[PART TWO: POPULAR UNITY AND THE ARMY The…]

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PART TWO: POPULAR UNITY AND THE ARMY The most glaring flaw in the politics Allende's Popular Unity coalition owed up in its attitude to the army. Allende said in 1971: . "'This process of change is possible because e armed forces and the carabineros armed lice) have a respect for the constitution, lich is not the case in the majority of Latin nerican countries"

This position never changed from the ginning to the end of the period of Popular lity. Two weeks before the coup the immunist Party daily newspaper El Siglo tried a full-page advertisement praising the my for its respect for democracy and the nsitution. With bitter irony the September 173 British Communist Party journal urxism Today carried an article by the eneral Secretary of the Chilean CP, Luis ervalan, in which he said: "We continue to support the absolutely ofessional character of the armed stitutions. Their enemies are not among the aks of the people but in the reactionary mp" • Examples of statements of this kind could : multiplied indefinitely. Did the Communist uty leaders really believe this? Their ologists in Europe claim they did and admit was a "tragic error"

The Chilean CP itself has made a public If-criticism on this question: "One of our most serious errors as a Party to have overestimated in various ways the mocratic capacity of the state system in ile and not to have acted in time to ansform it. This happened in relation to the med forces as well as other questions". (Official Documents of the Chilean Comunist Party issued in Santiago since the pup, p.125)

This seemingly humble confession of irror" is nothing more or less than an tempt to cover up the criminal political mitinn of the CP for which 10 A00 Chilean bombed ways.

Sadly, the Stalinists have again been helped in this attempted cover up by the USPI. In the IMG's pamphlet on Chile we read:

"The basic mistake which the Popular Unity made was its estimation of the army.... Given this wrong assessment, the Popular Unity tackled the question of the army in the wrong way."

(IMG, Chile, The Lessons of Coup pp20-21, emphasis added.)

FALSE 'Ihis view is totally false. There is no possible doubt whatever that the Popular Unity leaders were always aware of the possibility of a military coup. But it was the very nature of their politics which compelled them to treat the army in the way they did.

Trotsky again made the same point very clearly in relation to Spain:

"Many French socialists are asking themselves..... 'Why is it that the Spanish Popular Front, who have held power since February, did not take the necessary steps to deal with the army? What a blunder! etc.' What these people do not understand is that it is not a question of 'a blunder" but entirely one of class interests. When the bourgeoisie is constrained to conclude an alliance between its left-wing and the workers" organisations, it needs the officer corps more than ever as a counterweight - for the most important question i.e., the question of the protection of property is then posed.

This was no blunder at all!"

(Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution, Pp230231).

The Popular Unity leaders did not consider they were making a blunder when they flattered and bribed the army into not making a coup on behalf of the capitalist class. They rapidly improved the material conditions of the military esnecially the officers Thev

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The organisations which claimed in Chile to be revolutionary, in particular the largest of teem, the MIR, cannot, however, be exonerated from responsibility for what took place in Chile in 1973. But the nature of their responsibility is the opposite of what the Communist Party claims it to be.

Their fault was not in failing to support the lopular Unity leadership but in failing to provide an alternative revolutionary leadership. Despite the revolutionary rhetoric through which they often criticised the Popular Unity, they in fact contributed, in 'particular among the politically advanced sections of workers and peasants and students to strengthening illusions in the Popular Unity.

The MIR's attitude to the Popular Unity was always unclear and ambiguous. Until 1973 it refused to vote for the Popular Unity in elections; yet at the same time gave its symbolic support to the government by providing (until the army objected) Allende's personal armed bodyguard.

In the last months of the Popular Unity, when the strength of the mass mobilisations gave an unprecedented opportunity to separate the workers from their class collaborationist leadership, the MIR moved closer and closer to the Popular Unity. It presented the tasks of the working class in the period before the coup not so much as building separate leadership and separate organisations to defend all the gains of the working class but rather as defending the Popular Unity government.

The MIR's concept of political programme did not go tar beyond the demand that the Popular Unity implement its own programme more rapidly. It was unable to present an Top: Armed workers detachment before the cor Below left: Pinochet with his Generals. alternative revolutionary programme of its own which met the real needs of the working class and peasantry.

