By Ernest mandel
¡The Brussels newspaper La Libre Belgique (Free Belgium) published an article in its October 16 issue in which it joined Newsweek in slandering the Fourth International by portraying it as a "terrorist international." The Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel, a leader of the Fourth International, sent the following reply to La Libre Belgique. The text was published in the October 20 issue of La Gauche, the organ of the Ligue Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs (Revolutionary Workers League), the Belgian section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
In your October 16, 1972, issue under the title "The Internationalization of Terrorism?" you repeat the slanderous charges against the Fourth International and myself that appeared in the September 25, 1972, issue of Newsweek.! The article is nothing but a tissue of untruths and lies.
It states, among other things, that the Fourth International was founded two years ago in Brussels; in fact, it was founded thirty-four years ago in Paris. A statement is attributed to me - which you present between quotation marks- that I neither uttered nor wrote. The Brussels conference of November 21-22, 1970, in which 3,500 of our comrades from all the countries of Europe participated, is presented as a gathering of terrorists that issued a call to arms. ("Shoot" is the subhead in the Newsweek article for the section dealing with this conference.)2 This conference-which was public, which was attended by one of your own reporters, and about which you published a lengthy report - actually set itself a more modest goal: to bring together trade unionists and young people who are ready to struggle against the Europe of the trusts and multinational corporations and for a Socialist United States of Europe.
Your entire article culminates in an insinuation that the Fourth International might be part of a mysterious "terrorist international" or that it might itself perhaps be that international. You add to this another insinuation: that we would like to "bring about the rise to power of fascist regimes." You know perfectly well the slanderous nature of these charges.
The Fourth International lays claim to revolutionary Marxism, not terrorism. It tries to prevent the rise of fascist regimes or dictatorships, not to provoke a victory for such regimes. It proclaims that the emancipation of the workers must be carried out by the workers themselves, not by minorities substituting themselves for the masses, and this goes for armed minorities. I am aware that the view prevailing in the highest circles of our society is the "police conception of history," which holds that social explosions cannot be explained as the result of a system's contradictions but that they are always seen as the product of a dark "plot." It was out of such an awareness, moreover, that during the Brussels conference to which you refer I called attention to the fact that we are neither conspirators nor bomb throwers, because we have confidence in a weapon that is effective and formidable in a different way when used against the capitalist system: our programmatic and organizational ability to ultimately mobilize tens of millions of workers in action. Against them, an arsenal of even the most sophisticated weapons will prove ineffective.
It is true that in addition to pursuing this goal, the Fourth International, in a spirit of solidarity with all victims of oppression, firmly supports mass movements of resistance against tyrannical regimes that leave their victims with no other alternative form of struggle but armed struggle. We are not the only ones to demonstrate this kind of solidarity or to invoke this principle; it is even proclaimed by the Constitution of the United States. Sweden's Social Democratic government has provided a great deal of support for the armed resistance movement in the Portuguese colonies in Africa. The World Council of in alica. lne worla counci ot Churches has done as much. Even the editors of La Libre Belgique are suspected of having a little sympathy for an armed resistance movement that broke out against a certain King William a while back, not far from the offices of the newspaper. Should all these fine people therefore be classified in the "terrorist" category?
You yourselves admit that you have no proof to back up your charges. Nevertheless, you publish them with the obvious intent to slander. To get an idea of how infamous your method is, let us imagine the analogy of an international press campaign on the following theme:
La Libre Belgique's "sympathy" for American imperialism is well known. The CIA is an important agency of this imperialism. It is a matter of common knowledge that the CIA at the very least tolerates the production of drugs and the drug traffic originating within the borders of Indochina, if indeed it is not itself financing and organizing it. It could therefore be assumed that La Libre Belgique justifies at least the drug traffic; some badmouths are even saying that it is itself a cover organization for the distribution of drugs in Belgium. Obviously, we don't have any proof to support this hypothesis. But where there is smoke there is fire. Besides, the people at La Libre Belgique are so crafty and Machiavellian that the absence of proof proves nothing. All persons who buy La Libre Belgique should therefore be aware that they may be helping to finance the drug traffic and in this way are contributing to the delinquency of their children. Are not drugs an excellent means for diverting young people from revolutionary subversion? Is not this one of the political goals that La Libre Belgique seeks to attain?
La Libre Belgique's insinuations about the Fourth International and myself follow exactly the same logic and the same method. They are a disgrace to free journalism, even within the bourgeois limits of the term.
