Reactionary Friends of the Bureaucracy

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The leadership of the is pressing ahead in its efforts to establish a single, effective administration throughout the state.

Even though formal reunification of the North and South cannot be carried out in advance of national elections (announced for some time in the first half of 1976) the old frontier at the 17th parallel is being changed in the reorganisation of provincial borders which began recently.

Thus the former two southern provinces of Quang-Tri and Hue are to be combined with the northern area of Quang-Binh, to form a single new province.

'RELIABLE'

At the same time ten thousand technical workers regarded politically 'reliable' have been sent from the North to the South and especially Saigon where they will stay for some time. In Saigon, the authorities face a wave of petty crime and black marketeering, with unemployment stil high and food shortages still not eradicated.

At the beginning of January death sentences were announced on three men found guilty of armed robbery.

And in the North, miners at the Hong-Gai anthracite mines were reported to be staging a go-slow at the New Year.

They were protesting at the fact that the whole 5 million tons per year output of the pits - one of the most important sources of foreign exchange for Vietnam - is reserved compensation for the lack of fuel during a hard winter, rations should be increased.

The siutation was sufficiently serious to bring a hurried visit from the North Vietnamese Minister of Planning.

These incidents illustrate the inescapability of the permanent revolution - the unification of Vietnam and the establishment of an integrated, socialised economy there bring both the Stalinist leadership and sections of the working class up against the problems of the political The absence of any power in democratic committees, directly responsible to the masses, in the South, combined with the economic chaos left by the war, is what breeds crime and the black market.

Refusing to mobilise the political energies of the masses, so that they themselves can "police' these problems, the Party leaders are forced to rely on administrative repression through their appointed tribunals.

Similarly, in their ever-closer relations with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the VCP leadership seek their support not in the masses but among the enemies of the masses. Nhan Dan, the main Hanoi daily, gave front-page coverage to a New Year exchange of the warmest greetings between Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and the Catholic archbishop of Hanoi.

Yet a measure of the reactionary role of the Church in Indochina can neighbouring Cambodia the new Constitution outlaws those religions - including Catholicism - 'which contributed to the destruction of the nation'.

The permanent, indivisible character of the revolution in South East Asia is also underlined by recent developments in Thailand.

While Vietnam and Laos, moving more and more closely into the Soviet diplomatic orbit, are cementing their relations with Bangkok, tension and provocations continue along the Thai-Cambodian border.

'ADVISERS'

Although the sixteen thousand US troops presently stationed in Thailand are officially to be withdrawn by March, a US 'military assistance group', helped by 'advisers' will continue to provide the Pramoj regime with militaty supplies, training and support.

In other words, US imperialism will continue in its efforts to prop up its puppets and the Vietnamese and Laotian leaderships will not stand in their way.

They thus set themselves against the masses of workers and peasants in Thailand, who on January 2nd launched a massive strike against a government-backed increase of 25% in the price of rice - bringing the cost of this basic food up to more than half the income of families on the legal minimum wage.

The strike - though limited by the leadership of the trade union federation to workers in certain state enterprises - still brought out a demonstration of over ten thousand in Bangkok on Januarv

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Castro's policies in action: Jamaican dictator Manley welcomed in Havana PART 1: ORIGINS OF PRESENT CUBAN CP Between December 17th and 22nd the present Cuban years after the formation of the party.

That, in itself, is some indication of the non-political nature of the Cuban CP which in the ten years of its existence has functioned as an alministrative arm of the state overseeing the planning production, organising demonstrations of support for Castro's government and exercising a rigid control of any opposition or failure of commitment to production targets.

It has never been a political party: up to now the members of its leading bodies have not, even in a formal sense, been elected but are appointed by the selfperpetuating leadership; its origins are not in open political struggle since it was established 6 years after the Castro government came to power. Party (PSP).

The period from 1959 to 1965 had seen continual attempts to unite these three organisations. All of them failed for the same reason: Castro and his supporters were in control of the government and had considerable mass support, but their political organisations were derisorily weak and disorganised; the PSP had little mass support but were far better organised than any other political tendency.

Union of the organisations which was necessary to give an organised base to the new government would inevitably mean the overwhelming dominance of the PSP.

HOSTILITY

After the fall of Batista, there was an initial period of open hostility between the Castroites and the PSP. From Castro's side the hostility came both from resentment against the PSP's ambiguous and largely inactive role in the struggle against Batista, but also from the open and deep rooted abject attempts to forge alliances with whatever seemed to be the most powerful 'prgressive' section of the bourgeoisie at any time.

The PSP's about-face towards Castro in late 1959 therefore was quite in keeping with its political line for 25 years. At the same time Castro, forced by pressure of the masses into increasingly radical policies and so losing the American support which had helped bring him to power, turned increasingly to the PSP.

He needed both its domestic political organisation to control the demands and actions of the masses, and required its support as backing for its overtures • to the Soviet united organisation.

This was called the Integrated Revolutionary Organisations (ORI) and in March 1962 its national Directory (13 members of the 26 July Movement, 2 from the Directorate and 10 from the PSP) was announced. The ORI lasted in this form for 8 days!

Castro then made a speech claiming that the whole of the direction of the movement had been unscrupulously monopolised by members of the PSP (which was almost inevitable since a good deal of the membership of the 26 July strons organisation VADILANO™ At the top, however, other ois PSP leaders, especially Blas Roca the secretary general of the party and Carlos Raphael Rodriguez remained in an uneasy alliance witt Castro.

In 1963 the all but defunct OR had its name changed to the Uniter Party of the Socialist Revolutio (PURS). Purges of the old PSI leadership continued until 196: when the name of the organisatio was finally changed to the Cubar Communist Party which by tha time Castro and his close allies wer able to dominate.

The eight member Politica Bureau of the Party contained nc former member of the PSP, and sc it has continued until the preseni time. Roca and Rodriguez however were appointed to the 7-mar Secretariat from™ which they have come to exercise increasing power This has been particularly trus since 1968 when Castro declarec unequivocal support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Since that time the oscillations in thr relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union, and in the relation between the Castroites and what i left of the old PSP leadership, have ended.

Both have become, both verbally and in practice, increasingly intimate even to the point ol fulsomeness.

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Communist Party held its first Congress, This has come ten