No Peace in Vietnam

[p064] NO PEACE IN VIETNAM split, the Hanoi leaders with prospects of economic aid to rebuild the shattered country and with admission into the United Nations. Dr Henry Kissinger’s latest visit to Peking is obviously intended to get Peking recognition for Nixon’s policy of two Viet- nams at the summit confer- ence which is to take place soon. Although the agreement recognizes two Vietnams by depicting as ‘sacred and in-. alienable’ the South Viet- namese people’s ‘right to self- determination’, this scheme is being continually undermined by the civil war waged in the south and the incessant flow of men and materials down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Thieu puppet regime, despite the concessions of the NLF and Hanoi and the tech- nical superiority of its army and air force, has lost the strategic initiative in the civil war. Hated by the peasantry and harassed by the guerrillas the Saigon regime is now rapidly succumbing to the dual pressures of inflation and cor- ruption. Thieu’s control of Saigon and the provincial capitals is proving extremely tenuous since the NLF control all the district towns, the frontier regions and the strategically vital areas of the central high- lands and the Mekong delta. Thieu’s hold over the cities is conditioned not so much on US aid, but by the political neutrality of the working class Fourth international Spring 1973

[p065] for whom the bourgeois character of the NLF pro- gramme has little to offer. In the Tet offensive and again in the Spring offensive of 1972, the urban workers did not respond in a big way to NLF appeals, mainly because the PRG programme promises to respect private property and does not include nationaliza- tion proposals. But the massive inflation of food prices and imported necessities in the towns and the dollar devaluation will un- doubtedly bring the working class into action against Thieu and create serious problems for the NLF leadership and the Provisional Government. Thieu’s reactionary laws on the Press and the unions and his electoral laws which ensure a one-party dictatorship are guaranteed to intensify popular hatred of the regime and trans- form any election campaign into a civil war. So long as the land remains in the hands of absentee land- owners and the rural debt is not abolished, so long too will the civil war continue. No ‘peace’ agreement, no ‘cease fire’ can eliminate this. As the bourgeois correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph’ reported from Saigon on February 12: ‘Neither the Paris confer- ence nor the _ International Commission of Control and Stability appears able to cause a serious reduction in the number of incidents which occur every day. Scores are . undoubtedly initiated by the local Vietcong or North Viet- namese leaders on the spot, but others by the South Viet- namese army.’ These examples suffice to show the unviable and utterly reactionary nature of the Paris agreement. It is also plain that the agreement will not resolve the vexed question of 600,000 political prisoners and: that, in fact, the concentration camps and notorious penal settle- ments such as Poulo Condor will remain monumental evi- dence of the complicity of world Stalinism in this betrayal of the colonial peoples. From the beginning, the Vietnamese revolution has been a serious embarrassment to these bureaucracies. Unable to oppose openly the Viet- Namese struggle, Stalinism has: all along tried to exploit this struggle in order to pressurize French and, now, US imperial- No peace in Vietnam ism to recognize the status quo in Europe and underwrite ‘peaceful co-existence’ between Stalinism and imperialism. Thus in the mid-1950s the Vietminh were robbed of the fruits of the historic victory at Dien Bien Phu by Peking and ‘Moscow in order that - French imperialism might be persuaded to.oppose the re- militarization of Germany. This betrayal consummated at Geneva and hailed by the Stalinists and Pabloite revision- ists as a ‘great victory’ did not bring peace, but laid the basis for the present civil war. Soviet and Chinese Stalin- ism’s attitude to the Vietnam — Revolution, which is a com- pound of bureaucratic knee- crooking before imperialism and a nationalist and reformist hatred of world revolution, has been highly valued by US im- perialist observers. No greater indictment of © Moscow-Peking policy can be found than the — succinct appreciation of the Geneva (1954) Agreement by the US Presidential advisers contained in the Pentagon Papers: ‘While it is fair to state that the immediate implications of the Accords did not reflect (even according to CIA reports) Vietminh strength and control in Vietnam at the time of the conference, it is equally important to understand why. Vietminh ambitions were thwarted, not so much by western resistance or treachery, as by Sino-Soviet pressures on them to co-operate... To- gether and separately, Moscow and Peking pressed concessions on the Vietminh. ‘Invariably, the two prin- cipal communist delegates, Chou En-lai and Molotov, played major roles in breaking deadlocks with conciliatory initiatives... ‘ “Peaceful co-existence” was the hall-mark of their dip- lomacy. The Chinese, in par- ticular, were interested in border security, buffers, pre- venting the formation of US— alliance system with bases in the region, and_reconstruc- tion at home. ‘The two powers did not _ hesitate in asserting the para- mountcy of their interests over those of the Vietminh.’ (Our emphasis). So it was in 1954 so it is today! The alatm and hatred of the Stalinist bureaucracies to- ward the Vietnam struggle today is directly related to the fact that this struggle takes place in the context of the ~-- greatest monetary crisis in “Capitalism’s history and an - unprecedented upsurge of class “struggle in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. A decisive victory for the ‘NLF would act as a tremend- ous stimulant to the struggle in west Europe and within the USSR and eastern Europe as - well, Such a victory would severely intensify the crisis of Stalinism. Another contributing factor ‘towards this policy is the growing agricultural crisis in the USSR, which results from the bureaucratic methods of the Soviet leaders and their gross incompetence in manag- ‘ing agriculture, Unable to feed the working class and fearful of another series of revolts like those which unseated Khrushchev, the Soviet leaders have decided to sacrifice the Vietnamese revolution in exchange for. US grain. For these reasons the Soviet leaders deliberately refused to supply the latest missiles to the North Vietnamese and entertained Nixon while Hanoi and Haiphong were devastated. While previous Presidents refused to sanction the mining of the northern ports for fear of Soviet and Chinese retalia- tion Nixon could—and did— pursue a total blockade be- cause both bureaucracies had indicated their compliance with his war aims. Outside of Vietnam Stalinism has supplemented these be- trayals by converting the defence of Vietnam into a pacifist-protest exercise de- signed to strengthen’ the domination of ‘left’ bureau- crats and middle-class poli- ticians and aimed against the development of revolutionary leadership. In Britain the high point of ~ this betrayal was the refusal of the British Communist Party leaders to campaign against Wilson’s visit to Washington in 1969 and their recent cam- paign to bring pressure on _ Nixon to sign the agreements. In the US, Stalinist parti- cipation in the anti-war move- -ment was designed to tie the anti-war movement to. the Demotratic Party and turn the movement into a pawn in the 61

