DOUBLE TALK ON GREECE

mask Soviet lead from the Greek dictatorship called on the Labour gov- at the very time when the ernment to vote for the Soviet government, through expulsion of the Greek mili- both political and economic discussions with the colonels, tary regime from the Coun- has proved itself one of the cil of Europe at its meeting firmest supporters of the regime outside of the USA.

This is the classical Stalin"The whole weight and inList technique of double bookbe used to secure the expul- The 'Star' indignantly sion of the Athens junta from attacks Wilson's dealings with the council, without any furAthens, but remains silent on ther delay and without quali- the equally strong ties mainThe 'Star' then chides tained by the Kremlin with the torturers' regime.

Wilson and Stewart for their Like all its other campaicall reluctance to break from the the Communist for solidarity with the people of Greece against the colonels is a fraud.

'Unfortunately the past The 'Morning Star' has still record of Mr Wilson and the to explain its silence over British Foreign Secretary Carriat nantininatinn in tha parucipauon 111 Michael Stewart and the European Games held last words they used in parlia- summer in Athens. ment this week still leaves Letters appeared in the doubts in many minds about 'Star' both supporting and what will happen tomorrow? attacking Soviet participation, but neither Communist Party The Communist Party lead- nor 'Morning Star' comment ers call on Wilson to break on this principled issue was

Dillas deforms Lenin, Krupskaya and his sister in 1922 with orphans from the Civil War.

Lenin and Krupskaya with peasant families 1922. PAGE 'THE TIMES' has seen fit to anticipate the centenary of Lenin's birth in 1970 by calling. upon Milovan Djilas, former Yugoslav partisan leader and vice-president, to write a peculiarly derogatory article under the guise of an assessment of the man and his legacy.

The spot in the Saturday Review' in which the article appeared is usually devoted to literary reminiscences, short stories and similar fare to assist the English middle class to face the rigours of a weekend.

This time the intention was clearly more serious.

The way is being prepared for a campaign of misrepresentation and slander for centenary year itself.

That man like Djilas should undertake this task is surprise. could been expected, there attempt to throw fresh light on Lenin's character or on his impact history.

Instead, Djilas has dredged from a number of recent biographies a quite ordinary collection of half-truths, ready-made libels and downright lies salted enough phoney erudition to sound convincing to the unsuspecting reader the Here have Lenin fervent implacable dogmatist' whose interests never strayed outside political and social confines', whose 'spirit single groove indomitably in a • moved The same or similar phrases can be found in any number of books and articles on Lenin and Marxism.

They are intended to depict Lenin as narrow-minded, bigoted creature incapable of any human feeling: 'no human being ever succeeded in capturing his emotions'.

The conclusion is intended change the social order must be: seek similarly narrow-minded and machine-like.

Lenin made nastier and more dangerous having 'inexhaustible energy, 'sharp intelligence' and even 'uncanny infallibility' selecting right date to make a revolution.

Even Djilas's 'compliments' are designed to have the right political effect: alienate from Marxism any of the readers of 'The Times' who might tempted from reading the world crisis in its other pages to see whether it might offer a way out.

racialist Slur brace you tenderly, my darlDjilas does not forget to ing, send much love to all at cast a clearly intentional home'. racialist slur about Lenin's 'mixed blood' and 'mongoloid features'. The 'objectivity' of a good liberal knows no stereotype of the hard, attecbounds....

That the picture of Lenin's inhuman force. character drawn by Djilas is based on malicious false- dicts himself when he refers hood can be confirmed by any- to the shock which Lenin felt one who reads his personal at his brother's execution and This so-called 'infatuation' for accounts of those who knew Inessa Armand. him.

The lie that 'no human being beyond the bounds of Patep ever succeeded in capturing his emotions', for example, 1s comradeship' why call it an disproved at once from Lenin's "infatuation' ? affection and solicitude for his mother attested to by a regu- personal friendships with many lar exchange of letters over many years. including his sister They generally concluded with such phrases as I emBy Tom LENIN Kemp Plekhanov and Martov long after he had broken with them on questions of political prinVery ordinary sentiments, ciple is well-known. but sentiments all the same So also, is the fact that the which do not confirm the need to make these personal breaks caused Lenin considertionless man driven by some able nervous strain at the time.

