Un service de prauds “ouvir: sive
Vollo:5.6 Now 9 March 3, 1967
ELECTION REGISTERS GROWING FERMENT IN INDIA
The week-long elections in India February 15-21 ended with a staggering defeat for the Congress party which has ruled the country since political independence was won from Great Britain twenty years ago. With the final count still not in, it was clear that if the Congress party managed to secure a majority, it would be by but a slim margin. In the last parliament, the party held a 70% majority. The three most powerful leaders in the party, its president, Kumaraswami Kamaraj; the treasurer, Atulya Ghosh; and the railways minister, S.K.Patil, were defeated. In addition, three cabinet ministers went down: Chidambaram Subramaniam, Sachindra Chaudhuri and Manubhai Shah. Four chief ministers of state also ended up as losers.
The most spectacular reversal for the Congress party occurred in south India in the state of Kerala. Of the 134 seats in the State Assembly, the party won only 9, against 114 for a broad front in which the "left" [pro-Peking] Communist party won 52 seats. Even the "right" [pro-Moscow] Communist party came out ahead of the Congress candidates, winning 19 seats.
Besides the two Communist parties, the "left-wing" electoral front included the Revolutionary Socialist party, the Samyukta Socialist party, the Kerala Socialist party and two rightist formations, the Karashaka Thozhilali party and the Moslem League. The participants in the front watered down their programs and divided up the 143 constituencies so as not to contest each other. [See articles in World Outlook January 6, p.18; January 13, p.53, and the open letter on p.246 of the current issue.] The "left" Commu— nists scored so heavily as to become the dominant party in the Kerala legislature and it is thought likely that the party's leader E.M.S.Namboodiripad will be named chief minister. He was the head of the Communist administration in Kerala in 1957-59 which was
New York, N. Y. 10010. BHP ie
dissolved by Nehru. Namboodiripad won by. a majority of more tHan 12, 000 votes: in his own assembly constituency. Fs : 2,
*
In contrast to Kerala, the Congress party was defeated in Orissa on the Bay of Bengal by a right-wing ‘front composed of. the; Swatantra: [Freedom]. party and the Jana Congress, a grouping that split away from the Congress party last fall.
In Madras, where the Congress party won a two-thirds majority in the 1962 election, it lost three-fourths of its séats.: The:-majority went to the Dravidian Progressive Federation which had organized a five-party front. A regional grouping that has ordinarily campaigned on the language issue and appeals to local patriotism, the DPF switched in this election to the question. of ‘the high cost of food, running:on a campaign promise to slash the price of rice by 86%.
The gains by both rightist and leftist political formations showed that a polarization of forces is occurring in India. The prime issue is inflation which has been reflected in steadily mounting prices for food and virtual famine conditions in various parts of the country. The incapacity of the Congress party to stem this process resulted in the erosion of its popularity. The vote clearly spelled the opening of a period of crisis and intensified class struggle in India.
Two contributing causes were likewise discernible in the outcome of the election. One was the policy the Johnson administration. has pursued of seeking to take advantage of hunger in India. Johnson held up shipments of grain while pressure was put on the Indira Gandhi government to grant concessions to private capitalist interests at the expense of the public sector. American oil companies, in particular, wanted a change in the policies of the Indian government so as to provide them more profitable openings for the construction of fertilizer plants. In addition, diplomatic humiliations inflicted on the preceding Shastri government still rankle among the Indian people. Johnson also displayed his anger over the reluctance of the Indian government to come out in open sup~ port of his war in Vietnam. He was especially displeased with the stand taken by the Indian government in favor of ending the bombing of north Vietnam. In casting their votes against the Congress party, the voters were also balloting against the policies of the Johnson administration in relation to India and Vietnam.
The other factor that contributed to influencing the mood of. the electorate was the example of China. Under capitalist rule, the economic situation in India is becoming more and more chaotic. The specter of famine is very real. A big proportion of the huge population of 500,000,000 see no perspective whatever under the capitalist system except hunger and despair. The Congress party, in théir opinion, has been given adequate time -- two decades -- to show what it could do for the country. The results are conclusive. In China, on the other hand, despite all kinds of difficulties including natural calamities and heavy imperialist pressure and such setbacks as the Sino-Soviet conflict and the current political crisis, the country has taken giant strides forward. While India stagnates, China has moved ahead, showing its potential in such dramatic ways as developing a nuclear industry virtually on its own resources and in face of the active opposition: of both Moscow and. Washington.
“The influence of the Chinese example \ was thus registered in the showing made by the "left" Communist party. This was especially clear in Kerala where the vote was quite decisive in its repudiation of the Congress party and its indication as to what road the masses want to take. They want to get out of the orbit of imperialist America and into the orbit of Communist China. Along that line, they see salvation for India.
The election results thus alarmed Wall Street. In a gloomy editorial February 24, . the influential New York Times admitted that a “period of great stresses and strains is inevitable" and that "the problem of governing the vast subcontinent becomes formidable." .. Returning to the subject in a lead editorial February 26, the New York Times held that < "The power factors in the world have been altered definitely and permanently by the rout “of the Congress party in India's general election." India is‘now "too. weak and divided internally to have the influence she once exercised in global affairs. That is a loss for the West." India "cannot again be a major force in Asia,-or in the world, until she sets her house in order."
India was to be the glittering showpiece, set up and maintained by Western imperialism to offset the example of neighboring China. Too little and too late -- that will probably be the verdict of history.
But it would be a mistake to believe that India now stands at the verge of a successful revolution. One of the main ingredients is still missing -- a mass revolutionary socialist party. The construction of such a party is now more urgent than ever. The Indian workers have a priceless opportunity; let them not delay in seizing it!
ARMY MOVES TO THE FORE. IN SHARPENING STRUGGLE IN CHINA
By Livio Maitan
Events in China have continued to unfold at a dramatic pace and the situation is becoming more and more complex and charged with the possibility of new developments.
According to the official sources themselves, at the same time as the Shanghai events -- which we sought to interpret in an article published in World Outlook. [see February 3 issue, p.°116] -- or immediately afterwards, serious conflicts broke out in a whole series of: regions and big cities and, at least in some places, peasant masses also became involved.
It is difficult to give an exact estimate of the nature of movements like those. in Shansi and Harbin and it is possible that it involves a jumble of different and even opposing tendencies, ranging from unorthodox Maoist currents acting on their own to a certain degree and in practice even against the orientation Mao wants, to tendencies expressing the conservative interests of the apparatus, and including largely spontaneous tendencies analogous to those that appeared in Shanghai, regional tendencies, and some that may be infiltrated by genuine reactionaries. :
What is certain is that the explosion of all these tendencies has finally brought about an extremely dangerous situation for the ruling group headed by Mao which in the most serious instances (Shansi, Harbin, etc.) has resorted to bringing in the army as a decisive force. The utilization of the army, however, was not undertaken without hesita-— tion and conflict -- many times the official documents in the latter part of January attacked or criticized military groups or leaders who ‘presumably preferred to have the army remain out of the melee and the army was brought in only after some delay when it became absolutely clear that the “revolutionary rebels" could not win out by other means over the opposing factions.
As others have correctly stressed, the peasants were the last to enter the scene and it is not yet clear to what degree they have become involved. The avilable news and the indications in the Chinese press give the impression that at least up to now, the mobilization of the peasants has been limited to a few regions, the most sensitive politically, as for example in the Shanghai region.
Once again hypotheses can be advanced only on the basis of rather fragmentary reports. It nevertheless seems that the mobilization of the peasants has developed within a framework analogous to that of the strikes in Shanghai. Out and out anti-—Maoist movements, led by oppositionist elements, are not involved; they are largely spontaneous. The peasants, aroused by the appeals to the masses issued by the ruling Mao-Lin Piao group itself, seek to put up their own claims, to advance their own demands. According to an important editorial in a Shanghai newspaper, the staff of which has undergone various vicissitudes, the peasants are said to have demanded the “immediate elimination" of the gap "between town and countryside," more economic remuneration and more adequate welfare services. Other documents have alluded to a tendency that wanted to distribute to the peasants the part of the product set aside for the collective or for deliver to the state.
Despite the polemical distortions, it is clear that in the final analysis the peasant movement has again posed some crucial problems of the transitional phase that China like other workers states faces after overturning capitalism. These problems still remain, it appears, despite the ruling group having adopted solutions noticeably different from those tried by the USSR in its time and by the workers states of Eastern Europe in the past twenty years. Very complex problems are involved for which no a priori solutions exist. In addition it is well known that genuinely conservative tendencies can appear among the peasants. Nonetheless, if the interpretation along this line made by the international bourgeois press and even the news agencies of the workers states must, in our opinion, be rejected, the same goes for the Maoist interpretation according to which the peasants have been hoodwinked by diabolical agitators, who favor the restoration of capitalism and who have raised absolutely impermissible demands.
On this subject, the official documents in their polemics ceaselessly hammer away against what they call "economism," at times resorting to baseless and monstrously tendentious historical analogies. (For example, those who talk about a labor aristocracy in relation to the workers movement in Shanghai disregard the real meaning of the phenomenon and are in fact resorting to polemical distortion for purposes of ideological intimidation.) As we have stated previously, insofar as the Maoist polemic against "economism" seeks to express opposition to tendencies like those that developed in the Soviet Union (Stalin's Chinese defenders forget, however, that this began under his
rule), it has an objectively positive meaning. But it-is something else again when this stereotyped theme is used to answer the right of sectors of the workers and peasants to demand improvements in their standard of living, which, after all, remains very modest.
Another essential feature of the situation in recent weeks has been the continued differentiation and internal division in the Mao tendency itself.°:On-this subject the. material furnished by the official documents is rather abundant (naturally, if the. effort is made to grasp the significance of the allusions). In fact frequent criticisms can -be. found of .persons who sought to go too far in rejecting all. discipline and in striking in an indiscriminate way at everyone in power in the party and the state. — Similarly abundant are appeals-for unity among the obviously divided revolutionary : groups, and denunciations of groups and persons who, under a smokescreen of "Mao's thought" and the concepts and current slogans of the Maoist group, seek to attain different aims, to undertake different actions and even to set up their own organizational instruments. Above all, these denunciations signify an admission by the ruling group that it is unable to control the forces that it has evoked and that tendencies are developing that seek to go beyond the aims set by this group.
It is necessary . to call attention once more to the attitude of the Mao group, since any simplification could lead to very serious errors in judgment. In our previous article we indicated that this group had reacted negatively to the strikes in Shanghai. and we now stress that it has taken an analogous attitude in face of the mobilization of the peasant sectors. Still worse, at a certain point, the official documents not only began to make open threats of repression (and it is quite probable, if not certain, that repressive blows. have actually. been struck), but the Maoist group also decided to get out of the most difficult situations through direct utilization of the army. ..
Tt would be a mistake, however, to overlook “the fact that this attitude toward the imposing mass movement, along with military intervention, were accompanied or were immediately followed by a resumption and intensification of the themes that characterized Mao's appeals to the masses and the Red Guards, beginning in particular last summer. Along this line the Maoist agitation took on a more openly iconoclastic tone and the masses were invited precisely "to take power" and elect committees in the enterprises. According -to. some reports, bodies. of a "new type" which are glowingly compared to the institutions of the Paris Commune were created to administer certain big cities, in the first place Shanghai.
A Hong Chi [Red Flag] editorial sent out January 31 is particularly significant. This document includes the fundamental themes of the Maoist positions and polemics in the latest phase of the crisis in China, ranging from criticism of the "ultraleft" elements in the Mao tendency itself to interpretations of certain key occurrences like the result of the maneuvers of the capitalist elements. Along with a denunciation of the Shanghai strikes and movements like those in Harbin, threats of repression, warnings against the tendency to strike at all the cadres and all the leaders of the party and the administration, is to be found an appeal for direct intervention by the masses and the formation of new and historically original bodies of proletarian democracy. It is clearer than ever, in our opinion, that the Mao group is caught between contradictory needs -- on the one hand it cannot prevail over its adversaries except by basing itself on broad sectors of the masses (and from now on not only the student masses), on the other hand it seeks to block the movement it invokes from developing in accordance with its own dynamics beyond the objectives set for it.
It is difficult to forecast the next developments in this profound crisis which, in any case, will mark a fundamental episode in the history of the tempestuous transition period from capitalism to socialism. It is now possible to grasp the substance of what is happening. The very profound conflicts at the top, the methods utilized by the _ Mao group to fight its adversaries, the increasingly sharp and complex struggle of multiple tendencies have set off a clearer and clearer process of disintegration in the party and state apparatus. In the relative vacuum which this disintegration has produced, all. the social forces of China have begun to move under the impulsion of different objective stimuli and in order to advance their own-claims and demands. This liberation of social forces, this development of a dynamism that is very: largely independent of the aims and will of all the groups at the top is in itself a very positive phenomenon, particularly in view of the fact that the greatest weight by far lies with the workers and poor and middle peasants and that the context in which their action is taking place is absolutely unlike that of the Soviet Union in the middle twenties and the beginning of the thirties. ;
An overall judgment obviously cannot be offered until it becomes possible to see the outcome of the crisis -- and on this at the moment a prognosis cannot be advanced.
