FOURTH WORLD
reform, students no longer feel that they can rely on a political organiza–
tion. They still fear that in the existing political jungle the creation of
a formal organization with a given, inflexible structure would mean that
its political program too would soon become formal, narrow and re–
stricted, and that the shaping of the program would get pushed up–
wards into the lobbying to the functionaries. Therefore they
try
to
shape a broad political program through the activities of a number
of loose and flexible groups among the rank and file of the student
body.
The system of self-governing organizations as one of the pillars of
the new society is one of the topics most frequently discussed at joint
meetings of students and workers - for the students also believe
that a political democracy of socialist citizens cannot exist without self–
government by all productive institutions. One without the other must
degenerate.
They know that just as last year they could accomplish a change
in their own political representation by a movement from below by
activating the mass of students, they can now achieve changes in society
only by joining forces with other social strata, particularly with workers.
Some years ago they attempted to make contact, primarily with young
workers, but they were only partly successful. The governing bureaucracy
used all its means to enclose the workers in their factories, the farmers
in their villages and the intellectuals in their libraries, limiting their
exchange to the minimum and rationing the information available to
them. As a result, the workers stopped playing their political role as a
class, this role being taken over by the bureaucracy ruling in the name
of the working class. The set-up differed from capitalism only in that
the system of universal saleability was replaced by the system of uni–
versal manipulation.
It should be emphasized that in the period of complete freedom
of press and freedom of speech this spring and summer the clubs suc–
ceeded in providing a platform for the expression of their members'
views and played a role as a corrective to the Communist Party's politics.
This, no doubt, is why the dissolution of all organizations outside the
National Front was one of the first Russian demands.
The demand was accepted by the leaders, and the clubs abolished.
The existence of the Union of University Students of Bohemia and
Moravia, a new students' organization which came into being in the
spring when students left CSM (Czechoslovak Union of Youth) en
masse, was threatened. In order to save the Union of University Stu–
dents, the students agreed to start negotiations with the National Front,
