BUSINESS WEEK'S BLUEPRINT AND WILSON'S WHITE PAPER
By Dick Roberts
On November 22, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson submitted a White Paper explaining the details of the Labour government's economic policies for the first six months of 1967 (see World Outlook, December 9). His message was unequivocal: The "deflationary" policies ~- wage freeze, high taxes, cuts in consumer credit, bank advances and domestic government spending -- would be continued. This has already raised British unemployment from 317,000 (1.4% of the labor force) in August, to 541,585 or 2.3% in October. It promises to raise this unemployment rate much higher, with predictions ranging up to 1,000,000. And it means those workers who do have jobs will have steadily declining real incomes, because their wages will be frozen while prices continue to rise.
Three days before Wilson's White Paper was. announced, Business Week, one of the favorite magazines of American business executives, carried a 23-page supplement on the "Economic Battle of Britain" advocating precisely those policies which Wilson proclaimed. The timing of this special supplement is not entirely coincidental. American corporations have a deep interest in the economic situation in Britain and they are 100% behind Wilson's antilabor program; in fact, to take Business Week at face value, the American ruling class dictated the terms of the recessionary policies which Wilson is following.
The key factor which inextricably ties the fortunes of American capitalism with the future of the British economy is the major role Britain plays in the international capitalist market. "One-third of the world's trade is conducted in sterling," Business Week states. "If the economic underpinnings of the British pound come apart, the least that could happen is a world money crisis. The worst is a collapse that would wrench apart the trade of the industrialized nations, stifle the limited progress of the devel-
oping lands, and poison relations among the countries of the free world."
Britain's economic problems directly influence the stability of the world monetary system because they have resulted in a severe shortage of British gold reserves. Foreign governments, at present, hold $7 billion of their reserves and working balances in sterling, and corporations and individuals hold another $5 billion. But to back up this $12 billion in outstanding sterling balances, Britain holds less than $3 billion in gold reserves. And at the same time, Britain has been faced year after year with the problem of importing more than it exports, meaning that the few billions in reserves which Britain holds have been continually drained. off into the pockets of more competitive capitalist nations. . ;
At first glance, this might seem.to be more a problem for the City, than the financial capitals of the other nations involved. After all, it means that Britain is providing an excellent market for foreign goods and that other nations are reaping the profits this: implies. But the story doesn't end there. There is one way the British capitalists could cut down on the outflow of their gold reserves which might cause serious problems for other capitalist countries. Britain could devalue the pound. It is chiefly the worry that Britain might take this step which makes some international financiers -~ particularly those in New York -- feel that a fatal slip on Britain's part could “poison" the friendly atmosphere now existing between allied nations.
"None of the foreign governments want to be tagged as the one that broke the "pank' by starting a fatal rush to pull out of sterling," Business Week suggests. "Equally, none wants to be damned too sharply for losing a part of the value of its sterling reserves through failure to move before devaluation. Simultaneously, those countries with the largest sterling balances -- those with the most at stake -—- know that the moment any one of them pulls out, it will probably bring down the whole structure."
Concern about devaluation of the pound in this country, however, goes deeper than concern about the immediate effect on sterling holdings. Financiers in New York and politicians in Washington see devaluation of the pound as a serious threat to the dollar itself. It cannot be ignored that the U.S. is also faced with serious balance of payments problems. (In his recently published reminiscences of the Kennedy administration, the late president's top adviser. Theodore Sorensen reveals that the Kennedy administration devoted more time and worry to the problem of the international balance of payments than any other economic question. ) : :
The U.S. balance of payments deficit is not the result of an unfavorable trade balance. It is caused by the joint ambitions of the American ruling class to maintain far-flung investments in the world capitalist market while supporting a vast military machine to protect these investments. And Washington has not placed any limits on this perspective in the forseeable future -- as is evidenced by the bloody escalation of the war in Vietnam. Thus it is not out of any newly arisen benevolence that each time the British pound has come under serious "attack," Washington has rushed to the rescue, along with other nations, to lend Britain gold. "If a British devaluation came right now," Business Week states, "there would be trouble. Central bankers...would probably start dumping dollars for gold."
