[We have translated the following editorial from the April 30 issue of the Belgian revolutionary-socialist weekly La Gauche.]
The success of the mass anti-Vietnamwar demonstrations on April 24 surpassed all hopes. A half million demonstrators in Washington, a quarter million in San Francisco - all those who proclaimed the death of the antiwar movement in the United States look pretty silly now.
Thus, the correct political line of our comrades in the Young Socialist Alliance, who have been the principal promoters of the idea of mass united-front demonstrations against the war, has once again been confirmed by events. Their influence as the main left youth organization in the United States will be increased by this success.
Two features distinguished the April 24 antiwar demonstrations from those in pre vious years. First, there was impressive working-class participation in San Francisco, where for the first time a considerpart of the trade union movement able supported the demonstration. This was the result both of increased pressure from the rank and file and the growing discontent of the American workers in the face of the continual rise in the cost of living, record unemployment, and Nixon's antilabor policy.
Secondly, the role of Vietnam war veterans and soldiers still serving in Vietnam is becoming more and more prominent within the antiwar movement. Thus, a dynamic has been revealed that seriously threatens American imperialism. The U. S. imperialists can no longer fulfill their function of policing the world for capitalism if they do not have an army ready to march into all these dirty wars.
The onset of the moral and political disintegration of the U.S. army in Vietnam is an event of great importance. We must commend the reaction of the South Vietnamese revolutionists of the National Liberation Front and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, who, in the best internationalist tradition, are now trying to accelerate this disintegration by practicing a deliberate policy of fraternization
• the GIs. This is how Duong Dinh with Thao's April 26 Paris statement- that the South Vietnamese fighters would refrain from attacking any contingent of American soldiers demonstrating its opposition to continuing the war-must be interpret-
Is this the last quarter-hour of Amerimperialism in Indochina? Before drawing this conclusion, we must weigh two factors working to limit the extent of the victory of the Indochinese revolution, which is now possible in the near future.
The first danger comes from the pressure of the Democratic party in the U.S., aided by all those elements of both the old left (primarily the Communist party) and the new which refuse to break with the policy of supporting one of the two established bourgeois parties. The threat is that the Democrats will succeed in coopting the antiwar movement and getting it to subordinate everything to the 1972 elections, thereby prolonging again the duration of the war and the weight of the privations, exactions, and sacrifices imposed on the heroic Vietnamese masses.
During this new respite, Nixon would
Documents have no lack of opportunities for stepping up and extending his aggressions.
The second danger is that the Peking bureaucracy will now join with the Moscow bureaucracy to put heavy pressure on Hanoi and the NIF to get them to accept an "honorable compromise" with Nixon.
Of course, we are not opposed to establishment of diplomatic and trade relations between the People's Republic of China and the imperialist powers, including the United States. But just as we deny the Kremlin the right to subordinate the interests of the revolution in any foreign country to its own diplomatic needs, so we must deny this same right to Mao. His behavior toward the Indonesian revolution, the revolution in East Bengal, and the Ceylonese revolution is anything but reassuring. It is not excluded that as a quid pro quo for Nixon's establishing good relations with Peking, Mao will bring strong pressure to bear on the Vietnamese revolution. But after the experience of the Geneva agreement, after the experience of a long and victorious revolutionary war, will the LF let the fruits of its victory be stolen from it? That is something else again.
More than ever the duty of revolutionists, of workers, and of progressives throughout the world is to demonstrate the greatest possible active solidarity with the heroic Vietnamese revolution. And one of the reasons for this solidarity is to protect it during this apparent "last quarterhour" of struggle, not only against its enemies but also against its "friends," who are ready to sacrifice it on the altar of "peaceful coexistence."