In its September 24 and October 1 issues, the Daily World published comments on the conference of Marxist economists held September 10-13 at the University of Tilburg. These comments implied that I, or my political friends, tried to make it difficult or impossible for the American Communist party economist Victor Perlo to express his views at this conference. This allegation is untrue.
1. The professors of the department of political economy at the Catholic University of Tilburg initiated the first international conference of Marxist economists in the West. It was the result of one of the most radical student confrontations in the Netherlands, during which the students renamed the school "Karl Marx University."
About 1,000 professors and students from many European countries and some countries on other continents attended this meeting.
Far from being "anti-Communist" in any sense, the organizers of the conference invited three Communist party members the British economists Maurice Dobb and Bob Rowthorn and the American economist Victor Perlo). These three CP spokesmen were included among eleven reporters. The organizers made a real effort to see that all tendencies claiming to be Marxist were represented among the speakers.
For this effort and the success of the conference they deserve the thanks and approval of all Marxists - above all, because this took place in a coun try where the defense of Marxism has been very weak in recent decades.
2. The literature sold in front of the conference hall was not sponsored by the organizers but by a great number of very diverse groups. These groups sold their literature, obviously, because they saw an opportunity for presenting their political views.
It was not the fault of the organizers, nor the Trotskyists, nor mine, that the Dutch Communist party chose to pass up the chance to have a literature table in the hall. It had full freedom to do so- and far greater material resources for this than the groups that took advantage of the occasion.
3. The subject of the conference was
"Capitalism in the Seventies." My report, like those of the other reporters - including the British CP members Maurice Dobb and Bob Rowthornwas strictly limited to this topic. Although all the reports aroused not a little controversy, they were all listened to with great attentiveness by the participants. The papers that were presented evoked heated discussion, of course, but within the framework of strict respect for the right of all to express their ideas.
4. Victor Perlo had been invited to discuss the problem of American imperialism in the seventies. He felt it necessary to include in his report a defense of the Kremlin's intervention in Czechoslovakia.
This was, of course, his right. Equally it was the right of the majority of the participants in this conference to take the position that (1) this question was not on the agenda; and (2) that they did not agree with Perlo on this matter.
(It might be said in passing that neither the Communist party of Great Britain nor of the Netherlands approved the invasion of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic by the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries. Are they also "anti-Communist" ?)
5. Neither I nor my friends tried to hinder Victor Perlo from expressing his opinions. The resolution that was proposed condemned his point of view on the invasion of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, not his right to express his point of view.
The conference did not vote down this resolution (the great majority of the participants were opposed to the invasion of Czechoslovakia). What the conference rejected was putting the resolution to a vote, that is, transforming a conference called to discuss the questions raised by the development of capitalism in the seventies into a deliberative body deciding political questions- above all, questions not on the agenda. It was a procedural and not a political vote.
6. After Perlo's speech, the majority of the reporters, with the approval, I am sure, of most of the participants in the conference, asked two things of the organizers. First of all they de-
manded the right to discuss the opinions expressed by Perlo at a full session.
Secondly, the reporters demanded the right to include a statement by all those who condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia as harmful to the interest of the international and Czechoslovak working class in the volume of conference papers scheduled to be printed.
The other reporters demanded this right in order to prevent the expression of only one view on the Czechoslovak question as a result of Perlo's including his opinion on this matter in his paper. The organizers of the conference accepted the dual demand. This closed the incident. In doing this, no injury whatsoever was done to Victor Perlo's freedom of speech. All we did was to forcefully reaffirm freedom of speech in the workers move ment. This freedom applies to all tendencies and does not involve a monopoly for anyone.
7. It is true that one person, whom I do not know and with whom I have nothing to do, proposed that Perlo's speech be omitted from the conference proceedings. He was booed by the gathering and supported by no oneand rightly so. I continue and will continue to defend everywhere and always the right of freedom of speech for all tendencies in the workers movement, including the one represented by Victor Perlo.
There is only one difference between Perlo's position and mine on this point. For me, the right of freedom of speech is a universally valid principle, applicable in the Netherlands, in the United States, in Czechoslovakia, and in the USSR. Perlo, in contrast, claims this right for himself in the Netherlands and in the U.S.- I hope that he will continue to demand this right for me, too, in the U.S. (at Tilburg I thanked the Communist party of the USA in front of all the participants in the conference for its protest against the American government's excluding me from the country) - but Perlo denies this right of freedom of speech to Czechoslovak or Soviet Communists who disagree with the present rulers of the USSR and who are in prison (or, still worse, insane asylums) for the sole "crime" of publishing documents, which, for example, end with the words, "Leninism yes, Stalinism no! "
October 5, 1970.
All Fields Feel the Pinch
Tightening Controls on Czechoslovak Artists
Increasing government control of the press and mass media in Czechoslovakia since August 1968 is hampering the work of some of the country's most gifted artists, according to a report from Prague by Andrew Ritchie in the September 26 issue of the Manchester Guardian Weekly.
"Writers, film-makers, critics, and painters are suffering from more and more isolation from the arena of public discussion, and Czech artists have always been intensely political people," Ritchie writes.
The government "spends precious Western currency buying Raquel Welch and incredibly dated westerns, while the home industry, encouraged and prodded, could be a very big dollarearner for Czechoslovakia.
"The flowering of the Czech cinema in the 1960s was one of the most remarkable manifestations of the pervading process of liberalisation. Now Jiri Menzel's latest film is finished, with a screenplay by the author of 'Closely Observed Trains,' Hrabal, but is not going to be distributed yet. Also, apparently, two of Hrabal's new books are printed and waiting at the publishers, but are not allowed to appear yet."
Television and radio programming have become the victim of what Ritchie calls a "cultural imperialism." For example, a regular radio broadcast of baroque music has been re- Czech placed by "heavy cosmopolitan Germanic brass-band music and dated 1950 type jazz, the sort of noncommitted music which was out of favour for a long time."
A "documentary" film shown on television in mid-August, which Ritchie cites as typical, attempted to show that the reform movement of 1968 had been originated by foreign imperialism:
"First there was a shot of a parcel addressed to Czech TV, inside which were some tapes. Why they came from Paris, or who sent them was not explained or discussed. The voices on the tapes were so hard to hear that a commentary was read simultaneously...
The situation in the literary field is equally bleak. Host do Domu, a literary magazine, closed in May of this year. Universum, which printed English translations of Czech works, "was starved to death through lack of funds."
Avant-garde poet Miroslave Holub has been attacked in Rude Pravo, the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist party, for a travel book about New York, written several years ago, which was allegedly too "uncritical."
Holub now edits a small magazine called Orientace which "receives hardly any contributions in prose, because writers simply do not know what they can say."
The Slovak Writers' Union still continues to function and has even "won a little independence, but the Czech Writers' Union ... no longer officially exists, and all its functions have been taken over by the Literary Fund, effectively an offshoot of the Ministry of Culture. It has no money of its own, and all of its financial dealings have to be certified by an official in the Ministry of Culture."
The situation has resulted in a rapid decline of public interest in the mass media. Ritchie cites figures on newspaper circulation which illustrate this decline:
"The trade union paper 'Svet Prace,' which was selling 170,000 at the end of 1969, now sells about 70,000; 'Tvorba,' the new weekly political and cultural paper, has fallen in circulation from 60,000 when it was first published to around 34,000 now; and 'Rude Pravo'... the most important medium in the country, was selling more than a million copies daily just before the invasion in 1968, but has now dropped to 730,000, a figure which includes an oversupply of 7 per cent."
Nixon's Crystal Ball on Blink
"WASHINGTON, Sept. 30- The index of wholesale prices, which generally foreshadows retail price trends by a few months, rose sharply again in September, partly, but not entirely, because of increased food costs.
"The increase more than wiped out the decline in the index that had occurred in August, which [Nixon] Administration officials had hailed as strong evidence of the success of their anti-inflationary programs." - October 1 New York Times.