the students by offering to pay the hospital bills of the injured demonstrators. The students' response was to demand that those responsible be punished and the press publish the facts. Student leaders warned that if the papers did not report the truth they would march to the factories and report the incident to the workers themselves.

The split in the bureaucracy, the fall of Novotny and the rise of Dubcek which followed these events cannot be explained solely by the actions of the writers and the students, but must be seen against the background of the developing crisis of the Czech economy.

Stalinist

The insanity of the various national Stalinist bureaucracies of Eastern Europe trying to build socialism in 'their own' countries led to each state attempting to construct every branch of industry 'independently,' without giving any consideration to the inevitable restrictions imposed by the old capitalist national boundaries.

Bureaucratic planning 'from above' and the concomitant inefficiency, corruption and mismanagement meant that the necessity of 'meeting the plan' led to the replacement of quality with quantity. Those consumer goods which were produced, could not be sold on the world market, while their price put them beyond the reach of Czech workers.

The Czech economy was grinding to a halt, clogged with bureaucracy. The need to rationalise the economy, and fear of the consequences among the Czech workers, led to a split at the top of the Czech bureaucracy, and the emergence of the Dubcek wing of 'reformers.' In the West Dubcek and co. were lauded by the media, but what and who did Dubcek really represent?

The main thrust of Dubcek's programme was an economic reform where directives from the central plan would be replaced by plans drawn up by individual enterprises or associations of enterprises. Far from abolishing the privileges of the bureaucrats, Dubcek was aiming to increase wage differentials and grant 'incentives' to the factory managers. This was a classical Bonapartist manoeuvre balancing on one set of bureaucrats (the factory managers etc.), against another layer (state bureaucrats).

Initially the Western press reported that many workers were suspicious of Dubcek, and with good reason. In the last analysis Dubcek's reforms would work against the interests of the Czech workers. Competition between state-owned enterprises would inevitably lead to the closure of unprofitable factories producing large-scale unemployment.

From the beginning Dubcek looked primarily to the intellectuals and students for support. The Czech bureaucracy was clearly frightened that the ferment in the intelligentsia would spread to the workers - that was a lesson they had learned from the "Crooked Circle" in Poland and the "Petofi Circle" in Hungary, whose agitation sparked off the revolutionary movements of 1956. They were prepared to grant concessions temporarily, especially to the intelligentsia, in order to protect their own privileged position.

The rapid development of the mass movement in Czechoslovakia terrified Brezhnev and the Moscow bureaucracy. Dubcek's reforms were timid (incidentally it later emerged that Dubcek himself was a compromise candidate of the Central Committee, not even the most radical of the bureaucrats!) but they were enough to act as a catalyst to the discontent welling up in the working class.

The split in the bureaucracy precipitated an unparalleled outburst of discussion, protest meetings and demonstrations. In every factory, college and village a furious discussion raged. Resolutions poured in demanding the sacking of Novotny and the speeding up of reforms. Even Communist Party meetings were the scene of noisy debate. The movement was gathering impetus and the bureaucracy was forced to swim along with the current, granting reform after reform.

The Kremlin alleged that the "forces of reaction....with the aim of restoring the bourgeois system" were behind the movement. This was the standard contemptible formula employed by the Russian bureaucracy to frighten the workers into line.

The Stalinist bureaucracies of Russia and Eastern Europe feared strikes like the plague because they saw within them the potential for a movement which could overthrow their rule. Even worse in their eyes was the development of political organisations around which an alternative socialist programme to the perverted caricature of socialism that existed in these countries could crystallise.

Heavy pressure bore down from Moscow on the Czech bureaucrats to 'put their house in order.' The 'reformers' meanwhile had realised that they could not simply rule by the old methods. If the reforms created a dangerous situation for the bureaucracy, an attempt to go back to their previous policy would be ten times as dangerous. When a whole people stand up and say "No," no force on earth can stop them.

Dubcek

Dubcek's immediate intention was to grant concessions, removing the worst causes of discontent, but leaving the power and privileges of the ruling clique intact. However the movement below could not be allowed to go too far.

The pressure from Moscow wasn't the sole cause of Dubcek's rapid backsliding. His main concern was to restrict the movement of the Czech masses. With one hand the bureaucrats gave out concessions, with the other they issued warnings to the workers to "avoid another Hungary at all costs."

As always these so-called reformers constantly appealed for "calm," attempting to lull the masses into passivity. As the pressure from other frightened Stalinist cliques mounted, the Czech bureaucracy began to retreat step by step from the concessions they had made.

The Czech press was warned off printing articles too critical of the Soviet Union. At a meeting with Romanian Stalinist leader Ceaucescu on August 16th, Dubcek announced, "We need order in our country. The meetings in Prague [i.e. public discussions], if they continue, will have a negative effect on the democratisation process." (‘The Times’, August 17th 1968). They were taking very seriously the warnings from the Kremlin.

The Russian bureaucracy were terrified that if censorship were to be abolished in Czechoslovakia, they would be left with little justification for resisting the clamour of Soviet intellectuals for the dead hand of bureaucracy to be lifted from literature and the arts. More serious still would have been the effect on the working class. A free airing of opinions in the press would provide a focal point for organised expressions of discontent, inevitably leading in the direction of a new programme and a new party.

