Declaration of the United Secretariat of the
INDOCHINA: " The Fourth International hails the very great victories won by the peoples of Indechina dur-
•ing the past several months. These victories take on an exceptional importance for the evolution of the situation both in the region and on a world scale. With the liberation of Phnom Penh and the outbreak of the general crisis of the Saigon puppet regime after the collapse of the puppet forces in central Vietnam, the struggle of the Indochinese workers enters a new phase: a phase in which final victory in the long revolutionary battle against French and Japanese colonialism and against American imperialism is becoming an immediate reality. The imperialist debacle in Cambodia and Vietnam has profound international repercussions. It confirms the ultimate failure of the policy of intervention to which successive U.S. governments had committed all their authority and efforts and sharply highlights the crisis of political leadership that is racking imperialism today. The victories of the Indochinese revolutionary fighters are accentuating the modification of the worldwide relationship of forces between the classes. The considerable import of the latest turn in the history of the Indochinese revolution is a result of the nature of the revolutionary process under way, which is challenging the bases of capitalist and neocolonia list domination in Vietnam; of the deep interaction that links the struggles being waged in the three countries of Indochina, which has committed the Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese peoples to the same struggle; and of the international stakes that have been involved and still are involved in the war in Indochina.
SOLIDARITY UNTIL FINAL ¡ VICTORY! Fourth International, April 1975
The form taken by the rout of the puppet forces in South Vietnam in the Central Highlands, in •the northern provinces, and along the coastal provinces of the center throws a glaring light on the causes of the defeat of U.S. imperialism and on the nature of the revolutionary process that it tried to crush. In January and March 1975 the Provisional
Revolutionary Government (PRG) did not unleash a general offensive comparable to the Tet offensive of 1968 or to the spring offensive of 1972. On the contrary, before Thieu decided to abandon the provincial capitals of Kontum and Pleiku, the Peoples
Armed Liberation Forces (PALF) had committed only limited military forces to the fighting; after that, their progress had been made without great fighting until the battle of Xuan Loc in the Saigon region.
The military potential of the puppet army, with its mastery of the air, remained largely superior to that of the revolutionary forces. In spite of the relative reduction in U.S. aid, the puppet army was not short of motor-fuel, munitions, or spare parts. This shows just how deceitful are the excuses that have been officially advanced in Saigon and Washington to justify the retreat.
The sudden collapse of half of the puppet army is only the reflection of the internal decay of the Saigon regime and of the progressive evolution of the political and social relationship of forces in South
Vietnam. The profound cause of the current American-puppet debacle is to be sought in the deepening of the revolutionary process after the signing of the
Paris accords of January 27, 1973. The halt of the air attacks on Indochina and the withdrawal of the
U.S. expeditionary corps confirmed the failure of the earlier American strategy. This certainly did
INDOCHINA not mean the abandonment of the counterrevolutionary U.S. policy in the region, but rather indicated a reduction in the objectives and means of implementing that policy. "Such a withdrawal would not in itself (guarantee) the victory of the permanent revolution in South Vietnam. It (would imply) only that the process of this revolution (could) develop with a reduced, but not eliminated, counterrevolutionary interference, " declared the resolution adopted by the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International in December 1972. The victories currently being registered by the revolutionary forces show that they were able to take advantage of that new situation. The defeat of Thieu and his imperialist master is first of all political and social rather than military. In Saigon the economic crisis impelled a new rise of struggles for demands, limited by the scope of the repression but nevertheless very significant for the disintegration of the base of the regime. The gravity of the repression was unable to prevent the development of movements of struggle for the release of the political prisoners, for the restoration of democratic rights, and for the return of peace. The expansion of the urban opposition to the puppet regime was such that it provoked a deep cleavage within the regime itself between those who desired the preventive resignation of Thieu and those who feared this. In the meantime, the liberated zones, freed of the heavy bombing despite the "nibbling" operations launched by the Saigon army, went through an economic reconstruction and an acceleration of the agrarian reform. A social class was eliminated in the liberated countryside, namely the large landlords, while the prevailing social and political conditions do not presently permit the formation of a ruling class of capitalist peasants. Consequently, the liberated zones have begun to play a stimulating role in the political crisis shaking the cities controlled by the puppet army, where galloping inflation and tragic unemployment are the rule.
Such were the axes around which we thought "the revolutionary offensive of the toiling masses of South
Vietnam" would develop, as expressed in the resolution of December 1972, which drew the consequent conclusion that "the combined effects of the processes" thus described would result in "the disintegration of the puppet military and administrative apparatuses both in the cities and in the countryside."
This is what has happened, and it once again confirms that the power of the Indochinese revolution derives from the combination of social, political, and military struggles, from the combination of a struggle for national liberation and a process of social revolution, that is, from the dynamic of permanent revolution.
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U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean quits Cambodia. Jonot solely from that combination, but abo from The power of the Indochinese revolution derives its regional dimension. The offensive of 195354, which ultimately led to the very great victory of Dien Bien Phu, had already given expression to the close links between the struggles in Vietnam and Laos. This time, after the constitution of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the entry of the Cambodian masses into the Indochinese Revolutionary Front, the Indochinese revolution took on new scope. It was the successes registered by the FUNK in Cambodia after the 1970 coup and by the Neo Lao Hakesat in Laos after the American-Saigonese intervention of 1971 that prepared the 1972 spring offensive in South Vietnam. It was the signing of the Paris accords on Vietnam in January 1973 that led one month later to the signing of the Vientiane accords and then on August 15, 1973, to the halt of the massive bombing of Cambodia - a halt likewise imposed by the extraordinary victorious resistance of the Cambodian fighters. The liberated zones of South Vietnam were able to lean more firmly on the North Vietnamese workers state, which assured the liberated zones economic aid for reconstruction, military aid against the Saigon nibbling operations, and cultural aid. This time, in January 1975, Washington's inability to respond to the closing of the Mekong River -
along which pass 80 percent of Phnom Penh's supplies - and its inability to break the encirclement of the Cambodian capital showed the Thie regime and its armies that the power of American imperialism was very much limited. In turn, the collapse of the puppet army in the center of South Vietnam sounded the death knell of what was the Lon Noi regime: no longer could it hope for any support from Saigon. Finally, the defeats suffered by the neocolonial regimes in Cambodia and South Vietnam are ever more reducing the maneuvering room of the Vientiane administration in Laos: The dissolution of the puppet "National Assembly, " which had been decided a long time ago but the implementation of which had been blocked by the bourgeoisie, has just been decreed. This constant interaction of the struggles of the three countries of Indochina, this extension of the Indochinese revolution relative to what had been the case during the initial resistance to the French, also illustrates the dynomic of the permanent revolution at work in the region.
It is in this regional framework that the implica-
• ians of the liberation of Phnom Penh must be analyzed. The last country to be fully integrated into the Indochinese revolution, Cambodia has become the first to be completely liberated from imperialist aggression. The scope of the success achieved during five years of revolutionary war in this country of 7 million inhabitants despite the American-South Vietnamese invasion of 1970 and despite the attempted genocide from the air committed by Washington in 1973 is exemplary in that it demonstrates the extraordinary strength of an armed liberation struggle and of a revolution. Humanity is indebted to the conscious sacrifices made by the Cambodian toilers -like those of the other countries of Indochina - in their battle against the policeman of the world. Fully 10 percent of the population were killed or wounded as a result of the imperialist intervention! The final inglorious and unremitting fall of the puppet regime in Phnom Penh will have deep implicafions in South Vietnam. In Saigon it can now no longer be concealed that American imperialism is prepared to abandon its creatures. The flight of American nationa is from the Saigon region, coming after Ambassador John Gunther Dean's flight from the Cambodian capital, can deal a fatal blow to the morale of what remains of the puppet apparatus in South Vietnam. Apart from the recognition of the importance of the imperialist defeat in Cambodia, the analysis of the regime that has been born out of these five years of struggle is made more difficult by the small amount of information available. Much less is known about the amplitude of the social transformations that have
LEES gone on in the liberated zones or about the history of the communist movement of this country than is the case with Vietnam. But since Cambodia forms an integral part of the Indochinese revolution, it is nevertheless possible to locate the revolutionary process now going on there. A deep agrarian reform has been carried out in the countryside, analogous (despite real differences linked to the structure of agricultural property) to that in South Viernam. The
Cambodian comprador bourgeoisie was organically linked to the puppet military and state apparatus and to the imperialist presence, and thus finds itself suddenly uprooted, while repeated popular mobilizations have taken place in Phnom Penh during recent years. Finally, hegemony in the FUNK and the GRUNK is incontestably held by the "Khmers Rouges, the leaders of which come from the Cambodian communist movement. What is on the agenda in Cambodia today is the socialist revolution! The character of the Cambodian revolution is nevertheless not yet decided definitively. The consolidation of a new workers state in Asia will in fact require a series of deep economic, political, and social measures. Above all, the fate of the Cambodian revolufion is profoundly linked to that of the Indochinese revolution as a whole and most especially to the future of the revolution in South Vietnam. The revolutionary battle continues; it must conclude in the formation of the socialist states of Indochina!
The latest turn in the history of the Indochinese revolution confirms the failure of the policy
•worked out two and more years ago by American imperialism: the "Kissinger plan." This strategic failure comes in the wake of many others. U.S. imperialism's commitment to the war in Vietnam predates even the Geneva accords of 1954. In intervening, U.S. imperialism wanted to break the process of the Asian revolution and to prepare to reopen China to its penetration. That was the policy of "containment and roll back. " After the defeat of French colonialism, U.S. imperialism had first of all to consolidate a puppet regime in South Vietnam, that of Diem. The general relaunching of the armed struggle in 1959-60 then led U.S. imperialism to begin the "local war." In spite of the sending of American advisers, the puppet regime was on the point of complete collapse in 1964. Washington then decided to send the U.S. expeditionary corps - which landed at presently liberated Da Nang - and to open the air attacks both against the liberated zones of the South (which meant the heart of the countryside) and against the DRV, taksing advantage of criminal Soviet passivity. The Tet offensive marked the failure of this "local war." U.S. imperialism consequently agreed to an initial
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INDOCHINA reduction - at least provisionally — in its objectives. It no longer counted on immediately breaking the North Vietnamese workers state. Instead, it concentrated the essential part of its resources on breaking the back of the National Liberation Front in the South. That was "Vietnamization, "with its acceleration of the policy of "forced urbanization" and the new intensity of the air war. The de facto aborting of the coup fomented by the CIA in Laos in 1970 and of the occupation of the Laotian part of the "Ho Chi Minh trail" in 1971, like the 1972 spring offensive in South Vietnam, provoked the abandoning of this policy. In signing the Paris accords on Vietnam, U.S. imperialism renounced the destruction in the immediate future of the NLF, the FUNK, and the Pathet Lao. But it no less maintained three key objectives: to isolate these revolutionary movements in the Indochinese countryside through the consolidation of its power in the cities; to establish a new line of defense along the Mekong protecting Thailand; and to attenuate as much as possible the worldwide repercussions of its previous defeats. Phnom Penh and the principal cities of South Vietnam, except Saigon, have been liberated. Social struggles have broken out in the urban centers of Laos. The "Mekong line" has been broken, while Thailand is now experiencing an important development of social struggles and a resurgence of guerrilla actions. And the first two objectives are not the only ones to have been blocked during recent months. The third has also been blocked. The complete collapse in Cambodia and the still parfial one in South Vietnam have come so rapidly and so sharply that it has become impossible to camouFlage U.S. responsibility and paralysis in the debacle. And the frenzied poisonous campaign orchestrated around the question of the Vietnamese refugees and orphans will not be able to conceal the reality, either. The only ones fleeing the advance of the forces of the PRG are those who fear having to account for their activities of collaboration with the imperialist undertaking - the torturers, military and police officers, the bourgeoisie, the traffickers, and the profiteers. The others are only trying to escape the fighting or the reprisals that are traditionally perpetrated by the puppet forces against newly liberated zones, which have been bombed or transformed into "free-fire zones." The major part of the population - including the urban population - has remained in the territory liberated during past months or is returning there. Moreover, the advance of the revolufionary forces has been accompanied by regional uprisings and actions by clandestine urban militias. At the end of 1974, the Saigon regime lost or abandoned about 50 percent of its military posts in the Mekong delta solely because of the extension of a 6 popular guerrilla war. In March the liberation of the provincial capital Ban Me Thuot was the work of a thousand Montagnards known previously for their adherence to the FURLO, an organization created out of whole cloth by the CIA! In fact, the retreat of the Saigon troops was precipitated by the uprising of the ethnic minorifies of the Central Highlands. The advance of the forces of the PRG along the coastal plain of central Vietnam, given an impetus by the collapse of the puppet army, was combined with significant defections from that army, with actions by clandestine popular militias previously organized in the cities, and with a certain number of urban insurrectional movements. Finally, the popular welcome received by the FUNK upon the liberation of Phnom Penh could not be ignored by the press agencies. For the first time, American imperialism has been defeated in a counterrevalutionary war for which it had directly and massively organized its forces - and this by the populations of small, poor, rural countries. This fact by itself underlines the importance of the recent victories of the Indochinese revolution. O. titan in nay he gie of American pete The successive failures of the various counter-
