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gunboat. But today imperialism does not have enough gunboats to contain the rebellions and uprisings it confronts at home and abroad: nor does it have sufficient reliable crews or enough safe ports from which to operate. On every side it is under seige from a workers' movement and colonial liberation struggles that are now rocking its puppet regimes and dictatorships, its outposts and pools of cheap materials and labour. Even the Shah," bloodthirsty and apparently unshakeable, armed to the teeth and fabulously wealthy, now clings on to power only by his fingernails, resting. on the complete absence of revolutionary leadership in the Iranian working 'class on the one hand, and the support of 'human rights' Carter, the British Labour leaders, and the Kremlin and Peking Stalinists on the other.

In Latin America, the crisis of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua has brought the prospect of a new overturn of capitalism on the very doorstep of US imperialism: developments have again been only held back by the complete absence of a developed Marxist leadership, and the conscious abstention of the nearby Castro bureaucracy, which has restricted its "support" to the level of vague verbal proclamations. Somoza's plight is not unique, it is only one of the sharpest indications of the growing threat to pro imperialist military juntas throughout the subcontinent. And in Southern Africa it has taken the combined efforts of bourgeois nationalism, Stalinism and reformism at the head of the African masses to give the racist Smith regime the leeway to mount repeated attacks on Zimbabwean liberation forces' guerrilla camps. Such leadership offers the heroic liberation fighters nothing more than an endless prospect of diplomatic manoeuvres aimed at getting Patriotic Front "leaders" Nkomo and Mugabe seats in a black bourgeois cabinet.

In each instance the weakness of imperialism is obvious to all; the militancy and strength of the oppressed masses is beyond doubt; but the key to victory-a Marxist leadership that has learned the lessons of the degeneration of the Second and Third Internationals, and that fights tenaciously for the ' Transitional Programme which represents the sole continuity of the revolutionary traditions of the Bolshevik revolution-is lacking.

The objective conditions for the world socialist revolution-the stagnation of the productive forces in the epoch of imperialist decay, and the emergence of the working class as the central, pivotal force that must lead the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism-are already rotten-ripe.

But the development of the subjective factor, the preparation of Trotskyist parties adequate to the huge task of leading the revolutionary struggle for power, has been retarded by the disorientation and crisis that has developed within the post-war Trotskyist movement.

Our task is to resolve that crisis through the struggle to reconstruct the Fourth International which, in the conditions of today's class struggle must reaffirm not only in theory but in practice the programme and principles on which the Fourth International was founded in 1938. Now, perhaps more so than 'when the words were written, we can understand, and must act upon the opening declaration of the Transitional Programme that:

"The world political, situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.* POPULAR FRONTISM The common factors of recession and the drive for rationalisation to boost profitability have driven both the imperialist leaders and the bonapartist regimes of the semi-colonial countries to resort simultaneously to austerity programmes-cuts in social services, in public spending and _ in taxes on big business; closures, rationalisation of production and imposition of new technology; cuts in manning levels and attacks on real wages.

Thus in both the colonial and the developed economies the working masses are driven forward simultaneously into struggle against a common assault. And with them come the * The text of this document was drafted before the fall of the Shah in February, and it was decided not to add updating amendments.

The events of 1979 have shown, possibly more clearly than since the massive 1968 upheavals in France and Czechoslovakia, the acute leadership crisis that grips the world's working class.

In Iran and Nicaragua in particular, the chosen defenders of imperialist control have been toppled by mass struggles: and in Zimbabwe the racist settler regime has been forced to concede ground in the face of a rising guerrilla war.

Yet in none of these instances has a revolutionary leadership emerged that is capable of leading the masses to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' state.

Meanwhile in South East Asia the outbreak of wars between the deformed workers' states of Vietnam and Kampuches, followed by the Vietnam/China war, has exposed once again the reactionary, nationalist nature of the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies Yet though these developments in the class struggle point more sharply than ever to the necessity for a conscious Trotskyist International to spearhead the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism other socially oppressed layers that suffer the burdens of the capitalist crisis the rural peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, squeezed by the banks, the monopolies and the distributors, and faced with financial ruin. The imperialists do not have the option of picking off one section at a time as they tried to do in previous periods. Now resistance to attacks and threats to imperialist rule embrace every continent and penetrate every section of the working class. And this resistance is only temporarily deflected when the attącks. are carried out by ever-pliable reformist politicians rather than the open political parties of the bourgeoisie.

The forward movement of the working class internationally has disrupted the balance of forces between imperialism and Stalinism on a world scale. Imperialism has been decisively weakened by, its economic and political crisis. These defeats and setbacks have compounded the growing strength of the proletariat. The revolutionary potential of this enormous objective strengthening will be realised only by a reconstructed Fourth International that can overcome the massive subjective weakness of the world proletariat in its crisis of leadership.

But the weakening of imperialism has not worked in any simple way to the advantage of the Stalinist bureaucracies ruling in the USSR, China and the other deformed workers* states. Their economies, increasingly linked with crisis-ridden capitalism through the Stalinist strategy of 'peaceful coexistence' and deals to preserve 'socialism in one country, have suffered a certain dislocation. These problems have increased the pressure driving individual national bureaucracies into disagreements and conflicts. Such forces have significantly weakened the authority and ‹power of the Soviet bureaucracy in particular. But the crisis of Stalinism has taken on a new dimension.

The ruling bureaucracies justly fear above all the revolutionary movement of the masses. Such a movement, with its potential to 'overthrow imperialism and end the isolation of the workers' states, opening up the prospeet of an internationally-planned socialist economy, throws into question the continued bureaucratic power and privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy itself. (which feeds precisely off the isolation and imperialist encirclement of the workers' states).

This forward movement of the working class has. developed in every continent and every corner of the earth, continually threatening to pass decisively be yond the counter-revolutionary control of Stalinism and I aise itself and for political revolution. they have helped further to expose the profoundly opportunist politics of many cutrents posing as Trotsky. ists, and the profound theoretical confusion and deep divisions which these currents had for years struggled to cover up. The result has been a succession of splits and inadequate attempts at regroup ment.

It is with a view to countering such confusion and pointig to the necesaty of the Marxist method of analysis that the workers Socialint League is taking adrantage of the holklay perion to poblish the bulk of an International Perspectives documont drafted by the WSL more than a your ago, and adopted by our conference last March. Ja our yor the general assonal have been richty contined by events in 1979.

ror reasons of space an extended section on the internationa conomic crisis has had to be omitted. .

into a politically independent and genuinely revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat.