[p066] presidential election. The American CP did not hesitate to split the anti-war movement in 1970 in order to support ‘progressive’ capitalist politicians. In these manoeuvres they were aided by the un- principled intervention of the revisionists who substituted their own brand of ‘single- issue non-exclusionary’ reform- ism for that of the Stalinists. The International Committee of the Fourth International alone preserved and developed the Leninist theory of defeat- ism by openly attacking the bogus ‘united fronts’ of the revisionists and Stalinists and by making the Vietnam Revolu- tion a central issue in the programme to build a revolu- tionary party... . The absolute correctness of the IC and Socialist Labour League’s break with the Viet- nam Solidarity Campaign on the role of international Stalinism and the Vietnam Revolution in 1966 and our refusal to participate in the October 27, 1968, fraud is now amply confirmed by the events leading to the Paris treaty. The defence of the Viet- namese Revolution means, first of all, a complete rejection of petty-bourgeois, pacifist oppo- sition to the war, which confines the anti-imperialist struggle to a- series of adven- turist and propagandist ges- tures calculated to disarm the working-class politically and generate the illusion that wars can be ended by pressure on capitalist statesmen. Underlying such an oppo- sition is the reformist assump- tion that wars are accidents of the capitalist system and that the system can exist without militarism and war, This reformist-pacifist per- spective of the revisionists and Stalinists confuses the van- guard of the working class on the inevitability of revolution- ary struggles between the working class and the capitalist state and, more importantly, of the necessity to smash and not to reform the apparatus of capitalist coercion and rule by the actions of the working class led by the revolutionary party. As Lenin. stated at the inception of World War I: ‘Under capitalism, _parti- cularly in its imperialist stage, wars are unavoidable,’ The task of revolutionaries, therefore, is to show, in theory ‘62 and practice, the inescapable necessity to combine the struggle against imperialist war with the struggle for state power. To do this is to build the Marxist party without which the working class can- not be liberated. All the activities of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the Indo-China Solidarity Front, the Student Mobiliza- tion Committee, the revisionist Young Socialist Alliance and the various ad hoc organiza- tions set up in the USA under Stalinist and revisionist patron- age cogently reveal that ‘a propaganda of peace at the present time, if not accom- panied by a call to revolution- ary mass actions, is only capable of spreading illusions, of demoralizing the proletariat by imbibing it with confidence in the humanitarianism of the bourgeoisie, and of making it a plaything in the hands of secret diplomacy of the belli- gerent countries.’ (Lenin.) In this sense the differences between the US Stalinists and the US revisionists of the Socialist Workers’ Party were completely factitious. While the CP called on Nixon to ‘Sign Now!', the SWP-YSA called on Nixon to withdraw his troops uncon- ditionally. Both groups. based their policies on the reformist illusion that ‘public opinion’ and the clamour for ‘peace’ would end imperialist oppres- sion in Indo-China. Neither group campaigned for the indispensable necessity to place no political confidence in the Nixon regime and to break the US working-class decisively from the two-party system by forming an independent Labour Party, with a socialist pro- gramme, based on the trade unions. Their faith in the Nixon regime is but the reverse side of a deep middle-class sceptic- ism about the European and US working class. Secondly, no defence of the Vietnamese Revolution is pos- sible without an implacable struggle to expose the role of Stalinism in this war and to equip the vanguard of the working class with a correct and comprehensive — under- standing of the counter- sevolutionary nature of Stalin- ism, As the monetary and economic crisis of imperialism worsens and as the capitalist powers whip up a hysteria of economic nationalism to justify their corporatist measures, the Stalinist bureaucracies in western Europe are already openly collaborating with the monopolist plans to strait- jacket the working class, While the European ruling classes, particularly in France and Italy, integrate their plans for civil war through the mechanism of the Common Market, the Stalinist leaders prostrate themselves before the decaying organs of bour- geois democracy and swear to uphold the most reactionary constitutions in post-war Europe. The same doctrine of ‘peace- ful co-existence’ which per- mitted untold’ death and devastation in Indo-China and created the basis for a barbaric protraction of the war, means, today, in Europe, the pre- paration of the greatest and bloodiest defeats of the Euro- pean working class by capitalist reaction. qh Britain, too, Stalinism consciously opposes’ every attempt to force the Tories to resign and covers up for the corporatist policies of the trade union bureaucracy and its acquiescence to the Treaty of Rome. In Greece, Stalinism has plumbed new’ depths. of treachery by its open support of the monarchy and its recog- nition of a monarchical con- stitution. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) warns the working class that no step forward is pos- sible in Europe or Asia without the destruction of Stalinism and this struggle cannot and will not be conducted by the centrist movements like Organisation Communiste In- ternationaliste (OCI), Lutte Ouvriére, International Social- ism (IS), International Marxist Group (IMG) and the Ligue Communiste, but only through the construction of ICFI sec- tions in every European State. The Vietnamese Revolution —-despite the temporary set- backs—will prove greater than the bureaucratic strait-jacket. But the ultimate victory of the Indo-Chinese people depends, more than ever, upon the struggle of European and US workers to build an alternative leadership to Stalinism and reformism and to — smash imperialism. February 16, 1973 Fourth International Spring 1973