But at the same time, a continual bailing out process can ultimately only exacer~ bate the U.S.. gold deficit. Washington is not planning to solve British financial crises in the long run by bringing a worse one down on Wall Street.
And this is why, according to Business Week, Johnson demanded terms: "As Britain's financial position worsened, President Johnson, according to insiders, pulled out what is referred to in the U.S. government as 'the list' -- the things the British had conmitted themselves to do to restore health to their economy and their balance of payments. These had been spelled out in tough bargaining in the fall of 1964, when the British pound reeled under the impact of another crisis that came just as the Wilson government took office. The U.S. then helped bail out Britain and demanded quid pro quos. This midsummer, Johnson insisted that Britain take the actions it had promised if it wanted U.S. support....Deflation came with a vengeance on July 20, when Wilson announced the details of a package of policies that are designed to give the British economy its strongest deflation since World War II. Nine days later, Wilson was on his way to Washington to talk with the President. During one crucial part of their discussion, Johnson and Wilson talked alone; none of their aides was present."
Deflation, the Business Week staff suggests, is only the first step in the U.5S.favored program for retooling the British economy. The immediate effects of deflation would be salutary, they allege. It would reverse the balance of trade deficit and thereby begin to reduce the outflow of gold from British coffers. ,
But the long-run problem is the British economy itself which could only suffer stagnation under prolonged deflation.
The basic problem is how to make British industry more competitive in the world market, and for this, Business Week insists "the most important need is for greater productivity. One example shows the dimensions. of the problem. In the steel industry, to turn out what 100 U.S. workers can produce, Britain needs 230 men..." And from here on, Business Week's advice might be said to depart from the norms of diplomatic etiquette, but it has the virtue of being plain spoken: "No single group of laggards is to blame for the rigidity that leads to this kind of performance. The culprits are the inflexibility of trade unions, the lack of professionalism in management, the archaic educational system, the hidebound ways of many segments of society."
Noteworthy in its absence from Business Week's "list" is technological improvement. The big problem from Business Week's standpoint boils down to what it sees as "archaic" relationships between British management and British workers. Business Week's advice to British management is to soften up the trade unions and speed up the assembly lines: "Indeed, where individual companies in Britain have made sharp changes in their way of operating, they have achieved some solid results. For instance, Aluminium Corp., Ltd., an aluminum fabricator in Wales, decided five years ago to go after higher productivity. It launched a series of studies to measure normal working time for every job on the shop floor. Then it set up a system of bonuses for workers who produced above the norm. Says a company official: 'The effects have been startling. Production has increased threefold on one blanking press, with the same men operating the same machine as before.'"
A speed up? Not quite. Just friendly business advice. Here is where Business Week sees another important effect of deflation. The American magazine's staff concedes that the conversion from "hidebound" trade unionism to "20th Century" labor-management relations may be resisted by the British workers. And if it is so resisted, British management might not respond with the aggressiveness called for in Business Week's perspective. "Thus, a prior dose of deflation is needed as a spur to management, and as a brake on the wage spiral."
Shoulda the British worker accept wage cuts so that it costs U.S. imperialism less to napalm—bomb Vietnamese peasants? That is the implicit doctrine in Business Week's "Economic Battle of Britain."
The Wilson Labour government has proved to be a highly effective vehicle for transmitting the needs of U.S. imperialism into the economics and politics of Britain. This is due to the fact that on the one hand it is subservient to the whims of international capitalism while on the other hand it is still capable of holding the allegiance of the workers and thereby block them from going into action.
How long this loyalty will-last is another question. There have already been sporadic strikes in a number of industries being closed down by the deflationary policies. These show that the "spirit of Dunkirk" is not as omnipresent in the British working class as American capitalism would like to believe -- and this is only the beginning. There is much that the British workers can do in the months of deflation that lie ahead which is not accounted for in Business Week's blueprint. And in the last analysis, it is in the plants and not in private meetings between Johnson and Wilson that the most important exchanges will take place.
