In issue No. 36 of Intercontinental Press, dated October 13, a document signed by Comrades G. Foley, J. Hansen, and G. Novack takes up the question of Angola after having dealt, from their point of view, with programmatic and strategic questions with regard to the Portuguese situation. As the author of a series of articles in Inprecor, the official organ of the international, and having been implicitly criticized in this IP article, I ask that you publish this statement in a forthcoming issue of IP in order to make the real content of the debate clear to its readers.
It is not possible for me to take up in detail here the analyses and comments contained in the Inprecor articles. I refer IP readers to them. I will content myself with pointing out the untruths that serve as central arguments to the authors of the article in question in order to attack the position on the Angolan situation taken by the European sections of the Fourth International.
1. The authors claim that we have never mentioned the withdrawal of Portuguese troops from Angola. This is false. In issue No. 31 of Inprecor a long section deals with the contradictions of these "Angolan troops"
and ends with a slogan calling for the immediate withdrawal of Portuguese troops and leaving their arms and matériel in the hands of the MPLA and the "popular" commissions. Of course, the last part of this slogan is not to the liking of the authors of the IP article. But in this case, let's debate that and not the alleged lack of position on the troops question attributed to the majority of the international. Yet, curiously forgetful of our main writings, the IP comrades do not mention the presence of Zairean and South African troops on Angolan territory. That is, however, a decisive point that must be added, as we have done, to the slogan on Portuguese troops. We point out, to make the exact nature of the debate on this matter understood, that the Zairean and South African troops intervened clearly against the MPLA with logistical support for the FNLA and for the UNITA. The former structure the troops of the FNLA. It was following a trip by Chipenda, the vice-president of the FNLA, to Namibia that the South African high command decided to dislodge the MPLA from the Cunene River hydroelectric stations in the south. Neither the FNLA, the UNITA, nor the Portuguese high command protested. How is it that the IP comrades have no slogan for that?
2. The writers of the article claim that the MPLA is supported by the USSR, the Communist parties, and by European Social Democratic parties, particularly the PSP, while the FNLA is supported by China. A good balance, of sorts! First of all, let's point out that the Socialist parties of Europe are far from unconditionally supporting the MPLA. Delegations from the UNITA and from the FNLA found their best welcome in Europe from Social Democratic leaders now in power. Among the most opportunist is the PSP whose general secretary, in the all-out civil war of July 1975, preoccupied himself solely with "brother Portuguese refugees." Of course, we agree with the comrades that we do not consider the origin of aid and arms as the decisive question in settling the nature of this or that movement. But this cannot suffice for justifying neutrality toward the three Angolan organizations, because the whole history of the FNLA and the UNITA proves that these groups are politically controlled by imperialist factions and especially by the United States through 1732
posteolonial plans of these factions and through economic concessions that these imperialist interests can gain in the zones under UNITA or FNLA influence. The names of American experts who, at Kinshasa, trained Holden's high command are well known, as well as the fact of the phantom trade union that the FNLA claims to have. It was built and trained starting from the Afro-American center of the Zaïrean capital. A certain Stein assured relations between it and Lubaki Ntelo, the supervisor of "social affairs" for the GRAE. Correspondence between the UNITA and the PIDE was published after April 25; the leader of this organization, J. Savimbi, worked in close collaboration with the Angolan Unity Front of Falcão, an extreme right-wing organization representing the colons of the Nova Lisboa region after April 25. Before July 10, 1975, troops of the FNLA machinegunned meetings of the neighborhood committees in Luanda as well as workers demonstrations. It was the UNITA that put down the Lobito strike in 1974. These two leaderships denounced, in the name of anti-Communism, forms of self-management by the urban masses, and the seizure of their headquarters in Luanda in July 1975 led to the "discovery" of torture chambers, and many graveyards where MPLA militants, agitators, striking workers, and student leftists were liquidated...
Yes comrades, one cannot decide simply by reading a program such as you try to lecture us on. That is why one must look into the history of this country and the region, into the weight of certain tribal chieftainries, and into the political forces they produce in order to account for the qualitative differences that exist between the MPLA and the FNLA-UNITA. Also, because Angola is already divided into many concessions in the hands of different imperialist factions, one can no longer analyze "Angolan nationalism" solely in regard to its contradictions with Portugal. But this is also forgotten by the IP writers and also by Comrade Harsch, the author of articles on Angola.
3. The comrades claim that our support for the MPLA implies tail-endism, including the use made by the MPLA of our attitude in its diplomatic game. The comrades are making an amalgam of the positions of European centrist groups and those expressed in Inprecor reflecting the official positions of the Fourth International. In our articles we make a very long critique of the MPLA-of its program, its purely militaristic conception of the struggle against the FNLA, its oportunistic conception of African diplomacy, its political heterogeneity, and its bureaucratic mode of operation. In each of our articles we clearly expressed our conception of the coming political course of this petty-bourgeois nationalist leadership. We have clearly explained the meaning of our support for the MPLA, adding that through it we were speaking especially to the Angolan urban masses who have confidence in the Netoist leadership, warning them against the multiclass line of the leadership. We have always criticized the playing-up of "popular power" by the MPLA; and have advanced as an immediate perspective a workers and farmers government.
