New Lies from Newsline

Scan page 8

After 1905, when Trotsky was in exile following the defeat of the first Russian Revolution, he had discussions with a German Socialist called M.I. Helphand who used the penname Parvus.

'Parvus' was famous in the circles of international socialism, wrote a number of books and articles which appeared on the front page of Iskra. Before any other Marxist in the world had grasped the significance of the fact, he developed the view that the international character of the capitalist system and the proletariat made possible the struggle for workers power before the completion of the bourgeois revolution.

Originator

Parvus was thus the originator of the theory of 'permanent taken up and expounded by Trotsky in his pamphlet Results and Prospects in 1906.

Such a view is essential to explain the primary role of the Russian proletariat in the international revolutionary upsurge a decade later, provides the basis and method of the fight for socialist aims in any national bourgeois revolution today.

Now an interesting point about Parvus is that he did not have an entirely reputable career.

Since the signing of the internal settlement in March of this year, the Smith regime, now propped up by his black stooges, has been concentrating his efforts on selling the agreement to western imperialism.

Muzorewa, Sithole and Chief Chirau, the three black members fu it rentise Ene imper Conce il ot the new cxecutive councis. TUV realise international recognition -a precondition for which is that the agreement should seem acceptable to a substantial section of the black population.

Sithole, himself, stressed this at one of the 'negotiations' prior to the settlement:

"What we fear is that at present the police, the army, prison service and the administration are predominantly white at the top. Should they remain as they are, this will cause difficulty in selling the settleIn later years became obsessed with money-making, and later still became a corrupted agent of German imperialism arguing for its 'progressive' role during the First World War and standing on the extreme right wing of the German Social Democratic 'Proof' In tne yzus, wnen tne Stalinists wanted to discredit the theory of permanent revolution and attack Trotsky as an agent of capitalism, they referred to the career of Parvus as a 'proof' of the falsity of the views he had once put forward.

This argument was not only illogical, it was mixed with an 'amalgam' technique that culminated in the nightmare of the Moscow Trials, when revolutionaries with different opinions were lumped together, humil iated, murdered, and called spies, saboteurs, fascists and so on.

It might be thought that those who claim to be against Stalinism would shy well away from such methods of polemic, for fear they would tar them with the same Stalinist brush.

'Agents'

This, however, does not concern the ex-Trotskyists of the WRP leadership who have now become well steeped in the technique of ment.... While we are determined to see a settlement, we must face up to the problem of selling that settlement".

The efforts of Smith and his black stooges to persuade the imperialist powers that they are in control of the situation and the settlement is secure have been quite frenzied. • The statements made by the security forces and government about the guerrilla war are faithfully repeated as fact throughout the bourgeois media in the West. The severe restrictions on the movement of foreign reporters are still in force.

This tight control of publicity is used by the government to try to show that the settlement is popular, that the regime is being liberalised and calling their political opponents 'agents' of the Stalinists or imperialists, and then attacking others who reject this view as in some way supporters of imperialism, Stalinism, or any other agency that readily comes to mind.

A very worked-out version of this was seen in the WRP's daily News Line of 1st July last.

Here an anti-communist letter to Tribune written by Mark Jenkins, who is a former member of the Bulletin group (a group of British supporters of the French OCI, immersed in the Labour Party) is used to attack anyone who has ever agreed with Jenkins on anything.

Picture

The article is entitle WRP leader Hea that the guerrillas war.

All these propositions quite false.

The government's need to crack down on the rural ,areas through curfews and 'protecting' villages, proves that the African peasantry fully support the Patriotic Front guerrillas and the guerrillas are becoming more, not less, successful.

The regime, now presided over by an Executive Council, in which effective power is concentrated in the hands of Smith and the Rhodesian Front, has stepped up the war against the Patriotic Front since the settlement was signed.

It has increased repression in the rural areas by placing further restrictions on "protected villages"

Parvus

From Labour Party Towards CIA Position. Far-right move by renegades' and, in a bid to link it to the WSL, includes a picture of Alan Thornett.

Jenkins, in two letters to Tribune called for opposition to Soviet and Cuban involvement in Africa.

Greater support

This, as our readers well know, has never been the position of the WSL.

We have consistently supported liberation movements in Africa and called for greater support for them from the workers states.

