PERSPECTIVE
By Pierre Frank
- Faced with a presidential election at the end of the year, the fifty-fifth congress of the SFIO [Section Frangaise Internation«ale Ouvrisre -= the French Social Democratic party], held at Clichy . June 5-6, could only ratify the candidacy of Gaston Defferre, the mayor of Marseilles. ("To give up his candidacy would be a genuine catastrophe," General Secretary Guy Mollet declared.) No one had any alternative to propose. As for the future of the Socialist party and the possible "Democratic Socialist Federation" proposed by Defferre, the problem remains.
With Defferre as their candidate, something worse than a defeat awaits the opponents of de Gaulle. It is quite evident that the PCF [French Comaunist party] cannot play Defferre's game. The PCF leadership is under compulsion to run its own candidate, while trying to hold losses to the minimum. These will be due in particular to the fact that the numerous statements of the Communist leaders on the "yositive aspects" of de Gaulle's foreign policy will serve him the
way similar statements served him in the plebiscite of September 28, 1958. As for Defferre, despite all the-calculations of his "brain trust," not only will he take no votes away from the PCF, he will lose from his own left to the probable candidate of the PSU LParti Socialiste Unifié] and there is no guarantee that he can compensate from the right with votes picked up from the MRP [Mouvement Républicain Populaire].
The presidential election will prove to be at bottom a plebiscite for de Gaulle. Some of Defferre's partisans say that he.is looking aheac, to the succession to de Gaulle. For the most conscious politicians of French capitalism, the problem posed by the succession is maintenance of the "strong state," a presidential-type regime. But these same politicians are too shrewd to envisage carrying this out with men like...Defferre or Pompidou.
Actually a grave crisis in French society is maturing under the fagade of political apathy presented by the Gaullist regime. To the right, much more dangerous than the agitation of the ultras will be the calculations and possible undertakings of the army, an army. that has been more and more trimmed in the direction of a professional army. Along with this is the developing crisis in the Socialist party, the depth of which was shown at the Clichy congress.
The "Democratic Socialist Federation" proposed by Defferre is nothing less than the dissolution of the Socialist party, not even in exchange for a formation the program of which would be like that cf the German Social Democracy, but a formation without any real structure at all. The envisaged Federation would be the "UNR"* of a Defferre! It was quite symptomatic that the main oratorical clash at the Clichy congress occurred between the Marseilles mayor and Augustin Laurent, the mayor of Lille. In Marseilles,Defferre wins his elections without a strong labor following. In Lille, Laurent is backed by the majority of the workers and has to defend this majority against the encroachment of a strong Communist minority. His language reflected this fact:
"T agree with the idea that a federation could go further, aiming at the organic unification of the Socialists, but I hope that the federation will be willing at that time to address all those who accept the grand idea of socialism, including the Communists. It will only be then that the millions of workers, whose power today is paralyzed, will understand that the genuine future of the socialist democracy in France goes along the road of labor unity. Why cover up this aspect of things? You know very well that our difficulties arise from the existence of the Communist party. I am against the Communists because they compelled us to take up responsibilities in
*The Union pour la Nouvelle République organized by Gen. de Gaulle as his personal party.
the defense of the Republic that prevented us from being ourselves. But a Socialist party must never say that it gives up the desire to some day unite the whole world of labor."
One can smile at Laurent's words about what the Communists "compelled" the Socialists to do (break strikes? conduct the war against Algeria? enter de Gaulle's government in 19587), but it is quite clear that the Socialist party in France cannot carry out an operation such as Defferre proposes without repelling what remains of its own worker base, driving them toward the PCF despite the politics of that organization.
Since the Socialist congress was split down the middle and could not go back on Defferre's candidacy, it voted one hundred per cent, or close to it, for a document on which every one had his reservations.