As in 1968, when the rise of workers" struggles throughout Europe found its reflection in the Czechoslovakian events which posed the threat of politicál revolution, the Kremlin leaders recognise that the world-wide offensive of the working class today is a direct threat to their bureaucratic interests. And their 'chosen servants in the national Communist Parties also recoil in horror at the prospect of independent revolutionary action by the work-. ing class. They recognise in such action a threat to the Kremlin strategy of 'peaceful coexistence' on which their whole political perspective is based; they see it as a threat to their own bureaucratic apparatus and to their leading role within the working class of their own countries; and the very independence of the working class runs counter to their decades of training in the counter-revolutionary school of Stalinism. For some of these leaders, the many. years of tireless adaptation to their own bourgeoisie (carried out in the name of preserving peaceful coexistence' through peaceful, 'Parliamentary Roads' to socialism) have now been rationalised in the so-called 'theory' of Eurocommunism.

"Eurocommunist" or not, the Communist Parties, along with the servile reformist bureaucracies, have come to play an important role in safeguarding imperialism from the angry resistance of the working class. Whether drawn into open Popular Front alliances with capitalist parties, or used to provide a 'left' cover for fake "democratisation" moves by beleagured military juntas, or simply offering workers no more than empty left rhetoric and demoralising token gestures of opposition to "austerity" measures, the Stalinists have come to the front line of the defence of imperialism at home and abroad.

In Latin America and elsewhere, crumbling bonapartist regimes have been forced to take tentative steps towards legalising Stalinist and reformist parties in order to exploit their class collaborationist positions. In Spain, Carrillo's Communist Party has been almost the foremost defendel of the Francoist regime of Suarez and Juan Carlos. Spain indeed is now cited widely by bourgeois leaders and bona partist juntas as a model of the technique of fake. "demo cratisation"

The treachery of the Popular Front-which, by prosti tuting workers' independence to bourgeois political groupings can lead only to the consolidation of the power of the bourgeoisie, or in the worst instance, to a new Chile-style catastrophe-marks the almost universal signature of Stalinist, and reformist politics in this period of chronic,

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The re-emergence of strikes and trade union organi. tion of a leadership which can demonstrate to the prolesation in Chile expresses almost more clearly than anything tariat in practice that mass democratic demands are only else the independent forward movement of the working achievable in connection with the struggle for transitional class in Latin America in defiance of the most savage demands designed to unleash the independent strength of dictatorial measures and abysmal; treacherous leadership. the working class in the struggle for the overthrow of class. It held out for Pinochet's US imperialist sponsors and role in struggle under the leadership of the working class. If the capitalist class internationally a ray of hope that allowed to take the leadership of the movement, the petty barbaric repression could-if necessary-restore stability and bourgeoisie will seek merely to exploit the power and east their economic difficulties. But a newly-reemerging militancy of the working class as a battering ram to force workers' movement-driven into struggle by the same from the capitalist dictatorship a number of token material forces that have mobilised workers in their millions demands-such as extension of home ownership, entrein country after country-has given the lie to this illusion. preneurial and trading rights, votes in the 'homelands', etaThere can be no long term stability for capitalism, which which benefit the petty bourgeois but fall miles short of must always rest upon the open or disguised repression and answering the material exploitation faced by the millionsIranian oil workers after the fall of the Shah capitalist crisis and advancing class struggle internationally.

In India, Iran, Iceland or Italy; in Spain, Portugal or Southern Africa, the unmistakeable lesson for the workers' movement is that there must be a decisive break from all such political blocs with the bourgeoisie. A turn must be made to the construction of revolutionary Trotskyist parties which are capable of analysing and fighting every manoeuvre of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The struggle for the building of such a party is at the same time the struggle for programme.

Recent events in many countries have demonstrated beyond question that it is neither indomitable strength on behalf of the exploiting capitalist class, nor any timidity or passivity among the masses that holds back the overthrow of capitalism. It is rather the absence of a revolutionary leadership equipped with a programme which can embrace and mobilise the evident strength and combativity of the masses and turn the bluntness of spontaneous struggle into the sharp cutting edge of successful revolutjonary strategy and tactics.

The essence of this task in all countries is the correct application of the method of the Transitional Programme.

rely she combi POLA RIDA demands, and democratic demands along with transitional. demands which lead workers to challenge the very nature of capitalist power. It is essential to develop the ability to use the programme flexibly in response to the constant ebb and flow of the mass struggle itself, while maintaining the fundamental thrust in the direction of the complete political independence of the working class from all forms of bureaucratic and petty bourgeois misleadership. The relative emphasis accorded to different demands will vary as the objective situation and the consciousness of the masses change in the course of the struggle. But at all stages we continue to link the appropriate demands of today with the strategic objective of the seizure of power by the working class, the destruction of the machinery of the capitalist state, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In this context it is necessary to emphasise in many of the struggles now developing the necessity for the construc tion of organs and institutions which represent the unity and the independence of the working class and its need to ally with and give a lead to other oppressed classes in the fight to overthrow capitalist exploitation.

Whether in the wages struggle in Britain, the mass upsurges of black workers in South Africa, or the revolution against the Shah in Iran, the programme of the revolutionary party must at key stages of development bring right to the forefront the need to build factory and strike committees and councils (Soviets) of representatives of workers and _other oppressed social classes as a necessary basis both for defending the gains which have been made and for advancing the struggle towards new goals.

As Bolsheviks, we see these organs as representing the unity and independence of the working class, and its historic role in leading behind it the other oppressed classes. But this does not mean that workers councils are sufficient in and of themselves to advance the spontaneous struggles of the working class. The crucial role in the development of such councils must be played by the intervention of the revolutionary party itself. We argue that all representative organisations of the oppressed masses must be allowed to participate in these soviet-type bodies, and to fight within them for the adoption of their programme. Representatives of the bourgeoisie must be excluded.

Given such political leadership from a developing Trotskyist party we see such bodies as' the future organs of workers' power. At some stage in the struggle it will be the task of revolutionaries to call for all power to devolve to these bodies. At the present stage, however, it is crucial not to outpace the developing mass movement. Workers have first to be shown in practice that the soviet-type bodies can play a role in furthering their struggles. They must at the outset therefore be firmly linked to all the demands-economic and political-which can at the present stage of development of the mass struggle arouse sections of the working class to take action.

Thus the future instruments of workers power can begin life as bodies to unite and organise strikes for specific demands or to fight for the implementation of democratic demands such as the release of political prisoners or free elections to a Constituent Assembly.

