BAHRO 17 THE CHALLENGE OF RUDOLF BAHRO IN EASTERN EUROPE

Rudolf Bahro

The Alternative in Eastern Europe

T H E ALTERNATIVE IN communist parties and socialists in western EASTERN EUROPE by RUDOLF Europe and elsewhere. He differs from many BAHRO. New Left Books, London, 1978. others who have been imprisoned in that he remains very much a marxist and a Reviewed by DENIS FRENEY. communist, whose vision of socialism comes directly from Marx. Rudolf Bahro was released from prison in Bahro's book is immensely valuable, not the German Democratic Republic in October only for those who are concerned about the 1979, under an amnesty proclaimed on the future of socialism in Eastern Europe, the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union and China, but also for those GDR. He had been arrested in August 1977, concerned more generally about the and in July 1978 was sentenced to eight transition to socialism — and communism — years’ jail for “espionage”. The act of in advanced capitalist nations and more “espionage” was the smuggling of the generally for all of humanity. Bahro's manuscript of this book to West Germany analysis intersects with this concern on such where it was published. questions as the environment, consumerism, Bahro, then, was a political prisoner. His wornetvs liberation, the division between imprisonment aroused many protests among intellectual and "manual” labor, and so on, 18 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 72 with issues that have come to the fore for Soviet State has fulfilled the most important communists in countries like Australia. double function of achieving labor discipline and combatting the egalitarian tendencies of the masses. This was the precondition for Bahro’s book is divided into three parts: economic advance in the conditions The Non-Capitalist Road to Industrial inherited from the Russian past .... the Society; the Anatomy of Actually Existing purpose was to accumulate more on this Societies; and, finally, the Strategy of a narrower basis that the capitalists whom it Communist Alternative. was seeking to overtake .... All in all, the Soviet state with the party as its core, was The first part, which need not detain us long not the substitute for a working class too in this review, centres around an analysis of weak to exercise power, but rather the special Marx’s concept of the “Asiatic mode of substitute for an exploiting class” . production” and its characteristic form of “ Oriental Despotism” as applied to pre­ Bahro sees an inevitability, in the revolutionary Russia. Bahro engages in a conditions of necessary primitive lengthy analysis of oriental despotism of the accumulation of capital as in Russia, in the past, which could be debated, but the dominating role of the state. At best, he relevance of it to the Soviet experience concedes that the excesses of Stalin can be cannot be disputed: the Bolsheviks inherited avoided, but that the basic form will remain. what Engels described as the “natural basis He quite specifically rejects the theory of of Oriental Despotism .... Not only the “deformation” of the October Revolution Russian State in general, but even its specific “from Khrushchev to Garaudy” (via, of form, Tsarist despotism .... is the necessary course, Trotsky), and seeks to show that “the and logical product of Russian social political history of the Soviet Union is not conditions” . one of abandonment of the ‘subjective Bahro sums up his conclusions by listing factor’, but rather of its transformation, by those factors which were the “historical roots the task it had to undertake of for the subjection of Soviet society to a industrialising Russia” . bureaucratic State machine” : the It is possible to agree with Bahro’s basic “pressure of the technological superiority of thesis that in conditions of isolation, a the imperialist countries, enforced by their revolution in a backward capitalist country policy of military intervention and must inevitably and objectively proceed encirclement” ; second, the “ semi-Asiatic toward the dictatorship of a bureaucratic past of Russia, with the inherited elite, which will also objectively tend fragmentation of its agricultural base, with towards “ excesses” . However, the the extremely heterogeneous national “subjective factor” can and must play a role. composition of its colonialist multi-national After all, the overthrow of capitalism is a State, with the political traditions of Tsarist conscious act led by a subjective force, in autocracy going back to the despotism of which the masses of peasants and the small Baty Khan and with the psychology of the working class rise above their condition and masses still trapped to a large extent in for no matter how short a time, become an primary patriarchy” . historical force with a consciousness way Third, “the revolutionary situation itself’ beyond their objective cultural condition or referring to what Bahro sees as the role of a possibilities. strong state in any revolutionary Of course, as Bahro states, quoting transformation, including for the economic Gramsci, after the revolution there is the transformation. Here he quotes Marx on the process of “revolution-restoration” in which transformation from feudalism to the legacy of history must be accounted for, capitalism. Fourth, “the productive forces and in which the objective forces are that had to be accumulated under the expressed, including among the working pressure of the capitalist environment, in class and above all among the peasantry, but order to create the preconditions of socialism, also among the vanguard — the Party. themselves bear an antagonistic