The MIR in the end, therefore, played the role of a left cover for the Popular Unity itself. Its large size and influence in Chile meant that, in spite of its real efforts to arm workers and peasants, it must bear a very heavy responsibility for their political disarmament.

The MIR has not, any more than the parties of the Popular Unity, been able to draw out the lessons of the Chilean defeat. It has now joined up with the Popular Unity parties in the class-collaborationist resistance movement.

RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY Since the coup every working class organisation and party in Chile has suffered the most appalling repression. Leaders militants of all working class parties have been murdered, tortured, jailed and exiled. Not only have all the embryonic dual power organisations which the workers set up between 1970 and 1973 been disbanded, but so have the trade unions themselves.

Unemployment and astronomic inflation have slashed the living conditions of the majority of workers to virtual starvation levels. The Generals have made Chile unsafe for the working class.

But they have still been unable to make it safe for capitalism as they intended. It is true that they have received support from the compeled to bold back from helping the Chilean dictatorship as much as they would like to.

This is because the defeat in Chile took place in a period of major advance for the working class on a world scale. The complete victory of the forces of reaction in Chile has been prevented by the weakening position of imperialism and capitalism on a world scale.

The world-wide strength of the working class can be mobilised against the dictatofship in Chile. And one of the lessons of Chile for the working class movement is that the organisation of solidarity and resistence must be based on this strength of the working class.

The Chilean working class parties, however, are at the present time condemning the resistance to a position of impotence by maintaining and even extending the class-collaboration politics. of the Popular Unity. The leaders not only of the Popular Unity parties but also of the MIR reject a resistance movement organised around a united front of working class parties.

They wish to build an alliance with sections of the major capitalist party, the Christian Democrats, the majority of whose leaders actually supported the coup, along with the leaders of the Roman Catholic church in Chile to which they are so closely allied. Just like the Communist Party of Spain they argue that the bourgeoisie wishes to reintroduce bourgeois democratic rights in Chile and that the needs of the working class must take second place to those of these "progressive" capitalists.

The CP goes further and says that the Christian Democrats are a "multi-class" party.

The Christian Democrats with whom the Stalinists, reformists and centrists SO desperately wish to collaborate are at the same time busy all the time in Chile negotiating with the military dictators to get a share of.power.

Below right: Allende with Army officers.

A resistance movement based on collaboration with the capitalist class is totally unprincipled. It has its parallel in the various committees of solidarity with Chile which have been set up in Britain and other capitalist countries. It is not surprising that vocal support for these committees has come from the same sections of the leadership of the labour movement which are the strongest advocates of class collaboration in their own countries.

In Britain this means the trade union leaders who have helped to introduce the pay laws of the last two years, the Labour Party 'lefts' who have failed to lead any fight against such collaboration and, of course, their left cover the Communist Party.

The Chile Solidarity Campaign has helped to prevent the learning of the lessons of Chile working class. Dominated by the Stalinists and left reformists this campaign has virtually outlawed real political discussion of the politics of the Popular Unity in the interests of an unprincipled, and therefore impotent "unity" against the military junta.

Although workers in many trade unions in Britain have made attempts to implement a policy of economic boycott of the Chilean regime, this has in practice been opposed by the same trade union leaders who claim to support solidarity with the Chilean working class.

A real campaign of working class solidarity with the workers of Chile must be built in the trade unions and labour movement on the hasis of workino lass indenendence and the This means therefore, that it has to be built against the class collaboratic nist leaders of the working class in Britain and Europe.

THE TRUE LESSONS OF CHILE The election of the Popular Unity government in 1970 was one reflection of the offensive of the working class against capitalism. Workers and peasants in Chile, however, soon came to realise that the leaders of the Popular Unity were not their allies in this offensive, but, on the contrary, wished to hold it back and restrict its aims. The demands and militant actions of the working class and peasantry came increasingly into conflict with the Popular Unity government.

The military coup took place in 1973 because of the huge steps forward which the workers' movement had taken in spite of the earlier attempts to hold it back by the Popular Unity government. All over Chile, against the will of the Popular Unity leaders, capitalism and private property was under severe attack.

In the space of three years the trade unions and other workers' organisations had grown enormously. And in the last months of the Allende government more and more workers joined the movement to establish factory and neighbourhood committees which were the embryos of dual power.

The objective of the coup was to destroy not the Popular Unity government as such but the strengthening independent workers' movement which the government was no longer able to control.

