[The following article is from the October 11 issue of the Belgian revolutionary-socialist weekly La Gauche. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The pressure for an upward revaluation of the deutsche mark has become irresistible. It will come as soon as the changing of the guard in Bonn is confirmed by the Bundestag. What does it mean? What does it reveal? What does it point to?
At first view, the revaluation of the deutsche mark looks like a triumph for American diplomacy. U.S. big capital has applied the most conspicuous pressure for this result, backed up in particular by the City of London. The reason why these two powers favor revaluation of the deutsche mark is hardly mysterious. It would force their most formidable competitor to raise his prices on their principal foreign markets.
7 percent revaluation of the deutsche mark would mean that German industrial products would cost 7 percent more in the United States and elsewhere. (This is only true, however, so long as the German exporters do not succeed in "reabsorbing" the costs of the revaluation and the export tax is maintained in the Federal Republic. There may be a disagreeable surprise in store for the Anglo-American industrialists on this score!)
The American capitalists, moreover, would like to see the West German example imitated by other formidable competitors - the Japanese capitalists (the pressure will shift onto them next), or the Italian capitalists. Strongly pinned down by their working class, the Italians will defend themselves with the courage of desperation. The Japanese will most likely have to yield.
From the standpoint of the monetary experts, the triumph of American imperialism looks still more impres- 940
sive. When one capitalist country has a deficit in its balance of payments (as the United States has) and another a surplus (as Germany has), the "normal" procedure has always been for the deficit country to devalue its currency, and for the gold parity of the currency of the country with a surplus to remain unchanged.
Speculation, that is, capital transfers and flights, has been sufficient to achieve this result, as recently in the case of the French franc.
However, in the age of the golddollar standard, no speculative movement can force American imperialism to devalue. The United States has decided, for all practical purposes, not to give up any more gold in the "normal manner." The monetary experts have had their breath taken away: "Vice not virtue is being rewarded!" Instead of the dollar being devalued, the deutsche mark is being revalued.
But in making this observation, these same experts, without realizing it, are mixing up appearance and re ality. Because this is exactly what the revaluation of the deutsche mark is - a devaluation of the dollar!
This will become still clearer should the Japanese yen and other currencies such as the Italian lira and the Dutch florin or the Swiss franc become caught up in the whirlwind of revaluation.
But it still holds true even if the revaluation is restricted to the deutsche mark alone.
As soon as things are viewed in this way, the American "triumph" begins to look a lot like a Pyrrhic victory. In the October 7 issue of Le Monde, Paul Fabra proclaimed: "The supremacy of the dollar has become so total that for the first time in perhaps ten years the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit... was not even brought up before the general assembly of the International Monetary Fund."
By way of conclusion, Fabra added: "Finally, if, in spite of this imposing display, the dollar is not yet [!) 'as good as gold,' it is because it continues to be threatened on the domestic front, that is, by the inflation in America itself ..."
This "not yet" is worth its weight in gold. We can bet that the American capitalists are engaging in some bitter reflections on a currency whose "total supremacy" is characterized by an annual loss of 6 percent of its buying power...
In actuality, the intlation in the United States, this loss of buying powis no mere "domestic" matter. It er, rebounds against American capitalism throughout the world. It forces the big U.S. corporations, which formerly managed to pay their creditors' interest of 3 to 4 percent a year, to borrow in Europe at rates of 8 percent like any ordinary mini state (Belgium, for instance).
This inflation is provoking a general flight from the dollar, not only among the private capitalists but even among the principal central banks. This reflects not a "total supremacy," but to the contrary a loss of industrial supremacy which is astounding.
This is explained in part by the fact that, owing to the U.S. refusal to devalue the dollar, the American inflation has had repercussions on the country's export prices. No one has drawn attention to this aspect.
In the first five months of 1969, West Germany (whose population is only one-fourth that of the United States) exported more than a billion dollars worth of goods to the U.S., which is more than it imported from the U.S.
In both April and May, the U.S.'s total imports of machines and transportation equipment exceeded
$1,100,000,000. At this rate, these imports would come to $13,000,000,- 000 over a year's period, thus equaling the figure for U.S. exports of
Four years ago, producer goods. exports of American producer goc to Germany were still 20 percent hig er than imports. This U.S. "triumph" is really impressive.. In interimperialist competition, the battle is decided by competitive capacity, and this, in the last analysis, is a function of three factors - the jolume of capital, the level of productivity, and the level of wages.
With regard to the first factor, American imperialism enjoys a comfortable lead; with regard to the second, its lead is being eaten away year by year; for the third factor, American imperialism suffers a considerable handicap. And in this area, the inflation can only increase the difficulties for the U.S., inasmuch as it compels the American workers to demand more and more substantial wage rises.
