[ The following statement was issued August 13 by the Political Bureau of the RMF (Revolutionära Marxisters Förbund - Revolutionary Marxist League, the Swedish section of the Fourth International) and published in the August 16 issue of the RMF's weekly paper Internationalen. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
In recent months an intense debate has been conducted in the Swedish press over the line for solidarity work in defense of the struggle in Indochina. This has involved the platform of the solidarity movement, but at the same time it has opened other questions: developments in South Vietnam since the 1973 Paris accords, the U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, the nature of the Soviet Union, the role of China, and other questions.
Regarding this debate, the Vietnambulletin has had the following to say:
"The DFFG's [De Förenade FNL- Grupperna — the United NLF Groups] right to diseuss their own future has been under discussion. There has been a debate over the question of procedure. But it would have been more useful for Indochina and for all us anti-imperialists if the discussion had been over the real question: What is the state of things in the world today?" (Issue No. 5, 1974.)
Those who in this way reduce the subject of the debate in Aftonbladet and other papers to a procedural question must have put on blinders. To be sure, there were some repulsive contributions, such as the hypo- October 7, 1974
critical letter by the Social Democrat John Olle Persson, but these did not dominate the debate. Most of those who have criticized the DFFG leadership have not done so on narrow formal grounds but out of justified political opposition to the content of the DFFG leadership's new line. What will the consequences be of the DFFG's joining in a front against the superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, where the Indochina problem is to be treated as only one of a number of equally important questions?
This turn must mean that Indochina solidarity will get relatively less attention from the DFFG activists. The DFFG leadership is trying to justify this by a false interpretation of developments in South Vietnam since the Paris accords. This question is taken up elsewhere in this issue of Internationalen. Let us simply repeat the DFF's own view. It is summed up in the following cynical formulation:
"Vietnam is no longer the flashpoint of the primary contradiction in today's world. Hard struggles are being waged on other fronts- Palestine, the raw materials question, and the question of the boundaries for fishing rights." (From the Swedish FNL's newsletter for members, No. 6, 1974.)
Another result of the proposed turn would be that the Indochina question would be taken up in only a very limited way-from a nationalist standpoint, insofar as this struggle can give a good example of how small nations can fight the superpowers. In conjunction with this, the social and class content of the Indochinese revolution would be completely pushed out of the picture.
For us Trotskyists, it is interesting -but sad-to study the development of the DFFG leadership.
A few years back we explained our opposition to the DFFG's version of the flashpoint theory. It was not that we were opposed to an Indochina organization putting its stress on Indochina, as was claimed. Nor did we want to see the DFFG expanded into a "general anti-imperialist organization," as we were accused of doing. (Doesn't this argument rebound sharply now against the DFFG leadership?) Rather we wanted to oppose the DFF's failure to study imperialism as a system and their failure to understand that the struggle against this system must be international and thus that the DFFG for their part had to collaborate to a greater degree with other anti-imperialist organizations.
For a long time we were painted as traitors to the Vietnamese cause because we argued that unconditional support did not necessarily have to be uncritical that it was quite possible to take the lead in militant solidarity work without having to agree on every point with the Indochinese comrades'
analyses and diplomatic statements. How ironic it is that the very people who ranted against us for years about this are now not only criticizing the Indochinese in a way we never did but also sweeping the Indochinese comrades' positions under the rug and falsifying them.
On one question, the DFFG leadership has managed to make a 180- degree turn twice, namely on its attitude toward the VPK [Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna - Left party of Communists, the name of the pro- Moscow Swedish CP since 1967] and united-front work with this party. After the DFFG, under the influence of the KFML of the time, 1 included the concept of social imperialism in their program as a characterization of the Soviet Union, they dumped it in 1972 so as not to endanger the united-front work with the VPK that the SKP [ Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti- Communist party of Sweden, the name assumed by the main right-opportunist Maoist group in 1973] and DFFG leadership wanted. Today the pendulum has swung back.
What has happened now - the SKP fraction's using the DFFG leadership to ram through a decision turning the DFFG into a more direct instrument of their party's policy -has a long history.
Even before this, it was the needs of the SKP that molded the DFFG's studies and propaganda; it was this party's interests that determined the DFFG's relationship to the VPK, SAP [Socialdemokratiska arbetarpartiet- Social Democratic Workers party], and the RMF; it was the SKP's analyses that underlay the formulations of the DFF's program. Hitherto, however, the DFFG has had great prestige, and many of the SKP's points of view gained such momentum among the left that opposition was limited.