Salism in Indochina in face of the resistance and heroic struggles of the Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese populations is of capital importance in the world arena. The reasons for the intervention of the United States, as well as the forces committed and the stakes involved, have always been international. Washington was not concerned with defending massive investments in the Indochinese countries themselves. The stakes involved in the aggression against the Indochinese revolution were the totality of imperialist positions in Southeast Asia and even imperialism's capacity to defend its positions throughout the world. This revolution has become one of the points of crystallization of international social and political contradictions, the advanced trench of the world proletariat. Consequently, the imperialist defeat in Indochina is not solely the result of the combat of the Indochinese peoples. The American war was aimed not only at the Indochinese revolution, but also at the workers states. This led the Chinese and Soviet leaderships to agree to furnish aid that, despite is limits and fluctuations, played a decisive role in arming the revolution. The very existence of this aid, like its tragic deficiencies, fully justifies the slogan of the united front of workers states in defense of the Indochinese revolution, which was put forward by revolutionary Marxists from the very first stages of the second Indochina war. The same con be said of the organization of militant support in the imperialist world, in which the Fourth Intemational fully
participated. The U.S. defeat in Indochina in fact also depended on the emergence of an international movement of solidarity with the Indochinese revolution and on the growing breadth of antiwar sentiment in the United States which, in the present economic context, imposes immediate limits on Washington's ability to intervene. In turn, the Indochinese revolution has played a direct role in the formation of new generations of revolutionaries throughout the world outside the grip of the traditional reformist and Stalinist workers bureaucracies - and this in the context of the strategic weakening of the most powerful imperialism and of the disequilibrium of the international monetary system. The Indochinese revolution has clearly been the bridge linking the postwar revolutionary wave with the revolutionary wave through which we are living today. After the signing of the Paris accords, one of the keys to the "Kissinger plan" was the isolation of the Indochinese fighters through making overtures to the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies. Imperialism was forced to recognize the People's Republic of China. It hoped to make use of the consequent turn of Chinese international policy. The announcement in July 1971 of Nixon's trip to Peking - made without taking account of the needs of the Indochinese revolution - demonstrated the breadth of this turn. It demobilized an important part of the antiwar movement in the United States and throughout the world by suggesting that a peaceful settlement of the conflict had become possible. It indicated to the Vietnamese fighters — who immediately denounced its function in the framework of the "Nixon doctrine" - that they could not hope for a strengthening of international solidarity to put an end to the escalation. This is probably the major reason why they agreed no longer to make the departure of the Saigon regime a precondition for any accords, as had been demanded until then in the "PRG Seven Points. " The current victories of the Indochinese masses confirm both the independent position visd-vis the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies that has been adopted by the Vietnamese Communist party, the FUNK, and the Pathet Lao, and the possibility of a new upsurge of international class struggle despite the efforts made to put the brakes on it by means of openings toward the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies. The initial consequences of the turn that has been made by the Indochinese revolution have not been long in coming - first of all in Southeast Asia, where the regimes set up by American imperialism at the time of the cold war are experiencing a deepening crisis. This is apparent above all in Thailand, where the rightist government of Kukrit Pramoj is demanding the withdrawal of U.S. bases from the country, even though Peking has recently made it known that it favors their retention as a counterweight to Soviet influence in the Indian Ocean.