'Nothing human In any case, Djilas contrais foreign to me' And, by the way, if this As for Djilas's view that Lenin lacked other than 'poliIn fact, Lenin had close tical and social interests', , the net is so wide that it recalls people at all stages of his life, Marx's favourite saying:

'Nothing human is foreign to collaborators. me'. regard for men Lenin may not have been a keen student of mathematics, music or poetry-like the average reader of 'The Times" —but he did indulge in certain leisure-time activities.

His letters speak of shooting wild animals (while in Siberia), cycling in the forests round Paris, bathing, climbing mountains, going to concerts, etc.

For example, writing from London early in 1903, he said: "The other day for the first time this winter, we went to a good concert and were very pleased with it, especially with I chaikovsky's " Symphonie Pathetique" 'Are there any good certs in Samara? We have been once to the German Theatre.

How we should like to go to the Moscow Art Theatre to see [Gorky's] "The Lower Depths"!' Lenin's life as a political exile took him to many countries. He always had a keen eye for scenery and people, remarking customs, habits of speech and so forth.

As for human feelings again, Lenin found time during the Civil War to write personally to comrades who had lost sons at the front.

And so it could go on.

The whole Djilas school of falsification rests upon nothing but political animosity towards the principles for which Lenin stood and the struggle which he conducted.

Of course Djilas has to admit Lenin's greatness in some respects.

He shows that his theoretical work from the 1890s was turned towards the fashioning of a revolutionary party equipped with an advanced theory.

But, as with other enemies of Marxism, Djilas turns the Bolshevik Party of Lenin's day into a monolithin force geared to ideological conformity and military discipline by Lenin himself.

This is a wild and malicious caricature designed to show that the present Soviet bureaucracy was an inevitable outgrowth of the seeds sown by Lenin.

The conclusion is part of the small coin of bourgeois journalism and is handed out ready-made from university political science departments. Djilas has adapted himself to this level without too much difficulty.

On a whole number of crucial political questions Djilas evades stating his own posiThus, for him, all matters connected with the character of the October Revolution are "moot points' In other words he will be ready to accept whatever version pays best.

For 'The Times' he maintains a studied impartiality and thus adds additional weight to his already pompous prose.

Djilas is unable to explain why Lenin should have maintained a firm internationalist position in 1914 when all over Europe the historic leaders of the Second International, and not a few anarchists and syndicalists, were falling in behind their own governments and becoming recruiting agents for the front and the war factories:

It might spoil the weekend 'Times' to raise such delicate matters.

It would also mean that Djilas would have to say who was right and raise some questions which have relevance to the history of the workers' movement in his own country.

Djilas rightly (for once) sees October Revolution through a struggles with those, including Stalin, who had swung the Bolshevik Party • into conditional support for the Provisional government.

Here Lenin's intervention was quite decisive-and could only have been made as the result of all the preceding struggles to define the Marxist path for Russia.

But , even on this point Djilas is not able to give an accurate historical account.

Thus he is wrong about Lenin's position in 1905 and treats the coming together of Lenin and Trotsky after a decade of bitter opposition as an accidental matter.

To do otherwise would require a discussion of the permanent revolution and of 'What Is To Be Done?'_ which, strangely enough, remains unmentioned.

Theoretical questions not discussed No doubt Djilas would be out of his theoretical depth if he had to discuss such questions and it would hardly be digestible reading for the weekend readers of 'The It is much more palatable to dig out from Rosa Luxemburg just that part of her writings—made from behind a prison wall when her knowledge of the facts was very incomplete-in which she displays her weaknesses rather than her revolutionary strength -her criticism of the Russian Revolution.

Djilas does not trouble to discuss what the fate of the Russian Revolution might have been if Rosa's prescriptions had been applied.

Again, in mentioning Lenin's early recognition of signs of bureaucratic degeneration in the Soviet state and Party, Djilas dismisses them with a few facile phrases divorced from the reality of the social and political struggle in Russia at the time.

He is unable to explain or define the trends in Soviet society which appeared after Lenin's death.

We know from his own book "The New Class' what sort of a hash he would turn out and we can be thankful for having been spared a re-write!

Turning to 'the myth' of Leninism, Djilas identifies it with the ideology of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.

He is thus able to perpetuate the wilful confusion of all the bourgeois 'experts' between what Stalin and the Stalinists appropriated as 'Lenin's heritage' at the same time as they took over the state and the Party and the real meaning of Lenin's contribution to Marxism.

