[The withdrawal of Portuguese going to be able…]

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The withdrawal of Portuguese going to be able to carry through th mineral rich territory of Angola, of the imperialists is such that they colony in Africa, took place on in Angola the imperialists have res Is:= retain their hold over any indefe political claims to the oil and the last remaining important 11th November, the ne dent regime. independent nation, and the struggle must inevitably continue between the liberation forces of the MPLA and the miscellaneous CIA-backed gangs of Portuguese and South Afri can mercenaries, together with the Zairezrun FNLA and pro-Western UNITA organisations.

The continual references in the capitalist press to the rival liberatior movements' in Angola is a conscious effort to confuse a complicated sitvation and to cast a smoke-screen over the efforts of the US imperialists, their backers in Zaire, and their allies from South Africa. to retain control over this strategically important and economically rich area of Southern Africa.

THREAT

The advent of a truly independent regime in Angola would pose a great threat to the interaational strategy of the United States by its possession of an enormous length of the SouthWest African coastline, and to the racialists of South Africa in their attempt to hold on to the area of Namibia immediately to the south of Angola The big international oil and mineral countries including Gulf and Krupps who took enormous profits from the country during the latter period of colonial rule are also afrai of any regime that might threaten to expropriate them The MPLA has carried on a bitter war for national independence against the Portuguese since its foundation as long ago as 1956. It has widespread support from many different sections of the Angolan people, including most of the urban petty bourgeoisie and some whites.

It is said to be "Marxist' , but in fact is a bourgeois anti-imperialist movement of a classic sort and has received support from the Stalinists of the Soviet Union.

MPLA

The nature of the 'Marxism' of thr MPLA is clear from the recent calls in their paper Vitoria e Certa for a battle for production' , and their efforts to break strikes by dockers at Luanda and by other workers.

A movement puttingi forward policies such as these clearly is not revolution in Angola, but the crisis cannot tolerate even that. During the course of the liberation struge orted to a number of methods to ZAIRE The best channel for this policy has been Mobutu, dictator of Zaire (formerly Belgian Congo) immed iately to the North, who delivered left nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba to his murder in 1961, and since then has had the complete confidence of the CIA. During the course of the 1960's a series of smal tribalist successionist movements in the North of Angola close to the Zaire border came together under the leadership of Mobutu's brotherin-law, Holden Roberto, a business man from Zaire itself, born in Ang ola. This was the basis of the FNLA Whatever the shortcomings of the other bodies, there can be no doubt about the nature of the FNLA. During its early period its main purpose seems to have been not to fight the Portuguese but to prevent those who were actually doing so from gaining any any assistance in the North.

The FNLA's support derives soleły from the Bakonga tribe, which inhabits both sides of the Zaire-Angoli border, and Roberto himself has stated quite explicity that he cons iders it to'fall within the sphere of influence of the USA'.

POLICIES

Something of the social policies of the organisation can be gattered fro! the fact that their forces attacked or 30th April last the main offices of the National Union of Any blan Workers, the main trade 1 ion body killing 28 people. Ang arm of Zaire and the CIA is vement known as FLEC Sti Es declared the 'independence binda, a small oil-rich area su nded by Zaire territory.

Nor is there more said in favour of the other illed liberation movement, th NITA of Jonas Savimbi, There is little evidence that this movement, which controls a small area of the centre of the country around the town of Nova Lisboa. has ever been engaged in any serlous opposition actions against the Portuguese, though there are CONTINUED ON PAGE

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SOCIALIST PR Wednesday 12ih Norember 1975 MERMAMOMAL NEWS Page Z Ford and Rockefeller.

-SA Over the weekend of 2nd. November Washington was hit by a spate of dismissals and resignations as sudden and drastic as those which heralded the political death agony of Nixon.

The Secretary of Defence, James Schlessinger, was sacked in favour of Ford's chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA director William Colby dropped in the middle of the congressional investigation of the spy agency, to be replaced by George Bush, currently head of the American mission in Peking.

