Shah Must Go- Go- U.s.agrees

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After a lightning-fast invasion by the Vietnamese army thinly disguised as the "Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation", the Kampuchean government headed by Pol Pot has been driven from the capital Phnom Penh.

No radio broadcasts from Pol Pot's forces had been heard for 48 hours as we went to press, and Vietnamese claims that the whole country had fallen under the control of the "United Front" seem to have some substance.

The desperate but determined move by the Vietnamese Stalinists to crush the rival Kampuchean bureaucracy is further proof of the lengths to which these parasites will go in stifling all forms of opposition.

Suppression

In this respect the invasion is an echo of the Kremlin's brutal military suppression of political opposition in East Germany ( 1953) Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

Even while themselves seeking out reactionary deals and diplomatic alliances with capitalist regimes throughout South East Asia, the Vietnamese Stalinists have attempted to buttress their internal position by unleashing. pent-up age-old national prejudices in this move to crush their smaller and weaker neighbours and instal a puppet regime.

Lack of resistance

The lack of serious resistance to the Vietnamese invasion of a country that fought tenaciously for years against the full might of US imperialism is an indicator that Pol Pot's authoritarian regime enjoyed little ass among the peasantry was mply a part of a chaotic econmic policy that caused still irther disruption in the backard economy left behind by nperialism.

Although private ownership f land had been ended, and griculture collectivised, the dventuristic abolition of irrency meant that villages ere forced to become selfifficient isolated units, and evelopment was stifled.

Nationalism

The Kampuchean Stalinist raders used anti-Vietnamese ationalism as a means of eflecting internal opposition nd were driven to repeated ttacks on Vietnamese border reas.

This instability, combined rith acute internal economic risis within Vietnam itself and ears that the Peking Stalinists right consolidate an anti-Soviet nti-Vietnamese military and olitical alliance with the .ampuchean leaders seems to arm part of the background to is war between rival Stalinist egimes.

Meanwhile the Chinese ureaucracy, though not openly Former Cambodian leader Prince Sihanouk has been released from house arrest in Phnom Penh to give Peking press conferences calling for UN troops to intervene against the invaders.

Peking's new-found allies in the US administration have also opposed the Vietnamese invasion.

The Soviet leadership, on the other hand, has warmly welcomed the destruction of what it calls the "fascist regime" in Kampuchea, but also suggested the UN may take a hand in finding a solution.

One thing, however, is clear. Those Kampuchean peasants who obviously welcomed the Vietnamese forces as a relief from the rigours of the Pol Poi regime will soon find their illusions crudely shattered.

The answer to their problems is not to exchange Pol Pot for Giap, Giap's puppets in the "United Front" or any other Stalinist bureaucracy.

Political revolution

A revolutionary leadership capable of the political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy and opposing its reacThe revolutionary events in Iran have continued to accelerate.

But, even though the tyrannical Shah is-apparently on US imperialist advice-packing his bags, the extraordinary mass movement which began a year ago is more than ever in need of a new revolutionary New bourgeois premier Shapour Bakhtiar failed to find enough collaborators to fill a Cabinet but has nonetheless had his rump government sworn in by the Shah.

Lacking policies which would meet any of the democratic demands of the masses, Bakhtiar has tried to claim that the Shah has in effect surrendered political power, and that for the first time in 25 years Iran is ruled by a civilian.

Victim of Iranian army violence The demonstrations of January 7 and 8 with the slogans 'Death to the Shah' and 'Down with Bakhtiar' have already shown that the masses regard such a claim as laughable.

Bakhtiar has claimed that martial law will be ended in Shiraz on January 9 and progresisively thereafter in other. cities.

He has also promised a series of show trials for corruption of 30 former officials of the Shah including a former Prime Minister, implying that the trials will be followed by executions.

Even if Bakhtiar lasts long enough to hang a few scapegoats, he is likely to be only setting a precedent for his own eventual fate as mouthpiece for the Shah.

The latest demonstrațions, however, also emphasised the potentially fatal handicap of the revolutionary upsurge of the masses-the absence of a revolutionary socialist leadership.

The two separate days of mourning, strikes and demonstrations last week were organised partly in competition by the bourgeois National Front and the Shi'ite Moslem religious leaders.

It is hard to judge their relative success since large sections of the masses are taking action every day.

Strikes go on The imperialists may gain some comfort from the divsions between these leaders but the continuation of strikes is causing them severe concern.

Carter is supporting the Bakhtiar government, which has said that one of its first objectives is to end the strikes.

But US Energy Secretary James Schlesinger at the same time rattled the US sabre by puvlicly advocating "steps to shore up" Iran and other oil producing countries of the Gulf against what he alleges is Moscow's "exploitation" of the Iranian unrest.

In fact the Soviet bureaucracy have in the last few weeks done nothing but add to their long record of betrayal in Iran.

Until the last tew days, Soviet news media have referred to the mass movement against the Shah as reactionary.

Qualified

Only when the Shah's fall began to look inevitable, and the imperialists began to look more coolly on their ally, did the Stalinists in Moscow begin to qualify their implicit support for the tyranny.

And the still weak pro-Moscow Iranian Communist Party (the Tudeh Party) has strengthened the would-be bourgeois leaders of the mass movement by holding to a treacherous policy of forming a Popular Front government with capitalist parties.