Now the situation is different. In recent years, the SKP's position has suffered a relative weakening, and the new turn is running into opposition from all the organizations left of the SAP and outside the Maoist wing. It can only be hoped that the debate that has now been opened will deepen and draw the historical lessons, and that the SKP domination of the Indochina movement will be completely eliminated.
We agree with the critics who have argued in the debate that it is a sectwo groups reflecting the two sides of Maoism, an ultraleft "Third Period" group and a right-opportunist "Popular Front" group. The right-opportunist group, which maintained control of the DFFG, renamed itself the SKP ( Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti- Communist party of Sweden) in 1973, reviving the name that had been dropped by the pro-Moscow party in 1967. - IP by the pro-moscow party i isone 1312
tarian orientation for an organization devoted to solidarity with Indochina to get involved in deep programmatic analyses of a series of ideological questions. This goes not only for the nature of the Soviet Union or China but also for the question of the concrete course of the revolution and the policy of the Indochinese leadership. This is a sectarian orientation because it unnecessarily narrows the base of a solidarity group and prevents currents that are prepared to give unconditional support to the Indochinese liberation struggle from participating in organized common work. On the other hand, it is of standpoint of the needs of te course completely justified from the chinese struggle to criticize the Soviet Union and China for giving insufficient aid.
The DFF's present program - which includes far-reaching analyses - should be replaced by a statement of basic guidelines for action. A central slogan should be established, and at the same time the immediate tasks should be summed up in an action program with more limited demands and slogans.
The central slogan must reflect an understanding that-despite great advances - the decisive victory has not yet been achieved and that solidarity work must continue until all Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are liberated from the economic as well as the political oppression of imperialism. The slogan of "Solidarity to the Final Victory" corresponds best to the situation in Indochina and to the needs of the solidarity movement.
Five themes should be included in the action program:
1. Demands and slogans directed against interference by the imperialist powers and first of all by the USA (U. S. Out of Indochina, and more precise versions of this).
3. Demands and slogans directed against the Swedish government (Break With Saigon- Recognize the PRG, Recognize the GRUNC; Stop Swedish Business From Profiteering out of the Vietnam War).
4. Slogans and demands designed to express our solidarity (Uncondi-
tional Support to the Vietnamese People; Support the NLF; Send Money to Postal Account 400 499-0).
5. Slogans and demands that reflect the necessary internationalist orientation of this solidarity work (International Solidarity, International Struggle).
The three slogans? that have long guided the DFFG's work are essentially correct but in the present situation must be made more precise and complete.
Adopting a statement and an action program of the type we have described provides the necessary minimum platform, while not excluding political currents for no good reason. But on the organizational level, in order to end the suppression of other political views and permit the maximum mobilization, it is necessary to give tendencies the right to express themselves internally and externally, a principle that has been profitably applied in the last year by the Chilekommitté [Chile Committee.
The action program must also provide the basis for subsequent special campaigns on a broad minimum platform around certain limited slogans, campaigns along the lines of the DFF's present Vietnam weeks but with full freedom of tendencies. The most important theme seems now to be a campaign around the slogans "The Struggle in Indochina Continues" and the demand for Sweden to "Break All Ties With Saigon and Recognize the PRG."
The line that the SKP and DFFG leadership is pushing now is a deathblow to Indochina work in Sweden and means the liquidation of the positive aspects of the DFFG. Therefore it has to be fought. Therefore the SKP's domination of the solidarity movement has to be broken. The present development in the DFFG's leadership has at least had the benefit that many persons both inside and outside this organization have begun to discuss the SKP's policy. This discussion must continue.
Comrades!
Go to the root!
Take up the struggle for a correct line!
Take up the struggle for leadership in the solidarity movement!
Notes
1. The Kommunistiska Forbundet Marxist-Leninisterna (Communist League of Marxist-Leninists) later split into
2. Demands and slogans directed against the puppet regime and its backers (Free the Political Prisoners; Political and Trade-Union Rights; etc.).
2. The three slogans are "USA Out of Vietnam," "Support the NLF," and "Fight U.S. Imperialism." - IP