We have drawn attention to the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, for example, their support for the war against the Eritrean d liberation movement. ly-adopting Stalin's technique These are villages sympathetic to the guerrillas where the movements of the inhabitants are severely restricted.

Curfew regulations .. have become even . stricter since March-in some places they have been extended to 22 hours a day.

Anyone seen in the fields or the countryside during the curfew is shot on sight-and these are regulations which Smith and Co. claim are for the 'protection' of the villagers!

Detainees

One way in which the government has tried to establish its new liberal' image, is through the well-publicised release of political detainees.

However, Joshua Nkomo, leader of ZAPU, has asserted that the authorities often release Trotsky Where has the WRP stood on these questions?

Have they criticised the ambiguous and 'conciliatory' role taken by left nationalist Gadaffi in relation to the war against French colonialism in Chad, not to mention the war in Have they even attempted to explain how Cuba-which they apparently still define as 'capitalist'-has become part of the Stalinist world system of workers states and counter-revolutionary alliances?

Sordid purposes

The WRP, of course, does not feel it necessary to explain any of this.

Its sordid purposes are served by maintaining without any basis in fact or reason the following propositions:

*Alan Thornett agreed in the WRP 'that the crises of capitalism would force the Labour government to the left' *Thornett and his supporters flouted the discipline of the Workers Revolutionary Party over and over again.

*Joseph Hansen 'has been proved' to be a double agent inside the Trotskyist movement.

The first of these statements has been "proved' only be means of invented and falsified WRP minutes, and has never been shown to have any relationship Rhodesian soldie prisoners: "only to rearrest them immediately, this time without any legal proceedings"

Detainees are required to sign a statement in support of the internal settlement as a condition of - release. Many Patriotic Front supporters have refused to sign and remain in jail.

The State of Emergency, and all the repression that that implies, remains in force, so that released detainees get out to find the same climate of political repression.

The International Defence and Aid Fund pamphlet Smith's Settlement* , contains the names of over 200 people arrested on security grounds in the first two months of the agreement.

The full number must be far greater, given the unwillingness of the authorities to disclose such information.

years of Socialist Press.

The second statement has been refuted in detail many times.

The third is part of the WRP's now well-known and particularly vile efforts to deal with political differences by conspiracy theories.

Moved to right

To return to Mark Jenkins. It is quite true that Jenkins for several years has put forward positions with which we strongly disagree.

He has long since broken from Trotskyism and moved sharply to the right. But this is no reason to say that he has not in the past argued for points of view which were correct.

In the early 60s Jenkins was a leading member of the WRP's forerunner, the Socialist Labour League, in the Paddington area of London.

In the early 70s he made a number of generally correct criticisms of the ultra-left sectarian and antiTrotskyists policies of the WRP.

'Amalgam'

His subsequent evolution is a matter for explanation and regret.

But to attempt to associate his present position with the positions of the WSL is as logical as to equate all the positions taken by Parvus with those of the Left Opposition of the 20s; or those of the extreme reactionary ex-Trotskyist James Burnham with the present-day Trotskyist movement.

The use of the 'amalgam' the repetition of stale lies, appear to be the only answer that the WRP feels able to make to the series of articles that recently appeared in Socialist Press dealing with the utterly unprincipled role of the WRP in the trade unions and the rejection of all the principles on which some of them once stood on the national and colonial If the Healy School of Falsification is all that WRP leadership has left, is it not time WRP members began to ask where the principles of Trotskyism are being defended and fought for in the workers movement? * preserving the settlement' Political executions have continued , despite attempts by the black internal leaders to persuade Smith that such moves are not likely to convince the black majority of his sincerity.

IDAF pamphlet provides a rundown of the terms of the settlement and the activities of the security forces since March 1978.

Information on the extent of imprisonment, murders and beatings carried out by the security forces is distorted or absent from most of the bourgeois press in Britain, so pamphlets such as these are useful and their contents deserve to be publicised.

*Fact Paper on Southern Africa No. 6. Smith's Settlement-Events in Zimbabwe Since 3 March 1978. Published by International Defence and Aid Fund, 104, Newgate Street, London EC1. Price 50p.

Scan page 9

OCIALIST PRESS, Heiresda 19Jo. 19°: