Strange bedfellows detend Vietnamese

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Chinese artillery in use against Vietnamese forces The Fourth International was founded in the long struggle of Marxists against the betrayals and crimes of world Stalinism.

Trotsky and the forces of the International Left Opposition fought to build a new international as a revolutionary leadership for the historic struggles of the working class along the road to socialism.

But in the forty years since its founding, the Fourth International has been torn apart by splits, 'reunited" by unprincipled fusions and no longer exists in a concrete form.

The task for revolutionaries today is to reconstruct the Fourth International from sections of the groupings that remain and from any other elements that can be won to the living struggle for the continuity of Bolshevism.

In every crisis of the post-war International, it has been the nature and actions of Stalinism which have been at issue! • Nowhere was that more clearly the case than in the major split of 1953.

Then the forces of the International Secretariat (led by Pablo) were publicly attacked by those forces which were to form the International Committee (led by Cannon, Healy and Lambert). because they pursued policies that would have liquidated the Trotskyist movement in a belief that sections of Stalinism would begin to abandon their counter-revolutionary history and move towards Heirs of split The principal heirs of that split in Britain today are the . International Marxist Group (section of the now 'United' Secretariat of the Fourth International) and the Workers Revolutionary Party (principal section of the crisis-ridden International Committee).

But in their positions on the recent wars in south-east Asia, these two groups have shown yet again how they are still wandering about, lost in the fog of confusion The Poisoned:

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sion to the UfFi XIth World ,Congrace, Price 20p' plus 10p psep from WSL. 31, Dartmouth Park HIl, London NWS 1HR. created by the lack of clarity in the 1953 split.

Indeed in 1979 their paths have converged, and nowadays it is even the International Committeeformerly the rigid bastion of 'orthodoxy'-which has made the bigger accommodation with Stalinism.

"Differences""

The sectarians and the opportunists are united in their emphasis on the supposed "differences" between the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea (Cambodia) and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam.

In Socialist Challenge, no less an "authority" than Tariq Ali 'put his name to the following piece of analysis.

"There is no equation between what happened in Kampuchea and the Chinese invasion: the overthrow of Pol Pot was undoubtedly a step forward for the masses of that country.

'The regime over which he presided had become a blot on the international workers movement. There was a serious danger. of imperialism returning to Phnom Penh.

"It would have been much better if the Kampuchean people themselves had been • able to remove Pol Pot and his cohorts. In the event they could not do so without Vietnamese help.

"The latter should now begin the task of withdrawing its troops from Kampuchea."

Usurped

Undoubtedly the PolPot regime. was a blot on the international workers movement' It was the dictatorship of a Stalinist bureaucracy that had usurped the leadership of the anti-imperialist struggles of the Kampuchean workers and peasants.

That dictatorship of the bureaucracy had to be overthrown by a political revolution to . establish the unfettered dictatorship of the proletariat, based on the independent class organs of true soviet power.

The methods of Pol Pot's dictatorship-reflecting partly the dire economic contradictions and acute backwardness of : the Cambodian state-were almost certainly more vicious than those employed by any other ruling Stalinist bureaucracy today.

But it was not an isolated 'blot'.

In all essentials, it was identical with the Soviet Union and the deformed workers states of eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and Asia-including Vietnam.

Tarią Ali The overthrow of Pol Pot was not, in itself, necessarily an advance for the masses of Kampuchea. The essential question is how that regime was overthrown and what replaced it.

Ali suggests that in Kampuchea there was some form of popular uprising, supported by or spurred on by 'Vietnamese help'. There can be little doubt that the Kampuchean masses wished to rid themselves of Pol Pot.

Whether they wanted the 'help? of the Vietnamese bureaucracy .in that is another matter altogether.

The "Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation" was formed by a group of Stalinists within the ruling bureaucracy who were hostile to specific • policies being followed by the Pol Pot leadership.

Far from representing an John independent proletarian alternative, it was very clearly and closely allied with the • Vietnamese bureaucracy-a force every bit as counter-revolutionary. as its Kampuchean counterpart.

Imposed Nor did this new leadership come to power through d pólitical - revolution. Instead it was imposed from above as a new dictatorship by the arms of the invading Vietnamese army.

For the workers and peasants of Kampuchea, it did not represent a'step forward but a step sideways.

In these new conditions, their struggle for socialism will be directed against a different bureaucratic caste, one with different methods of preserving its dictatorship.

Yet the central task of political revolution to overthrow the parasitic bureaucracy remains.

The arrival of Vietnamese troops has not only not brought its realisation nearer by a day, but, by creating the possibility of the struggle taking a purely nationalistic form, may well have retarded it further.

No evidence • But in passing Ali throws in a different argument to defend the Vietnamese bureaucracy in their exploits in Kampucheathat the distorted gains of the Vietnamese revolution were "threatened" by developments under the Pol Pot regime.

Unfortunately, like every other supporter of this thesis, he produces no evidence to back • his extravagant claim that there existed "a serious danger of imperialism i returning lo Phnom Penh"

The 'orthodox', 'antiPabloite' Workers Revolutionary Party however, far' from combating such notions, has followed a similar line of argument with more enthusiasm.

After first ridiculing any suggestion that the Vietnamese army was playNOW 20p p&p. 50p plus WSL, 31; ing any substantial part in the military overthrow of Pol Pot, the Newsline was forced to make some concessions to reality.

Then, on February 24, Newsline published a statement from the International Committee, saluting "the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people and government" (our emphasis) to the Chinese invasion:

«The International Committee critically supports the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. It ended the pro-imperialist provocations of Peking and Phnom Penh.

"Like the Soviet Red Army intervention in Georgia in 1920-21 the Vietnamese invasion must be seen in the context of the overal defence of the conquests of the Vietnamese revolution."

This argument opens up a series of major issues. Even leaving aside the INSIDE: • Ma • The significa JUT! Trotst Still availat 20p p&p.

Dartmouth complexities of what took place in Georgia in 1920-21 and assuming that the Red Army intervention was carried through in a straightforwardly correct manner, the IC's analogy raises more questions than it answers.

In the struggle within the American SWP against the state capitalist positions of the Burnham-Schachtman faction, Trotsky took up the example of Georgia in relationship to the Red Army's moves into Poland and Finland.

Central to his argument was the 'profound difference' between the revolutionary Soviet Republic of 1921 and the bureaucratised USSR of 1939.

Profound difference It was impossible for Burnham and Schachtman to understand the Polish and Finnish events because they were unable to grasp the source of that 'profound difference'-that is, of the history and character of The 1953 split within the International showed, on both sides, a similar failure to understand the post-war developments within world Today, both the IMG and the WRP adapt their "Trotskyism' to one supposedly. 'progressive' section of the Stalinist Next week's article will look further at the issues at stake in S.E. Asia, and the political positions of other international tendencies including the American SWP.

THEORETICAL JOURNAL OF THE WOAKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE Nu d Januay 1979 45H1 indel's dance with Stalinism nce of 'the Transitional The U.S. SWP 40 years on. ‹yism Today No. 4. Price 45p plus sle, Trotskyism Today No. 2; price (No. 3 sold out). Available from Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

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