The renewed crisis of capitalism, added to its long-term economic failures, especially in the semi-colonial countries, have meant that its survival depends more and more on the erosion of hard-won democratic freedoms in the imperialist countries and their virtually complete suppression in most parts of the semi-colonial world.

These facts mean that revolutionaries are obliged to give democratic demands (freedom of expression and organisation, representative elections, release of political prisoners, etc.) substantial prominence in their programme. Such demands respond to the objective needs of the mass movement and are therefore often capable of strongly mobilising the masses.

To prevent these demands becoming la democratic noose fastened round the neck of the working class by the agents of the bourgeoișie', ', revolutionaries must fight for these demands by linking them at all times with a programme of democratic and transitional demands. At the same time of course revolutionaries fight for democratic demands by revolutionary methods-through mobilisations of the working class, the construction of independent organisations committed to fight for these demands. Neither the programme nor the method of fighting for it must in any way be subordinated in the interest of forming alliances with sections of the bourgeoisie and its agents.

THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF IMPERIALIȘM In the wake of the profound defeats inflicted on US imperialism by the successful liberation struggles in Vietnam and Cambodia and the struggle against imperialistbacked forces in Angola, the main feature of the recent period remains the weakness of imperialist control over the underdeveloped nations. Puppet regimes-military dictatorships or uneasy bonapartist regimes awkwardly straddled across the labour bureaucracy and the repressive military apparatus-have found themselves increasingly isolated from a hostile mass movement, at the head of which, contrary to the false impressions and schemas peddled by the Pabloite movement throughout the 1960s, has been the organised working class.

ATIN AMERICA -Chile was the only Latin America dictatorship established capitalism. on the basis of an outright military defeat of the working exploitation of the propertyless proletariat.

Alongside the rise of struggle in Chile, the recent Angolan workers eelebrate the defeat of imperialist-backed forces period has seen military juntas all over Latin America quail in the face of workinq class militancy: Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru (where the economic crisis has reached the point that 55% of the country's export earnings are pledged to debt repayments to the IMF and imperialist banks) all show this. The huge votes achieved in Peru by the electoral bloc headed by USFI and OCI Trotskyists' in the General Election, combined with the combativity of the Peruvian workers' movement and the IMF's demands for further austerity measures all indicate the acuteness of the combined political and economic crisis facing the imperialists.

Throughout Latin America the necessity to fight all formis of Popular Frontism, and to combine democratic demands with transitional demands pointing the way beyond reforms to the necessity for revolution is the overriding task to be taken up in the building of Trotskyist parties.

AFRICA In Africa too the combined struggles for national liberation and militant actions by the. working class have emerged in both the more advanced and the more economically backward countries, though the generally lower level of industrialisation has meant that in more instances the peasantry is playing a central role. But the working class remains the most powerful force challenging the rule of imperialist-backed regimes, and breaking asunder the fragile political compromises on which their rule is based. In Tunisia a massive general strike movement sparked off by wage demands has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of supposedly "reliable" trade union leaders, a number of whom have now received punitive jail sentences. , In Ghana, too, the military regime has been shaken by major strikes following on the political removal of former 'junta chief Acheampong.

But the most profound upheavals of all have emerged in South Africa, the most advanced industrialised capitalist country on the continent. The working class there has grown numerically while denied the most basic of bourgeois ' democratic rights. This poses problems both of organisation and of political leadership. During the Soweto events, i working class mobilisations went far beyond the political limits of the traditional nationalist, Stalinist and petty bourgeois-led organisations-but found themselves up • against a complete absence of political leadership and perspective to advance the struggle against South African capitalism.

The essential question in South Africa is the construc The black petty bourgeoisie can only play a progressive /continued ...

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Limbabwe struggle exploited by Stalinists for diplomatic purposes strong black African proletariat.

All notions that a "national liberation struggle" rather than a social revolution is on the agenda in South Africa today must weaken the struggle for revolutionary leadership and lead inevitably to a Stalinist-type "two-stage" concept of the struggle that could leave it decapitated at a crucial point.

The implicit or explicit popular frontism of the existing nationalist and petty bourgeois groupings must be fought. One way of doing this is to challenge its reflection in the various solidarity movements in the imperialist countries, where the independent action of the working class. to enforce blacking and other solidarity action is subordis, a no res go campaigs to aid the mantiapartheid" struggle, in isolation from the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism itself in South Africa.

But if South Africa is a clear case where a proletarian mobilisation is essential to carry forward the struggle, elsewhere in Africa the struggle against imperialism has taker the form of the struggle against national oppression and puppet regimes. Such are the protracted wars' now taking place in the Sahara-where the Saharoui people are fighting an unholy alliance of French imperialists and Moroccan and Mayritanian armies-and Chad, where guerrillas continue to fight the French puppet regime. The refusal of the Stalinist bureaucracies to offer any material support to these struggles is further testimony-if any were needed-to the counter-revolutionary strategy of Stalinism in Africa.

So, too, is the role played by Soviet arms and Cuban troops in supporting the reactionary Derg military dictatorship in Ethiopia, with their bloody attempts to defeat the Eritrean liberation struggle. While they wish to consolidate Stalinists atant and partitar any othependent revoin the Ethiopia, the struggle-and/recognise in the Eritrean war of liberation a force which could spur on militant resistance not only to the Derg within Ethiopia itself, but also against national oppression throughout the Middle* East and the African continent as a whole.

The crucial force in the development of the revolution in Eritrea has been and remains the, EPKF. Owing no allegiance to the Kremlin or the Peking Statinists (or indeed to any external force) the EPLF nonetheless seems to hold some positions-particularly on the two-stage theory of revolution-that echo those of Stalinism. Yet it cannot be stated categorically at this stage whether these signs are the traces of political immaturity and confusion of the hallmark of a bureaucratic leadership that will become exposed as the major obstacle to socialist revolution in Eritrea. The EPLF has displayed a resilience and strength which go well beyond the examples of any previous liberation movement and clearly it is still passing through a process of political development. Its formal positions on the 'National Democratic Revolution' have been increasingly contradicted in practice in the liberated areas. Under attack from the Stalinist bureaucracies, it has struggled nevertheless to preserve a principled position towards the Soviet Union.

While not accepting the theory of permanent revolution and the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism, the EPLF has so far resisted the blandishments of Maoism. The EPLF thus represents a political formation whose progress we should follow with the greatest attention and seek to develop at every step, and win to Trotskyism.