GREEN BERETS REPORTED IN GUATEMALA
In a report about the Guatemalan guerrilla group led by César Montes since the death of Iuis Turcios, Georgie Anne Geyer states that the guerrillas claim that more than 1,000 U.S. Green Berets are already in Guatemala. "Their presence was confirmed to us by one Guatemalan police official," she continues. "We cannot confirm numbers, but we did see several Green Berets on the streets of the capital." Her account of a threeday visit to the guerrilla camp was published in the December 13 New York Post.
U.S. officials, naturally, have denied that any Green Berets have been sent to Guatemala. Nevertheless, as Miss Geyer points out, "American involvement would not be surprising. The U.S. backed the Guatemalan invasion which overthrew the pro~Communist government of Col Jacobo Arbenz in 1954."
According to Miss Geyer, the Rebel Armed Forces are growing in size and boldness. One guerrilla told her that they were followed by 20,000 persons in the southern regions of the country alone.
THE SLL CALLS THE COPS IN ERNEST TATE CASE
[The following four letters concerning the latest developments in the Ernest Tate case were made public by Farrell Dobbs, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. For more information on the case see World Outlook, December 2, 9 and 16.]
* * x
December 15, 1966
National Committee Socialist Labour League 186 Clapham High St. London, S.W.4, England
Dear Comrades,
As yet we have not received a reply from you to the November 21 letter of our National Committee asking you to place on trial all those in your organization responsible for the beating inflicted on Ernest Tate in front of your public meeting at Caxton Hall on November 17, and, specifically to expel your general secretary, Thomas Gerard Healy, for his role in this shocking assault upon a member of the revolutionary socialist movement.
' Instead, it would appear that the victimization of Comrade Tate is being compounded by a move on the part of the top officers of your organization to resort to bourgeois law and the bourgeois courts.
We call your attention to the following: items which should sufficiently indicate the emerging pattern:
(1) In response to the pamphlet Healy "“Reconstructs" the Fourth International, which made public a number of documents exposing the antidemocratic practices that featured the April 4-8 international conference sponsored by the SLL, your Political Committee issued a statement which was published in the August 20 issue of The Newsletter. This statement contained the following clear indication of the course of action decided upon with regard to the pamphlet Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International:
"We shall not hesitate to deal appropriately with the handful of United Secretariat agents who hawk it around the cynical fake-left in England."
What was this if not a confession of incapacity to give any kind of effective answer, political or otherwise, to the exposure contained in the pamphlet? What was it if not a public threat directed against individuals designated by your Political Committee as “United Secretariat agents," specifically those who might "hawk" the pamphlet in England?
(2) At a meeting in Paris November 4 at which your general secretary, Thomas Gerard Healy, was the featured speaker, members of the audience who asked to take the floor to answer accusations made by the speaker were set upon by the sergeants at arms.
The November 29 issue of Voix Ouvriére reported that the sergeants at arms "beat and threw out a member of the JCR who wanted to take the floor because his organization had been attacked and reviled throughout the meeting."
The same issue of Voix Ouvriére reported in addition: "The sergeants at arms also set upon distributors of Voix Ouvriére."
The incidents at the Paris meeting were reported in the November 12 issue of The Newsletter as follows: "The Pabloites and Voix Ouvriére...attempted to provoke incidents at the meeting. These, fortunately, did not get very far. They demanded the right to speak at 11:30, when the meeting was closed. The chairman refused them."
It is clear from the account in The Newsletter itself that the "provocation" consisted of asking for the- "right to speak." The Newsletter left out what happened to the comrades who asked for the democratic right to answer a public attack. But the entire working-class vanguard in France knows what happened. At least one revolutionist was beaten and thrown out at a meeting where your general secretary was the featured speaker. Other revolutionists were attacked.
The most shameful and reprehensible aspect of this is that The Newsletter did not
denounce the attacks. Instead it approved! And The Newsletter went so far as to accuse the victims of attempting to "provoke" what happened.
That sounds like the standard formula used by the cops when they work someone over. The victim, it is well known, always "provokes" the beating he receives; and the cops are always merely defending themselves and acting in the line of duty.
(3) On November 17, some two weeks after the "incidents" at the Paris meeting, Ernest Tate, a "United Secretariat agent," was in front of a meeting sponsored by the Socialist Labour League at Caxton Halli in London.
