Castro's fans excuse Eritrea

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The renewed campaign by leading members of the American Socialist Workers Party to make Fidel Castro an honorary Trotskyist was given another boost in the October 2 issue of the journal Intercontinental Press in an article on the Ethiopian Revolution by Ernest Harsch.

The main subject of the article is the war in the Ogaden in 1977-78 between the Ethiopian Derg,_ supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the West Somali Liberation Front and the regular army of the Barre military dictatorship in Somalia.

Changed view

Harsch admits that Intercontinental Press has completely changed its assessment of this war.

" It used to say (correctly enough) that it was a contradictory war in which a legitimate national liberation struggle-of the oppressed Somali minority inside Ethiopia-was also being used by the imperialists for their own reactionary objectives in Ethiopia.

Now, however, Harsch says that "the imperialistbacked Somalian invasion was the overriding aspect of the war, both in its actual extent and in its political thrust.

So in retrospect, Harsch claims, it becomes clear that this was a very simple war of imperialism whose real impetus' and 'objective aims' (sic): only emerged afterwards.

Why does Harsch feel it necessary to rewrite the history of this war in such a one-sided way?

The answer becomes plain in the rest of his article: because such a rewriting will reflect revolutionary glory on the hero of the story, Fidel Castro.

So, as a result of the Castro with Che Guevara (right) Cubans' role Ogaden, Harsch claims:

"Despite the negative aspects of the Cuban role in Ethiopia, the dominant side by far has been the progressive one. In a war situationwhere the question is posed of 'which side are you on?' -the Cubans come out decisively against the imperialist machinations. In the overall picture, that's no small thing."

This to Harsch is:

66 .. an internationalist policy, a policy that aids the African revolution, and by extension the world socialist This clean bill of revolutionary health for Castro, follows hard upon the publication of another article in which SWP leader Joseph Hansen lauded Castro's regime, claimed that it was "independent" of the Soviet Union and explicitly denied that Trotskyists should call for its overthrow through political revolution. (See the comment in Socialist Press No. 113):

Falsifications Harsch, like Hansen before him, is forced I° stoop to falsification in order to establish his case.

One scandalous instance of this is his treatment of the Soviet Union.

He tells us (p.1093) that in Ethiopia:

• "Moscow's policy is highly opportunist, and has nothing to do with aiding the Ethiopian revolution."

He is quite right. And he adds some (rather crude)

proof: the USSR. initially supported the "repressive military junta" in Somalia and only switched to Ethiopia later because it was bigger and because the Americans withdrew.

All this constituted, Harsch says, a "counterrevolutionary approach.

That's at the beginning of the article.

Only when we've read on enough to forget that, does Harsch tell us with breathtaking inconsistency that just the same conduct by Cuba is evidence of its A medal for butcher Mengistu revolutionary internationalism!

Withdrew aid

So when the Soviet Union withdrew military aid from Somalia and sent it to the Ethiopian Derg it was counter-revolutionary and opportunistic.

But when Cuba did the same (a policy which it obviously co-ordinated with its co-thinkers in the Kremlin) then it was coming out decisively against imperialist machinations!

When Moscow portrays the Derg as "socialist" and "Marxist-Leninist" then; Harsch tells us, "the Kremlin helps bolster Mengistu's phoney claims.

But when Fidel Castro calls Mengistu a revolutionary and a socialist, when he fetes the Ethiopian leader as the most honoured possible guest in Havana (most of which Harsch chooses not to mention), then Harsch assures us;

"Castro is right when he points to the socialist dynamic of the Ethiopian revolution, but he confuses the Derg itself with this process.

"This political position could lead to some serious Cuban troops in Angola errors, especially in situation as complicated Ethiopia."

Harsch doesn't divulge the (no dubt very dialectical trick which enables him to discern that virtually identical and certainly co-ordinated actions by the Moscow and Havana bureaucracies are in the one case conscious counter-revolution and in the other case a simple confusion of a genuine revolutionary socialist.

Harsch tells us:

"Soviet arms aid falls within the context of Moscow's support for the Derg's repressive policies against the Ethiopian and Eritrean masses.

Not revealed Of course he doesn't reveal how Cuba's arms aid (from the beginning co-ordinated with that from the Soviet Union) falls in a totally different context.

Of course, Harsch doesn't sort out this apparent inconsistency because he cannot.

Every shred of evidence is against him. And he knows this • because the structure of the article obviously tries to conceal the glaring inconsistency from the reader.

It is a conscious effort to falsify the role of Cuba in Ethiopia.

Even in the Ogaden war that role was certainly not an unambiguously anti-imperialist one.

Since then it has been unambiguously counterIts troops have defended the repressive dictatorship of Mengistu which has unleashed a bloodbath against the Ethiopian left.

And Cuban (and Soviet) military assistance has been decisive in supporting Mengistu's genocidal offensive against Eritrea.

• Against the evidence, Harsch asserts that "the Cubans have steered away from getting directly involved in the war."

Whether: or not Cuban soldiers are in the front line Mengistu's offensive would be impossible without the back-up he gets from the thousands of Cuban troops and technical advisers.

Harsch even claims that Castro supports the right of self-determination for If that is so, then how does he explain Castro's frequent recent public references to the "territorial integrity" of Ethiopia?

Harsch •scandálously reduces Cuba's collaboration with Mengistu's attempted genocide to a "difficulty facing the Cubans on the question of Well, poor Cubans-not knowing whether to be in the front line of the bloody offensive or just to back it up from the rear!

The truth is that Cuba's role in Ethiopia is as the more flexible left' arm of Soviet foreign policy.

For years every statement and action of the Havana bureaucracy has shown that you couldn't fit a lightweight page of Intercontinental Press between the positions of Castro and Brezhnev.

The leaders of the SWP, however, want to say that the . difference between them is the most. fundamental possible political difference-that between revolution and counterThis is a desperate effort by the SWP to prop up longdiscredited positions.

It was on the basis of common adaptation to Castro and petty bourgeois radicalism i that US and European "Trotskyists" formed an unprincipled political bloc-resulting in the "United" Secretariat in 1963.

The denial of the political assimilation of Castro to Stalinism is certainly the continuation of those political positions and those of the Pabloite adaptation to the Stalinist • And to maintain this position requires, as Harsch's and Hansen's articles have shown, that these "Trotskyists' indulge in scandalous distortion of the evidence.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Heinesda SOrter i*% A full year after the public murder of American Young Socialist leader Tom Henehan, police are still refusing to arrest the known Lister a81 this Jacques?) collecting donations.

"If Jacques has sufficiently recovered by now he may be able to provide a more thorough explanation of what occurred.