character .... Via a principle of reward according to As Bahro amply demonstrates, Marx, work that is in no way taken from Marx, the Engels and Lenin had no illusions about the BAHRO 19 weight of these objective forces in countries substantially combat the objective forces such as Russia. But all conceived of the driving to a bureaucratic dictatorship, even Russian Revolution being but the spark for when the process has begun. In China, the Germany, and the advanced capitalist experience prior to the Cultural Revolution countries, where the working class there showed that transformation of the would respond. When, in Lenin’s last years, countryside could be tackled without the it became increasingly clear that Russia excesses of Stalin. There is good reason to would remain isolated and that the believe that, in specific circumstances, revolutions in Western Europe would not particularly with a leadership aware of the achieve victory, Lenin sought to halt the fundamental problems, it would be possible bureaucratisation. One method waB the to go beyond the Yugoslav experience, even formation of the Workers and Peasants in a backward country in Africa, Asia or Inspectorate, which, as Bahro notes, became Latin America. itself bureaucratised and under Stalin a means for his dictatorship. Finally, it is worth noting that the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and latter-day Maoism, The question of how far it is possible to were in many ways rooted in this desire to limit bureaucratisation in backward Bkip the inevitable stages of capital countries remains a burning one, for it is in accumulation, by a “forced march” using the these countries that socialist revolutions are techniques of pre-revolutionary guerrilla taking place, and where the same or similar warfare and mass mobilisation to “leap” objective conditions pertain and where the forward. goal of primitive accumulation of capital is dictated. In one sense, it was an attempt to replace the mass terror used by Stalin as a means of In one sense, these revolutions are not as labor discipline with mass political isolated, as the Soviet Union and eastern mobilisation, which implied self-denial by Europe form a powerful economic force the masses and an end of “material which could objectively give the basis for incentives” , which, with the politically- lessening the ravages enforced by such inspired labor of the masses was to allow the accumulation. The problem remains, first massive accumulation of capital resources. because the aid offered is not, and for the foreseeable future could not be sufficient to The “deformations” of the Cultural overcome the basic problem, and, second, the Revolution, denounced by Mao, were the fact that the Soviet bloc remains a effects of objective forces arising from the bureaucratic dictatorship, and recommends, historical backwardness of China, distorting even imposes, its model on new socialist the ideal Mao had set. The end result was revolutions, leads to new revolutions falling disastrous, with two decades lost. Now the for these reasons into the same pattern. All Deng-Hua group is attempting the other one can say is that some of the excesses of road, offering the masses, and particularly Stalin are avoided, particularly the forced the peasantry, the “ material incentives” collectivisation which still imposes such a denied in the past, while exploiting the heavy burden on Soviet agriculture. present world conjuncture to hope for massive western investment to escape from Bahro mentions the Yugoslav and Chinese the iron grip of China’s economic experiences a number of times, while backwardness. deploring the fact that in east Europe he must rely on western sources to know what is At the extreme, we have Pol Pot’s happening. This, of course, points to the Kampuchea, where the desire to go straight problems someone like Bahro faces, to communism, to physically destroy the particularly when studying China. In total historical legacy, down to the most regard, for example, to the Chinese Cultural minute example, led to the massacre of Revolution, this has led him into a too-ready hundreds ofthousands, if not millions, guilty acceptance of the verbiage of that particular of carrying in their heads some aspect of the episode. past, or of simply objecting to Pol Pot’s “experiment” . The end result was that the Jugoslavia does, however, show that in experimenters themselves came quickly to given conditions it is possible to embody the worst barbarism of the past 20 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 72

which they claimed they were trying to structure, a structure which remains intact destroy. Those who do not recognise in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if historical necessity and try to “abolish” it, with some minor modifications (such as a become consumed by it themselves. The much less reliance on terror). continuing appeal of Maoist solutions, Bahro sees the road to socialism as defined offering illusionary short-cuts around by Marx and Lenin as depending on the historical necessity, cannot be abolition of the traditional division of labor. underestimated among the revolutionary Bahro insists that Soviet and east European intellectuals of the Third World. socialism is stratified not into a simple They are on the other end of the scale to dichotomy of working class and Bahro. bureaucracy, as is claimed, for example, in orthodox trotskyist analysis, but rather into ★ a series of social strata, organised on the hierarchical structure of these societies. Bahro is not primarily concerned with such problems, but the legacy of such Bahro agrees the bureaucracy exists, but problems as they exist in eastern Europe and he denies the existence of the working class the Soviet Union today. His fundamental as a social class as it exists in capitalist thesis is that the “ stalinist superstructure” society. “Individuals” , writes Bahro, “only which continues is obsolete and that the form a class insofar as they stand in common “material preconditions of socialism are at antithesis to another class with respect to least achieved far above that minimum that their position vis-a-vis the conditions of Lenin once took to be necessary” . production and existence.... The proletariat loses its specific socio-economic identity Bahro notes that Marx and Engels saw the together with the bourgeoisie, so that in the preconditions already achieved in England post-revolutionary situation it is necessarily of their time, and Lenin in Germany. No completely different criteria, in fact criteria doubt, these were over-optimistic projections of internal structuring, that become of the potential of the economy and of the relevant.” working class at those times. Whether Bahro and most marxists of today are over- Bahro repeats many times that the optimistic about the present level of bureaucracy uses the concept of an existing productive forces in advanced capitalist and working class, which supposedly rules in post-capitalist countries being sufficient for “actually existing socialism” , to mystify. reaching socialism as defined by Marx and And later, Bahro develops a thesis common Lenin, will only be tested in reality. However, to all oppositionists in eastern Europe: that it there can be no doubt now that the present is the intellectuals who will lead change. level of productive forces is already testing It is not true that the working class ceases the limits of finite resources. In such to exist because its antithesis, the capitalist conditions, and given the analysis developed class, no longer exists. Classes are historical by, among many others, Australian formations. The working class continues to communists, it is difficult to conceive of exist in the transition to socialism because it socialism which would necessitate a lunar is historically a specific class, whose task, as colony! We will return to this later in this conceived by Marx and Lenin, is to carry out review. the transition to a classless society, which The second part of Bahro’s book seeks to implies abolition of the traditional division analyse “actually existing socialism” . of labor etc. and therefore its own abolition. Arising from the necessity of the Bolsheviks Of course, it is necessary to look again at to organise post-revolutionary Russia for the such concepts in the light of historical primitive accumulation of capital, came the experience. But it is insufficient to point to need for labor discipline, and the division of the “ atomisation” of the working class in the labor, which took a “traditional” form Soviet Union and eastern Europe, or to the between manual and intellectual, between fact that they have no “leaders” of their own those who make decisions and those who (p. 190). The atomisation of the working class carry them out. This, under Stalin, grew into and the destruction of its autonomous a totally hierarchical and centralised political or trade union organisation can be BAHRO 21

explained by historical evolution, as a degree of education, level of management, product of stalinist terror. functions of the reproductive process and branches of the division of labor in the If, as Bahro argues earlier, the particular sphere of the economy” . It is, of bureaucracy is the “substitute for an course, fruitful, including in all capitalist exploiting class” , then it can be said that in societies, to examine the social strata with in “actually existing socialism” the working and w ithou t the principal classes. It is class is defined not by what under capitalism necessary, even essential, if any class is its primary feature (i.e., its relation to the analysis is to be of practical use, to not only means of production) but what is under examine the major classes but also the capitalism a derivative function, i.e., its different strata within them, and to reject the relation to decision-making on the so-called marxist analysis which denies that organisation of the means of production and there are no strata outside the basic classes, distribution of the surplus. or in the grey fringe areas between them. Bahro proceeds, however, to categorise Bahro's analysis and denial of the strata in post-capitalist societies within their existence of the working class is also strange “level of function in overall social labor” : in insofar as it denies experience in eastern five categories of, at the bottom, “simple and Europe in recent decades. Bahro refers schematic compartmentalised and ancillary several times to the Polish events in work”; next, “ complex specialist empirical December 1970, which were eminently an work” ; “reproductive specialist work in example of working class action and self­ science” ; “creative specialist work in organisation, but, in common with many science” , and finally at the peak "analysis intellectual oppositionists, stresses rather and synthesis of the natural and social the way they were “contained” by the totality” . apparatus with “ reforms” . Yet the Polish These are part of a simplified “sketch of the events of 1970, and to a lesser extent the social structure of proto-socialist industrial events i* Hungary in 1956, Berlin in 1953 society in its differentiation according to and Czechoslovakia in 1968, concretely 22 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 72