This "agent" was there exercising his democratic right to "hawk" the pamphlet Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International and copies of the magazine International Socialist Review.
He was not alone. Representatives of other socialist groups were likewise there to hawk socialist newspapers, magazines or pamphlets.
Comrade Tate was on the pavement in front of the hall. He was not inside the hall. He was not guilty of the provocative crime of demanding the right to take the floor at 11:30. .
But at a certain moment, it appears, Thomas Gerard Healy came from inside the hall to the entrance.
We have no way of divining what was going on in his head. We do not know what duties you as the National Committee might have assigned to your general secretary that required him to come from inside the hall to the entrance at that precise moment. We do not even know if it had any connection with carrying out the line laid down in your Political Committee statement published in The Newsletter of August 20:
"We shall not hesitate to deal appropriately with the handful of United Secretariat agents who hawk it around the cynical fake-left in England.”
Thomas Gerard Healy would best be able to answer, we would suggest, whether his appearance was purely coincidental or in line with obscure official duties. pertaining to the highest, post in your organization.
We understand that he has averred that what he was engaged in was giving directions to members of the SLL on clearing the pavement so that people arriving in coaches could walk directly into the meeting without any inconvenient obstructions. If this report is wrong -- and it does seem incredible that you would assign your general secretary to the task of regulating the flow of traffic in front of a meeting sponsored by the SLL -- perhaps you may have a correction to offer.
The fact remains that at that precise moment, Comrade Tate, the only one hawking Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International was set upon by a gang. Nowhere have we seen any denial that they were members of the SLL. Indeed, they appear to have been acting directly under your general secretary in whatever functions they were engaged in.
This gang beat Comrade Tate. They beat him severely, knocking him down and kicking him in the head, kidneys and genitals. He had to be hospitalized.
Let it be noted well -- the beating occurred in the very presence of the general secretary of the SLL, as if the gang felt that what they did would meet with no censure. Perhaps they had good reason to believe that it would even meet with approbation, as was the case with the sergeants at arms at the meeting in Paris, and that was why they went to such lengths even after their victim had been knocked down!
It may be contended that this is perfectly normal procedure in the SLL; that this is the way the SLL always clears the pavement in front of its meetings in order to facilitate the coming and going of coaches.
Comrades! The Political Committee of a Trotskyist party would have placed charges at once against every single member involved in such an assault; and, in face of the evidence, would have expelled them forthwith ~- no matter what their posts.
Still more, comrades, the Political Committee of a Trotskyist -party would at once have instituted the most searching examination of the organizational pattern that had made such an occurrence even conceivable. .
The Political Committee of a Trotskyist party would have taken the severest mea-
sures against all the key officers responsible for such degeneration of the organization.
And, if the Political Committee defaulted in its obvious duties, the National Committee of a Trotskyist party would have called an emergency meeting to consider the grave situation and to undertake the appropriate measures.
So far as we are aware, you have not followed this course. Instead, something still worse followed.
(4) It was decided to resort to the bourgeois courts in a legal action against Comrade Tate!
The legal basis sought for this action, it appears, is a phrase or two in a letter which Comrade Tate wrote to the labor and socialist press describing what happened to him in front of your meeting as he witnessed it.
Despite the great injury done to. him at the time of the beating, he did not call the cops. Despite the gross violation of his democratic right to hawk socialist literature on the pavement in front of an SLL meeting, he did not go to any representatives or institutions of the class enemy. Instead, he appealed to the labor and socialist movement.
Why did not your top officers follow that principled example if they disagreed with Comrade Tate's account of the circumstances under which he was beaten by a gang in front of an SLL meeting while he was selling socialist literature?
The answer would seem self-evident. In a court of working-class opinion, before an impartial body of unionists, Labour Party members, socialists or partisans of proletarian democracy, the SLL executive officers reached the conclusion that they had a losing case.
On the other hand, if a sharp lawyer could be hired to comb through the open letter of this working-class militant beaten up by a gang in front of an SLL meeting, phrases might be found that could be presented in such a way in a bourgeois court that a sympathetic bourgeois judge would hand down a decision in favor of the SLL and against the victim. What a triumph that would be for the SLL!