The Stalinist and reformist leaders of the workers' parties in the Popular Unity had not set out to create the catastrophe which the workers' movement suffered in 1973; they themselves were swept away in the same storm. Nor had they set out to lead the working class to power nor to create socialism; instead they sought only to increase the power of their own parasitic caste by exercising it through the bourgeois state as well as the organisations of the workers' movement.

"HISTORIC COMPROMISE"

This necessitated that they make "historic compromise" with the capitalist class. The capitalist class for its part was only prepared to accept this "compromise" as long as the Popular Unity leaders could deliver the mass of the working class behind the compromise.

In order to maintain their leadership of the working class the Popular Unity leaders were obliged to arouse its expectations. In order to maintain their compromise with the bourgeoisie, on which their power also rested they were obliged to become policemen of the working class and prevent the expectations they had created from being realised.

As the situation in Chile became more and more polarised between the capitalist class and the working class, the role of the Popular Unity leadership was to strengthen the capitalist class and the military and to weaken the working class. They did not will what happened in September 1973 but they were responsible for it.

It was their conscious aim to prevent the working class from playing an independent role in support of its demands; they had hoped that the teeth of the workers could be extracted painlessly and without blood. Rut they wanted tha tanth antanat-d desperate attempt to save their own skins by offering to hand over power to the bourgeoisie. Thus, just before the coup, the Communist Party wished to abdicate in favour of Frei and the Christian Democrats. But by that time the capitalist class saw that the unconditional surrender of the leaders would not be followed by the majority of the working class. Only through a bloodbath could the capitalists begin to reconstitute their power.

This result followed not from the "errors"" and "mistakes" of the Stalinist ănd reformist leaders. It was necessary to their compromise with the capitalist class that they should destroy the. independent strength of the workers' movement. The very strength of the workers movement in Chile prevented them from doing this along the peaceful road which they desired. They therefore ineluctably paved the way for the success of the military coup.

The apologists of class collaboration throughout the world labour movement try to say that the coup succeeded because Chilean working class was "too weak" - This is no more than a cowardly excuse for the treachery of the class collaborationist leaders.

The coup succeeded because the political aims of the Popular Unity leadership led them to oppose every manifestation of the inherent strength of the working class.

As Trotsky wrote in Whither France?:

"Whoever declares that the proletariat does not want to wage or is incapable of waging a revolutionary struggle, himself spreads calumny by ascribing his own feebleness and his own cowardice to the toiling masses."

(Trotsky, Whither France?, New Park, p68)

Everything the Stalinists and reformists offer as an excuse for the defeat can be traced back to their own actions and policies.

But the coup was not inevitable. It succeeded also because no alternative revolutionary leadership was built in the Chilean working class. Every political organisation in the world claiming to be revolutionary, of course, asserts that defeat occurred because there was no revolutionary party in Chile. But this conclusion becomes nothing more than a tautology unless the conditions of building a revolutionary party are clearly understood.

This task of building leadership inseparable from the application of the Transitional Programme to each concrete situation. And it is an international task.

CRISES There can be no doubt that the internal crises of the organisations claiming to be the Fourth International and their errors of analysis played a crucial part in preventing Chile's small Trotskyist groups from playing a major role in Chile between 1970 and 1973. A further lesson of Chile, then, is that the Fourth International must be urgently rebuilt.

The defeat in Chile was latent in the politics of class collaboration. An equivalent defeat is today latent in the politics of the leaders of the Stalinist and reformist workers' parties in Western Europe. The lessons of Chile are also the lessons of Britain, Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal. The fight to learn them is the fight to build a new revolutionary leadership based on the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

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most important item in Hansen's States from Mexico, Comrade Joe reply. Hansen chanced to : meet an agent Trotsky did (Hansen relates) of the GPU. This agent introduced attempt to use him to infiltrate the Hansen to a superior in the GPU, a thereby to gain vital knowledge of the heads of the American division the Stalinists' plots against the of the GPU. This man whose real McGregot is mistaken in placing it out the possibilities of converting in 1938. Secret communications Hansen into an agent of the GPU. between Hansen in New York and Hansen immediately informed Trotsky in Mexico on the matter Comrades Trotsky, Cannon, and went through one V.T. O'Brien, an Shachtman. Under their direction American guard of Trotsky, who is. and with their full approva he still alive and has testified in writing conducted for purposes of recontge 8 WRP At the beginning August of foseph Hansen, veteran gember of the American Socialist Workers Party, published a lengthy reply to he slanders levelled against im in the publications of the Norkers Revolutionary Party. • In his reply Hansen demolished he main pillars of the mountainous abrication of 'evidence' erected by he leading clique of Gerry Healy in he WRP who allege that he has been for almost 40 years an agent of the Stalinist GPU.