February 8, 1967
229.
_ WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THE VIETNAMESE TARGETS?
The December issue of Liberation magazine* carries an informative report by editor Dave Dellinger on his trip in October-November 1966 to Hanoi where he had an opportunity to tour American bombing targets and take photographs. Among other "things, Dellinger asks: Be -
"What can:one. say to a 20-year-old girl, swathea in bandages and still in a state of shock because -her mother, father, three brothers and sisters were all killed at their noonday meal when American bombers attacked the primitive agricultural village in which they lived? She herself was pulled unconscious and severely burned from the straw hut. in which the rest of the family perished."
Here's what to tell the 20-year-old girl, if we are to believe General Earle G. Wheeler, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, as reported in an interview in the February 27 issue of U.S.News & World Report:
"Q Has bombing the North produced worthwhile results?
"A As you know, some critics of our bombing campaign assert that. it has. failed to produce tangible, favorable results. This is simply not true. .
"First, it has raised the morale of the South Vietnamese. For a long while, only these innocent people were paying the price of war -~ intimidation, kidnaping, and deliberate murder by the enemy. They were greatly encouraged when the aggressor. began to pay a toll, too.
"Second, che campaign has brought home to the North Vietnamese that they cannot
invade another land with impunity. Their aggression is now costing them heavily in terms of money, diverted manpower, matériel, interrupted lines of communication, and military facilities and equipment damaged or destroyed.
"Third, the bombing of North Vietnam has unquestionably reduced the flow of men and supplies to the South from what it would have been, greatly hampered the enemy's ground operations in the South, and, as a consequence, saved many American and Allied lives.
"No-one indicator is proof in itself of the success of our air campaign. But there is ample proof in the sum of several indicators, viewed now in the perspective of time."
If you would like to give the 20-year-old girl a more diplomatic answer than the one offered by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, try this one given by his boss Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in a closed-door joint session of the Senate Armed Services committee and the Defense Appropriations subcommittee in January and made public in Washington February 20:
"I don't believe any amount of bombing, within practical limits, of North Vietnam would have substantially reduced whatever the actual infiltration was."
At another point, McNamara reportedly said:
"Undoubtedly, the bombing does limit the capability of the North Vietnamese to infiltrate men and equipment into the South. But it is not clear that the limit that results is below the level that the North Vietnamese planned on and, in any event, it is not below the level necessary to support the force in the South at the present."
As for the feelings of those selected as targets by the American génerals and their Commander in Chief Johnson, Dave Dellinger quotes the following as told him by Miss Tuyen, a peasant girl in the village of Nam Ngan, whose two brothers, one eight and one three, had been killed less than a month before she was interviewed:
"When the planes come bombing and strafing our native land we feel a great indignation. We are making every effort to shoot them down, in order to avenge our young people who have been cut down by the American aggressors....What would young Americans think if they were living peacefully and suddenly another country came and started killing them? For this reason, in spite of the planes all over the skies, we do not fear
* The issue was delayed, going to press January 24. For a copy send $.75 to Liberation, 5 Beekman St., New York, N.Y. 10038.
them...When I was carrying ammunition a bomb:exploded near me and covered me with dirt but I struggled free in order to continue fighting. We only have rifles in the ground forces but we are making every effort to bring down the planes. Since August 5, 1964, we have participated in more than a hundred battles (I can't remember the exact number), but we are still firm in the battle.
"At night when the planes come, I volunteer to cook rice. I reach every difficult place to serve the soldiers. During the day I go to the fields and gather vegetables for the army. They come, we open fire; they go, we continue picking vegetables....Bombing is continuous but we never feel tired....It is very clear that the young people in my village are ready to sacrifice their lives if necessary to defend our independence. The struggle may last for years, but we realize that we will win.