(5) This course does, naturally, offer the top leaders of your organization the vision of an immediate gain of the most opportunistic character. Perhaps this was sufficient to sway the balance in their calculations. By instituting legal proceedings against the victim of the beating administered in front of an SLL meeting, a plausible pretext was provided for not reporting the assault in the columns of The Newsletter. It has now become a legal matter, you know. And the following sentence actually appears in the December 3 issue of The Newsletter:
"The issues raised in the Nov. 2lst letter by Farrell Dobbs, Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, about what happened at Caxton Hall on the night of November 17th, we cannot discuss at this stage for legal reasons."
In addition, by bringing in bourgeois "law and order," other publications may be intimidated into saying nothing about the beating inflicted on a well-known Trotskyist in front of an SLL meeting.
This has the same happy effect as a conspiracy of silence in the bourgeois press -- workers are kept in ignorance of an important development. Above all the members and followers of the SLL are kept in ignorance of the scandal.
That the news about the beating inflicted on Comrade Tate is known to the entire vanguard in all other countries where a Trotskyist movement exists is of small importance to the top leaders of the SLL. They are not internationalists. They are nationally minded. They are concerned about their own bailiwick.
In this way, they unexpectedly reveal once again how far they have departed from the principles of Trotskyisnm.
(6) Comrades, please consider more closely what is revealed by this action:
(a) Your executive officers either did not think of appealing to working-class opinion or ruled it out. They decided to appeal to the class enemy. What then is the inescapable conclusion as to their class instincts? What does this say in turn about the nature of the class pressures to which your top leaders are responding? They have more confidence in pettifogging lawyers, shyster lawsuits and bourgeois courts than in a
working-class court of honor. It is more natural-for them to appeal to the bourgeoisie than to the workers. It is in accord with their principles -- strange principles! -- to ask the class enemy to deal with a working-class political opponent.
(b) From the moral point of view, the SLL ends up in an even worse light. The. open letter of a working-class victim of a beating inflicted by a gang in front of a public meeting of the SLL, the open letter of a revolutionary socialist who tells how he was set upon and who his assailants were, is studied from the viewpoint of bourgeois law to see in what way it can be turned against the victim in order to damage him still further; and especially to block him from voicing his outrage.
Even more, the open letter appears to have been studied to see if it could not be utilized in the bourgeois courts so as, with a favorable ruling from a sympathetic bourgeois judge, to bring down a curtain on the whole matter and even prevent any further hawking of literature damaging to the pretension of the SLL leaders that they are authentic spokesmen for Trotskyism in Britain.
Doesn't this call for the addition of a chapter to Trotsky' s Their Morals and Ours -- a chapter on the morals sometimes to be found in ultraleft sectarian groups as they degenerate?
(c) .Note the background against which this action occurs. As the heroic Trotskyist Hugo Blanco faces a possible death sentence in Peru under the workings of bourgeois law and the bourgeois courts, the SLL leaders set in motion an appeal to the British bourgeois cousins of the Peruvian dispensers of class justice -- and the action is directed against one of Hugo Blanco's most ardent defenders in England, a “United Secretariat agent" like Hugo Blanco himself.
What infamy your top leaders have brought upon the SLL!
(7) Finally, we ask you to consider what this course of action signifies as to the sincerity of the headlines to be read with monotonous frequency in The Newsletter about organizations or figures in the labor movement with whom you have differences who are charged with "calling the cops."
In the light of what happened at the Paris meeting on November 4 and in front of the SLL meeting at Caxton Hall on November 17, what conciusion can be drawn except that the editors of The Newletter are guilty of the most disgusting hypocrisy. The SLL itself calls the cops!
A suspicion arises. If the leaders of the SLL can with such singular lack of compunction and in such gross violation of their professed principles resort to calling the cops themselves, can it be possible that they are guilty of the very crime they have charged against the comrades at the Paris meeting; i.e., "provoking" incidents leading to fisticuffs? Is it a pattern now for the SLL to “attempt to provoke incidents," as The a put it, that will cause inexperienced political opponents to call the cops?
We would not like to believe this of the SLL, comrades; but we are duty bound to call your attention to the fact that such conclusions may well be drawn by wide circles of the vanguard in light of the course of action being followed by your top. leaders.