The reaction of the WRP leaderconfirmed to the nit the assess- ship since Hansen's reply has ment we made earlier of Healy's marshalls its 'evidence' by distornons, lies and concealment, and which serves only to divert from the sharp political struggles which are necessary in the rebuilding of an international Trotskyist leaderWRP Frames Hansen in Socialise *WRP Frames Hansen In Press'of December 31st. 1975).

DIFFERENCES

Then as now, we spoke up in defence of Hansen against these slanders, despite the fundamental differences which divide us from the revisionist politics. of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International' (with which the Socialist Workers Party is in political sympathy, though prevented by reactionary legislation from affiliating).

Wé did so not only because we believe that slanders of such a vicious and serious character must be combatted on principle wherever ¡political crisis of the world Trotskyurgency and impostacks for uch international struggles of the working class that - more than at lany other time in the post-war period - it is impermissible to ¡allow methods such as those of ¡Gerry. Healy anad Cliff Slaughter ¡to foul and obstruct the political ¿struggles that are on the agenda.

DETAILS Nothing short of a book could examine in detail the whole of the WRP's accusations. But it will be highly illuminating of their methods to focus on the key items. Examining in detail the reactions of the WRP leadership to Hansen's reply will make clear the character : of the frame-up.

AmOng all the volume of 'evidence' unearthed by Healy's "investigators' only one single item is related to Hansen individually. This was a report prepared by an official of the US Consulate in Mexico City of his conversation with Hansen on Saturday August 31st, 1940.

This was eleven days after Trotsky was murdered at his house in Mexico City by Stalin's agent, i Mercader.

The report was forwarded to the recently unearthed in the State Department archives by the WRP's 'investigating' team (who give no precise location for the document).

In his report, the consular otficial, Robert G. McGregor, wrote that Hansen had suggested various lines of enquiry in the United States which might uncover the responsibility of the GPU apparatus for Trotsky's murder.

CONTACT Hansen reportedly told McGregor that he himself had been in contact with a GPU agent in the US for several months. The passage reads:

"For, while Hansen is convinced that the murder is a GPU job, that very fact makes it hard to unravel. Hansen stated that when in New York in 1938 he was himself approached by an agent of the GPU and asked to desert the fourth International and join the Third.

He referred the matter to Trotsky who asked him to go as far with the matter as possible. For three months Hansen had relations with a man who merely identified himself as "John', and did not otherwise reveal his real identity."

(Quoted in How the GPU Murdered Trotsky, Chapter 17, no page number.)

McGregor's memorandum immediately became the star exhibit in Healy's 'case' • It had the advantage for them that - unlike virtually all the rest of the material it related to Hansen as a named individual, rather than just the SWP or its leadership as a whole and it showed a conscious contact with the GPU.

EXCLUSIVE

The WRP used it to try • to establish two distinct and in fact mutually exclusive, charges against Hansen. (Perhaps there were at one stage too many cooks stirring the broth).

Firstly: that Hansen had some kind of illegitimate relationship with the US authorities and/or the FBI, concealed from the Trotskyist movement, and they insinuated) that he might even be an FBI agent.

The 'evidence' for this was the fact that Hansen met McGregor on Saturday (ie outside normal office hours) and appeared to have "a familiar relationship' with him.

But this allegation simply collapsed under the fact that (as is clear even from the WRP's own material) Hansen was only one of several members of the Fourth International (including Trotsky himself who had had quite open conversations with McGregor.

DROPPED

Characteristically the WRP discretely dropped this line of insinuation.

Secondly, they accused Hansen of lying when he said that his meetings with the GPU agent were reported to, and under the direction of the leadership of the Trotskyist movement.

The clear implication was that Hansen was acting for the GPU - and dila a And idvice, rork d of tha The document was thus used as the number one prop in the alleg"accomplice of the GPU», and is an ation that Hansen was and is an "Is it seriously suggested" , the WRP asked, "that Trotsky, the leader of the Red Army, would ask relatively inexperienced newcomer from Salt Lake City lie. Hansen to infiltrate the most skilled terror machine of the GPU? What could have been the purpose of this infiltration? There are no published records to show that Trotsky evinced an interest in infiltrating the GPU."

(How the GPU Murdered Trotsky, Chapter 17).

Ther IDD's chatorinal anections are answered in what is perhaps the GPU apparatus in the US and movement and Trotsky himself.

This took place in 1939 to his role in the operation.

moreover, on Trotsky's the SWP leadership in New ew up a confidential record natter whirh was sioned hv organisation sations with book which now writing

SOCIALIS

Cannon Hansen himself (though Hansen was not then a member of the leadership).

Hansen has now published this report (Intercontinental Press, 9th August, 1976, p.1210).

It is worth reprinting, both for the light it sheds on the serious manner in which Trotsky and the American Trotskyist leadership approached the overwhelming task of protecting the movement against Stalin's murder-squads, and in order to appreciate the utter cynicism of the WRP's reaction to it.

April 7, To the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party: Comrades:

Upon his return to the United man apparently the head or one of name Hansen does not know but who may be called "Y" sounded naisance in the American GPU Trotsky La series of conver"Y" upon the Stalin Comrade Trotsky is the internal status of Wednesday 22nd September 2116 Above left: Hansen Above: Schachtman at Mexico, in all cases giving equivocal, misleading answers to "Y's" questions or telling him things that are semi-public knowledge, reporting in detail after each meeting to Comrades Trotsky, Cannon, and Shachtman. Throughout these conversations valuable information has been gained for the Fourth International. • Hansen is disinclined - for fear that the story might leak out and because the reconnaisance is not yet completed - that the entire PC shouid be made aware of this affair at present without full guarantees that his personal safety and the further political gains which might accrue be safe-guarded by complete silence on the part of PC members with their friends, political associates, and correspondents regarding this affair. Even the most guarded allusions or hints might cause the failure of further work in this respect.

J.P. Cannon Max Shachtman Joe Hansen How have the WRP responded to this document? At no point have they challenged its authenticity. On the contrary they have - in an astonishing logical somersault taken it as additional evidence for their "indictment"!

LEAFLET A hurriedly-prepared leaflet issued to the WRP's London meeting on August 15th - ostensibly organised to 'commemorate Trotsky, in reality to_ '"indict" Hansen and pollute Trotsky's memory - carried the astonishing headline "Hansen Admits the Charges!" • This leaflet - like the other statements on the matter produced by the WRP since then - manages to avoid any explicit mention of the very existence of the document quoted above, although the leaflet is quite obviously an attempt to obfuscate the fact that it destroys the only item in the WRP's 'case' that had any direct bearing on Hansen's individual role.

As Cliff Slaughter, secretary ol Healy's International Committee' (and now coming forward as one of the main architects in the attempt to shore up the fabrications) has rightly commented it is "circumstantial evidence" that "abounds in situations of this sort." (News Line, August 21st).

METICULOUS

Evidently, a report dealing in detail with the matter, clearing Hansen and signed by James Cannon, is so "circumstantial" that its very existence must not be mentioned by Healy's allegedly 'meticulous' investigators!

political direction of the WRP's "investigation' emerged with dazzling clarity over the weekend of Sunday August 15th.

Far from pausing for even the briefest reevaluation of their case, the WRP leadership turned immed¡ately to the capitalist press (as they have accurately described them the sewers of Fleet Street').

Healy's apprentices in the matter of frame-ups turned without hesi

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesda The Sunday Times of August 15th carried an article by Anthony Holden summarising uncritically the WRP's case, and including a plug for their meeting that day.

It is impossible to avoid the supposition that Mr. Holden - at best - naively swallowed information' offered by courtesy of his former colleague •as a Sunday Times journalist Alex Mitchell, now editor of the News Line.

Next day the campaign hotted up. Revealing the leverage. they seem to have over the "jackals' who inhabit 'the sewers of Fleet Street' (their epithets, though we agree with the spirit!) the WRP called a "press conference" to which the capitalist press and only the capitalist press werę invited!