For Defferre, the "movement" around his candidacy, the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie associated with it, will serve to liquidate the old ideas and the old party. It is worth noting the numerous pessimistic statements made about the Socialist party by him and his partisans at the congress. (Defferre stressed the loss of mem-— bers. A senator from Seine-et-Oise said, "We are suffering from leukemia.) On the other hand, his opponents count on the electoral defeat dealing a blow in the SFIO to Defferrets "Federation." The mayor of Lille talked about the "bursting of this soap bubble," Finally, Mollet stressed the changes occurring in the POF.
Thus the Socialist party which was the axis of almost all the governmental combinations during the Fourth Republic and which suffered a split to the left after de Gaulle came to power, is now threatened with a deep division in which its existence as a workers party is at stake. The issue will not fail to flare up again after the election.
In the PCF, the leadership has refrained from publicly expressing the internal differences troubling the party. The continuation of Defferre's candidacy under the conditions approved by the Clichy congress extricates it from a quandary. But this does not end its deep difficulties within the framework of the international crisis of Stalinism due to the absence of policy and authoritative leader~ ship since the death of Thorez.
Even the bureaucratic success chalked up less than three months ago in the Communist Student Union proved ephemeral, the new leadership of that organization having already divided politically.
In the corridors, the PCF leadership (or a part of it) appears to be moving toward. the "Italian" position. But. this will not solve the problem, since the PCF does not have the advantage currently enjoyed by the Italian Communist party; namely, of operating within
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the framework of bourgeois democracy. The Gaullist regime does not make things easy for parties that want to live and to act as in the days of the Third and the Fourth Republic,
The die is cast for the next presidential election. An electoral defeat is inevitable. What is important is to draw lessons from this defeat that can serve to renovate the labor movement in order to avoid subsequent defeats of a kind much worse than: those on the electoral level.
DEUTSCHER DESCRIBES "TEACH-IN" MOVEMENT
7 At the national "teach-in" held in Washington May 15 [see World Outlook May 28], a representative of the European intellectual community was invited to participate. The guest selected by the committee in charge of arrangements was, interestingly enough, Isaac © Deutscher, the well-known biographer of Leon Trotsky.
He presented his views at the Washington meeting, which was televised across the United States to about 100 campuses making up an audience of 100,000. Deutscher then crossed the country, speak-~ ing at a number of universities, and participated in a giant debate at the University of California in Berkeley. From all the reports, he was very well received and drew heavy applause from the audiences of students and teachers.
The Tribune, a left-wing weekly of the British Labour move-~ ment, published the full text of the notes from which Deutscher prepared his speech Lin two issues, May 21 and May 28]. The document offers a very good popular presentation of the revolutionary Marxist view of the broad lines of American and Soviet foreign policy since the end of World War II, ending in the present grave situation in Vietnam which may be the prelude to a nuclear conflict. LFor anyone wishing these two issues of Tribune, the address is 222 The Strand, London, W.C.2, and the cost is two shillings -- $.28.]
The Paris weekly Express [June 7] has published Deutscher's impressions of his trip. These are of considerable interest.
For the first time since the end of the war, Deutscher writes, a formidable clamor has arisen in the United States over foreign policy, specifically Johnson's policy in Vietnam and Latin America,
"The clamor is being stirred up by the young American generation. In almost all the universities, thousands of professors and hundreds of thousands of students are participating in the movement." It began in March and swept the entire country in a little more than’ a month.
Describing the "teach-in" in which he participated in Washington, Deutscher says: "It was not at all comparable with anything generally seen in the British demonstrations on nuclear disarmament: no prophets, no beatniks, no eccentrics. However, there was no doubt about the sentiments of the participants. They listened politely to the defenders of the government's policies. but demonstrated their approval and their enthusiasm each time a critic of the government spoke,"
A "still more radical" meeting was the debate organized at Berkeley. It was an open-air gathering that lasted thirty-six hours, including speeches, reports, political satires, folk songs, one after the other. "Among the speakers were leaders of the Negro civil-rignhts movement, organizers of antisegregationist marches in the South, professors, authors, a senator from Alaska, a Negro member of the Galifornia state assembly, etc." Deutscher found himself speaking after midnight in the cold breeze coming in from the Pacific. But the ; students, 15,000 of them, did not wish to go inside. Deutscher con=": tinued with his Marxist analysis. LHe does not mention it, but other ares report that when he finished he was given a "standing ova~ tion.
