Pious peace

page with whom they disagree ally.

The conference expressed its approval of the way in which the previous national committee had defended the Communist Party militants fighting the witch-hunt in the ETU during 1961.

It called upon all members of the ETU to maintain this fight and to build up a united front in that union to prevent the victimization of leaders such as Frank Foulkes, who is now being hounded from office by the Right wing.

Problems

The activity of the Socialist Labour League during 1961 was carefully examined in the light of the responsibilities of leadership. It was felt that there were some important problems which had not yet been answered satisfactorily.

These are to be the subject of further discussion inside the organization and the incoming national committee was instructed to prepare a report analysing these problems and suggesting a solution for overcoming them in the next period.

Whilst the Socialist Labour League is perhaps the bestprepared organization on the Left in Britain today, delegates were concerned lest any feeling of complacency should creep into its methods of work.

In face of the constant attacks by the Right wing, it was considered extremely foolish for members of the League to become in any way complacent about the dangers facing the movement.

The great achievement of the conference was the concrete and real way in which the delegates faced up to the difficulties and tasks of the future. he to of construct a party cal sable of representing the British working class. • Trotsky lived long enough to pass over to us a great bequest, he said. 'But we cannot rely on the old arsenal for ever. We have to re-equip ourselves. • The fact that Trotsky was a giant in our movement was in some ways a disadvantage. We have to measure up to the problems facing our movement.' THE INTERNATIONAL REPORT to the Conference was moved by Cliff Slaughter. It had been prepared, he said, in a period of renewed struggles in the world.

There was mass violence in Algeria. The French situation summed up both the decay of capitalism and the tasks of the working class.

" That capitalism should be able to stabilize itself in any way in this period is fantastic. It is only possible because of the rise of the bureaucratic caste in the USSR, the dominance of social democratic and Stalinist leaderships, produced by the uneven development of the advanced and backward countries, the consequent narrowness and weakness of the working class in the advanced countries, absence of strong revolutionary parties and of international working-class leadership and, following on this, the unchallenged dominance of opportunist middle-class groupings over the struggle of the workers and peasants of the backward countries.' These, said, had enabled capitalism contain the great strength the workers and peasants.

Leadership

The break must be in this question of leadership. In the history of the working-class movement there have been breakthroughs to the necessary consciousness.

' This is the essential strength of the working class-to achieve consciousness of its historical role.' He said that the working class is the only revolutionary class and working-class power is the only way of overthrowing capitalism. Only Trotskyists defend that today. Stalinism was a counterrevolutionary force; Stalin's theory of 'socialism in one country' meant socialism nowhere else.

Out of the struggle against Stalinism came the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky in the 1930s. All the objective pre-requisites for the overthrow of capitalism were present, but the main problem facing the working class was, then as now, the crisis of leadership.

Revisionism

Marxism is a guide to action, an attempt to find the real needs and tasks of the working class. At each stage in the struggle there is a dire necessity to combat revisionism, i.e., those who suggested that our principles are no degeneration of the world communist movement can be measured by its position on the question of war when compared with that held in Lenin's day.

The best way to prevent war is to do away with the means of warfare.' This platitude by Maurice Thorez is used by Jean Kanopa, one-time mentor of French communist intellectuals, as a text for an article on disarmament in the May issue of 'World Marxist Review'.

From the article we learn that in the struggle for peace, 'which is the prime task of all communists, disarmament is the paramount issue.

Its main thesis is that pressure from the working class and its allies —' peace supporters and the non-aligned countries'— can compel the imperialists to embark first on partial, then on general disarmament.

It offers the prospect of the resources released from arms in the Menshevik theory of two stages' to the revolution.

This was really what was in the minds of those who, in talking about Algeria, spoke of the need to consolidate independence first and then go forward to the struggle for socialism.

'Isn't this the theory which Stalin and company foisted on to the workers of Egypt, Syria, India and China? ' Speaking about the debate on the nature of the Cuban state, Cliff Slaughter said that there had been a great step forward. There was the possibility of a workers' dictatorship arising out of the battle against United States imperialism.

But, for this consciousness, a great leap in organization and a relation to world forces was required. This meant a step towards working-class political independence in workers' councils led by a Marxist party.

Cuban example

In Cuba there are dangers of bureaucratized state being erected on the ruins -of the old bourgeois caretaker state, restoring bourgeois power against the workers, helped by the Stalinist bureaucrats.

"This is the dominant trend in Cuba just now. To praise the situation in Cuba as a "confirmation of the Permanent Revolution" is treachery to Marxism. It is the opposite of providing a conscious leadership to the working class.

'It is wrong to start from Cuba, an island of six million and use it as a model for a whole Maurice Thorez: platitudes spending becoming available to raise the living standards of the people.

It is clear that for Kanopa, as a spokesman for the Soviet bureaucracy, there is no question of a political struggle to overthrow imperialism politan countries.

' Peaceful co-existence' necessarily envisages a situation in which a disarmed imperialism divides the world with the Soviet rulers. It assumes, in fact, that the capitalist powers will increase their aid to the newlyindependent countries.

'The capitalist powers, he writes, 'will never agree of their the relation between the working class masses. the nationalist middle class and imperialism.

'Since our international resolution was accepted by Conference last year, it has been rewritten and published in the 'Labour Review? and adopted in its main line by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Inspiring revival

Cliff Slaughter said that the line of the International Resolution had been confirmed by the objective events. In Britain particularly, the desperate drive of the employers to achieve a new stability and avoid the developing crisis was leading to sharper struggles within the Labour movement.

"This is bound to be given a new momentum by the inspiring revival of the class struggle in Spain and Germany.

' In Italy and France, too, the strike wave mounts. Our specific contribution must be the construction of the revolutionary party here in Britain at the head of the working class, and particularly the youth.

'But equally the Socialist Labour League has to try to take its responsibility in driving forward the discussion of those international political perspectives without which the impending struggles of the European workers will result in defeats, even greater than those in Germany and France in the 1930s. own free will to extend such aid. Only persistent struggle will compel them to assume their responsibility to the people they have robbed and exploited for centuries' The salting of an article of this kind with a few revolutionary-sounding phrases does not change its character. The perspective of putting pressure on imperialism to compel it to disarm and then, under conditions of detente, to intensify struggle against it, is entirely unrealistic, not to say antiLeninist.

Kanopa, like other CP theorists, argues like a Jesuit. Quotations from Lenin are torn from their context to 'prove' his argument. Kanopa has to reach a certain conclusion and he does so regardless of the real line-up of world forces.

MISLEADING

Intending to set the stage for coming World Peace Congress in Moscow, this article is highly misleading and dangerous. Who is going to be disarmed as a result of this policy? Certainly not the imperialists.

But there is no doubt that the working-class movement will be disarmed in the face of imperialism if it contents itself with calling upon capitalist governments to reach a disarmament agreement with the USSR.

'These are not idle words: Violence and terror will follow slander and witch-hunting, unless the working class prepares politically.

Show the way

"That is the job of the Fourth International; to find and show the way from the great struggles now beginning in Europe and America to the final victory of the working, class, the victory of socialism. • A further report of the Conference will appear in next week's " THE PEACEFUL ROAD' IN SPAIN 'The Spanish Communist Party has made clear that it stands for a peaceful solution of Spain's difficulties and will work loyally with all those who are for such a solution and an end to the dictatorship.

"The events of the past two months have shown that such a solution is possible and has the support of the Spanish people?

-Sam Russell in the 'Daily Worker', June 12, 1962 PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE? 'RUSSIAN GIRL COUNTERATTACKS WITH LOBS ' -Headline in 'The