It is perfectly true that Lenin did not set out to create a new body of theory, but regarded his task as being to develop and apply Marxism as the science of proletarian revolution.

This he did, and it is this imperishable contribution that we shall celebrate next year.

Dillas evades anti-Stalinist opposition But there is another aspect of this which Djilas evades.

The bureaucracy will also celebrate the Lenin centenary with all the pomp, pretentiousness and hypocrisy of which it is capable.

At the very same time, as always, the anti-Stalinist opposition will continue to demand a return to Leninism.

This is no enigma, but it can only be understood by showing the connection between Lenin and Trotsky and the way in which the International Committee of the Fourth International represents the real continuation of Lenin's work today. And in this connection Leninism is certainly no 'body of dogma'.

When Djilas goes on to say that Lenin's 'mode of thought was not a philosophical one' he is plainly wrong if he means that Lenin was indifferent to what Marxists understand by 'philosophical questions', Lenin conducted all his political struggles on the philosophical basis of dialectical materialism which he sought to strengthen all the time.

Lenin saw that it was necessary, but by no means suffi cient, to conduct a struggle in defence of materialism.

He went back to Marx to extract from his writings grasp of the dialectical method which had been overlooked or all but forgotten by all the other theoreticians of the Second International and which was the source of their prostration in 1914 when the war came up. himself As Lenin showed, even the best theoreticians in as Kautsky or. Plekhanov Ger- the pre-1914 movement, such the learned scholars of man social democracy, had neglected the dialectic.

This was the importance initially, of "Materialism and Empirio - Criticism', another work of Lenin's which Dilas unaccountably 'forgets'.

Actually this book is central in differentiating Lenin from the other trends social democracy at that time: it was their indifference to philosophical questions which presaged its degeneration.

Even those who took up the defence of materialism at all did so in a spirit more akin December to that of the 18th materialists than to that of the dialectic.

If any aspect of Lenin's struggle to build the workers' party should be singled out for special emphasis in • the centenary year it should be this From the standpoint of the petty bourgeoisie, represented by the failed revolutionary Milovan Djilas, such a matter is unworthy of mention and probably seems quite meaningless.

Workers who want to know how Lenin's work can assist their own struggles should not make such a mistake.

Lenin's historical role It was not magic willpower, but the theoretical genius of Lenin which accounts for the role he was able to play in history when circumstances provided the opportunity.

There is thus a close relationship between all the aspects of Lenin's work and his theoretical writing to which Djilas is blind.

Stalin and the Stalinists had to break with Lenin's dialectical method and did turn his theory into sterile dogma to conserve their own power.

In that they broke with Leninism.

By accepting the Stalinists as authentic descendants of Lenin Djilas has either been taken in or writes what his audience requires; perhaps he has never thrown off the effects of his own Stalinist training.

The readers of "The Times' are unlikely to peruse Lenin's 'State and Revolution' or 'Imperialism' to find out whether the version offered by Djilas is correct.

In fact it is a dishonest distortion.

Djilas wilfully perpetuates a number misconceptions which reflect his lack of understanding of the Russian Revolution and of the reasons for its degeneration under The claim that 'Imperialism' was culled from Hobson and is 'constricted and schematic' cannot be borne out from a reading of the book.

The theory of imperialism propounded by Djilas himself hardly reaches the level of a third-rate school textbook, being 'as it has always been; one of the aspects of the essential nature of a great power'.

The attempt to claim that the development of monopoly capitalism does not bear out Lenin's view carries absolutely no conviction.

Djilas is unfortunately wrong in saying that Lenin 'lived' to see the triumph of his ideas'.

certainly carried through the first successful proletarian revolution in 1917 and thus changed the course of world But this was, as Lenin well knew, but a beginning.

The formation of the Communist International, which Djilas only mentions in pasreal hopes lay in the arena of indicates Lenin's world revolution.

This question, too, cannot be taken up without considering what happened to the Comintern, and thus without discussing the Left Opposition, Trotsky and the Fourth International.

Under a pretentious cloak of learning and spurious impartiality Djilas has dished up a hotch-potch of familiar nonsense, worthy of 'The Times' but contemptible when coming from one-time would-be If these warmed-over pottages are the best that the press organs of the bourgeoisie can produce for the Lenin centenary it can only be assumed that their intellectual bankruptcy is already well advanced.

December IN THE Amalgamated will serve the capitalist state.