Some yards away, "something extraordinary" impressed the historian. Volunteers were giving their blood for the victims of American bombings in Vietnam. One hundred litres were collected under the slogan: “Johnson is sending them napalm; we will send them our blood,"
He heard a suggestion to organize a brigade to help the freedom fighters in Vietnam along the lines of the international brigades in the civil war in Spain.
"To those familiar with the political climate of America inthe past decades, these meetings and these protests must appear, as they did to me -- fantastic innovations. And the way in which this. clamor has found an echo in the written and spoken press, so often sunk in conformism, is a sign that times have changed.”
In estimating the import of this new movement, Deutscher feels ta little skeptical" about the immediate effects it could have, Nevertheless, it serves as a brake on those pushing for escalation of the war. .
The long-range effects, he feels, will prove much more important. "In my opinion, the awakening of the critical attitude in the United States is almost as important as the de-Stalinization in the USSR. In certain respects they resemble each other. A new left is being born that is sweeping away the corpse of the old traumatized left, worn out during the thirties and forties through its collusion with Stalinism, stunned by de-Stalinization and struck down by McCarthyism,”
This new generation, now entering the political arena, "has
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known neither Stalinism nor de-Stalinization. It has not been intimidated by McCarthyism. It is entering politics remorselessly, fearlessly... It is engaging in struggle with innocence and courage. It reacts. vigorously against the anti-Communist clichés and the anti-~- Marxist dogmas, It no longer supports the cold-war indoctrination. The Pharisaism and self-conceit of the American ruling class appall it. Aware of the gaps in the general prosperity, the vast continuing ‘pockets. of pgverty,' the 'structural employment' in the midst of full economic expansion, the oppression of the Negroes, it wants to indict the whole establishéd order,'
Deutscher is not prepared to predict how far this generation will go. It is too early. "But there is not the least doubt that Marxism will appear or reappear in the United States as an intellectual and moral force and that this force will appear much more attractive than ever before."
“Deutscher ascribes the origin of this movement to the struggle opened by the Negroes against racial segregation. They broke the “magic vise" of American conformism and served as a catalyzer for the young radical intellectuals,
“He: ends by stating that the debates are the "first phase of the rebirth of an active social consciousness in the United States." The next phase cannot be foreseen. “When I left the United States, the organizers of the debates were discussing how to widen the basis of the movement. Whatever comes of it, there is no doubt that it has already transformed the politico-moral climate of the country."
SUGGEST VOLUNTEERS TO AID DOMINICANS
A plan under discussion in California university circles to “send volunteers to help the Constitutionalists against the counterrevolutionists and the invading U.S. forces, was reported in the May 23 Los Angeles Times,
In a dispatch from Berkeley, the Los Angeles daily quoted Timothy F. Harding, an assistant professor at California State College in-Los Angeles, as stating that the purpose of the plan was "to make it known that there are Americans who feel differently from the U.S. government."
The plan would be launched by sending four students. If they needed help, it might be possible to arrange to send more.
The group has already-begun to collect blood for the Constitutionalists., This-is sent through a contact at the United Nations.
A member of the Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Harding
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was in Berkeley as a participant in a Vietnam teach-in protest.
"Wwe are completely an ad hoc group," he told the special cor~ respondent of the Times. "I am not a Communist, not a Socialist, and, to the best of my knowledge, neither is anybody else I am work= ing with," ©
Harding is a specialist in Latin-American history and former assistant editor of Hispanic American Report. A recent study of his on the background of the rightist coup in Brazil appeared in the Fall 1964 issue of Studies on the Left.
SHASTRI'S TRIP TO MOSCOW
By Kailas Chandra
Bombay
Coming in the wake of the cancellation of his projected trip to the United States, Prime Minister Shastri's eight-day visit to the USSR has been acclaimed as highly "successful." Premier Kosygin paid him the unique honour of accompanying him | personally from the Soviet capital to Leningrad.