Pieces duly appeared in the Guardian and The Times the next day. They did not, of course, mention Hansen's reply nor has any of the capitalist press yet done so.

And to top it off, an interview was conveniently arranged on the BBC's Radió 4 PM' programme on Monday evening for Harold Robbins, a former SWP member and one of Trotsky's guards in Mexico, who has lent his name to the WRP's campaign.

NOT COHERENT • In it, Robbins - though not completely coherent - attempted to revive the theory that Hansen was (and is?) an agent both of the GPU and the FBI:

"The Socialist Workers Party ... was successfully penetrated by GPU agents, and they weren't just GPU agents, I'm convinced that some of them were double agents, agents for the American Government who wanted to kill Trotsky precisely because they didn't want to have what they had after World War 1."

(PM', August 16th) • From their proposals for a 'parity commission' of the Trotskyist movement to investigate their spurious allegations, the WRP leadership overnight switched horses, apparently without batting an eye-lid, to attempt to get a witch-hunt rolling through the capitalist press and media.

There could be no clearer indictment of the tactional, slanderous and anti-political character of their campaign.

Report of Trotsky's Any honest assessment of the evidence highlights, in fact, the serious and revolutionary manner in which Trotsky and the small cadres of the Fourth International in the 1930s faced up to the task of defence against the avalanche of slander and violence launched by Stalin.

And, if the SWP report which Hansen publishes is authentic (which the WRP have at no point challenged) it shows that his own role, though secondary, was a courageous one.

Not only was he in the firing line as one of Trotsky's guards in Mexico, but he exposed himselt to the serious risk of 'liquidation' at the hands of the GPU if they discovered he was hoodwinking them: a GPU machine which had already taken the lives of thousands of Stalin's political opponents.

It is necessary to comment also on the way in which the slander campaign against Hansen highlights the enormous acceleration in the political degeneration of the WRP and its leadership, a degeneration in the fight against which the founding members of the Workers Socialist League were illegally and bureaucratically expelled by Healy at the end of 1974.

Cutting themselves off from their base in the organised workers' movement, turning their backs on the day-to-day struggle for adership in the unions, mouthing a few sectarian slogans to cover id September 1976 over their opportunist adaptation in practice to the labour bureaucrats (including entry into scab "participation' committees) - all these tendencies show Healy's "Trotskyism" being driven swiftly, under pressure of the class struggle, into its opposite: phrase-mongering and intrigue.

Healy and his associates move increasingly in a narrow circle of petit-bourgeois dilletantes, actresses and bourgeois journalists.

CIRCLES

In such circles the fraudulent and frenzied search for 'conspiracies' to explain the problems of the organisation easily push out any serious attention to questions of security against agentsprovocateurs and spies.

Similarly, light-minded speculation and metaphysics takes the place of the political, scientific study of real developments in the wotkers' movement.

In this atmosphere the most ethereal 'explanations' can flourish. It has been suggested (though this is not a version the WRP leadership has yet put into print) that there is a version of Hansen's 'complicity' with the GPU which could survive the evidence he presents in his defence.

It is this - that Hansen was a trained agent of the GPU, in place in the SWP since well before the events of 1938-40. As a skilled operator in intrigue he (or his masters) conceived a plan which would allow him to meet more openly with his GPU controllers in New York, and at the same time protect himself against accusations from the Trotskyist ranks that he should pretend to infiltrate the Gry on behalt of the swe, meanwhile pretending to the SWP leadership that he was pretending to do the opposite on behalf of the GPU, and getting a report signed by Cannon on file to cover himself.

CUNNING

He thus became an agent (or accomplice') of the GPU within the SWP, cunningly disguising himself as an agent of the SWP inside the GPU ostensibly pretending to be an agent of the GPU in the SWP - or so on ad nauseam!

* Trotsky Deoth Weapo murder No doubt, if the WRP leadership chooses to come forward with this version, they will find excellent 'philosophical' and "dialectical" reasons to butress it with.

And these are the best reasons they can find, since in the nature oi the case, the 'facts' of the matter as they have emerged so far can -'logically' - neither prove nor disprove it.

It is, like the WRP's recent "philosophy' inherently metaphysical.