"During the resistance against the French colonialists, when we won our independence, one of my brothers lost his life. He was 18 at the time. Now the Americans have come, massacring the people in our village. That has fanned our hatred. We know that the American aggressors may commit more crimes against our village, but we have no alternative but to stand firm.
"Recently, as I told you, my aunt and my two younger brothers were killed and I can't help feeling a great hatred. I am determined to avenge this blood debt....We know that our battle is very difficult but we can see our victory ahead.
"It's hard to find the words to tell you all our experiences but I realize that you can see much for yourself. On your return I hope that you can help the American people to understand the truth and if you don't mind, I send my regards both to the peace movement in your country and also to your wife and to my brothers and sisters in your family. As for me I have no alternative but to go on fighting. When one day our country is reunited in freedom, I hope to greet you in our village on your way to Saigon.'
IN DEFENSE OF BERTRAND RUSSELL
By Joseph Hansen
In its February 19 issue, The New York Times Magazine, the weekly supplement of the world's biggest, if not always best, bourgeois newspaper, paid its highest possible tribute to Bertrand Russell; i.e., it subjected him to a full-scale personal attack of a most venomous nature.
The New York Times does not claim to speak authoritatively in the field of philosophy in which it rates Bertrand Russell's contributions as among the greatest of all time. But it is an authority on imperialist war and the suppression of colonial struggles for freedom and it is in this field that it levels its heavy guns against the distinguished British pacifist. More particularly, it lowers its aim down to Russell's opposition to the current American role in Vietnam; and to give its condemnation of the 94-year-old battler the greatest possible weight, it utilizes the services of a Bernard Levin whose credentials are that he is "a regular contributor to The Daily Mail of London and New Statesman" and that he recently joined "Kingsley Amis, John Braine and other British writers in publicly affirming support of American action in Vietnan. "This bird, it is clear, does not flock with the doves.
Levin's article is entitled, “Bertrand Russell: Prosecutor, Judge and Jury." Its thesis is simplicity itself: Russell is violating the norms of bourgeois jurisprudence by taking part in a War Crimes Tribunal that is gathering evidence of American war crimes in Vietnam when he himself has already become convinced that the U.S. government is guilty.
Levin does not attempt to establish a countercase by arguing that the Johnson administration is innocent. He does not advance facts or cite witnesses in an effort to defend the acts committed under the policies for which Johnson, McNamara, Rusk and Helms of the CIA bear responsibility. Instead he scores Russell for "actively defending" alleged “atrocities of the Vietcong in Vietnam."And under guise of “explaining” why Russell stands on the side of the Vietnamese freedom fighters and not the imperialist aggressors, Levin seeks to further divert attention from the real issues and facilitate his main job which is to smear the War Crimes Tribunal by attacking Russell personally.
Levin describes Russell at a London press conference as an "it," and his appearance there as "the equivalent of the religious custom of showing to the faithful the
saint's bones, or vestments, or miraculously liquefying blood.” The "it" is "unwrapped" as "the holiest relic the. international left possesses..." Are we to conclude then that Russell at 94 is senile, as all this somewhat more than implies? Not at all! "His grasp of the speech he is reading, its pages held in a thin, blue-veined hand is obviously complete."
This disclaimer does not prevent Levin from then continuing after Russell has read his statement and leaves the room: "The holy relic has been shown, and is laid back
; in its velvet-lined ark till the saint's
day comes round again." How's that for
literary polish, for dexterity in slid-
ing a razor across a throat?
If Russell is senile, then it
must be that he is being used and ma-
nipulated? Levin brings in Russell's
secretary Ralph Schoenman, "a young
man with a round, neat beard, and a
smile of infinite self-satisfaction."
A number of details, including American
flavored words in Russell's statements
indicate that Schoenman does indeed ma-
nipulate the “holy relic." Oh, no, but
not at all! How can you believe that
Levin implies anything of the kind is
being done by this "sidekick" who grew
up "with a deep, and deeply neurotic,
hatred of his native land..."
"For even if Schoenman prepares
singlehanded all the documents, it is
beyond dispute that Russell agrees to
them. Schoenman may be Mephistopheles,
but he is not Svengali; he may have
persuaded Russell to believe in, and
propagate, the most odious rubbish,
but the fact remains that Russell does
believe it, and is not just a mindless
puppet, good for nothing but holding
the pen." ‘
And as if to prove that every-
thing he has brought up about Russell's
age and the American Schoenman's "anti-
American" influence is meaningless =-
except as it may stick in the minds of
BERTRAND RUSSELL careless readers, Levin specifically
; declares: "Russell is not senile. Indeed, it is quite clear that in many ways his faculties are undimmed, and those who have talked with him recently have been impressed by the vigor of his mind...it must be made clear that he is no brain-softened dotard, signing documents he does not understand."