The flight of capital - "international speculation" - is an anticipatory movement, which obviously can bring the day of reckoning closer. But in the last analysis, it is the development of competitive capacity which is decisive. During the two weeks the deutsche mark was offered at a "floating rate," France lost all the currency reserves it had gained since the devaluation of the franc.
In this context, the revaluation of the deutsche mark represents an attempt by big capital east of the Rhine to stop a chain reaction which could mortally threaten the entire international monetary system, that is, capitalist world trade.
When certain capitalist countries enjoy a considerable surplus in their balance of payments, they cannot help but attract capital "fleeing" from those countries that have deficits, where a devaluation seems inevitable sooner or later. But, by themselves, neither revaluation nor devaluation change the situation. They only change it if the relationship of productive forces changes, if the competitive capacity of a country suffering a deficit is re stored. But such a change is not a function only of exchange rates. is also a function of relative industrial productivity, of capitalist profit rates (which determine whether or not it is possible to "neutralize" the modification of the exchange rates), of the relationship of forces between the classes.
Although it may seem surprising, since the Social Democrats have been great advocates of revaluation —
this really so paradoxical? - IS October 27, 1969
the revaluation is primarily a psychological operation aimed against the German working class.
The government and the bosses will tell the workers and the unions: "See, there is no longer any reason for you to get excited. Inflation has been staved off. The buying power of the deutsche mark is secure. So, be satisfied with 'reasonable' raises. Don't forget that the competitive capacity of German industry has been damaged by the revaluation. If you demand excessive wage raises, exports will drop and we will find ourselves in a recession. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."
This amounts to saying that the German workers must be satisfied with the reduced share of the national income that was forced on them as a result of the 1966-67 recession and its consequent unemployment now when there is full employment again.
Will the German workers let themselves be taken for a ride? That is not certain. And last month's strike wave is grounds for hoping that they will not. At any rate, all the speeches about "capital flight" have not pre vented the Italian workers from de manding - and getting - quite substantial wage increases.
All this reflects the fact that "overheating" is again developing in the economies of several European countries and that this development will end up in a recession, which, unlike the one in 1966-67, might well coincide with an American recession. It is this prospect that sends cold chills up and down the spines of the Common Market financial experts.
Up until now, the American workers have been the principal victims
Their buyof this merry-go-round.
ing power has been declining for several years, while the purchasing power of the European workers, despite everything, has risen markedly. This is the only "positive" aspect of the American inflation for U.S. big capital - it enables it to reduce the disparity between wages in the United States and Europe.
But here again the question is whether the American workers will let themselves be had. In 1967 and 1968, the hours of work lost because of strikes in the United States were double the average in the years 1960-66, nearly double that of 1964,
1965, and 1966, and more than double that in 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1963.
The American workers are defending their steaks, and the "wage disparity" remains more or less intact. The only remedy is a new American recession with an increase in unemployment. The Nixon regime is working on this in its own way. But it is a drastic remedy because the United States has become the principal market of all the other imperialist countries, and an American recession would strike all the other capitalist economies, thus reducing their capacity to import American products...
To sum up. The crisis of the international monetary system has not been produced by technical causes. It is not the product of errors made by the governments. It simply reflects the fact that without inflation, Americanand international capitalism - can no longer avert serious recessions.
The maneuvers we are witnessing for the moment have a double meaning. Every imperialist class is trying to shift the burden of an adjustment, which has become inevitable, onto the shoulders of the working class of its country and onto the shoulders of its competitors (that is, the workers in the competing countries).
The workers will not remain passive in the face of these attempts to create and export unemployment. Imme diate self-defense is required. But the best defense is the best offense, that is, challenging a system whose bankruptcy is once again apparent, despite ten years of boasting by its exponents.
Unemployment Down in West Germany
Unemployment in West Germany fell in September to 100,000, or one-half of one percent of the population, according to Bonn. With 1,500,000 foreigners already employed in the coun try, the number of open jobs still stood at 832,500.
UN Closes Petition Mail Box United atens on fetober sent obe orders to its information centers to end the twenty-year practice of accepting petitions from citizens charging their governments with violations of buman rights.
Czechoslovakia
From Courts to Plants - A General Slowdown
The Kremlin-sponsored Stalinist restorationists in Czechoslovakia have apparently been able to win over, intimidate, or oust the members of the pro-Dubcek faction in the state and party bureaucracy with relative ease. They appear, however, to be meeting much greater difficulties in re building the badly shaken totalitarian system.
The Husák regime began preparing a large-scale repression as soon as it was installed at the May Central Committee plenum. For his state pros-
Husák chose Dr. Jan Fejes, ecutor, a prominent prosecutor in the mass frame-up trials of the early 1950s.