[p067] BULLETIN PAMPHLET SERIES Black Nationalism and Marxist Theory by Tinn Wohlforth $ .50 Revisionism in Crisis by Tim Wohlforth 50 Stalinism & Trotskyism in the USA by Fred Mueller 75 Questions Facing Progressive Labor by Lucy St. John 50 What Is Spartacist? by Tim Wohlforth 50 Marxism and American Pragmatism by Tim Wohiforth 95 Ernest Mandel: The Fraud of Neo-Capitalism by Dennis O’Casey 50 Progressive Labor’s War Against Lenin by Lucy St. John 50 The Struggle for Trotskyism in Ceylon by Michael Ross 75 Towards a History of the Fourth International by Lucy St. John and Tim Wohlforth 50 The Liberal Philosophy of George Novack by Alex Steiner 50 Where Wallace Really Stands by Bruce McKay and David North 50 SWP: Reform or Revolution by Fred Mueller 50 In Defense of Trotskyism by Tim Wohlforth 50 BULLETIN INTERNATIONAL SERIES Lenin on Dialectics by Cliff Slaughter $ .50 Opportunism & Empiricism 50 Rebuilding the Fourth International . .50 Problems of the Fourth International by Gerry Healy 50 2 Open Letters to Joesph Hansen 50 Revolution & Counterrevolution in Hungary by Gerry Healy 50 The Dollar Crisis 25 OCI: Break With Centrism! 95 BULLETIN LABOR SERIES Steel: Lessons of the Past, Program for Today by Lan Fried and Steve Cherkoss $ .25 Showdown on the Docks by Dan Fried 25 -§SEU: A Case History of Militant Trade Unionism by Dennis O’Casey 25 The Case for a Labor Party 25 _ From Sit-Down to Lordstown: Story of the UAW by iMax Lewis 75 BULLETIN BOOKS The Struggle for Marxism in the United States: A History of American ‘Trotskyism by Tim Wohlforth $ 2.45 The First Five Years of the Communist International 3.75 _ BULLETIN SPANISH SERIES La Agonia Del Capitalismo Y Las Tareas De La Cuarta Internacional: Programa De Transicion . $ .50 Por un Partido Obrero! 25 BULLETIN TROTSKY SERIES Transitional Program - -$ .50 Trotsky on the Labor Party 50 BULLETIN MARXIST CLASSICS Capital: Chapter 1, The Commodity $ .50 The Teachings of Kari Marx 50 Essentials of Dialectics 50 _The Communist Manifesto -50. LABOR PUBLICATIONS, INC. 135 West 14th St., New York, N.Y. 10011 (Write for free catalog) Subscribe to the Bulletin! Subscribe O$1.00 For 4 Months . to the ‘Young Socialist! ($2.00 For 6 Months : 11s4.00 For One Year OOne Year. (12 issues) $1.00

[p068] 10,000 workers and youth rally at Empire Pool, Wembley , England in March 1973 to kick out the Tories and transform the Socialist ‘Labour League into fthe revolutionary party. >