showed that the working class does exist, conditions which Bahro helps elucidate in a uniting both the “ old” and “new” sectors, very useful way. Communists in advanced and is capable of overcoming its atomisation capitalist countries, because of a vastly and organising in a class way. different experience, find it difficult to grasp . Of course, these struggles, while reaching these conditions. Bahro places great stress towards socialist democracy, were often of a on the importance economic competition “trade union” character, arising as reactions with capitalism plays in “actually existing against particular injustices or bureaucratic socialism” . This contributes to continuation acts, similar in many ways to such struggles of emphasis on economic growth, within a in the capitalist world, in their motivation at framework determined by the more least. And as Bahro so eloquently illustrates, advanced competitor. it is a question of a total transformation of Second, because social and material the “proto-socialist” societies into socialist positions depend on the place occupied in the ones, involving the abolition of the hierarchy, “competitive behaviour between traditional division of labor, a redefinition of individuals in our system is ... strongly total goals and so on. When workers’ focussed on the phase of education, in which struggles, moreover, have primarily a “trade access and admission to favourable union” aspect, then it is possible for other positions in the system of overall social forces to demagogically exploit them. labour is determined, with those strata who It is the nature of the transformation have already acquired education and necessary — that is, not simply introduction influence holding the centre of the stage”. of socialist democracy but also a “cultural (p.212) revolution” (as defined by Bahro, not Mao)— Equally important, Bahro claims that in which does imply a specific role for the GDR and other east European countries, intellectuals and, above all, for “the content and character of labor, together revolutionary, communist intellectuals who with the opportunities for advance and are able to break out of the limitations of the development that are bound up with the job, intellectual strata as it exists, and to develop have already overtaken salary as a their own, full role in such a transformation. motivational factor, and the more highly One of those limitations is the elitism and skilled people are, the more pronounced this contempt for the “working class” which is so tendency is”. This “competition for common, including among intellectually- appropriation of activities for self­ trained w orkers themselves. That does not development” has become the “specific mean, however, to fall into the other driving force of economic life characteristic limitation of intellectuals which is to idealise of actually existing socialism” . the working class which, rather than overcoming elitism, is only another The nature of these societies, the expression of it. “ assumptions of its existence” , require that the contradiction between the State and “the But before continuing on this question, immediate producers does not become too which rather fits in to the discussions of the marked”, meaning that the State is last part of Bahro’s book, we should examine his analysis of the nature and limitations of "essentially ... in no position to enforce the “actually existing socialism” . same intensity of labor as capitalism can” . Thus, “workers have a far greater ★ opportunity to blackmail the ‘entire society’ than do the trade unions under capitalism, The driving force of post-revolutionary and actually do use this, against all surface appearance, even if they can do so only in an Russia and of all “actually existing unfruitful way, i.e. by holding back on their socialisms” is and was economic growth, output” . first to achieve the material basis for socialism and now to overtake the capitalist Thus, at both the level of the intelligentsia world. Bureaucratic-centralist planning and the “immediate producers” there is within those goals, goals which are dictated movement, But each has its specific in fact by the capitalist world as the more expression. The intelligentsia are enwebbed “advanced” competitor, operates in specific within a bureaucratic mesh which they BAHRO 23 either adapt to, or find themselves in Bahro advances the concept of “surplus contradiction with. consciousness” as one key concept for his As for the bureaucracy, Bahro presents a “strategy” : “today we have for the first time bill which draws both from Marx’s own in history a really massive ‘surplus analysis of capitalist state bureaucracy, and consciousness’, i.e., an energetic mental the experience of “actually existing capacity that is no longer absorbed by the socialism”. Bahro provides a major place for immediate necessities and danger of human “bureaucratic rivalry” and for “bureaucratic existence and can thus orient itself to more inertia” within these societies, particularly distant problems... The problem is to drive among the “politbureaucracy” . Compared forward the ‘overproduction’ of with them, the technocrat “is a progressive consciousness, so as to put the whole figure (who)... is objectively working at the historical past ‘on its head’ and make the liquidation of his role, inasmuch as he sets idea into the decisive material force, to progressive productive forces in motion, guide things to a radical transformation that whereas the bureaucrat daily sanctifies the goes still deeper than the customary status quo” . transition from one formation to another within