revolutionary fighters in the world today as "bourgeois"?
For the Defense of the Cuban
Revolution -- Against the
"Newsletter" Fakers, Too
Banda makes fun of Livio Maitan's contention that Escalante and his group "went so far as to wish that the USSR would undertake economic measures which... would lead Castro to correct his attitude!"(5) "He actually dared to WISH [sic] dangerous things," exclaims Banda. What nonsense! And what counterrevolutionary nonsense, too!
Escalante happens to be a Cuban, not a Russian. In the same way, Ferencz Munich and Janos Kadar were Hungarians, and not Soviet citizens. Both could only "wish" and "ask" for the Soviet. bureaucracy to bring down the axe to destroy a living revolution. The real decisions remained in the hands of the Kremlin. But "wishes" that become translated into acts, into attempts to sway people, into theft and transmission of documents, into gathering information, are no will-o'-thewisp. They have a very concrete reality, a very tragic reality, as the Hungarian and Chinese workers learned to their misfortune. We can only hope that the Cuban working class does not have to learn the same lesson in a similar way.
Escalante knew that the overwhelning majority of the cadres and the masses of Cuban revolutionists favor the Castro line for Latin America. He also knew that the Kremlin and the Latin-American Communist parties oppose this line. So he went to the Russians and told them in effect: "Please apply some pressure. Reduce deliveries of oil and other necessities. Cut the wheat ration. Let them go hungry. Then it will be easier to convince then. We'll do the rest to reeducate them."
Can anyone conceive of anything baser than such actions against a revolu-
(5) The complete sentence is as follows: "The reference [to the economic blackmail applied by the Kremlin to China] is not at all to an abstract analogy -- everyone knows what pressures are constantly exerted on the Cuban leaders; and, according to Rail Castro's report, Escalante and his friends went so far as to wish that the USSR would undertake economic measures which, by having very grievous repercussions for the country, could lead Castro to correct his attitude!"
tionary party and a revolutionary people? Is it possible to find a clearer admission of political bankruptcy, of one's inability to convince his own party, than the need to stoop to such methods, to try to starve the workers of your own country into submitting to realignment with the Kremlin's foreign policies?
But Banda has nothing to say by way of condemning the rotten bureaucrats who resort to such methods. He reserves all his scorn for those who denounce such people for what they are -- despicable tools of the Kremlin against their own working class. And he goes to the length of lauding as "a section of the working class" that must be defended (!), these very people who are being used by the Kremlin against their own party and against their own state in blackmailing the working class by threatening it with hunger.
If Banda~Healy & Co. were staunch upholders of proletarian democracy at all times and places, no matter what the concrete situation might be, beginning, naturally with their own small movement, one could at least say that they are honest, if dangerously naive, defenders of abstract principles, who inadvertently stumbled into a complex situation where they lost their way.
However, their whole political evolution is such as to preclude such a limited verdict.
First of all, Healy is not a novice in politics. He was already around at the time of the Tito-Stalin conflict. Against Stalin's attempts to subvert the Yugoslavs, the Tito regime used much stronger methods than those applied by Castro. Many Communist party leaders lost their lives. Many others were imprisoned for long terms. Not once did Healy raise his voice in protest against the reprisals taken by Tito against Stalin's agents in Yugoslavia.
Furthermore Healy-Banda & Co., who are such staunch defenders of proletarian democracy in the case of others, resorted to physical violence and bourgeois justice to prevent supporters of the Fourth International from distributing a panphlet to members of their own party telling the truth about a fake "international conference" which their "International Committee" had organized.(6) Presumably it is perfectly proper to distribute Stalinist propaganda in Cuba, but strictly forbidden to distribute Trotskyist literature to members of the SLL!
(6) The pamphlet was Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International. It is available from Merit Publishers and Pioneer Book Service.
Last but not least, there is another Communist party in the world today racked by internal strife and differences compared to which the handling of Escalante appears like a model of drawingroom manners. We are referring to the conflict inside the Communist party of China. There a broad section of the party cadres have been accused of the worst crimes in the exact pattern of the Moscow trials. Liu Shao-chi, one of the main leaders of the CCP for forty years, has been accused of "plotting the restoration of capitalism since 1949." At least a dozen persons have been executed for alleged crimes, which no one can verify. Hundreds of party cadres have been imprisoned, dragged through the streets, humiliated and tortured, without being able to defend their ideas or even to state them. Large workingclass demonstrations have been broken up, sometimes even by means of direct intervention of the arny.