In a joint communiqué the two prime ministers took a common view on many subjects.
They expressed "great concern" over the Vietnam situation and demanded an immediate halt to the bombing of north Vietnam,
Among other things they called for the disbanding of military bases in foreign countries. This is of significance in the context of reports about U.S. moves to set up military bases in the “uninhabited islands" of the Indian Ocean.
The Indian prime minister no doubt sought the support of his Soviet hosts on Indiats border dispute with China and the new one with Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch, While the joint communiqué was silent on both topics, Shastri made it clear on his return to New Delhi that these questions were discussed in Moscow and that he had been assured of Soviet "sympathy and support in matters which directly concern us."
There has been considerable speculation in the Indian press whether the Shastri trip marks the beginning of a new shift in the foreign policy of the Indian government. Since the border war with China in 1962, New Delhi has more and more identified itself with the imperialist powers in return for military and economic aid. Even the pro-government press admits that India has been taken for granted by
Washington of late. The rude refusal of President Johnson to receive Shastri in June therefore came as a big.shock to the policy-makers in New Delhi,
India is now seeking substantial aid from the Soviet Union, especially in the field of heavy industry (iron and steel, nonferrous metals, oil and power), during the Fourth Plan period. The Soviet government has responded with assurances of substantial aid, Imperialist countries have been reluctant to help the Indian bourgeoisie in the field of heavy industry.
The new border conflict with Pakistan, which started with the clashes in the Rann of Kutch, have assumed serious proportions. New Delhi has made capital out of the American weapons used by the Pakistani forces. The bourgeois regimes of both India and Pakistan are cleverly utilising the conflict to create chauvinistic hysteria in their respective countries to divert the attention of the people from their immediate economic and political problems. In some parts of India, communal and reactionary organisations have already fomented Hindu-Muslim riots,
Developments in India have crucial significance in the present world situation, The American imperialists know this. So does the Soviet bureaucracy. This explains the attention being paid to India by both Washington and Moscow. The Indian bourgeoisie on the other hand is prepared to pay any price to avert a revolutionary crisis within the country.
Open support of American imperialism would be very dangerous for the bourgeois leadership in India in the context of widespread. protests-against the rapacious intervention of Washington in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. The Shastri government requires an attractive cover and is trying to achieve this with the help of the Soviet bureaucracy.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, seeks an understanding with the Indian bourgeoisie as a diplomatic foil against Washington. In the process, of course, it will sacrifice the revolutionary struggles of the Indian masses in accordance with its policy of maintaining the status quo,
Shastri will use the prestige accruing from his Soviet visit to refurbish the image of his regime as truly nonaligned, strengthening the Indian hand in the forthcoming Afro~Asian conference in Algiers, The visit has also helped him to sidestep a serious threat to his own leadership in the ruling Congress party.
So far as the internal situation in India is concerned, the repressive policies of the government are not likely to be relaxed. The leaders of the pro-Peking Communist party are still in prison. The Kashmir leader, Sheikh Abdullah, who has just returned from a
world tour, has been interned because he sought a private interview with Chou En-lai in Algiers. The civil liberties of the people are being crushed in the name of the new "emergency" created by the Indo~ Pak border confrontation, All strikes and mass demonstrations have been virtually banned. The pro-Moscow Communist party and the petty~ bourgeois Socialist parties are contributing further to whipping up the chauvinistic atmosphere in the country in the name of fighting Pakistani "aggression," mo
DANGEITES BACK SHASTRI GOVERNMENT
By S.R.Singh
- New Delhi
The pro-Moscow Communist party of India has openly identified itself with the Shastri government in the "patriotic war" against Pakistan. The general line of the party headed by S.A.Dange is to condemn the "Pakistani aggression on India" while pledging "full support to the measures to defend the country."