Yet even while claiming to support the Eritrean struggle the 'Trotskyists' of the USFI have continued to peddle the idea that Castro's troops in Africa are fulfilling an "internationalist" role independently of Kremlin policy, and' stressed the 'socialist' measures of nationalisation undertaken by the butcher Mengistu regime. The task of building revolutionary parties in both Ethiopia and cannot be carried out with such a perspective, which condones the counter-revolutionary role of Cuban But though the Stalinists' role in Eritrea is so nakedly exposed that the empiricists of the USFI have trouble ignoring it, it is no less pernicious in the behind-the-scenes moves to hold back the Zimbabwe liberation strugglewhere a military overthrow of the Smith regime would spell danger to the whole fragile balance of forces on which bourgeois nationalist leaders throughout the continuent are precariously balanced. At stake for imperialism is its control over the huge mineral• wealth and industrial development it holds in Southern Africa. If it were lost, the economic crisis itself would immeasurably worsen, and the stimulus to world revolutionary struggles would shake the stability of the imperialist nations themselves.

It is in this area therefore that the most devious, backdoor wheeling and dealing is in progress. The full weight of the reformist and Stalinist apparatus has been set to work in the hopes of achieving what the open spokesmen of the capitalist class internationally could not hope to achieve -the construction of a black bourgeeis government in Zimbabwe without the military defeat of the Smith regime.

Behind the scenes talks have been combined with conscious Stalinist sabotage and under-equipment of . the guerrilla forces in a desperate bid to stem the revolutionary tide that gained such momentum with the defeat of the South African/CIA puppet forces in Angola. Inside Angola itself Cuban forces remain at hand to control the restive working class movement should it oppose the policies of President Neto. Neto's line of developing a friendly working relationship with multinational firms, imperialist governments and the puppet Mobutu regime is clearly one worked ouț with the consent of the Stalinist bureaucracies-who have simultaneously taken steps to draw Angola into the Comecon set-up. They would hate above all to see their military/diplomatic bridgehead turned into a centre from which confrontation with imperialism was organisedprompting full-scale struggles throughout Southern Africa. "Peaceful Coexistence" remains the basic watchword for the Kremlin and Havana Stalinists and their chosen allies. This is why in Mozambique also, Stalinist "advisors" have helped ensure total impotence of the armed forces in the face of repeated armed assaults by Smith's racist troops.

The task of the Trotskyist movement in the Zimbabwe etrinale ie to avnice thå anllahnratinn and cahntano hoinn carried out by all the so-called leaders of the liberation struggle, and point to the need for a Marxist Party based on a programme of democratic and transitional demands to combine the guerrilla warfare in the countryside with the mobilisation of the black Zimabawean working class in the towns in the struggle for socialism.

ASIA In Asia, as in the remainder of the underdeveloped economies, capitalist regimes have found themselves under renewed pressure from a workers' movement held back only by a total absence of revolutionary leadership, and the counter-revolutionary, Popular Frontist policies of the The crisis of proletarian leadership has taken perhaps its sharpest form in India. While the reformist and openly capitalist politicians of the Janata stagger from one crippling catastrophe to the next, ex-dictator Gandhi has been able to step forward as the "champion" of the oppressed masses. Meanwhile in West Bengal the workers are occupying factories and the peasants seizing land even as the non-aligned Communist Party (Marxist) struggles to hold together its local Popular Front and urges capitalists to invest profitably in this particular Indian state. In Sri PHOTO: Carlos Augusto (IFL)

SOCIALIȘȚ PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

Counter-revolutionary alliance in the Horn of Africa: Castroy n-Da.

The Portuguese events shook the entire European bourgeoisie Lanka, the bourgeois regime rests even more openly than the Janata on repression and on emergency legislation which gives the lie to the facade of 'democracy'.

In Pakistan that facade fell with ex-President Bhutto and was replaced by a stop-gap device of military rule based on nothing more than the imprisonment of Bhutto (the only politician in Pakistan with any mass base of support) and willingness to use armed force against the masses. But the weakness of the regime is openly demonstrated by its failure to implement the death sentence on Bhutto for, fear of unleashing the full fury of his supporters and thé govern-: ment's many other enemies.

Pravda's opposition to the anti-Shah demonstrators and strikes in Iran, and Brezhnev's notorious birthday greetings to the butcher Shah himself spell out beyond doubt the commitment of the Stalinists to stemming the revolutionary process in this key, strategic, oil state. Again the prospect of such a profound revolutionary upheaval on the very borders of the USSR itself is too terrifying for the Kremlin. On top of this the Stalinists recognise the blow that it would strike against world imperialism, thus

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h Ethiopian butcher Mengistu REMOS •.39 as.

: 20:

isrupting the entire balance of forces internationally. (hile joining the efforts by international capital and social emocracy to shore up the Shah, therefare, the Stalinists lave not hesitated to üse their particular secret weaponpe Stalinist Tudeh Party inside Iran itself. This Party has ow played the Popular Frontist card-calling for the stablishment of a cross-class government of national unity, esigned to defuse the independent struggle of the workers' lovement.

In this situation the necessity for a Trotskyist pro: amme for the arming and self-organisation of the working ass through militias, factory committees and soviets, mbined with democratic and transitional demands, is the sential element needed to combat the political and ligious forces seeking to divert from the struggle for the icialist revolution.

HE MIDDLE EAST Like Iran, the Middle East offers little comfort to ither Stalinist leaders or the imperialists. The US intinues of course to cultivate Sadat as its main stooge in the Arab world. And Sadat-driven by the lure of cutting Egypt's military budget and thus easing the massive economic problems which threaten to arouse the exploited masses against his regime-continues to be drawn closer into this arrangement. But these moves have brought renewed pressure on the bourgeois heads of the other Arab states to act in support of the historic liberation struggle of the dispossessed Palestinian people.

Since there is no way that the Palestinian national question can be resolved without the destruction of the racist settler state of Israel, and since the bourgeois and petty bourgeois Arab nationalist regimes are determined to avoid such an outright collision with imperialism, this pressure must be headed off in other ways-the establishment of endless "rejectionist" committees, fronts, funds and conferences. The Arab leaders also recognise that with the long-standing interconnection between the Palestinian struggle and the Arab masses, an all-out mobilisation against Zionism would also encourage revolutionary struggles against their own military and dictatorial regimes.

The Stalinists recognise this too. So while paying lip service to the Palestinian struggle and verbally opposing the Zionist state which Soviet abstention helped to create, the Kremlin has increasingly lent its assistance to the "rejectionist"' leaders' efforts to contain the struggle-and in particular to the latest realignment between the Syrian and Iraqi dictatorships. As in Africa, the so-called 'Frontline' states are to be found in reality in the rearguard of the liberation struggle.