Why do the IP comrades persist in hiding this in order to strengthen their proof? We also have criticized the inadequacy of the MPLA's political responses to the FNLA and the UNITA. It is not enough to denounce the former as a fascist group guided by remote control and the latter as a tribalist group. Again it is necessary to advance a body of slogans that definitively break the illusions of the small peasantry in the FNLA as defenders of the Bakongos and in the UNITA as defenders of the Ovimbundus. But because these slogans would have to be class slogans the heterogeneous leadership of the MPLA rejects these policies. Because the IP comrades do not see the class line that separates the urban movement, led by intermediary cadres of the MPLA, from the use of chieftains and notables by the FNLA and the UNITA to maintain social peace in their zone, they prefer to stay on the level of a false neutrality rather than making precise the exact nature of relations between each movement and the masses, at the risk of uttering incredible nonsense about the stakes in the civil war.
4. On the basis of this position, the comrades make another mistake in trying to provide an answer to the tasks for "small revolutionary groups." Size does not mechanically determine a "catalog" of tasks and responsibilities for a Trotskyist organization (which is a qualitatively different political category from that of "small" or "big revolutionary groups"). For such an organization it is not sufficient to give good "roundups" of a situation or to content oneself with benevolent or paternalistic solidarity with the right of self-determination. In Angola, for example, the Fourth International must be part and parcel of the evolution of the revolutionary vanguard and the blossoming of a clearly anticapitalist force. We are not observers of the class struggle. We are involved in the building of the African revolutionary movement and particularly the African revolutionary Marxist groups. But the good lessons that the IP comrades want to give us do not suffice to begin—we mean begin-such work. It is by posing this question that one can understand just how the question of support for the MPLA is decisive for the further growth of the vanguard, starting with the appearance of a class-struggle tendency in the many neighborhood and factory committees as well as in the ranks of the MPLA. Already leaflets and writings have appeared in Luanda that are close to our conception of the permanent revolution. But this nascent radicalization knows that if the FNLA reenters Luanda it will be the first target of what Holden called the "cleanup of Communists." It is this dimension that the IP comrades miss. But how is it that they say nothing about the long paragraphs that end our articles on Angola? Do they view this as secondary? Must we be content not to "entangle revolutionary groups in the sometimes fratricidal politics of the nationalist groups"
and not take the slightest interest in the route that the building of the Angolan revolutionary party must take? That is the curious thing. The comrades maintain such positions because implicitly they cite the established fact of no revolutionary party in Angola. But nothing comes up in their problématique to tell us and the IP readers how to construct it. Millions of men are confronted with a civil war that could well surpass in horror the Congolese civil war and Trotskyists must content themselves with assuring them of their solidarity with the withdrawal of Portuguese troops and the right to independence. We wager that many Angolans would consider this to be good, but a trifle inadequate. That can suffice for some support groups, but not for the growth of the Angolan revolution and for the construction of the Fourth International in Africa. That is why the attitude of the IP comrades seems to us to be opportunist. How can one respond in an overall manner to situations like those in Angola? Must we be astonished if the position of IP on Timor is not the same as that adopted on Angola? However, the formula the comrades have given us on Angola would no longer let us settle on or announce sympathy for the Fretilin. In Rhodesia would it be necessary to accept the reunification of the four groups, ANC, ZANU, ZAPU, and Frolizi, on the pretext that it is a matter of fratricidal December 8, 1975
conflicts, whereas this "reunification" is being carried out under pressure from neocolonial states in order to help a right-wing conglomeration reduce the power of the armed groups that are implanted in the masses?
5. The comrades begin their article by trying to prove that our "errors on the MFA" lead to our "errors on Angola." This unhappy task ends in failure. But in our opinion their introductory sentences reveal their method. Because these comrades believe that the Angolan question is primarily determined by the analysis of Portugal, they engage in this nonsense on Angolan nationalism. Because they think a little in the Maoist fashion that there is a sort of "major contradiction" between the Portuguese power and Angolan nationalism, they refuse to take a position on its different components. With this method they reach an impasse on such important facts as American, French, English, German, penetration into the
Japanese, Belgian, and South African Angolan economy, even in its most decisive sectors. Thus they avoid precision on the connection between the character of the Angolan economy and the purpose of the trips of UNITA and FNLA representatives to Europe, the FNLA control of the northern coffee plantations, the UNITA's control of the Cassinga iron mines belonging to Krupp and others, of the intervention of South African troops to protect the Cunene basin, and so forth. This does not mean that there are not certain tendencies inside the MPLA favorable to uniting with certain bourgeois circles
(particularly Lucio Lara), but the essential thing is that today the mass movement that the MPLA is leading prevents these tendencies from pushing their perspective further and that because of this movement no imperialist circle will risk supporting the Netoist leadership. In this framework a defeat of the MPLA today would represent a defeat of the mass movement, a defeat of the first big experience of urban revolt in Africa, and a crushing of anticapitalist militants involved in the "popular power."
That the comrades of IP did not do all their homework in analyzing the Angolan situation is one thing. But we cannot accept an argumentation based on complete ignorance of the analysis put forward by the international in its official publication, Inprecor. That analysis is, in any case, a prerequisite for engaging in a public debate and for interesting the readers of IP.
Notes
1. Govêrno Revolucionário de Angola no Exilio (Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile), a body set up by the FNLA.-IP
2. Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (Salazarist State Security Police).—IP