One could remain indifferent in the face of this new example of the wellknown intolerant, stupid, and vicious nature of the reactionary press. But this slanderous press campaign is not without reason. It has a very precise purpose: to prepare the way for, and to justify, political repression. Following Newsweek, La Libre Bel gique worms its way into the noble crusade of those who want to restrict or suppress freedom of association, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and freedom of travel for their political opponents.
Following May '68, the international bourgeoisie became fearful. So, in spite of all outward appearances, the working class was not "integrated" into the system after all! A strike wave broke out across Europe. Profits were threatened. With an intolerable insolence, the workers challenged the right of the bosses to impose speedups, to shift orders to other plants, to fire personnel, and to close factories. All right-thinking persons serving the golden calf obviously had to react against that danger. Thus limitations had to be placed on the right to strike, "agitators"
who organize wildcat strikes had to be hunted down, and on occasion shot at, and if necessary the trade unions had to be muzzled.
To achieve these ends, the most determined supporters of strikes by workers and students and the most irreconcilable opponents of rule by capital must first be crushed. If the attempt to stifle the far left succeeds, the next to be hit will be the tradeunion left, the official Communist parties, and the Socialist left. And if any willingness to resist remains after all these blows, it will be the turn of the most moderate forces of the workers' movement, the respectful left.
This salami tactic can only succeed if the far left is successfully isolated from the rest of the workers' movement. What easier way to accomplish this than to brand it as "terrorist"? The Fourth International is meeting with growing success in its efforts in many countries to bring together the most determined militants in the strugmost determined millants In the struggle for a socialist world. Therefore, the term "terrorist" must be applied to it in order to make it easier to suppress.
This is not the first time that such a maneuver has been used against the leading wing of the workers' movement. In 1878, Bismarck, taking as a pretext an attack on William I, decreed a law banning the press and organizations of the Social De- November 13, 1972
mocracy. In 1934, Stalin, taking as a pretext the attack on Kirov that he himself undoubtedly had ordered, had all his opponents and former opponents within the Communist movement in the USSR arrested and later massacred. In both cases, the charge of "terrorism" had no basis whatsoever. Neither the German Social Democrats nor the Soviet Trotskyists had committed a single act of violence against the above-mentioned governwhich they were fighting ments, against by means of propaganda and by educating and organizing activists. The charge of "terrorism" simply served to justify a massive repression of political opponents.
Bismarck and Stalin are not the only terrorists in power who attempted to smear their opponents as "terrorists." Hitler branded the entire antifascist resistance as a movement of "terrorist bandits." The motion against international terrorism - defined as "action that aims to attain political goals through the use of violence against persons on foreign territory" - was presented to the United Nations General Assembly by the American government which, as everyone knows, is aiming to attain no political goal by bombing the civilian population of North Vietnam, is killing no one there, and is acting only on the territory of the United States itself. Let's bet that the Belgian and world workers' movement will not take its instructions from La Libre Belgique, that it will not permit any suppression and restriction of the democratic freedoms of the far left under the fallacious pretext of "fighting terrorism," and that it will remember the lesson of the past fifty years: that any repression that is tolerated against any section of the movement ends up being applied to the movement as a whole.
The only charge contained in your article to which I am ready to plead guilty is that the Fourth International is hostile to the "order" of the "states as they are generally [!] constituted in our century." This "order," which in the space of a half century has produced two world wars, innumerable local wars, the economic crisis of 1929, fascism, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the genocidal bombing of Vietnam, the poverty of the Third World where millions of children die each year from hunger, and the threat that pollution and nuclear weapons hold for the survival of humanity-yes, this "order" must indeed be replaced with all possible speed by a true social order in which priorities in the use of resources will be determined by reason and humanity, not by the "laws of the market," and in which the associated producers will democratically run their own affairs, free from the requirements of profit and competition. Do we need to let you in on a secret? We are not the only ones to hold this view. It is shared by millions of workers, intellectuals, and young people throughout the world.
I have one last consolation. La Libre Belgique has a solid tradition of fighting for lost causes. We are familiar with the brilliant and lasting success that crowned its campaigns against universal suffrage, against the eight-hour day, against the extension of free care through the Assurance Maladie-Invalidité Sickness and Disablement Insurance], and against the strengthening of the unions. Its campaign against the Fourth International will be crowned with the same success.
Notes
1. The actual date was September 18, 1972. - IP
2. In full, the subhead stated: "The Philosophy 'Is to Shoot.'" - IP 1248