If Russell's mind retains whatever vigor it formerly had, then perhaps he was always easily taken in. Not so, Levin responds. "His mind has in its time been one of the most glorious that ever adorned the human race; he has compelled his recognition as the peer of Leibnitz, Descartes, Newton, Archimedes, Kant..."
Nevertheless that same mind has reached the conclusion that Johnson, McNamara, Rusk and the rest of them are guilty of war crimes! How is this to be explained?
Did Russell become anti-American because of "the shameful treatment he received as long ago as 1940, when he was prevented, in a trumped-up legal action, from taking up his appointment as professor of philosophy at the College of the City of New York"? No! That case, "which to this day makes sorry reading for admirers of the United States" as a classic example of "prejudice, malice, religious bigotry and judicial boondoggling... never seemed to have left any lasting mark on Russell..."
The mystery deepens even more before Levin clears it up; for this mind, of the caliber of a Leibnitz, Descartes, Newton, Archimedes, Kant, is nevertheless “hovering uncomfortably close" to an “insane paranoia."
For instance, this titanic intellect, which on the surface still appears to re-
BERTRAND RUSSELL
BERTRAND RUSSELL
tain full lucidity, is nevertheless capable of issuing a statement. accusing the CIA of. engaging in plots! Yes, the American CIA!! How monstrous it is to: accuse the CIA of:-en+ gaging in plots could fortunately be judged by everyone the very week >in which Levin's article appeared, for that was the week the CIA won headlines throughout the world in : recognition of its philanthropic disbursement of funds in a whole. series of fields:s: ngs beginning with education.
All “the more pertinent, therefore, is the evidence cited by: hevin to show the. kind of “odious rubbish" to- which Russell attaches his distinguished name. Despite ‘the. nausea it will obviously occasion among some of his readers, Levin dutifully cites the following: ‘proof: of "insane parandia" -- an attack leveled by Bertrand Russell against the CIA: - ods
"The C.I.A....draws up lists of popular leaders to be assassinated. It plots to. start wars. It invades countries....In Argentina, American tanks smashed the civilian government of Arturo Frondizi....Brutal military putsches have been imposed upon Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala. and Honduras....The United. Nations has become a tool of. American aggression... -In the Congo, mercenary troops, acting for Belgian and American interests... have shamelessly killed....The dregs of American militarism have been used for this pure pose... .right—wing generals, with United States money, have taken control of Indonesia...."
Even if he stands at the level of Leibnitz, Descartes, Newton, Archimedes and Kant, a man is obviously off his rocker if he can believe such "odious rubbish" ‘about the CIA and the Pentagon. _
What then is the explanation ‘for Russell's. ‘sad decline? Here’ ‘is ‘the vkey to the mystery as worked out by a mind of the level of Levin's: "What I-think has distorted, and finally destroyed, Russell's capacity for critical judgment , is. his unbearable horror at the prospect that mankind may perish in a nuclear: Armageddon. "
Russell is suffering from a strange kind of madness. whe has. lived, privately as well as publicly, fully and richly; and now he sees the possibility that the human race, which he has so long and valiantly labored to show:can be master of its destiny, will vanish utterly in a radioactive wilderness, and make Plato.and Shakespeare and Beethoven and Rembrandt, and the millions of innocent people who only want to live in peace, and the hills and fields, and the goodness of which men and women are capable, and Bertrand Russell, all one with the dust. 5 :
"To. prevent that, he has frenziedly devoted, what must now be. ‘his. comparatively few remaining years. Philosophy he now rejects with ¢ontempt as a wasteful digression; the only thing | that now matters is preventing. man vowing himself and the. earth to pieces. . oe,
From this Russell came to blame "particular men," 1 ‘then those guiding the de inies of the. "most powerful nation." From that he came to “regarding them and theirsysten as evil," then to regarding their opponents as "good and true and always right": and "thence to -- well, the 'War Crimes Tribunal,' which will put President Johnson and the United. States on ‘trial! before judges who have already made up their minds that the defendants are guilty as charged."