According to the Dangeites, the Anglo-American imperialists are behind Pakistan. The party has also "condemned the Chinese support for Pakistan." (According to reports in the Indian press, Peking has backed Karachi'ts border claims in the Rann of Kutch, )
While the pro-Moscow Communist party, the Samyukta Socialist party [SSP], the Praja Socialist party [PSP] and other petty-bourgeois parties are going so far as to demand an all-out war against Pakistan, the pro-Chinese Communist party has refused to commit itself on the Indo~Pakistan border dispute, E.M.S.Namboodiripad, one of the party's leaders, recently refused to sign a joint state-~ ment submitted by all the other parties calling for a public meeting in Trivandrum to condemn the "Pakistani aggression."
Trade-union leaders belonging to the pro-Moscow Communist party appeared on the same platform at a mass rally in Bombay May 23 with leaders of the Congress party, the Jan Sangh, the PSP and SSP to urge the industrial workers to donate a day's pay for a memorial fund to be built in honour of the late Nehru.
While the propaganda of some of these "left" parties can hardly be distinguished from the communal parties like the Jan Sangh and the Hindu Mahasabha in their war hysteria against Pakistan, others have taken advantage of this situation to don the mantle of an opposition, Thus "Sarvodaya" leaders like Jaya Prakash Narayan, who claim to stand above the classes, have been able to strengthen their prestige by protesting the Shastri government's questionable manoeuvres in the border disputes with both China and Pakistan.
_ FIGHT FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN INDIA
Bombay
In face of the Shastri government's policy of repression -against the left forces in India in the name of a "national emer~ gency," a country-wide campaign is being organised in defence of civil liberties of the people. Regional conferences to demand the release of the political prisoners have been held in different states.
A major civil-liberties convention is scheduled to be held in Bombay on June 12-13 under the presidentship of N.C.Chatterjee, M.P., who heads the All India Civil Liberties Union. An all-party preparatory committee has been set up to organise the convention. P.K.Atre, a leading Marathi literary figure and editor of the daily Maratha, is serving as chairman of the committee, and S.B.Kolpe, a Marxist journalist, is secretary.
The committee includes prominent lawyers, journalists, trade unionists and leaders of political parties including both the pro- Moscow and pro-Peking wings of the Communist party, the Samyukta Socialist party, the Praja Socialist party, the Revolutionary Socialist party, and the Trotskyist group.
A symposium on "Problems of Civil Liberties in India" has been scheduled for June 11. Speakers invited to participate include Indulal Yagnik, M.P., leader of the Mahagujarat Janata Parishad; S.M.Joshi, president of the Samyukta Socialist party; Bhupesh Gupta, M.P., leader of the rightist Communist party; Jyoti Basu, a prominent figure in the leftist Communist party and leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly; and Dr.A.R.Desai, a Marxist professor at the Bombay University. , ,
Resolutions to be discussed at the convention will urge among other things that the "national emergency" be scrapped along with the so-called "Defence of India Rules." Demands will be raised for the release of political prisoners now under detention without trial, for unrestricted freedom of movement of citizens within the country and abroad, etc.
The Bombay convention will be a prelude to an all-India civil liberties conference planned for later at Nagpur.
ERITREANS LOSE ARMS SHIPMENT
The Eritrean freedom fighters lost a shipment of arms, Agence France Presse reported June 9, Two Syrian planes landed with the arms at Khartoum. A high official, who had promised to help forward them, revealed the plan to the authorities and the shipment was seized by the Sudanese government.
GERMAN UNIONS BLOCK AUTHORTTARIAN LEGISLATION
Cologne
For the first time since the end of World War II, the trade unions held firm in a conflict with the leaders of the German Socialist party [spp], winning at least a temporary victory.
The government sought passage of some vicious antilabor legislation. The measures would give the government the right to declare an "emergency" if it learned through "secret sources" that an attack was to be expected. The “emergency could be declared "even if no generally recognizable tension exists." Under the "emergency," the government could:
€ Set up a censorship.
@ Outlaw meetings.
e Draft workers, thus wiping out the right to strike.
¢ Arbitrarily imprison people.
® Compel either evacuation or forced residence.
@® Militarize the entire economy.
* Use the armed forces in domestic conflicts.
