REVOLUTIONARY THEMES SOUNDED
Berlin
In the demonstrations conducted in West Berlin October 21 against the war in Vietnam, young revolutionary students and workers showed their feelings about the death of Che Guevara by carrying hundreds of large portraits of the martyred Latin- American revolutionary leader. In the following weeks they showed again how deeply they identify with the cause of socialist Cuba and the world revolution as personified by Guevara. pening at Bruton Parish Church, there was considerable fluttering in the hawkcote. Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives Carl Albert of Oklahoma said he thought it was the "first time in our history anyone has tried to make a captive audience out of the President."
Congressman Albert did not offer to estimate how many times in history American boys have been made captive by the draft and sent to distant heathen lands in undeclared wars to perform such civilizing missions as setting babies on fire with napaln.
Representative Wayne L. Hays, a Democrat of Ohio, said, "It's well known that the best way to get headlines is to attack the President. Nobody ever heard of this minister before today and nobody will ever hear of him again, which will be no great loss."
It would probably be no great loss if nobody ever heard of Representative Hays again...but let that go; no doubt he sounds great to Johnson.
In view of the uproar, the minister apologized profusely that he meant no harn.
He may be telling the truth; but the circumstances are suspicious. If he's not an ocutright fellow traveler or dupe, he at least may have been brainwashed by the "Prince of Peace," the alias of a subversive who seems to have been active in the church field for a dangerously long time.
AT WEST BERLIN GATHERINGS
On November 1, progressive students and professors of West Berlin's university founded the "Critical University" ([Kritische Universitat]. The next day they held the first public session of the new organization in the university's huge auditorium. Some 1,200 students participated in a forum which started with a report on the present situation in Cuba by Gisela Mandel and an analysis of the present stage of the Latin-American revolution by Ernest Mandel that included an appraisal of the contribution made by
Guevara to both the theory and practice of that revolution.
In the lively discussion that followed, only a tiny minority expressed hostility to Cuba and the Latin-American revolution.
When one of them questioned the right of the Cuban revolutionists to turn to the road of "violence" and thereby expose the whole continent to the kind of genocide now being perpetrated in Vietnam by American imperialism, Ernest Mandel drew stormy applause when he pictured the inhuman conditions and the reactionary violence driving the Latin-American masses to revolt.
By widening their revolutionary struggles, he said, the outraged masses make counterrevolutionary intervention by U.S. imperialism more difficult, for even the huge resources it commands do not enable it to simultaneously bring to bear in a number of countries the kind of firepower being concentrated solely against the Vietnamese people today.
On November 6, the Socialist Youth organization of West Berlin celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the October revolution. Between 3,500 and 4,000 persons turned out at the historic meeting hall called "The New World," which was the scene of such key occurrences as the founding congresses of Liebknecht's and Luxemburg's Spartakusbund and the German Communist party.
In his opening remarks, the third chairman of the West Berlin Socialist Youth, Peter Bischoff, called for recognition of the German Democratic Republic, the defense of all the conquests of the October revolution, the full rehabilitation of Leon Trotsky and all of Lenin's companions who led the Bolshevik party to victory in 1917, and publication of their writings in the USSR, East Ger » and all the workers states. Bischoff's remarks fit appropriately with the huge backdrop portrait of Lenin flanked by Trotsky.
Then the audience rose in tribute to the memory of Ernesto "Che" Guevara while Bischoff read extracts from the message the guerrilla leader sent to Tricontinental magazine in Havana which has become his testament.
Ernest Mandel delivered the main speech of the evening. Frequently interrupted by heavy applause from the very militant audience, he recalled the his-~ toric significance of the October revolution in opening the epoch of socialist world revolution, and he dwelt on how the heroic Vietnamese people, the Cuban and Latin-American revolutionists are continuing the struggle started fifty years ago.
He predicted that inside the in-
perialist countries themselves, the fail-
ure of the working class to link up with
the Russian revolution of 1917, which was
the main historic cause for the bureau-
cratic degeneration of the USSR, would
finally be rectified.
Fifteen speakers from the audience
and the platform took the floor before
Mandel summarized the discussion. Most of
the speakers excoriated the Social Demo-
cratic and trade-union bureaucrats.
One representative of the left
wing of the Social Democratic party,
Harry Ristock, who was seated on the plat-
form, had difficulty making himself heard
in face of the disagreement of the audi-
ence with his point of view. But the
second chairman of the Socialist Youth,
Wolfgang Hohmann, who presided at the
meeting, made a strong appeal in favor of
workers democracy and called for the audi-
ence to let Ristock speak, even though he
himself shared their distaste for the
speaker's attempt to enlist the great
German revolutionist Rosa Luxemburg
against the October revolution.
A short speech by the West Berlin
revolutionary student leader Rudi Dutschke,
proved extremely interesting and signifi-
cant. In calling for the utmost active
support for the Vietnamese and Latin-
American revolutions, he added that the
student movement led by him had been mis-
taken in underestimating the potential
militancy of the German working class.
He called attention to the impres-
sive demonstration staged by the miners
October 21 against the closing down of
coal pits in the Ruhr. About 15,000 men
engaged in the demonstration -- and be-
hind red banners.
He also hailed the strikers in a
large West Berlin metal plant who had
downed tools that very day to protest an
attempted slash in wages.
Ending with a strong appeal for
unity between the students and workers
against capitalism, he received a tre-
mendous ovation from the audience.
The meeting wound up with the
audience singing three stanzas of the
Internationale.
Other highlights of the evening
included heavy contributions of cash in
response to an appeal by Ernest Mandel
for help for the Bolivian guerrillas.
Some 400 copies of a booklet containing
excerpts from Lenin's "April Theses,"
Trotsky's Lessons of October, and Preo-
brazhensky's analysis of the New Economic
Policy were sold.
The meeting received extensive
coverage in the press and on the radio and television networks of West Berlin and West Germany. It received similar treatment in the German Democratic Republic although the reports there were doc-— tored so as to eliminate all references to Trotsky, to Guevara and to the name of the main speaker.
Ironically, the Soviet mission in West Berlin held its reception in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Octoper revolution at the same time as the meeting in the New World hall.
West German capitalists, church
dignitaries and scientists packed into
the luxurious ballroom where they were
served caviar and pink champagne. They
listened to soft dance music instead of
the Internationale. And of course no
collection was taken for guerrillas any-
where in the world.
Some members of the working press
who happened to come from that official
celebration to the somewhat less official
one in the New World, found the spirit of
the mass meeting decidedly more congenial
and in keeping with the Russian revolution
than the festivities organized by the
Soviet diplomats.