Under these conditions the PLO strategy of appealing solely to the United Nations and the Arab heads of state offers nothing to the Palestinian masses. The key to the situation must be the construction in every Arab country and within Israel of Trotskyist parties, equipped with a programme of demands to mobilise the exploited masses in the struggle for the overthrow of the Zionist state, and for socialist revolutions throughout the Arab countries.

Like the Palestinian struggle, the Kurdish national liberation struggle has profound implications in the struggle against imperialism in the Middle East. As the recent developments in Iran have shown, the emergençe of centrifugal struggles by Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Iraq are unavoidable whenever the class struggle advances in those countries. The formation of an independent Kurdish state in the area represents a major threat to the bourgeoisie in.

these countries.

Trotskyists must combine uncompromising defence of the right of the Kurdish people to self determination and the formation of an independent Kurdish state, with the struggle for the independence of the Kurdish masses from bourgeois leaders like Barzani and Talabani. The future of the Kurdish masses lies in the fight not fór a supposedly "democratic" bourgeois state of Kurdistan, but for the establishment of a united socialist states of the Middle East.

In Europe, too, the explosive role of the national struggle is a crucial factor. The re-emergence of major anti-imperialist demonstrations and armed struggle in the occupied six counties of Ireland, and the growing sentiment within the British working class against the complicity of the Labour leaders in the military repression of the Irish people, are partial reflections of the sharpening international class struggle.' In Spain, too, the national struggle by Basque workers has remained a constant factor in the struggle against Franco's heirs and their treacherous assistants in the Stalinist and reformist parties. The Basque struggle, by its sheer persistence, has highlighted the unreformed nature of the Francoist repressive apparatus, despite the efforts of the CP and PSOE to conceal the reality behind the fraudulent new "constitution". In fact, despite the propaganda suggesting that Spain has been "democratised" and the confusion on this by many 'left' groups, the continued struggle of the working class against speed-ups. sackinas and wage cuts has already brought one abortive attempt at a military coup and a mass mobilisation of the still-organised fascist forces.

AFTERMATH While the defeats of Vietnam, Cambodia and Angola have shaken the entire colonial world and shaped the recent period, the collapse of dictatorships in Portugal, Greece and Spain have inflicted major setbacks on European capitalism. Since these events the bourgeoisie has had to carefully assess its political methods in imposing austerity plans, rationalisation and speed-up.. • The sheer scale and scope of the Portuguese events following the April 1974 overthrow of fascism brought back to the capitalists agonising memories of the French 1968 General Strike. Portuguese workers, once apparently firmly under the fascist jackboot, were suddenly breaking down all kinds of cherished barriers-occupying factories, forming their own workplace committees, marching in their hundreds of thousands, publishing capitalist bank accounts; forming joint committées with students and even with rank and file soldiers, and jointly patrolling the streets in armed squads to protect against fascists. The bourgeoisie was terrified.. They needed a political answer to this mass movement of the working class.

And the key in Portugal and elsewhere rested with the bureaucratic leaders of the workers' movement-the newlyconstructed Socialist Party and the (Moscow-line) CP of Alvaro: Cunhal, which proved itself no less frightened of revolution than its "Eurocommunist" stable-mates.

The Popular Front roadblock to the Portuguese revolution was first pieced together in the form of a variety of Armed Forces Movement governments in which Stalinists and centrists played prominent roles. It has continued to this day with the period of Socialist Party coalition government and the tacit CP support to the restoration of open bourgeois rule.

As a result, the mass movement that once horrified the capitalists of Europe appears to have been restrainedthough not eliminated-and a "democratic" edifice created to decorate the continued power of the army which has formed the bedrock of capitalist rule under both fascism and AFM "revolutionary" government-a telling confirmation of the Leninist theory of the state.

Portugal also demonstrates that, no matter how'left'its rhetoric, no Communist Party offers workers: any alternative or independent road. And, far from being pressured towards revolutionary positions by a mounting mass movement (as the Pabloites still fondly believe) the Stalinists and 'left' reformists move-as we have always insisted-time and again into more and more desperate attempts to hold back the working class. It is in the wake of the Portuguese events that Santiago Carrillo and Enrico Berlinguer have hastily put the finishing touches to their ramshackle "theory" of Eurocommunism-hoping once and for all to prevent any repetition of the Portuguese.

experience.

Both looking for cover: PLO leader Arafat with Spanish Prime Minister Suarez.

These policies have found practical expression in the diehard CP support for Italy's reactionary Christian Democratic government, and Carrillo's willing backing for the wage-cutting Moncloa Pact, In France, the classic Stalinist policy of the Popular Front took the form of the Union of the Left, while the CP is now responding to the militant demands of its membership not by fighting the Giscard austerity measures but by blocking strikes and actions designed to protect jobs and wages.

Such treacherous policies have provoked a real, if totally confused response from among the mass membership of the Stafinist parties. Splits and crises have taken place in the French, Spanish and Italian CPs, and in Britain, too, the much smaller and more docile CP has split, with the formation of the pro-Moscow New Communist Party. Such splits and feuds have been distinaniched in aarh naca hi,tha hanlennta...l..... vive i call cast wy wit pankrupicy and contusion of both sides 'in the argument, and the necessity for a sharp intervention by Trotskyists on the Transitional Programme if any development towards revolutionary politics is to emerge. Meanwhile whole sections of workers and youth are turning away from the Stalinist Parties in the search for a way forward. In Italy, whole groups of hospital workers, organised in a union confederation largely autonomous of Stalinist control, recently brought the hospital system to a grinding halt in pursuit of their pay demands-and forced a turther governmental crisis for the Christian Democrats.

Meanwhile, as reformists and Stalinists conspire to hold back the working class, in France, in Italy and in Spain, and -above all-in Turkey, fascist groupings are beginning to prepare in the wings.

The experience of Germany and Spain showed clearly that the only defence against fascism is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system that fascism arises to detend. The : whole effort of the mass parties of the working class is to prevent such a mobilisation. But they have not fully succeeded in this task: The power of the masses arises. again and again. This is why throughout Europe the bourgeoisie has sought to stave off governmental crises through Popular Front arrangements:

Even Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Iceland have witnessed attempts made to construct governments which /continued...

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*romlin londors -usine onportunities in Africa to preserve "peaceful coexistence' with imperialism kremun leauers - usurig uppuriu ґ• combine the brutality of the bourgeois parties themselves with the more insidious treachery of the bureaucratic leaders of the workers' movement.

And West Germany, the supposed pinnacle of class compromise, has found itself beset by a series of major strikes, culminating in the November 1978 steel strike-the first in 50 years. These struggles flow from the plans for rationalisation and speed-up forced on the German capitalists by the impact of the international crisis.