On the occasion of the September Central Committee plenum, marked the second phase of the bureaucratic reaction, Jan Nemec, the general secretary of the Czechoslovak- Soviet Friendship Society and a casehardened Stalinist, was given the post of minister of justice.
Emergency laws have been decreed which sanction the following measures: (1) internment of citizens for twentyone days without a warrant or authorization from the state prosecutor's office; (2) exclusion of legal counsel from the pretrial investigation conducted by the court; (3) verdicts by individual judges without the concurrence of either other judges or juries, even in cases involving allegations of serious crimes; (4) banishment of political offenders.
Between August 18 and 31, according to the October 13 issue of the West German weekly Der Spiegel, 4,094 persons in the Czech lands and 433 in Slovakia were indicted for illegal distribution of leaflets.
The German magazine noted, however, that the courts were moving very cautiously against persons hauled in for political crimes. Of 212 citizens in Slovakia indicted for participating in demonstrations on the anniversary of the Soviet occupation, only eightysix have been sentenced. Moreover, most of the penalties imposed have been jail terms of one to fourteen months, unusual mildness in a coun 942
which try where more death sentences were handed down for political crimes in the 1950s than in any other East European country except the Soviet Union.
instances of judicial clemency and fairness that must seem virtually scandalous to the Stalinist hangmen in the Soviet Union.
Ludek Pachman, master, was arrested on the night of August 20-21, charged with "publicly slandering a leading representative of the republic." The slanders were supposed to have been contained in a letter Pachman sent to various officials and institutions. The offending passage referred to Husák, who holds only the post of Communist party first secretary and no official position in the government:
that - despite all my reservations 'about his political line - I regarded Dr. Gustáv Husák as one of our most capable political leaders of the recent period... A series of his latest moves, however, have convinced me that I erred. It is not possible to consider shameless indulgence in the political principle cannot be presented as tactical talent; adaptability as realism; and ruthless disregard of the people's will as originality."
three weeks. On being transferred to the Pankrác prison in Prague, he be was immediately released. The court found the evidence insufficient.
sentenced to two months in jail for "insulting and maligning the Russian twenty-fifth anniversary of the libera-
In addition, there have been several the Czech chess s friate
"I have often declared publicly crudest demagogy as rhetoric; lack of
Pachman was held in detention for gan a hunger strike, after which he
The mine mechanic Prucha was people with vulgar expressions in front of two Soviet army officers." The court, however, postponed remanding Prucha to jail for a year, by which time an amnesty is expected for the tion of Czechoslovakia in May 1970.
But the most surprising case of judicial independence came in connection with a slander suit against the alive.
service."
sent him.
time arch-Stalinist and Kremlin collaborator Vilém Nový. A group of anti- Stalinist figures including Pachman, the journalist Skutina, the writer Pavel Kohout, the student leader Holecek, and the Czech Olympic champion Zátopek initiated a suit against Nový for his allegations that they had persuaded Jan Palach to burn himself
The martyred student's mother also added her name to the suit on the grounds that the same Stalinist hack had accused her son of "maintaining contacts with the West German secret
Over Nový's protests, the court accepted this suit and the first hearing took place September 19. Nový chose Dr. Ruzícka, who served as a "defense attorney" in the treason trials of the early 1950s, to repre
Ruzicka is mentioned in a recently published book by Arthur London, a prominent Czech Communist jailed during these purges. He was London's attorney. In his memoirs, which appeared in France under the title L'Aveu (The Confession], London described Ruzicka's role: "I saw my attorney for the first time after my trial... He promised me at the that he would go see my wife, but ne never did."
It seems likely that Ruzicka is de fending Nový with greater zeal. But he does not seem to be doing this with any greater adeptness.
In the
September 19 hearing, Ruzicka challenged the court's jurisdiction on the grounds that his client's statements were "subject to the discipline of the Communist party." According to Der Spiegel, Dr. Melchar, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, protested that Ruzicka's plea represented "a new and astonishing interpretation of trial procedure and legal responsibility."
The court postponed hearings on the case until October 24, demanding that Ruzicka give a written explan tion of Nový's absence from the in tial session and guarantee that his client would be in court when the new session began.
Where citizens are able to force Stalinist officials to answer to a court for their political slanders, the totalitarian system is obviously under seri- Vous challenge. This case in Czechoslovakia need only be compared with a similar one which occurred recently in the Soviet Union.
Mrs. Lyudmila Ginzburg, the mother of the young dissident writer Aleksandr Ginzburg, announced her intention in January 1968 to sue the Soviet youth paper Komsomolskaya Pravda for alleging that her son was an agent of a reactionary anti-Soviet emigré group.
