Mobilize to defend the Vietnamese Revolution

[p061] Defend Vietnamese revolution bombing campaign. Thus the Vietnamese workers and peasants were sacrificed to the privileged interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and workers all over the world were politically disarmed. In the advanced capitalist countries, the Stalinists isolate the Vietnamese revolution by confining the working class of Europe, America and Japan to purely trade union and opportunist types of struggle. The single-minded aim of the Stalinist parties, in alliance with the corrupt trade union bureaucracy, is to prevent the working class from confronting the capitalist class and its governments in a struggle that would lead to proletarian state power. > Successful revolutions in these countries would be the greatest blow of all against US imperialism in Vietnam. Those who hold the working class back from these revolutions are deliberately isolating the people of Vietnam and condemning them to death. The numerically powerful Com- munist Party of France epitomizes this role in its ‘popular front’ alliance with the reformists and bourgeois radicals. All those revisionists, and particularly the Pabloite ‘Unified Secretariat’, its sec- tions like the British International Marxist Group and supporters like the US Social- ist Workers Party, who accepted the ideo- logy of the ‘third world’ as ‘epicentre of ‘the world revolution’ and consequently restricted the role of the working class in the advanced countries to that of middle- class protest, share directly this responsi- bility of the Stalinists. These revisionists propagated the lie that Stalinism had changed its nature and was no longer counter-revolutionary. But on the contrary, Stalinism was preparing its greatest betrayal. These Pabloite revi- sionists showed their bankruptcy by join- - jng the liberals and Stalinists in announ- cing that Vietnamese ‘victory’ was at hand in the period of the US presidential elec- tion. Only the International Committee, starting from the insoluble nature of the international capitalist crisis, could warn and prepare the working class for the new . gtage of the struggle. The only force which can stop US imperialism in Viet- - Mam is the organized strength of the in- ternational working class in solidarity with the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese workers and peasants. In every trade union, every factory, every socialist and working-class organiza- tion, there must be a fight for immediate industrial action and mass demonstrations against the bombing and for total US withdrawal from Vietnam. Every working-class action against the US imperialist attack must be directed against the capitalist class within each country. Notwithstanding the grave inter- imperialist contradictions, the capitalists of Europe and Japan know that when Nixon attacks in Vietnam, it is the pre- paration against the working class every- where. It is the inevitable outcome, if left unchecked, of their Common Market imperialist strategy, their attack on demo- cratic. rights, their anti-trade union laws, their counter-revolutionary preparations. ‘The fight against the US in Vietnam is

[p062] Z| the same fight as that to mobilize and educate the force which can lead the working class to the overthrow of capital- ist governments in every country. To mobilize working-class action in this way will mean a thorough struggle against the reformist and Stalinist leadership. Thus, in taking up our responsibilities of international working-class solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution, we bring for- ward those forces which will have to build the alternative revolutionary leadership in the workers’ movement. On the question of how to fight against imperialist war, how to unite the revolution in the colo- nial countries and the advanced countries, _and how to build alternative leadership, the Marxist education of the youth and the most advanced workers proceeds. The working class in the USSR, East- ern Europe and China now face an even greater threat of imperialist war to des- troy the gains of their revolutions, because of the free hand given to Nixon in Viet- nam by the betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The workers in these coun- tries are taking up the fight against the bureaucracy on many questions. But this bureaucracy seeks strength, against its ‘own’ working class, from its imperialist alliances. Every step we take to weaken imperialism in Vietnam at the same time weakens the counter-revolu- tionary bureaucracy, and opens the way for the workers of the USSR, Eastern Europe and China to restore their links with the international working class. At the centre of the struggle stands the working class of the United States. Independent working-class action all over the world to stop the imperialist ‘var, to bring down the capitalist governments, is the way to encourage the working class of the US to take the road of indepen- dent political struggle, independent of the Capitalist parties: in the first place, the formation of an American Labour Party. This is what Nixon and the imperialists fear most of all. They are lying in wait, if they get away with the Vietnam out- rage, bloodily to suppress the American working class. The anti-strike laws and the ‘Pay Board’ are only the beginning. Once again! The Vietnam bombing raids mark the imperialist response to the irre- versible deepening of the crisis of their economic system. They signal the prepara- ° tion of historically unprecedented des- . truction of the productive forces, above all of the working class itself. : There must be an end to secret diplo- macy. Just as the 1954 Geneva agreement was the formula for depriving the Viet- namese people of the fruits of military victory and the screen for US intervention to reconquer Vietnam, so today the Stalin- ist support for ‘these ‘peace’ talks pro- vides Nixon and Kissinger with the cover for the bloodiest counter-revolutionary war in history—and this is only the begin- ning of the attacks they must undertake all over the world. Every revolutionary fighter in the inter- national working class, every section of the Interriational Committee of the Fourth International, must fight for the strength of the entire working class to. be used in every way—industrial action and mass demonstrations in the first place—to stop the imperialists in Vietnam! The essence of this struggle is to turn the working class all over the world, in answering every imperialist attack, to the preparation of the conquest of state power. What is at stake is the death- throes of the capitalist system, lashing out in self-defence to destroy everything that stands in its way. The whole future of the working class now depends on building in time the alternative leadership which can take the working class to the smashing of capitalist state power. It is to this end that the working class every- where must rally with mass actions against the US imperialists in Vietnam. @ Trade unionists in every country must stop the movement of all US and other imperialist supplies to Vietnam! @ Strikes in every country in solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution! @ Mass workers’ demonstrations in every country against the bombing! @ Stop the bombing now! Immediate withdrawal of all US land and air forces! @ Victory to the workers and peasants of Vietnam! December 29, 1972 Fourth International Spring 1973

[p063] Statement by the International Committee of the th International While the working class in every country is facing the harshest attack by the capitalists on its stan- dard of living and all the rights it has gained, in