We hope that you will again read the November. 21 letter which our National Committee sent to you and that you will act on its recommendations at once without further damaging delay.
Fraternally,
Political Committee
Socialist Workers Party
Farrell Dobbs, National Secretary
TEXT OF SWP LETTER TO PIERRE LAMBERT
December 15, 1966 Pierre Lambert Informations Ouvriéres 29, rue du Faubourg du Temple Paris 10, France Dear Comrade Lambert,
Enclosed is a copy of a letter sent by the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party to the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League.
The letter concerns a new. grave development in the Ernest Tate case; i.e., the decision of the top officers of the SLL to resort to the bourgeois courts in a desperate effort to bring down a curtain of silence on the beating inflicted on this Trotskyist by a gang at the entrance of the SLL meeting at Caxton Hall on November 17.
Up to now we have not received a reply to the November 21 letter we sent you concerning this assault. Is your silence to be taken as a sign of approval of such methods? We hope that this shameful silence will not be extended to the SLI's latest move of appealing to the class enemy to rule on the protests lodged by the- vietin of the beat-. ing.
Fraternally,
Farrell Dobbs, National Secretary
TEXT OF SWP LETTER TO TIM WOHLFORTH
December 15, 1966 Tim Wohlforth, Editor American Committee for the Fourth International 439 Lafayette Street, Room 305 New York, N.Y. 10012 Dear Comtrade Wohlforth,
Enclosed is a copy of a letter sent by the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party to the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League.
We note that the latest issue of your paper echoes Healy in intimating "legal reasons" for saying nothing about Healy's calling the cops against Ernest Tate. This can have no other meaning than approval of the victimization of this revolutionary socialist and Healy's subsequent action of seeking to drag him into the bourgeois courts.
It is to be hoped that you will carefully consider, in the light of the attached letter, whether you are not morally bound to change your attitude concerning this case and to lodge a public protest against Healy's methods.
Fraternally,
Farrell Dobbs, National Secretary
TEXT OF SWP LETTER TO JAMES ROBERTSON
December 15, 1966 James Robertson, National Chairman Spartacist League Box 1377, G.P.O. New York, N.Y. 10001 Dear Comrade Robertson,
Enclosed is a copy of a letter sent by the Political Committee of the Socialist
Workers Party to the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League.
If you have taken a stand on the issues raised by the SLL's actions around the case of Ernest Tate, this has not yet been called to our attention.
We trust that you will not further delay taking a public stand in solidarity with the victim; and, in particular, that you will clarify why you continue to offer political support to Healy.
Fraternally,
Farrell Dobbs, National Secretary
YSA APPEALS TO YOUNG SOCIALISTS AND REVOLTES GROUP
{The following letter was sent by the National Executive Committee of the Young Socialist Alliance, the American revolutionary socialist youth organization, to the National Committee of the Young Socialists in London and the leadership of the Révoltes group in Paris.]
December 17, 1966
Dear Comrades,
In the past few weeks, two extremely serious incidents have occurred, one in France and the other in England, which compel us to speak out and to write you requesting that you also make your attitude clear.
On November 17, at Caxton Hall in London, Ernest Tate, an internationally known Trotskyist, was attacked and severely beaten by a gang while he was selling literature at the entrance to a public meeting of the Socialist Labor League. According to those who witnessed this incredible attack, Thomas Gerard Healy, the general secretary of the SLL, was present while the gang carried out the beating.
On November 4, the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste sponsored a meeting in Paris at which the same G. Healy was the main speaker. When a member of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionaire asked for time to answer the charges that had been made against his organization during the course of the meeting, he was physically attacked and thrown out of the meeting. Others in the audience who objected to the use of such methods to prevent differences of opinion from being expressed were also attacked.
The Young Socialist Alliance is writing you because you are a youth group publicly associated with the political organizations which sponsored these meetings, and we hope you will make clear where you stand on the key question of the role of violence inside the working-class movement. We are sure you realize that unless you indicate you are in total disagreement with the methods employed by the leaders of the SLL and the OCI at these meetings, your youth organization will also be implicated.