one and the same civilisation” . “The indolence of the bureaucrat corresponds to the lack of interest of the This leads Bahro to his central strategic worker and the dissatisfaction of the concept — a “ cultural revolution” defined as specialist... The modem productive forces, “ a transformation of the entire subjective which are based more than ever on people form of life of the masses, something that being creative, are effectively braked by our can only be compared with that other bureaucracy precisely in their most sensitive transition which introduced humanity into zone.” And the party is trapped within class society by way of patriarchy^ the this “omnipresent spider’s web by its own vertical division of labor and the state. In apparatus” . this second cultural revolution, man will At the peak is the “ politbureau found his existence on his consciousness, on dictatorship ... a grotesque exaggeration of the ‘highest mode of existence of matter’ and the bureaucratic principle, inasmuch as the concentrate on the social organisation of the party apparatus subordinate to it is at the noonsphere so as to regulate his natural same time both church hierarchy and super­ relationship anew from this point of state” . departure” . There is no need to go into great detail here It is unfortunate that Bahro uses the term on how this leads to a lessening of potential development, which includes above all “surplus consciousness” which certainly has idealist and even metaphysical implications. definition of the goals set and the ability to mobilise forces for such change. Essentially, however, Bahro is advancing The final section of Bahro’s book is both its a thoroughly materialist concept: the high most important and most controversial. level of productive forces and the high Bahro directly confronts the question of cultural level of all sectors arising from it and “utopianism” to which “marxists have a necessitated by it, provide the basis for defensive attitude. It was so laborious to “general emancipation” , or in the words of escape from them in the past. But today Marx and Engels in the German Ideology: utopian thought has a new necessity ... “the task of replacing the domination of Today it is general emancipation that is the circumstances and of chance over absolute necessity.” individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances” . Bahro returns to a central theme — that economic conditions, the level of productive The task is concretised by Bahro: forces in advanced industrial societies, are or expanded production, “this very avalanche will soon be sufficient to consider the of expansion in all material and technical abolition of the traditional division of labor dimensions, is beginning to exhibit a and “general emancipation” — and that the runaway character. The success that we had social forces are already present in “actually with our means of dominating nature is existing socialism” to achieve this goal. threatening to destroy both ourselves and all 24 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 72 other peoples, whom it relentlessly draws being sponsored in the drive for maximum into its wake”. It stands “in global profits. In “actually existing socialism” , it is antagonistic contradiction to the natural alienation plus the continuous pressure of conditions of human existence... The so- the need to measure up to the advanced called scientific and technical revolution ... capitalist world, that sponsors artificial must be reprogrammed by a new social needs. revolution. The idea of progress in general There remain, of course, real material must be interpreted ir. a radically different needs that exist and will continue to exist way from that which we are accustomed”. and which any society claiming to be socialist must fulfil. In Australia today real Thus Bahro in the following pages takes needs, such as housing, education, health up the concerns of many in the capitalist and other needs which have to be largely world: the environment and consumerism, fulfilled by public functions, are denied which in the GDR is leading to the same because the drive is to maximising profits waste as in the capitalist West. Bahro which requires new, artificial needs to take analyses how “ consumerism” arises from precedence. It is not only, of course, a alienation. He therefore concludes that “the question of maximising profits, but of the overcoming of subalternity on a mass scale is capitalist state finding forms of social the only possible alternative to the limitless control and containment or diversion, expansion of material needs”. This is a allowing alienation to be channelled. very important conclusion, not only for Bahro is right: only when there is a eastern Europe, but also for the West. revolution in cultural options, a revolution against alienation, waste and artificial It is already clear in countries such as Australia that material needs are needs, can progress take place in advanced manufactured and are pushed beyond industrial societies. bounds that are rational, healthy or In advanced capitalist countries, it is ecologically sound. Under capitalism, these inconceivable that a revolution can occur false needs also arise from alienation, while which will be aimed at more of the same — BAHRO 25 that is, fulfilling even greater material needs. eastern Europe (and inside the Soviet Union) Rather, it will be aimed at fulfilling real arising from Soviet heavy-handed needs that are denied, while undertaking thj domination, plus the lag in the west same type of “ cultural revolution” that European socialist revolution, plus the Bahro defines as necessary in