Shortly after this, she was hauled into the offices of the secret police and warned that if she repeated her "offense," she would be liable to a penalty of three years in prison for spreading false rumors. *
Der Spiegel reported that the hatred of the Stalinist terror system expressed during the brief period of relatively free speech threw a lasting scare into the old regime's hanging judges. "Be fore the party leadership can impose class justice [sic], it must replace the entire apparatus of judges and state prosecutors. But it does not have sufficient legal technicians for that. In the 1968 Prague spring the press ruthlessly exposed the Stalinist drumhead justice.
"Even old Stalinists who had to re sign in 1968 are afraid to return to their posts. Thus, the highly incriminated former state prosecutor of Ostrova, Dr. Zdenek Zuska, preferred a place in the party apparatus — he did not want to be rehabilitated to a post in the state prosecutor's office."
The obeisances of the new government to the Kremlin could hardly be more abject. For several weeks the Soviet press has carried notices of messages of "esteem" for the Soviet Union from Czechoslovak officials, and retractions by Czechoslovak bodies of previous condemnations of the August 21 invasion.
The following letter to Kosygin
Ginzburg Protests
Slander of Her Son," in World Outlook
Intercontinental Press), February (now 16, 1968, p. 126; and "Moscow Polit-
Warn Ginzburg's Relatives from Oldrich Cernik, a former Dubcek supporter, is a good example of these declarations. It was printed in the October 11 Pravda:
"Esteemed comrade Kosygin, I sincerely thank you for your heartfelt congratulations on the occasion my designation to the post of president of the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Permit me on this occasion again to express the profound interest of the peoples of Czechoslovakia in continually strengthening the traditional fraternal friendship, the mutually beneficial cooperation among the peoples of our countries.
Devoted to the principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialist internationalism, we will strive to guarantee a firm place for Czechoslovakia in the commonwealth of socialist countries ..."
The people of Czechoslovakia, howseem less reconciled to Soviet ever, overlordship than the regime. In an article in the October 14 Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zuezda, according to the Washington Post of October 15, General A.M. Mairov, the commander of the Soviet garrison in Czechoslovakia, wrote that his forces "often experienced and continue to experience in varying degrees the provocative activities of antisocialist forces." He complained that "forces hostile to socialism are still operating, sometimes in the open, sometimes under cover."
In a speech to the Skoda workers in Plzen October 14, Husák indicated that there was still considerable unrest within the country: "Many people are falling prey to dejection, spreading panicky moods as if our state were facing collapse from which there was no escape."
He complained that even party members were "occasionally losing if not their good mood, at least their courage to struggle with problems."
Husák seemed to confirm reports that many Communist officials were reluctant to cooperate with his purge, either out of principle or out of fear that, in the present state of the world, a regime supported by the bayonets of foreign troops has no future:
"Certain persons don't even want to accept high posts. They don't want to dirty their hands. There are people who run away when the going gets tough; they get cold feet. We have to get rid of all those persons in high or less high office who don't want to fight... If certain people want to run away and keep their hands clean, very well, but they must give up their posts."
In his speech to the Skoda workers, Husák seemed to alternate between threats and pleas. He promised that be "no return to the errors there would of the past," meaning presumably the witch-hunt trials of the fifties. But this reassuring note was followed immediately by a menacing one: "If some one tries to undermine the state, this is an entirely different matter."
Perhaps the most significant thing in Husák's speech, however, was his threat to reintroduce the six-day workweek unless productivity improves. This would mean a frontal attack on the national slowdown strike that has developed spontaneously in re sponse to the occupation. The outcome of such a confrontation cannot be predicted.
An indication of the problem Husák faces was given in an article in the October 15 issue of the Washington Post: "Visitors returning to Vienna say they have seen whole sections of important factories where most of the workers were simply standing idle by their machines or were working at the slowest pace possible."
Moreover, it is possible that the resistance the Husák regime would meet if it launched a head-on confrontation with the workers would not be entire ly leaderless. The Washington Post article continued: "What may be an even more serious sign of protest was in Rudé Právo yesterday reported [October 14] in the form of a 'manifesto of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Czechoslovakia'* calling for strikes and civil disobedience in factories.
Foreign observers in Prague have not seen this manifesto. However, it is considered extremely significant that the Communist Party organ has denounced it publicly."
was printed in Interconti-
August in nental Press,
October 6, 1969, p. 885.
This statement also called for strikes and civil disobedience in the factories. It is not clear from the brief report in the Washington Post whether this manifesto was the same one that came under fire in Rude Pravo.
Notes
* See "Lyudmila I.
1 Police Md Friends," in World Outlook, March 1, 1968, p. 181. October 21, 1969
* A manifesto of the Revolutionary Socialist party of Czechoslovakia issued