It is particularly important to have clarity on this issue at the present time when there is so much ferment among the radical youth in Europe. We have the best opportunity in decades to influence those who are beginning to break with Stalinism and the Social Democracy and who are finding their way to revolutionary socialism, especially around the struggle to build a united front defense of the Vietnamese revolution.
The demonstration in Liége, on October 15, was a striking proof of this fact. A significant number of Communist party youth from Belgium, Germany and Denmark came to that demonstration because they felt the need to publicly express their support to the Vietnamese revolution, and because they felt the CP itself had defaulted by not calling an international demonstration like the one that took place in Liége, or by not supporting the Liége demonstration once it had been called. These CP youth were willing to work with other socialist and communist youth on the key political question of today. The same was true for a good number of youth influenced by the social democracy.
In every European country there are thousands of youth like those who came to Liége, and they can be won to the forces of revolutionary socialism. But, they will be lost if they see those they believe to be revolutionaries practice the same organizational methods which have disgusted and disillusioned them with Stalinism. Such methods do nothing but weaken the working class in its struggle against the main enemy, the
capitalist class.
At the Liége demonstration you decided to carry a banner defending the Hungarian revolution. Although the organizers of the demonstration and most of the participating organizations felt this tactic only lessened our opportunities to take advantage of the openings we have to influence the Stalinist youth who are beginning to break with their leadership on the Vietnam issue, there was never at any time a threat or an attempt to use physical violence, or force, to remove that banner. You should compare this with the treatment given the member of the JCR, who merely asked for the floor at a public meeting and Ernest Tate who was simply selling literature at the entrance to a public meeting.
As revolutionary socialists we should be particularly sensitive to the use of physical violence against working-class opponents, as it is against ourselves that such methods have frequently been employed by the Stalinists in the past. We must demonstrate to the youth we are trying to win away from the Stalinists and Social Democrats that we are unconditionally opposed to the organizational methods, as well as the political betrayals of these organizations, and that we will never be party to them. Only by doing so will we be able to win for revolutionary socialism the forces that will be needed to abolish capitalism on a world scale and assure the future of mankind.
As a new generation of revolutfonary youth we have a tremendous challenge to meet. We will be successful only if we demonstrate to the world working class the correctness of our ideas and the integrity of our organizations. It is for this reason that we appeal to you to disassociate yourself from the physical attacks on Ernest Tate and the member of the JCR, and. publicly state your unconditional opposition to the use of violence by any working-class organization against members of other working-class political tendencies.
Fraternally,
Mary-Alice Waters
for the
National Executive Committee
of the Young Socialist Alliance
CHE GUEVARA “ALIVE AND WELL," DECLARES FIDEL CASTRO
In the course of a long and very interesting interview published in the January [1967] issue of the Chicago magazine Playboy, Fidel Castro was asked: "There has been widespread speculation in the Américan press, since Guevara's mysterious disappearance last year, that he was executed at your orders. Is this true?"
Castro answered: "Those who write such stories will have to square their accounts with history. The truth is that Che is alive and well. I and his family and his friends receive letters from him often. We do not have anything to say about his whereabouts at this time, however, because it would be unwise, possibly unsafe for him. When he is ready and wants it to be known where he is, we will tell it first to the Cuban people, who have the right to know. Until then, there is nothing more to be said."
Besides special points like this one, the interview contains an excellent account of the gains made by the Cuban people through their revolution. Likewise very good, under the persistent questioning of the interviewer, Lee Lockwood, is Castro's estimate of his own development from a rebel to a Marxist-Leninist.
On the question of proletarian democracy in Cuba, Castro is found on the defensive. He, of course, has no difficulty in proving that the Cuban people enjoy freedoms today that were inconceivable under the domination of U.S. imperialism and the puppet Batista. But on the question of specific institutions through which proletarian democracy can be exercised in accordance with Leninist norms and procedures, Castro could only point to progress in structuring the Communist party.
The editor of Playboy did not play around in making clear that he is no Castroite. He introduced the interview with a long editorial and throughout Castro's remarks he inserted his own propaganda in brackets. The display of his capacity to hew to the State Department line is quite convincing.