Also in Thailand, the guerrillas are now experiencing a forward development. In the United States, the crisis of the system of government, opened by the massive American intervention in Indochina and underlined by the Watergate scandal, is being aggravated. In capitalist Europe uneasiness is being manifested in government circles in face of the absence of political leadership from American imperialism, policeman of the capitalist world, and thus in face of the "leadership crisis" of the so-called Free World. Washington's control over its allied and satellite states is weakening along with the decline both in American "credit" and in confidence in American commitments. The weight of the Indochinese defeat of U.S. imperialism is all the heavier in that the Indochinese revolution is no longer the only problem U.S. imperialism has to deal with; rather, it is today combining with the new rise of workers struggles in West Europe, the social crisis in the United States, the weakening of NATO, the failure of American diplomacy in the Middle East, etc. Ten years ago, Washington was able to concentrate all its forces on Indochina alone. It was the beginning of the most ferocious military escalation in history. Ten years ago the workers movement was living through one of its most serious defeats in Southeast Asia, the bloody crushing of the Indonesian Communist party and the massacre of at least 500,000 people. Three years later, there was the Prague spring, the French May, and the Tet offensive -a symbolic year for the dialectic of the world revolution. What we are seeing today is the general reorganization of the forces of the revolution and of the counterrevolution.
y International support must assert itself in this It is not simply a matter of affirming our full crucial hour for the Indochinese revolutionaries. solidarity with the peoples of Indochina in their victory and in their test and of thereby denouncing the poisonous campaign being waged around the question of the refugees. It is also a matter of remaining at the sides of the Indochinese fighters in a struggle that is still not finished. American imperialism is maintaining an aerial bridge to Saigon; General Brown is announcing preparation for a new intervention; the U.S. fleet is massing along the Indochinese coast; Ford is asking for a thousand million dollars for his puppets and is talking about sending in U.S. troops under the pretext of protecting American lives. It seems unlikely that the United States will commit new infantry troops and aviation to the conflict for any length of time. But Washington continues to bear the responsibility for the present sufferings of the peoples of Indochina and could want to wage serious retaliatory operations in order to show the world what price has to be paid for challenging Pax Americana. We must be prepared for this.
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INDOCHINA We must also be prepared for new political mancuvers by imperialism. Tomorrow Washington could decide to do what it had refused to do six months ago despite the pressing request of the Saigon right opposition: attempt to set up a "Thieu regime without Thieu" in such a way as to maintain some minimal control of the situction. This operation, which was previously considered too risky, would obviously have to be attempted under very much deteriorated conditions: after the extension of the liberated zones, which now cover 75 percent of the country's territory and include about 50 percent of the population; a situation in which the specific weight of the PRG has been sharply increased and in which the internal crisis of the puppet regime has been dramatically aggravated; of the time of the liberation of Phnom Penh and of American discredit. Under these conditions, the replacement of Thieu could accelerate the tendency toward the decomposition of the puppet apparatus instead of strengthening it. That is why the operation has not yet been attempted, despite the debacle. It is in this context that the possible establishment of a coalition government in Saigon (in accordance with the Paris accords) must be considered. As was affitmed in the IEC resolution of 1972, "If is our duty to clearly explain that no 'national concord" is possible between the exploiting classes and the exploited classes, in Vietnam or elsewhere. The Fourth International is and will remain opposed to governments of coalition with the bourgeoisie, whatever the concrete composition of these governments. Even when the bourgeois ministers of such a government are hostages of a state power that is in fact already proletarian, their presence does not facilitate the conclusion of the process of the seizure of power and cannot fail to disorient the class consciousness of the proletariat. "But this principled opposition to any government of coalition with the bourgeoisie does not authorize us automatically to define each of these governments as equivalent to a popular front government stabilizing and defending the economic power and state of the owning classes." On the contrary, in the event of the complete disintegration of the puppet forces in the manner that it has occurred in Hue, Da Nang, etc., such a so-called coalition government would be but an organ of transition between the PR G's entry into Saigon and the establishment of a new revolutionary administration. In the event that this disintegration were not complete, open dual power would then dominate the Saigon region, and the coalition government would not be able to durably interrupt the process of national liberation struggle and social revolution now under way.
