MICHAEL SHUTE
in any sense of the word. Hass is familiar with the earlier "new class"
theorists, and they have clearly had their impact. But Hass and his group
utilize the past selectively, with a discrimination shaped by the needs of
their struggles. For new class theory corresponds to their experience in
attempting to create a new beginning for a struggle against the Com–
munist state. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Hungarian
working class seized control of the means of production, replacing Com–
munist factory managers with democratically elected workers councils.
The first real revolution against Communism transferred the means of
production from th'e hands of one class, the bureaucracy, to those of
another, the working class. And the idea that the bureaucracy constitutes
a new social class which owns the means of production through its
political control of the state is the core of the new Polish Trotskyism.
This theory strikes at the heart of Communist totalitarianism, for
it challenges the very basis on which the "dictatorship of the bureauc–
racy" rests. Previous revolutionary movements-Western Marxism, for
example-have strengthened their struggles by attempts to evaluate the
nature of their enemies. The revolutionists working within the Commun–
ist nations, however, have not had the same arsenal of theoretical weap–
onry that socialist intellectuals have traditionally provided for the work–
ing class in the struggle against capitalism, primarily, of course, because
of the enforced absence of real intellectual discourse behind the Iron
Curtain. And although the Hungarian Revolution collapsed because it
did not spread fast enough into other satellite countries before Russian
intervention, it suffered also from the lack of a leadership with a theo–
retical grasp of the problems confronting the revolution. The efforts
of Hass and his comrades are a milestone in the socialist revolution
against Communism, for this group has at least begun to educate a cadre
of socialists to a realistic view of Polish society in particular and the
Communist bloc in general.
The emergence of the Polish new class theorists is important to the
New Left in America as well, for it demonstrates that American radicals
are fighting for international goals. The activity of the New Left in the
ghetto, on the campus and in resistance to American intervention in
Vietnam, has been part of a fight to expand democracy. To the New
Left, America's attempt to impose her will on Vietnam and her persecu–
tion of dissidents like the DuBois Clubs reflect deeply rooted social and
economic interests which are incompatible with the welfare of the people
and with the values of a civilized society. To Hass and his imprisoned
companions, the jailing of radicals and the sentencing of writers like
Sinyavsky and Daniel to slave labor compel similar conclusions about