It is the sort of 'theory' which would allow the WRP's "investigators' to leave aside all the "circumstantial evidence' -including the detailed history of Joseph Hansen's more than forty years in the Trotskyist movement -except where it was convenient for them to select from it.

MANIPULATED

It allows Healy's International Committee to represent all the important post-war splits of the Trotskyist movement not as real political battles but as crises fomented and manipulated by Stalinist agents.

And, like their campaign against Hansen to date, it represents not an attempt to protect and strengthen the Trotskyist movement, but a slanderous and incompetent invention.

her discussion article (SP41 and 42), Comrade Fauzia Rafiq outlined many aspects of the history of the Marxist movement in Pakistan.

• One fact emerges glaringly from this account. There is a complete absence of any reference to Trotskyism.

Indeed the whole tradition of Indian and later Pakistani Marxism with virtually no exceptions has from 1924 onwards been confined within the suffocatingly narrow horizons of Stalinism.

In part one of her article, Comrade Fauzia points out correctly that:

'In Stalin's view the national bourgeois movement in India showed better prospects as an ally than the young Communist Party of India.

KEY This is indeed the key to the sordid story of class compromise and collaboration which has been the progress of world Stalinism as a whole and Stalinism in the Indian sub-continent in particular.

We only need to look to India today, where the CP remains as the only party apart from her own Congress Party, prepared to support Indira Gandhi's dictatorial rule, to see that these traditions live on unchanged in the Stalinist movement.

Just as in China in 1926-27 Stalin supported the entry of the Communist Party into the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang - a policy which led directly to the wholesale slaughter of Communists by the forces of Chiang Kai Shek in 1927 - so elsewhere, and particularly after the turn towards "Popular Front" politics in 1935, the independence of the working class was subordinated by international Stalinism to diplomatic deals and collaboration with bourgeois parties.

ALIENATED

And these reactionary manoeuvres took place in such a way that the petty bourgeois and peasant layers supposedly to be won were in fact alienated from the national Communist Parties.

The isolation of the CPI was therefore very much the product of Stalinism, and resulted in its forces being drawn almost exclusively from the intellectuals and middle class layers divorced from the masses.

And when partition took place in 1947 and the new Communist Party of Pakistan set up, it was for the same reason inhabited only by a handful of second-rate Stalinist academics and petty-bourgeois.

Of course the success of the Chinese revolution, and the emergence of a new anti-imperialist power in Asia had an enormous impact on Pakistan. Combined with the war between Pakistan and India in which world imperialism and the Soviet Union were seen as backing India while China sided with Pakistan, this served to create a substantial pro-Chinese current. This took shape within the workers' movement - where Maoism emerged among the younger forces - and also found reflection in the bourgeoisie, sections of whom were seeking ways of combatting Ayub Khan's policy of subordinating Pakistan to American finance capital.

Yet Comrade Fauzia is not able o pout out that Maoism, as the Chinese national version of Stalininternational relations as a matter of manoeuvres between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the Kremlin.

The Maoist groups that emerged therefore aped the Moscow-line they were serving the requirements of Peking and not Moscow, they courted different bourgeois parties.

This created huge tensions within the Maoist ranks at the time of the Bangladesh war of independence (which unfortunately is not mentioned in Comrade Fauzia's article).

While Maoists in East Bengal, confronted by the threat of immediate slaughter at the hands of the butchering army of Yahya Khan, took up arms and joined the battle for national self-determination, the Maoists in West Pakistan, following the line of Peking gave support to the army - blaming the war on 'Indian intervention"!

Bhutto No clearer indication could be found of the entirely chauvinist confines within which Maoism, like Stalinism, imprisons its followers.

Following similar logic, the Maoists fell in with the populist rhetoric of Bhutto's bourgeois Pakistan People's Party, giving no independent lead to the working class.

Mairaj Mohammed, a leading Maoist spokesman, even served for months in the Bhutto government, presiding over the murder of militants by Bhutto's police, before himself being unceremoniously removed from office and eventually arrested.

When the purge of the left-wing elements from the PPP government and party really got under way - as detailed by Comrade Fauzia in part two of her discussion article, it marked Bhutto's confidence that -thanks to Stalinism - no firm based alternative existed to his power, and no political leadership with any base in the masses.

The starting point for militants in Pakistan to approach Marxism must be these historical experiences of the complete bankruptcy and betrayals of Stalinism and the need for independent revolutionary Quite clearly the conditions of semi-legality and police repression which exist in Pakistan present the appearance of particular difficulty.