This labored argument is of interest for it provides a clue to understanding a person of the Levin type, a species that is apparently human but which experiencés no unbearable horror at the prospect that mankind may perish in a nuclear Armageddon. It enables us to'appreciate how such a: stringer on the payroll of the New York Times can close his mind to the threat of nuclear war and blithely devote himself to such higher interests as defending the immaculateness of the CIA and the purity and innocence of U.S. policy in Vietnan.
It enables us likewise to better grasp why a Levin can seriously argue that Russell, “whose first major public action was his participating in a commission to examine the Congo atrocities of King leopold I of the Belgians" is now doing the utter opposite. by initiating an inquiry into the war crimes being committed by the Johnson administration in Vietnam.
The real problem is not to understand Russell but to understand a creature like Levin. Albert Einstein, the great physicist and mathematician, had a word to say on the subject. In an article in which he came out strongly against capitalism and in favor of socialism in 1995” Einstein stressed the peril faced by mankind should a nuclear war
* aby Socialism?" written for the first issue (May 1949) of the Honthiy Review, and subsequently . issued by MR as a pamphlet.
~2435-
oceur. “Innumerable voices," said Einstein, "have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection’ from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very ‘calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why 3 are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?" :
. “I am sure “that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days."
. Einstein does not indicate the identity of his visitor. In all likelihood it was not Levin; but it was quite clearly one of his sisters under the skin.
It is striking that in the list of great men with whom Levin chooses to compare Russell, he selects the names of scientists and philosophers who lived long before’ the day of nuclear weapons. He does not include a single contemporary. Above all, he does not mention Albert Einstein. Why? Was it: just because he was familiar with Einstein' s opinion of the Levins of the late forties? Or is it more likely that something else is involved? Something more destructive of his assessment of Russell?
The truth is that Einstein shared Russell's concern over the danger of a nuclear war. In fact it is possible that it was Einstein or someone of his stature who convinced Russell of the danger, for at one point immediately after World War II Russell apparently favored a preventive war against the USSR if the Soviet governnent rejected international inspection concerning atomic weapons.
. Einstein and Russell corresponded about the danger of atomic annihilation in another war and their last letters, exchanged on the eve of Einstein's death in 1955, show how close their views-were. (See Einstein on Peace, Simon Schuster, New York, 1960.) Einstein's last two signatures were appended, one to a letter to Bertrand Russell, the other to a public. statement drawn up by Russell appealing to scientists. to set. aside all their feelings about even such issues as "the titanic struggle between Communism and . anti-Communism" and to "consider yourselves only as members of a biological. species’ which has had a remarkable history, and those disappearance none of us can desire." -
If Levin haa compared Russell with Einstein, he would, in all consistency, have been compelled to mention their common viewpoint on the danger of any war in the world today becoming escalated into a nuclear war that could signify the end of mankind as a biological species. And if Levin did that, what would happen to his carefully constructed _ attack on the personality of Bertrand Russell? Everything would have become reversed. He would have had to recognize Russell as continuing logically in the pattern set by Einstein. Still more, he would’ have had to recognize that, wholly to his credit, Russell was carrying on despite his age and the handicaps that go with it such as lowered energy.
The truth is that anyone the least’ fair-minded must recognize that Russell at the age of 94 is at the height.of his moral stature. He is carrying on in complete -consistency with his participation in an inquiry into the atrocities: committed by the Belgian imperialists in the Congo and in complete consistency with the broad humane view that has always characterized mankind" s greatest figures.
But if Levin had been fair-minded how could he have carried out his ‘task of picturing Bertrand Russell as having "fallen into a state of such gullibility, lack of discrimination, twisted logic and rancorous hatred of the United States that he has turned into a full-time purveyor of political garbage indistinguishable from the routine _Products of the Soviet machine "?:
Two final points should be noted.
First, the chagrin and anger of the New York- Times over the fact that one of the best-known luminaries of the academic world should have come to put the interests of humanity above the interests of the bourgeois class in which he was born.
Secondly, the dismay felt by this mighty shaper of public opinion that the War Crimes Tribunal sponsored by Bertrand Russell will indeed be recognized by the majority of mankind and that its verdict will stand throughout the world as a definitive moral condemnation of. the dirty. colonial war being waged by: the Johnson administration in Vietnam.
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THE MAO