[*The trouble with Pablo, Jim, that he is…]

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*The trouble with Pablo, Jim, that he is a little disappointed with our terrible struggle to build an international. It must be said, however, that he has been at the forefront af the fight. Great progress has been made over the postwar period in organising a proper functioning international organisation.' (Healy to Cannon, May 1953) Yet Bryant is suggesting that Healy was sharply critical of Pablo!

IDEALISM

The attack on Marxism emerges as Bryant, desperate to find some hint of insight in Healy's letters, attributes Pablo's opportunist capitulation to Stalinism and wholesale revision of Marxism to his subjective "impatience" saying:

... this impatience with the concrete struggles to build cadres was the origin of Pablo's search for 'short cuts' and his abandonment of the Marxist method.' If this were true, the question rewant us to believe that moods and consciousness determine history, as all idealists believe?

Hastily rushing past this 'analysis' Bryant finally resolves to smuggle in a quotation from Healy, not fron 1953 (the time of the split) but from 1966 (a mere 13 years later!), which offers a hindsight on the split.

Bryant struggles to backdate Healy's questionable analysis by the incredible statement: «This retrospective judgement was altogether consistent with the estimation of Pablo that the British Trotskyists came to during the heated activity of the months before the split.

This of course cannot be proved in any way by reference to what is written - in fact the British Trot skyists, if the documents are complete, produced no theoretical analysis of Pablo's revisionism until 1957 - four years after the split, and six years after the first theoretical attack on Pablo by a member of the French section.

Bryant's job however is to falsify history, not to analyse it, and so this theoretical bankruptcy is covered over.

"INFALLIBLE"

Slaughter's volumes and Bryant's review abound in similar distortions and evasions. They sweat to prove that there is (and always has been) some "infallible' leadership, just as they did in expelling our own leading comrades on the eve of the WRP conference last Decem beI.

For us, the Workers' Socialist League, the history of the Fourth International is not to be cynically manipulated. It exists, with all its gains, its limits and its mistakes, and it is the property of the whole working class.

We take up the study of it with all the care and honesty it needs. We shall defend the memory of James Cannon against fabrications. And we shall defend the principled opposition built by Cannon, Healy and Lambert in 1953 against Pablo's attempt to liquidate the International. But we shall do that with the truth.

But basic questions immediately face the leadership of the WRP. Will they now publish the essential uments and correspondence fre i before 1953, especially that relating to the expulsion of the French majority?

And will Gerry Healy, who abov all lived through that crisis, repudiate the distortions of "Trotskyism versus Revisionism' and publish his own account of the 1951-3 split?

As Healy himself wrote in 'Labour Review' (May/August 1952) : "Our workers cannot abide any cult of "infallible lea ers' whether they are named Pollitt or Stalin. They want to maintain full right of free and fair discussion in their organisations." demonstration in October 1968 on the eve of the Mexican Olympic games.

In almost every Latin American capital the CIA organised the most de tailed (and most hugely expensive) surveillence of 'hostile embassies and trade missions.It is routine, for example, to film conversations in the gardens of Soviet'establishments and have them 'transcribed' at CIA headquarters by experts in Russian Mp-reading!

... it is obvious that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class...

"What does this power consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons etc., at their command."

Lenin; State and Revolution As the class struggle develops towards confrontation, sections of workers refuse.. to accept reluced standards of living and loss of jobs, the capitalist state preps ares for this with legislation again st pickets, and other basic rights, with strengthening the police force and army manoeuvres at Heathrow.

It is particularly necessary at this time to have a clear understanding of the role of the State. An article in the 'Morning Star' of Wed. January 29th, reprinted press over official revelations that the CIA has also been spying on US citizens (a task officially the province of the FBI)

The present CIA scandal - which has forcad President Ford to assign Vice-President Rockerfeller to a top-level 'enquiry - is of the greatest international importance. The growth of the CIA din ce the second world war reflects the fact that the USA, as the leading imperialist power, has been forced to take on the role of policeman for capitalism on a world scale. The first head to roll in the recent wave of CIA 'resignations' was that of James Angleton, Dirfrom the paper of the French CP L'Humanite, shows how the Communist Party completely opposes the Marxist understanding of the state.

The article, by Fernand Chatel, is about the demonstrations by French conscript soldiers in Draguinan in France and in Karlsruhe, Germany. These movements are obviously a reflection of the massive class movements in France, which in 1968 brought about a revolutionary situation which was defused by the French CP, and which recently saw troops being used to scab on a dustmen's strike in Paris.

The article starts by saying capitalist Defence Minister Jacques Soufflet (who has since resigned) is "blind and deaf" and will not "face reality" and goes on to say that members of left-wing parties are being prevented from being promoted in the army, that the "training" is inadequate, and not enough "real combatant courses" are being given. If the army, according to the CP, must be trained for "combat", , then who are they going to fight ? The army of the bourgeois state is a class weapon ning, his counter-Espionage Division is licenced by its role to conduct spying operations against 'alien' organisations in the US itsell, and was therefore the obvious section to pry into the affairs of American citizens suspected of left-wing or radical sympathies.

As Miles Copeland - unofficial 'expert on the CIA - has pointed out (in the Times of January 11th) the 10,000 names already admitted are only the tip of the iceberg.

Not all CIA activities involve spying in the conventional sense. and can only serve the interests of the ruling class - and its combat capability can only be used against workers.

Yet more explicitly, the article states "The malaise is being aggravated by it (the army) being given tasks which have nothing do with national defence......It intervenes in the 'maintenance of order' which should only be the job of the police..

If the Stalinist author were only a little more blunt he would say outright that the army is a strikebreaking, anti-working class task force, and the "nation" it is defending is the French capitalist state against workers in struggle. Not content, however, with defending the army, he also defends the continuation of that other 'armed body of men'-the police force!

The Stalinist parties internation ally follow on their betrayal in Chile in which they covered over the ciass naturecot the state by using similar language to this, in Portugal: by being in the government of the Armed Forces Movement; in Italy, in Spain, and all over the world.

Both these publications - and especially Philip Agee's book -are of real value. They must be used to arm and build a revolut ionary leadership in the workir. class, ready to deal with all the vicious and devious methods used by the protectors of imperialism.

reviewed by ADAM WESTOBY The policy of the British CP in "The British Road to Socialism" is exactly the same. They talk of ......a transition to socialism without armed conflict is possible today in many countries." (Page 10) and "Consolidation of the political power of the working people by ensuring that those in commanding positions in the armed forces and police, the civil service and diplomatic services are loyal to the Socialist Government.

Their call merely for cutting the arms bill and for only the withdrawal "to their barracks" of the army in N. Ireland shows their position.

The WSL fights for what Trotsky fought for in the Transitional Programme, the founding document of the 4th International, which calls for "Substitution for the standing army of a peoples militia, indissolubly linked up with factories, mines, farms etc." "Scabs and private gunmen in factory plants are the basic nuclei of the fascist army. Strike pickets are the basic nuclei of the proletarian army. This is our point of departure. In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers' groups for self-defence.

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What dominates this film PRESS, Thursday, 20th February 1975 working class at its head. The