NOT ISOLATED Yet it would be wrong to simply see the problems in Pakistan in isolation from the international strengthening of the oppressed masses and their emergence in struggle against even the most barbaric and repressive regimes -South Africa and Spain just being the clearest cases.

The decisive question is the preparation of principled leadership for the time when struggles against the Bhutto regime break out in In our view it is clear that the building of a Trotskyist cadre in Pakistan is an indispensible beginning to the preparation of a principled leadership. A movement must be built on a scientific understanding and analysis of the methods and betrayals of Stalinism, of the reactionary policies behind the ultra-left rhetoric of Maoism.

Such a movement must make a concrete analysis of the social conditions prevailing in Pakistan -in particular the problems and forms of organisation of the working class and peasantry.

In the last two editions of 'Socialist Press' we have printed a discussion article by Fauzia Rafiq on the history and problems of the Marxist movement in Pakistan. Here John Lister gives our reply to the points made.

On the basis of such an analysis it must work out a programme which will necessarily combine a range of basic democratic demands - free trade unions, freedom of the press, emancipation of women, for example - with further demands which though they begin from today's problems faced by Pakistani workers and peasants, lead towards a common struggle for socialism.

A crucial guide to such a method and programme is Trotsky's Transitional Programme. The section entitled The Alliance of the Workers and Farmers' shows the vital link between the demands for the working class and those for the rural peasantry (the farmers):

"While the farmer remains an independent petty producer, he is in need of cheap credit, of agricultural machines and fertiliser at prices he can afford to pay, favourable conditions of transport, and conscientious organisation of the market for his agricultural products. But the banks, the trusts; the merchants, rob the farmer from every side. Only the farmers themselves, with the help of the workers, can curb the robbery. Committees elected by small farmers should make their appearance on the national scene and jointly with workers" committees and committees of bank employees take into their hands control of transport, credit and mercantile operations affecting agriculture."

(Folrose edition p19)

The Transitional Programme shows position absolutely opposite to the class collaborationist "fronts" with the bourgeoisie and prosperous middle class into which thè Stalinists liquidate their forces and which offer no independent road to the exploited masses:

"The alliance proposed by the proletariat - not to the 'middle classes' in general but to the exploited layers of the urban and rival petty bourgeoisie, against all exploiters, including those of the middle classes' — can be based not on compulsion, but only on free consent, which should be consolidated in a special 'contract'. This 'contract' is the programme of transitional demands "voluntarily accepted by both sides." (p21.)

Equipped with such a programme and the method of Trotskyist analysis it is possible though certainly a big task to begin patient work assembling a cadre in the Pakistani working class and peasantry.

NOT EASY easy the thorst ad see est is soot suggest is not would be the version suggested in Comrade Fauzia's closing pardgraphs where she talks of a "wider united front" and "closer contact with the Communist Parties and communists of other countries, especially India and Bangla Desh."

Nothing could be a more surefire recipe for disaster for Pakistani militants than to move into an embrace with any ot the Indian "Communist Parties" - worst of all the pro-Gandhi dictatorship CPI - or any national Stalinist or Maoist grouping. This would only signify a move away from any prospect of an independent programme and policy for the oppressed masses in Pakistan.

And if Comrade Fauzia's final paragraph dwelling on the need for Marxists to "be on the defensive" and "retreat from their open fronts" means pulling back from any kind of intervention in the mass workers movement in Pakistan, then such a retreat too must be dangerous.

What is needed is neither adventurism nor academicism, but a serious turn to the method and analysis of Trotskyism combined with seeking out avenues for practical work.

And the turn should be not inwards to political tendencies long proved bankrupt, but towards the initiatives now being taken to fight for the reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth International.

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The link between Leyland's Body and Assembly plants at Cowley H3623* rico Treatington 2

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Medrende, Z2d Sepecmber 1976 THE 'REVOLUTIONARY' LEFT

which must be a precondition for the develop- ment of real active solidarity with the Chilean

investigation - that it is a delib- brate and cynical frame-up, which

they appear within the workers' movement, but because the

DRIB LE In the . two parts of

ism, simply took over its reaction- ary political orientation, seeing

Communist Parties - but, since VST