Henry Kissinger, while remaining Secretary of State, is yielding the chairmanship of the National Security Council to Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroit, whose loyally i Kissinger is widely supposed but not certain. And in the midst of it all, Nelson Rockefeller announced his intention not to stand as Republican vice-presidential candidate in the 1976 election.

In the wake of the shake-up, the capitalist press has poured forth a stream of often confused and contradictory analysis. This is not surprising, confusion and disarray of the US ruling class as the world crisis of capitalism centinues to work its way through American society and to disrupt political and economic stability on an international scale.

Ford tried to explain the "shuffle" in terms of personalities rather than politics, a trick of which the American bourgeois confusionists are specially fond: according to him Schlessinger and Colby were simply not "my guys".

INEPT

Ford has never been thought a particularly adroit politician (Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have described him as "the only man I ever knew who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time"), but it would be quite wong to see this latest fumble as at bottom a personal failure.

Rockefeller's withdrawal -whether he jumped or was pushed -(most likely he was helped to jump) is intimately linked to the inability of the ruling class to unite in dealing with the deepening crisis, and especially with its sharpest current expression, the imminent financial collapse of New York City.

Ford's hard line on the plight of New York is doubtless in part aimed at crushing whatever resistance the crumbling reformist leadership of the city's main unions might offer to the conditions which will eventually be put forward for bailing it out. But there is more to it than that. The most reactionary elements of American capital see a retürn to policies of laissez faire as the best way to ensure that the burden of the crisis is yoked securely to the shoulders of the working class.

RIGHT WING

They would quite happily see New York City slip into medieval social conditions. These elements are largely grouped around California's right-wing former governor Ronald Reagan, who has a substantial base of support among the petty bourgeoisie.

After a period of quiet, Reagan is rapidly coming forward as the strongest challenge to Ford's nomination as Republican pres idential candidate. The increasing alignment of the right-wing behind Reagan was driven home to Ford by the cool reception given to his speeches at party gatherings in California at the end of October.

His policy on New York City must be seen as partly an attempt to head off Reagan by adapting to his viewpoint. This, too, is behind Ford's satisfaction at the promised departure of Rockefeller, whose name is anathema to such types as Reagan and Goldwater.

SEPARATE

Rockefeller meanwhile had good reason to separate himself from Ford's stone-age tactics towards the big city. Not only was he, as Governor of New York, deeply involved in the recent history of the city, from which his political power base is partly drawn.

He is also immersed to the neck and beyond in the city's financial institutions - his brother David is chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank - which is gravely menaced by the danger that New York will default.

LIBERAL STRATEGY

The strategy of liberal finance capital, which Rockefeller represents, is for the government to prop up alling but essential institutions, much as the Wilson government is doing in Britain.

Reagan's approach is a far cry from this, even though the aims of both - to drive up the rate of profit at the expense of the working class -are identical.

It is in this sense that the antagonism between Rockefeller and the Reagan-Goldwater wing of the Republican party shows the inability of the American bourgeoisie to solve the insoluble, with Ford buffeted about in the middle by forces which he almost certainly does not understand.

SIGNIFICANT

The most significant move in terms of global politics is the sacking of Schlessinger as Secretary of Defence. During the recent period, he had emerged as the chief opponent of detente within. the government, earning the hostility of Congress by speaking out against cuts in the defence budget, and of Kissinger by posing a danger to the progress of the SALT negotiations.

The Soviet Stalinists were as overjoyed by his removal as the Chinese were dismayed. The American ruling class now seems ready to sacrifice relations with China to the development of detente, at least in the short term.

The Soviet bureaucracy, for its part, is no less ready than at the end of World War Il to sell out the international working class by connivance with the major capital. ist powers.

That China feels threatened by the US shift of strategy was already evident from the tension and hostility which . accompanied Kissinger's recent visit, and which bid fair to interfere with Ford's trip planned for the beginning of next month.

Although George Bush probably made no lasting impact on Chinese culture with his Coke and hot-dog parties in Peking, the Chinese bureaucrats are surely unhappy about his leaving to become America's chief spy.

It begins to look a if their recent eagerness to bet ay Asian revolutionary movement interests of "friendship" with the USA is not paying off.