the “actually dangers of an Europe-wide explosion ending existing socialisms”. in nuclear war, mean that “a planned evolution in eastern Europe would be the As Bahro sums it up: “The question is to surest means to averting a later European create the objective conditions so that conflict over this zone. Otherwise it cannot everyone can prefer ‘to know and to be, be ruled out.” Bahro expresses his instead of to possess”’. thanks for west European communist Bahro outlines a program for such a support and advocates dialogue between cultural revolution, including such things as those in east and west Europe. “the redivision of labor” in which all share Unfortunately, in my view (and as things not only in decision-making but in different have turned out), Bahro seems much too types of labor; “a unitary course of education optimistic in the evolution of for fully socialised people” and “securing the “ Eurocommunism” to power and socialist capacity for education and the motivation to transformation in west Europe. learn” , with “humanisation of childhood” , end to “sexual oppression” , patriarchalism Bahro proposes the formation of a league and “personal communication” etc. of communists which would represent the “emancipatory interests” , that is those Some of these are, of course, also widely forces and interests in all strata which debated in the West, and no doubt many identify with “general emancipation” , the (including this reviewer) will find much to cultural revolution etc., which “puts the state debate, to query or to reject. The point is not hierarchy in its proper place” Bahro the validity or not of Bahro’s specific rejects the concept of this “league of solutions, but his stress on these factors communists” , being a “working class party” , within a “cultural revolution” , as integrated for reasons outlined earlier, and the league within the total revolution he sees as not only becomes “ ...the collective intellectual”. desirable but necessary and possible. After outlining such questions (which he Of course, Bahro shows some awareness of returns to in the last two chapters), Bahro the inherent limits of intellectuals, but in fact considers the “potential for a new sees the league as the party of the transformation” , examining for example the intellectuals which will unite around it all Prague Spring, the hallmark of which was its “emancipatory interests” from all strata. aspect of “glorious revolution”, “of the appropriation of political power on the basis In many ways, Bahro ignores (when it of ‘competence’ .... it needed no special comes to the intellectuals) his own strictures program apart from that of ‘pressing concerning the effects of the traditional forward’” . division of labor. While we are told much about the effects it has on the bureaucrat and Bahro sees dangers in a movement which the worker, little is mentioned about its is simply a political opposition “not a effects on the intelligentsia as such (except political-economic, socio-economic and when they are absorbed into the apparatus). cultural opposition”. Such a The “pure intellectual” is, by omission, “superficially political opposition” which, almost idealised and, in fact, this intellectual behind democratic demands seeks mainly to is the model for the future society. destroy the apparatus, “unfortunately” means for Bahro that probably “the minimal program of a democratic revolution against * * $ * * the politbureaucracy becomes autonomous, and demands a stage of its own” . It is not, however, necessary to dwell on It is this fear which nags at Bahro and this important gap in Bahro’s theses. which he returns to throughout the last part After—all, he has written a trail-blazing of the book: that the rising nationalism in book, not only for communists in the 20 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 72

advanced industrial societies of “actually Certainly, once objective and subjective existing socialism” , but also for those in factors ripen and combine, the task of advanced capitalist countries and, more changing the bureaucratic system and generally, for the whole international opening the road to socialism is much easier communist movement. in eastern Europe than in capitalist countries, where the ruling class maintains Bahro is somewhat unique in that he is immensely powerful ideological autonomous optimistic concerning perspectives for and active forces of repression. change in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. One gets the opinion that he did not Any such change in “actually existing believe that he would face prison after socialism” would, of course, be an immense writing this book, and that there were forces, aid to the revolutionary movement in even in the top ideological apparatus of the advanced capitalist countries as well as in ruling parties, that were of basically the the ex-colonial nations suffering from the same mind as himself. Let us hope that this is horrific legacy of capitalist and imperialist correct, although two years in prison shows su per-ex ploita tion. that he perhaps underestimated the official reaction. + * * * # It is true, as we saw in Czechoslovakia, One thing is certain: Rudolf Bahro is a that the forces for change are potentially comrade, a communist of courage and very strong, and that the resistance of the top perspicacity. His release from prison is to be apparatus, the “politbureaucracy”, welcomed and let's hope that change begins crumbled easily, and many at the top became within the framework he outlines. leaders of change. No doubt, too, there are “ Soviet Dubceks" waiting in the wings at the top leadership, as he claims.