To pass the legislation, a two-thirds majority was required. This could not be obtained without support from the SPD. Although a congress of the German Federation of Unions strongly opposed the legislation, the SPD decided to vote for the legislation with some face-saving amendments,
The SPD leaders counted on the union bosses going along with their politics as they always have in the past. But as the vote neared in parliament, 250 eminent university professors petitioned the unions to oppose this reactionary legislation. ,
The chemical, metal, printing and public servants' unions responded by calling for an extraordinary meeting of the Trade Union Committee, the highest body between congresses. Several hundred trade~union secretaries signed petitions to the Executive Committee of the trade-union federation. Protest resolutions poured in, pro-= test meetings were held.” , ,
Advised by their brain trust that a conflict between militant unionists and the SPD could prove damaging in the forthcoming elections, the Social Democratic leaders became frightened. They view the elections as a major chance to win cabinet posts which they have
not held for more than thirty years, when they helped prepare the capitulation to Hitler...
In an about-face, the SPD declared that the proposed legislation is not sufficiently well known to the public or well-enough prepared for passage. While "in principle" still in favor of the legislation, the SPD now favors considering it more closely and there is not time for this before the elections.
The unions have a right to feel proud over their victory. But they had better keep their guard up against new maneuvers after the election in favor of measures that would help pave the way for another authoritarian government in Germany.
MUNICH MARCHERS PROTEST U.S. ROLE IN VIETNAM
Some 500 demonstrators, protesting U. S. intervention in Vietnam, clashed with the police in Munich May 27.
The protest march was organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and scheduled to take place during German-American Friendship Week. POGOe at
The authorities sought to ban the march on the grounds that the Americans at the America House in Munich might take measures of "self-defense."" The case was taken. to court. and a partial legal victory was won, The march was approved but the marchers were forbidden to take a route passing the America Houss. (Since the beginning of May, members of the War Resisters League have held a permanent vigil there against the war in Vietnam. )
The march began after a meeting. Among the speakers was a secretary of the biggest union in the world, the two-million-strong German Metal Workers.
The demonstrators carried placards reading, "Vietnam to the Vietnamese"; "Vietnam -~- Today Bombs and Gas; Tomorrow Atom Bombs?"; "Don't Bomb -- Negotiate!"; "Mr. Erhard, Don't Support U.S. Policies in Vietnam"; "No Vietnam in Germany -- No Emergency Laws}"
The demonstrators chanted, "Ami, Go Home!" and "Amis, Get Out of Vietnam." ["amis" is the German slang for Americans, |
The clashes with the police occurred when some of the demonstrators veered from the prescribed route and headed in the direction of America House, Twenty were arrested. They were released after their names had been taken down. :
The day before the demonstration, U.S. Ambassador George _
McGhee spoke at the. University of Munich on "Atlantic partnership and European unity." One of the students listened to Johnson's envoy attentively but with the precautionary measure of wearing a gas mask,
Others, less respectful, qiterrupted the speaker with shouts of "Santo Domingo" and tvietnam.'
GUBRRILLA WAR CONTINUES IN ANGOLA
In a news release issued June 5, the ALNA [National Liberation Army for Angola] reported fresh activity in the freedom struggle against Portuguese imperialism.
In an encounter in the Quibala region, the Portuguese suffered five killed, and the freedom fighters six. At the Cabulo cataracts, a Portuguese patrol was virtually wiped out. A number of guns and hand grenades were captured,
Near the Onzo river, ALNA forces opened a bazooka attack, compelling: the Portuguese troops to abandon a camp, leaving six dead. A radio transmitter and a grenade launcher were captured. In six other regions stiff fighting occurred. -
At Serra de Golume, close to Quitexe, a Portuguese army convoy was ambushed, Eleven troops were killed, the ALNA losing seven, including an officer, Simao Quilango. A tank and two half-tracks were destroyed. -On the Quissamano road, a Portuguese transport truck ran into a mine set by the partisans, The truck was blown up, all the occupants being killed. :
Directeur-Gérant: