Of course, we disagree on this. I challenge his preference for the Italian as opposed to the French CP on the grounds that the Italian party has persuaded the trade unions to moderate their wage demands, protests against the For Bahro, the ever widening gap in living world and the poor countries of the Third World must be overcome by an austerity policy of the working class.
I am not sure that we are still speaking the same languare. that, despite such statements, Bahro remains a true revolutionary at heart. It is difficult to imagine him, who speaks so eloquently about *the communism that wanted', selling out the Fiat workers to Italy's bourgeois government.
Premature A similar problem comes up in relation to Eastern Europe. Bahro declares himself against any 'premature' political Germany, and insists that until changes have been brought about in Moscow all one can do is discuss theory ideological struggle'. 'It is no use artificially forcing political action in the GDR, nothing is gained by it. outright.' But when pressed on the possibility of mass explosions, the revolutionary in Bahro comes through, against his theoretical reservations: 'Of course, should anything happen in specific while the French CP of its austenty pians between the develoned imperialisi but somehow never doubt Marx and Engels learned guiding concents.' activity in East The calls *the They will simply defeat us boldly. RUDOLPH BAHRO, Communists', will have to guide social progress in what he sees as a democratic dialogue between leadership and masses.
the whole history movement that cannot translate some principle directly It soon becomes clear that two experiences dominate Bahro's political thinking: that of Prague in 1968, which makes him doubt the possibility of any fundamental political change in Eastern Europe until there has been some change in the Soviet Union, and the experience fascination that the model' holds for sectors of the masses in the GDR which, in his opinion, would lead to a collapse of the state if reforms were enacted too 'We should have burcaucracy of our into tactical the labour capitalism unsatisfied.
West German reform interests 'we must not play with The theoretical Yet there is no Bahro is a true of But his German German company. progress, and in which gradualism even appears | revolutionary compared to the dead hand of the At the time of the interview, barely spent a week in the West. His curiosity, his thirst for information about the realities of and socialist movement tresh His declared intention is to build a united socialist movement to the left of the SPD (the Bahro had Marxism reformism of the Eurocommunists. largely *The full of New Left Review.
RUDI DUTSCHKE, become an of the founders (Socialist Students German student movement.
February Liebknecht in protest head-wound tragic end.
tribute is to carry on the struggle.
German Labour Party) on the model of the Italian Communist Party. Disillusionment will be rapid; a further clarification of political ideas necessary. Time will tell whether Bahro's future evolution will be towards revolutionary towards the bureaucratic His present ideas contain the seeds of both. will published in the January February 1980 issue who died on December, was above all an internationalist. Born and brought up in East Germany, he fled to the West, but unlike many others he did not anti-communist but a radical. As of the German SDS Germany) in the mid- 1960s he helped to form the politics of the Whatever its other weaknesses the Germar SDS was internationalist to the core. It made solidarity with Vietnam its central concern. In 1968 it organised a Congress for Vietnam in West Berlin, the centre of the Cold War. 25,000 people marched behind red flag and portraits of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl against American A few months later a young Nazi, inspired by the inflammatory newspaper campaign of the reactionary Springer Press, shot Dutschke in an attempt to kill him. He suffered a severe but recovered after a number of operations. He came to convalesce in Britain, but was deported by the Tory government at the beginning of 1971. He then settled in Denmark.
But the injury to his head never fully healed. It was this which caused him to faint while having & bath and drown: an unecessary and Rudi was a dedicated socialist. Our best Socialist Challenge 3 January 1980 Page 11
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socialist, has recently been freed after spending nearly two years in jail on a charge of spying. His arrest followed the publication of his book, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, by a West
On this page GUNTER MINNERUP recounts a conversation he had with Bahro in West Germany after his release.