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The military victory of the forces of the PRG over the Saigon puppets would, of course, not in itself guarantee the socialist growing-over of the revolufion in South Vietnam; the revolution's consolidafion in the cities will depend on a series of social, political, and economic measures. But the process of permanent revolution will enjoy conditions very favorable for its development, the overthrow of the organs of puppet power and the dissolution of the reactionary parties in the newly liberated cities are an indication of this. Finally, in view of the degree of organization of the urban masses and the limits that have been imposed on this organization by the repression and by the traditions the Vietnamese CP inherited in this area from the Stalinized International, it is unlikely that the forms of proletarion power that will be born in the cities will be free of serious bureaucratic deformations. It is especially in this area that the forms of coalition government (even if the bourgeois ministers are simply hostages) can weigh negatively on the development of the class consciousness of the Vietnamese workers and mosses. The victory of the revolution in South Vietnam and the initiation of a process of reunification with the workers state of the North will nevertheless pose new problems for the whole of the Indochinese revolution, both in the area of economic reconstruction and in the area of social and political organization. In face of the continuing political and military intervention of U.S. imperialism in Indochina, the movement of international solidarity must affirm its most total solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of Indochina, must denounce the poisonous campaign orchestrated by imperialism around the fate of the refugees, and must demand the immediate recognition of the PRG and the GRUNK, the withdrawal of the U.S. Fleet from Indochinese waters, the ending of the aerial bridge to Saigon, and the cessation of all imperialist interference. It is now thirty years that the peoples of Indochina have been engaged in a long fight against colonialism, and then against imperialism. They have had to confront the most serious of counterrevolutionary undertakings under conditions of sometimes tragic relative isolation. They have paid a very heavy price in the struggle of humanity for its liberation. At the time when the decisive victory over U.5. imperialism and its instruments is possible, solidarity must come to the fore: to stop Washington from committing any act of criminal retaliation, so that the victory of the peoples of Indochina may truly be the victory of the workers of the entire world.
We are publishing below the response of the Liga Comunista Internacionalista (Internationalist Communist League), sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in
Portugal, to the platform proposed by the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA — Armed
Forces Movement). This document has been published in Portugal as a brochure, thousands of copies of which have been distributed. The next issue of INPRECOR will examine the results of the elections (scheduled to take place April 25) and the economic measures taken by the Council of the Revolution. Following the contacts made by the MFA with the various legal parties, we were asked our opinion on the pact proposed to the political parties. Because we believe that the questions involved are of concern to all the workers, and because we bélieve that the workers movement as a whole must debate all these problems, we cannot keep our position and response secret. The workers and revolutionary organizations cannot discuss these questions behind the back of the workers. That would amount to renouncing the defense of the workers' interests and to abandoning the struggle to strengthen the offensive capacity of the toiling masses and to break down all the reformist illusions that prevail today. For this reason, we appeal to all workers to demand that the workers organizations make public both their positions and all the compromises that they may have made. As for us, we have long since chosen our path. We will never renounce pushing forward the mobilizafion of the workers, which is the only way to make sure that the workers response to the crisis of capitalism will prevail against the attacks of the bourgeoi