In Czechoslovakia, as in Hungary in 1956, (where the workers actually set up workers' councils, soviets in all but name) the working class would undoubtedly have tried to move in the direction of the programme drafted by Lenin in 1919, based around the following four demands:
Free and democratic elections with the right of recall
No official to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker
No standing army, but an armed people
No permanent bureaucracy, "every cook should be able to be Prime Minister."

At least one Czech journal was already raising the idea of genuine, democratic workers councils. In the course of events, experience would have demonstrated to the workers the need to by-pass the limitations imposed on them by the Dubcek clique.

In 1956 the Hungarian workers went much further than the "reformers" like Nagy and Dubcek had foreseen. They built a genuine workers' revolution, not a social counter-revolution to overthrow the socialist property relations, but a political revolution to oust the bureaucracy and establish a healthy, democratic workers' state. That movement was only crushed by the intervention of Russian tanks at a tremendous cost. Now again in 1968 Moscow was faced with a stark choice, either intervene which would mean yet another blow against the power and prestige of Stalinism; or stay out which would probably create an even more dangerous situation for the bureaucracy, a danger which would not be confined to the borders of Czechoslovakia. In other words, the invasion was not a sign of strength on the part of the bureaucracy but of weakness, motivated by fear.

Superficial

From a superficial point of view the appearance of tanks on the streets of Prague spelt immediate and inevitable defeat for the movement in Czechoslovakia. From a purely military point of view any talk of Czech resistance to the mighty army of Soviet Russia would be ridiculous. However, for Marxists military factors by themselves are not decisive in war. If that were the case, then the young Soviet Republic would have been crushed by the twenty-one armies of foreign intervention sent against them. But this did not happen. The reason was the clear internationalist position adopted by the Bolsheviks and the class appeals made to the workers in uniform of the foreign armies. The result of the Bolshevik propaganda and fraternisation on the already demoralised troops led to mutinies in the armies of intervention which became infected with "Bolshevik influenza."

A genuine Leninist leadership would have prepared the Czech people for the eventuality of an invasion, both politically and militarily. If the Red Army had been confronted by an armed working class organised in soviets it would have made a tremendous impact on the Russian workers in uniform. As it was, numerous eye-witness reports tell of the bewilderment and demoralisation of the troops, as the realisation dawned on them that they had been duped by their leaders. There were instances of Russian troops breaking down and weeping in the streets, protesting that they didn't even know they were in Czechoslovakia. In this situation a clear internationalist, class appeal would have led to massive disaffection in the Red Army. The Czech workers and youth showed an instinctive grasp of the need to fraternise. Mere passive resistance is not enough though. The interventionist troops should have been made to feel the absolute determination of the Czech people to fight to the death if necessary to defend their gains. They should have been confronted with a force so implacable as to encourage them to disobey the officer with his pistol at their back. Without such a confrontation the officer caste can always force the troops back into line with the threat of the firing squad.

The tragedy of Czechoslovakia was that at the crucial moment the Czech people found themselves leaderless, disarmed and unprepared. The cowardice of the Dubcek clique, which preferred to see the country occupied rather than arm the working class, is a clear indication of their real interests.

Undoubtedly the Soviet invasion was a defeat for the Czech working class. As in 1956 the capitalist press had a field day exploiting the invasion as proof of the barbarity of communism. They shed crocodile tears but were not prepared to lift a finger to help because they knew that all the Kremlin's propaganda about counter-revolution was a lie. There was no desire on the part of the Czech workers to restore capitalism, rather they were groping towards creating a genuine workers' state. Of course the capitalists have no interest in allowing that to happen. So despite all their hypocrisy, they were quite pleased to see Russian forces crush the movement, while taking advantage of the cheap propaganda opportunity to drag the name of socialism through the mud. For decades the capitalist class in the West and the Stalinist bureaucrats in the East leaned on each other for support, while simultaneously the western capitalists used the crimes of Stalinism to discredit socialism, and the bureaucratic cliques relied on the threat of counter-revolution to control their own workers.

Bureaucracy

In the end it proved to be the bureaucracy itself, no longer able to guarantee its power and privileges on the basis of a nationalised planned economy strangled by the absence of democratic workers control, who turned towards capitalism as Trotsky had predicted in the 1930s. In Czechoslovakia their actions were eventually responsible for the criminal break-up of the country.

The restoration of capitalism in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe has created a nightmare for the working class. Every day is providing new lessons in the ‘wonders’ of the market. In the next period the workers of Eastern Europe will rediscover the traditions of 1956 and 1968 and the other marvellous struggles of the working class, and rediscover too the genuine programme of socialism and Bolshevism. The banner of Marx and Lenin will be recovered from the mud through which the Stalinist bureaucracies dragged it by a new generation who, standing on the shoulders of their forebears, will link arms with their brothers and sisters in the West in the struggle for a socialist future for all humanity.

This is an edited version of an article by Alan Woods originally published in 1968. This version appeared first in Socialist Appeal.