Indian 'Communist Party Backs 'ehru against China

puted northern border between India and China. He promised Premier Nehru that the Communist Party would support the Indian Government 'with all its powers in the event of the 'faintest possibility of violation of the MacMahon line by China.

At an election meeting in Calcutta on December 10, he pledged this support at the same time against the Chinese and against any 'Portuguese aggression' against Indian territory.

The Indian Communist Party leaders have also attacked recent political statement by the Chinese government, in which 'Nehru's foreign policy was said to be a reflection of his growing dependence on US economic aid. Z. A. Ahmed, member of Parliament and of the Central Secretariat of the CP of India, said that the Chinese statement showed la lack of understanding of the real feelings of the Indian people' and that it was 'absurd to believe that the lure of the dollar was the decisive element in determining India's foreign policy or her attitude towards China'.

Ajoy Ghosh expanded on this theme, saying that the Chinese were: wrong to suppose that Nehru's government had almost gone over: to the camp of imperialism. He reaffirmed Ahmed's statement of December 13 that the CP of India supports Nehru's foreign policy 'because we consider that it strengthens the independence of our coun try.?

'We work out our policy and implement it taking into account the true interests of the Indian nation, he said. Ghosh had been reported the previous day as saying that in the coming elections the CP hoped for the victory of Mr. Krishna Menon, present Defence Minister, in North Bombay, and indicating that the CP would avoid splitting Menon's vote against Right wing opponents.

It would be absolutely insufficient just to condemn the Indian CP leaders' statements as unprincipled compromises in preparation for the forthcoming General Election. They are that, of course, but they are much more. It can now be clearly seen that the present anti-Chinese line of the dominant Khrushchev clique in world Stalinism is not just a dispute over doctrine, but reflects the latest step in the process of degeneration of Stalinism.

An understanding with imperialism in order to preserve the narrow interests of a bureaucracy; a covering of this with a theory of 'Socialism in one country'-this has always been the essence of the logical end of Stalinism. Ghosh's last statement was made during the State visit to India of the Soviet President, Brezhnev. Nehru, laying on banquets for Brezhnev one minute, prays for US aid the next, like Nkrumah and many another one.

In 1914, Lenin commenced to make a conclusive break with the old type of Socialist, however 'Marxist' those Social-Democrats claimed to be. What decided him was one single action that revealed the full extent of their class betrayal: the leaders of European Socialism in almost every country gave support to their own ruling class in making war against other nations; they helped the capitalists to mobilise millions of workers to don uniforms and systematically exterminate their brothers. Lenin proceeded to brand these leaders as agents of imperialism in the labour movement.

What can a Leninist say about the statement of Ajoy Ghosh? He pledges support for 'national' policy, not even against another bourgeois government — but against a workers' state in China! Perhaps his line is that Nehru's is not a bourgeois government, but leads what the recent 'Statement of the 81 Communist Parties' called a 'national democracy.

But Ghosh in his election speech on December 10, canvassing votes in the General Election, said that Nehru's government had a domestic policy of 'economic repression'!

Communist policies? There is not the slightest trace of anything remotely connected with Marx and Lenin in the Indian CP policy: according to them the Indian government has a more progressive foreign policy than a workers' state and yet carries out economic repression at home!

All this confusion and betrayal springs from the Stalinist destruction of Trotsky and the Bolshevik opposition. In the backward countries such as India, the task of a real Communist Party would be to lead the mass movement of workers and peasants to form their own organs of power against the bourgeois government of Nehru and his type. 'National' wars against imperialists like the Portuguese in Goa are a completely different question from the relation between the Indian working people and the Peoples' Republic of China.

Nehru and his type and ruin of the whole system unless the imperialists can find faithful allies among the native middle classes, allies who can at the same time delude the masses into thinking that they are democratic, nationalist leaders.

The Stalinist parties, by helping to swing the masses who listen to them behind Nehru and Co., give strength and stability to these agents of imperialism. The Soviet bureaucracy, above all wanting peace to solve its own problems and preserve its privileges, insists on this very line in the international communist movement. Recent articles in the Soviet press attack the Albanians, who had suggested that too much aid was going to governments like those of Nasser and Nehru. The Albanians (and, by implication, the Chinese) were attacked for not realising that such aid broadens the anti-imperialist front.

Vital lessons have to be learned from this series of events and disputes. To understand fully the Russian-Chinese dispute between two Stalinist factions, we shall require a thorough, overall analysis of the present crisis of imperialism, the specific class forces on which it depends, and the relation of the working class and of its Stalinist misleaders to these forces. The Indian example gives us a clear pointer to what is involved. We are in a period when the Stalinist domination of the working class exposes the mass movement to the gravest dangers. But capitalism cannot abolish its contradictions, cannot achieve stability, and revolutionaries have a strong objective basis for optimism.

This optimism will be justified only if Marxists make the necessary advances in theory and build revolutionary parties in every country which can find a road to the mass movement. The gross and cynical betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy conflict more and more with the interests of the mass of working people all over the world; and revolutionary initiative can bring out of the present crisis a great leap forward towards the international socialist revolution.

'It was not accidental that for decades we had no works on political economy philosophy or Sovies toane history of any worthwhile signiThese ficance.' Ilyichov, at Revolution CPSU 22nd Congress Betrayed Read Trotsky's classic analysis of the Soviet Union, its origins, its betrayal, its future.

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