Nor has Britain escaped the Europe-wide move towards Popular Front forms of rule-as our British Perspectives document points out. The CPB was not of course a direct partner in the Popular Frontist formation of the Lib-Lab coalition-which rested tacitly on the counter-revolutionary perspectives and policies of the Stalinists acting through their bureaucratic positions in the trade union movementbut the arrangement proved crucial in the preservatior and extension of wage controls in the face of a militant working class. The attempt-fostered by the Stalinists-to extend the method of the Popular Frort into industry itself, with the creation of joint management/union "workers' participation" schemes as in British Leyland has failed to convince the working class-and the Leyland scheme itself is under notice of union withdrawal.

The vast scale and increasingly political development of the proletarian movement throughout Europe cannot be ignored. Huge sections of workers have not only taken militant strike action despite the massive collaboration and blatant manoeuvres of the labour bureaucrats; they have also entered into the process of directly challenging their existing reformist and Stalinist leaders, although often in a confused and misguided way. The formation of the 'autonomous unions' in Italy is once clear example of this. In Spain, large groups of workers have again and again struck for higher wages despite the collaboration of union bureaucrats in the Moncloa Pact, while in West Germany the pressure of the economic crisis has been great enough to cause maior strikes, despite all the suppressive apparatus of labour laws. At the same time, expulsions and other anti-democratic methods have not been enough. to safeguard the reformist leaders against the opposition of militants. These growing signs of independence by the working class pose sharply again and again the question of the fight for transitional demands to develop forms of workers. control over production, transport and distribution and every aspect of capitalist society.

'The renewed onslaught on pay and jobs by the Carter administration points yet again to the essential unity of the twin capitalist parties that contend for workers. votes in US elections. The construction of a Labour Party based on the US trade union movement is a demand that in the developing crisis remains of paramount educational and agitational importance. It offers workers an avenue for struggle against both capitalist parties and against the union bureaucracy whọ bolster the existing political set-up. The 100 million abstentions in the last elections despite hugely expensive advertising campaigns shows what a large proportion of the working class in the USA has seen through the capitalist shroud of propaganda and recognised that neither of the two main parties has anything to offer.

Indeed the growing scale of the world imperialist crisis and the sharpening antagonisms that it fosters are the motive forces stripping away the facade of credibility from the treacherous labour bureaucracies in every country of the world. As imperialism grasps desperately for support in preserving the existing balance of forces, so also its faithful servants who have posed as "progressive" nationalists in the underdeveloped. . and colonial countries are increasingly exposed for what they are in the eyes of their former supporters.

But for such exposure to lead to the recessary conclusion-the need to construct revolutionary parties in every country as part of a reconstructed Fourth International-the political contradictions of the period must be consciously drawn out by the intervention of Trotskyist forces. For such an intervention it is necessary to uphold and develop the understanding of the counterresolutionary role of Stalinism and social democracy in the post-war period.

STALINIST EXPANSIONISM IN AFRICA?

The puppet regimes of imperialism in Africa are crumbling, as the oppressed masses move forward. In this situation, the Kremlin Stalinists have been forced to move dramatically beyond their everyday methods of counterThey continue to supply arms on a restricted basis to the liberation movements, so as to exercise political control over their development. On this basis, the Stalinists can bring maximum, pressure to bear to force the African nationalist movements to make compromise deals with imperialism. But this well-worn method of preserving the balance of world forces in relation to imperialism has come against new problems. After the defeat of the US imperialists in Vietnam, the weakness of imperialismevident to all-has placed the Kremlin leaders in an embarrassing dilemma, since imperialist forces were clearly in no position to withstand the advancing struggles in Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere for any prolonged period:

But this period for Stalinism coincided with a new turn in its own internal crisis. As the split between the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies grew deeper and more bitter, the Kremlin leaders were also faced with the increasingly open willingness of the leaders of the mass European CPs to collaborate with NATO and their own bourgeoisies even in the event of war with the USSR, and with a growing confrontation within the Warsaw Pact with Rumania and other sections of the Stalinist national bureaucracies.

These divisions dangerously weakened the ability of the Kremlin bureaucracy to defend itself against any offensive by imperialism against the nationalised property relations of the Soviet Union. To restore the balance, the Brezhnev clique was forced to look for new allies and bases of support.

It is a combination of all these factors that accounts for the entirely new level of Soviet involvement In. A!rica.

The tool for these operations has been the armed forces of puppet Stalinist Fidel Castro (now completely absorbed into the Stalinist economic and' military orbit). Cuban troops, combined with Soviet and East German advisors and judicious supplies of arms and material aid, have been used to secure Stalinist. bridgeheads in the wake of imperialist defeats in Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

This intervention has had a contradictory character. In order to preserve their own bureaucratic interests; the Kremlin Stalinists have actually assisted in the victory of anti-imperialist struggles.

In this way, the Soviet bureaucrats sought both to forestall any deeper radicalisation of the masses that might result from a more prolonged struggle, and alsó to exercise immediate control over the leadership of the newlyindependent states or new regimes.

In -each instance Stalinist Stalinist opposition to the independent struggles of the masses has been demonstrated vividly-most blatantly of all in the Eritrean war.

Our position on such military involvement must underline these dangers, while seeking to strengthen the fight of those forces now in struggle against imperialism. We do not ourselves raise the demand for the sending of Soviet or Cuban troops-though we do demand that a maximum of arms, finance and material aid is provided to every anti-imperialist sturggle by the workers' states. On the other hand where the leadership of liberation struggles themselves issue an appeal for Cuban or Soviet troops to assist them, we should support such a demand, while at the same time spelling out the necessity for every possible link-up between the liberation forces and the troops concerned to ensure the expropriation of landlords and capitalists in the liberated areas and the creation of soviets and committees of workers and peasants, which must strive for the involvement of rank and file soldiers.

Only such an approach offers any independent road for the masses in the struggle against their own petty bourgeois leadership and against the reactionary hold of the Stalinist But for the imperialists the harsh fact still remains that, while their own power in Africa is on the wane and they face severe problems in Latin America and Asia, the Soviet ureaucracy. is ensconcing itself in key strategic ports and nitninste and consolidatina as best it can economic and military links with the ruling petty bourgeois nationalist regimes. Posed with this problem in Africa, the question of whether or not to unleash a renewed "cold war" confrontation with the Stalinist states, or even a military confrontation with Cüban detachments in Angola and elsewhere, has raised its head Indeed at the time of the Zaire events during 1978 and the Stalinist show trials of pro-Western "dissidents" i the sabre-rattling by Carter and other leading US spokesmen demonstrated the real content of the fraudulent "human rights" crusade designed to lay the basis for an offensive against the degenerated and deformed workers' states.

But the Cold War tactic in itself-seeking to isolate the 'workers states and on this basis also repress the revolutionary and left wing organisations within the main capitalist countries-is of dublous value to the imperialists in a period where the forward movement of the working class makes witch-hunting of communists an uncertain proposition.

Moreover when the Stalinists are playing such a crucial role in holding back struggles in so many parts of the world, and (as the accommodation between Angola and Zaire shows) are plainly hostile to any upsurge of revolutionary struggle that might jeopardise the global balance of class forces, an all-out confrontation with them could only threaten further problems for imperialism.

The military intervention in Zaire also spotlighted the massive problems faced by the imperialists in any challenge to Statinism-particularly in the wake of the Vietnam defeat. The US imperialists themselves had to sit on their hands, unable to send troops, and were forced-to do no more than supply cash and transport planes. The job thus fell to the second string imperialist powers, France and Belgium. These states themselves could not move until the Stalinist leaders of Cuba and the Soviet Union made it clear they would under no circumstances support or defend the rebel forces. But even here, with the mobilisation of only a few hundred troops to intervene in Africa, thousands of French and Belgian workers took to the streets in protest.

And while the operation was on the class struggle in France erupted into strikes on wages at naval dockyards and.

munitions plants, and riot police called in to break up illegal mass meetings.

PericaN music in.

Carter - 'human rights' a cover for war moves?

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If all this happened with only a few soldiers committed to a brutal, but short and small-scale military intervention, what chance have the imperialist nations got of carrying through the huge task of directly controlling events throughout the vast African continent by military force?

In any event Carter's vague threats soon drew forth apologetic gestures by the Stalinist bureaucracies. Castro disavowed any intention of interfering in Zaire, offering to help police the border. And top Cuban bureaucrat Carlos Rafael Rodriguez pointed out:

"Cuba does not aid subversion, but on the contrary participates as the American ambassador to the UN admitted, in "an affort of stabilisation or struggle against subversion."

• Despite their deep mistrust of the Stalinists, the imperialist leaders are impelled increasingly by their own weakness to rely on the Stalinists to police the world against social revolution. In recent months the Stalinists have shown off their counter revoluționary credentials in Iran, in Nicaragua and in the Middle East.

And in Angola the imperialists have scented the willingness of the Stalinists to honour an unwritten "spheres of influence" arrangement. They have therefore pulled back from the kind of economic and political measures, that forced Castro's Cuba completely into the willing embrace of the Kremlin bureaucracy. They have instead agreed with Neto on terms under which they will continue the multi-million dollar oil operation in Cabinda and the Benguela railway. And Neto-himself reluctant to see any extension of the Angolan struggles into Southern PHOTO: Andrew Wiard (Report)

Africa-has willingly collaborated in the moves to block guerrilla struggles in Zaire Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Under these conditions the dark threats bandied about earlier in the year by the Carter administration and in particular by top aide Brzezinski, have been largely set aside in a renewed effort at tactics of cláss collaboration to retain controt of Africa. These tactics are summed up in the reactionary manoeuvres by the British Labour traitors. Callaghan was one of the first to criticise Carter for heavy-handed "Christopher Columbus" tactics on Africa. Now * imperialist errand-boy Owen and other Labour leaders are effectively, the mainstay of hopes 'for a "peacéful" transition to black bourgeois rule in Zimbabwe, while the Stalinists use their material and political influence with the guerrilla forces to give the imperialist powers the leeway for such a squalid deal.

While the contradictions of the economic and political crisis of imperialism therefore still must drive the capitalist class to contemplate the necessity for a war to the obstacles to such a strategy—a forward moving working class challenging capitalist rule in every continent on the 'globe, acute economic constraints on the major capitalist powers, and a profound political crisis penetrating the very heart of the imperialist nations themselves.

Before the imperialist ruling classes can contemplate a military confrontation with the degenerated and deformed workers' states they need to remove that obstacle, In their fight for survival they can count on the aid of international Stalinism. The political reality in the world today is the unity, albeit uneasy, of imperialism and Stalinism against the working class.

If the imperialists succeed in crushing a significant section of the working. class in the advanced capitalist countries it will be in no small measure the responsibility of the Stalinists who will have then laid the basis for a military assault by imperialism on the gains of 1917.

Our principled call for the defence of the nationalised property relations of the workers' states against attack by imperialism, and for the extension of these gains through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and political revolution in the Stalinist states therefore gives a conscious focus and direction to the spontaneous radicalisation of the world's proletarian and peasant masses in the current situation.

And in doing so it raises to the forefront the task of constructing. Trotskyist parties not only in the capitalist countries and the colonial world, but also in the degenerated workers' states themselves.

FOR POLITICAL REVOLUTION!

The forward movement of the working class that has characterised the period in the capitalist states is also a material factor within the deformed workers' states of Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba. The growing demands of the working class are the ever-present factor underlying the splits and divisions between the different national Stalinist bureaucracies.

Rumanian leader Ceaucescu, fearing a repetition or extension of the recent mass strike by Rumanian miners, has allocated an increased portion of the state budget to increase working class living standards-hoping in this way to buy off', the working. class with concessions while retaining the political power in the hands of the bureaucracy. But this course has driven him into conflict • with the Kremlin's demands for an immediate increase in defence spending from all the Warsaw Pact countries.

Fears of repetition of the Hungarian and Czechoslovak events has therefore also persuaded Ceaucescu to refuse to place Rumanian troops at the complete disposal of the Warsaw Pact whose chiefs of staff are Soviet officers.

resources for the expansion required to placate the working class, Ceaucescu has set out to further his opportunist links with the capitalist nations: 'Socialism in one country' and the failure of Comecon to attempt any overall planning of the economies of the workers' states save in the interests of the Kremlin leaders, have thus drawn the Rumanian bureaucracy on to the path of increasing reliance on capitalist loans and technology. In so doing it renders the Rumanian economy increasingly liable to disruption as a result of the capitalist economic crisis. Similar pressures can be seen at work in the Yugoslav economy. Tito's flirtation with 'Eurocommunism' is little more than a reflection of the Yugoslav bureaucracy's increasing dependence upon investment from the capitalist states, and its search for a measure of independence from the demands of the Kremlin. "

Given the interdependence of the Stalinist bureaucracy and imperialism in the face of the forward movement of the world working class the penetration of imperialist investment into the non-capitalist economies is the major form which imperialist aggression against the gains of 1917 takes at present.

Ceaucescu - fears anger of masses The emergence of differences between Rumania and the Kremlin over military spending will intensify the pressures on other national based Stalinist bureaucracies to place as a priority the placating of their own working class, and to resist efforts by the Kremlin leaders to buttress the Soviet economy at their expense.

The emergence of territorial rivalries between the deformed workers' states-both in Europe and between Vietnam and Cambodia, Vietnam and China-also demonstrates the utterly reactionary, nationalist basis on which each Stalinist leadership attempts to. resolve its problems. Such splits and conflicts offer imperialism its only real chance of making inroads into the gains represented by the nationalised property relations in those countries.

But the developing antagonisms between the bureaucracy and the working class which lies at the root of these upheavals offer the prospect of developing in the direction of political revolution for the overthrow of the parasitic Stalinist ruling caste and the establishment of a government based on workers' councils.

The Soviet bureaucracy itself, as shown by the recent spate of show trials and punitive sentences handed out to intellectual "dissidents", isolated supporters of imperialism, and other opponents, feels the kind of unease which suggests that they are concerned not so much to punish the individuals concerned as to intimidate more substantial forces likely to move into opposition to the bureaucracythe working class.

Such nervousness must also underly the bureaucratic crackdown in East Germany against intellectual "dissident"

Rudolph Bahro and the Czech "Charter: 77" grouping, which has had the audacity to demand the implementation of rights written into the Czech constitution.

The Stalinist leaders will be acutely aware that isolated, often confused protests by intellectuals were the first symptoms of the emergence of the mass struggles now gripping the Iranian dictatorship.

But more than this is involved in the struggle for democratic rights in the degenerated and deformed workers' states. The bureaucracy knows that one crack in the armour that is its repressive apparatus will be enough to encourage the unleashing of mass struggles. We fight alongside the 'dissidents' for democratic rights, aiming always to develop that struggle away from any notion of a united front with the 'democrat' Carter towards the resurgence of a genuine dictatorship of the independent class organs o ine proretarial.

The 'human rights' crusade by Carter does not extend to serious support for dissidents within the Stalinist states. Carter knows well, the effects of a genuine struggle for democratic rights against the Stalinists. He is not yet ready to organise open parties of restoration.

A sense of this internal weakness is also a factor in the moves by the bureaucracy to seek new diplomatic and military bases of support in the Middle East and Africa. In particular the economic and military alliances formed in Angola, Mozambique and. Ethiopia seem to be attempts to repeat the experiences of the Cuban revolution, in which the use of such measures to bolster up Castro's nationalist government led to complete assimilation of the Castroites into the orbit of Stalinism, providing a "low cost" extension of the defence of the USSR through the establishment of a military outpost on the very doorstep of the USA itself.

Such a strategy-in total opposition to and in mortal fear of the revolutionary mobilisation of the independent strength of the world proletariat-is possible only as a result of the weakness of world imperialism at a time of acute crisis for the Stalinist leaders themselves.

The bureaucracy which clearly feels most menaced by the mass movement of the working class, and most driven to measures designed to bring rapid improvements in living standards, is that in Peking.

Acting from a far more isolated and weak economic position than the Soviet bureaucracy, and denied the resources they need from any of the degenerated workers' states, the Chinese Stalinists have set out to build their own 'socialism in one country' with the aid of huge loans and deals with imperialism, and to buttress themselves against the Kremlin bureaucracy through the most brazen bureaucratic and military manoeuvres. In its bid to win Western respectability and justify its appeals for credit, the Peking regime has offered its services as an ally against the Soviet Union. And, trying to establish itself as a rival force to the Kremlin on a world scale, Peking has set out to establish its own network of opportunist links with selected regimesincluding some of the most outrageous despots /and dictators. Such a strategy is simply an alternative versior of the opportunism of the Kremlin leaders themselves.

The scale of the borrowing and of purchases, and the opening of doors to direct capitalist investment of up to 49% in new Chinese industrial projects, are reflections of the unresolved economic backwardness inherited after the 1949 revolution and preserved through the policy of "socialism in one country". Now this massive commitment to world capitalism carries real dangers to the nationalised. property relations of the Chinese workers' state itself.

The bureaucracy has clearly remained split on the need for such extreme measures. And this division, combined with the growing militancy and awareness of the working class itself, led to the emergence in late 1978 of the wall poster campaigns which now the bureaucracy is attempting to contain.

The range and vigour of the wall posters now appearing in the capital-and surrounded by crowds of readers.suggests that the bureaucracy is so split that its rigid control is slipping fast. Ten years after the 'Prague Spring', the crisis of Chinese Stalinism is producing a "thaw" in this much vaster nation. The Central Committee has already made desperate attempts to close ranks. But there can be no Soviet tanks coming to the rescue of Chinese Stalinism.

For this reason all factions of the bureaucracy will tend to be drawn towards the protection of the army chiefs. If the masses are to find a way forward, the struggle for the building of workers' councils as the focus of organised power independent of the bureaucracy is crucial.

In each of the workers' states, therefore, the reflection of the capitalist crisis and the movement of the masses raises the necessity for the construction of Trotskyist parties to lead the political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The vitriolic attacks on "Trotskyism" carried recently in the Cuban press, and the anxious efforts of the Stalinist regimes to repress intellectual opponents who might turn in the direction of Trotksy's analysis and programme for the political revolution, all indicate that this point is not lost on the bureaucracy itself.

RECONSTRUCT THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL !

The international crisis is such that the continued disorientation of the world Trotskyist: movement is becoming a material factor in prolonging the life of imperialism and shackling the working class to its bureaucratic leaders.

The Workers Socialist League restates its determination to fight for a return to the basic principles, the programme and the method of the Trotskyist Programme of 1938 as the basis for discussions and practical work designed to pave the way for the reconstruction of the Fourth Only in this way can Trotskyists come to play their historic role in the vanguard of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, the armed overthrow of the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracies, and the establishment of a world federation of socialist states as the only answer to the threat of fascism and barbarism raised by capitalism in its death agohy.

CONCLUDED

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Sumerian Civilisation is a small but interesting exhibition showing until January 11 at the Iraqi Cultural Centre in London.

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ALL POWER TO THER PATRIOTIC

ZECC - ZIMBABWE EMERCENCY ROL CAMPAICH C MITTE

recapture the lost markets and once exploited masses of the degenerated workers' states, this same crisis also produces

Meanwhile, unable within the - confines of the bureaucratically deformed Rumanian economy to find the