But of these events one can hardly find an echo in the pages of The Newsletter, still less the slightest condemnation. A person capable of devoting ten columns to defending the Moscow agent Escalante, claiming that he was tried for "ideas" and not "acts" committed, is incapable of writing a single line to defend Liu Shao-chi against slanderous charges of "crimes" which he never did commit, charges fabricated in the style which the GPU made famous in the Moscow trials. How can anyone have the slightest respect for fakers who simulate indignation about Cuba but who hold their tongues about what goes on in China because they happen to be courting a few pro-Peking trade unionists in Britain?
Our position remains a principled one. We stand for workers democracy everywhere in the world. We stand for workers democracy in our own organizations. We don't ask for rights which we are not ready to recognize as belonging to other proletarian tendencies.
If Escalante had been put on trial and condemmed only because of his views, we would consider his trial a political mistake and a disservice to the Cuban revolution. But notwithstanding confused and sonetimes mistaken formulations in his trial, we believe that he was condemned for treacherous acts against the vital interests of the Cuban masses and the revolution in Cuba and Latin America; i.e., for attempting to aid and abet the Kremlin in the use of economic blackmail to bring the Cuban revolution "into line."
Anyone who challenges the Escalante trial must answer two questions: Was Escalante guilty of such acts? If he was guilty, was it right to condem him for them? To raise a hue and cry about the Escalante trial without answering these questions is moral fakery.
Our duty is to defend the Cuban revolution whatever the shortcomings in workers democracy may be in that country. Precisely because of the worsening economic situation faced by the Cuban revolution, we have the double duty of defending it against the open blockade maintained by U.S. imperialism and the more "subtle," more hypocritical, but no less damaging, slow economic strangulation
imposed by the Kremlin.
And when fakers of the Newsletter
type whitewash the Soviet bureaucracy's
counterrevolutionary pressure against
Cuba, when these fakers whitewash and
defend the Kremlin's agents and tools,
then we have the revolutionary duty to
defend the Cuban revolution against
them, too!
TEXT OF VIETNAMESE ANSWER TO JOHNSON
{The following is the text of a statement issued by the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam taking cognizance of President Johnson's announcement that he had decided to issue orders "limiting" the bombing of North Vietnam. The statement was broadcast in English over Hanoi radio's international service April 3.]
* * *
For over ten years now, the U.S. imperialists have been blatantly violating the 1954 Geneva agreements on Vietnam, strenuously carrying out a policy of intervention and aggression and waging war against the Vietnamese people. Their design is to prolong the partition of Vietnam and to turn South Vietnam into a neocolony and a military base of the United States.
The people of South Vietnan, united as one man, have risen up in a resolute struggle to defend their fundamental national rights.
Since 1965, in an attempt to retrieve its defeats and to get out of the South Vietnam quagmire, the United States has massively brought in U.S. expeditionary troops to wage a "local war" in the South. At the same time it has conducted a war of destruction against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It has thus committed an extremely barbarous crime of aggression against the entire Vietnamese people.
The heroic South Vietnamese people, under the talented leadership of the National Liberation Front, have fought with wonderful gallantry, successively defeated all schemes and tricks, however wicked and perfidious, of the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys, and recorded very great victories.
The generalized offensive and uprising of the South Vietnam armed forces and people early this year have inflicted a fatal blow on the U.S. aggressors and their lackeys. Nothing can save from collapse the puppet administration and army, props of U.S. neocolonialism in South
Vietnam. Nothing can save the U.S. aggres-
sors from a total defeat.
The valiant North Vietnamese peo-
ple, firmly resolved to thwart the U.S.
imperialists' war of destruction and to
defend their sovereignty and territory,
have meted out well-deserved punishment
to the U.S. aggressors.
The Vietnamese people's fight for
independence and freedom has entered a
new period. The U.S. defeat is already
evident. The United States must bring
its aggressive war in Vietnam to an end,
withdraw all U.S. and satellite troops
from South Vietnam and let the Vietnamese
people settle the internal affairs of
Vietnam themselves.
The Vietnamese people's stand for
peace and independence, as expressed in
the four points of the Government of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the
political program of the South Vietnam
National Liberation Front, embodies the
fundamental principles and main provi-
sions of the 1954 Geneva Agreements on
Vietnam. It is the correct basis for a
political settlement of the Vietnam prob-
len.
The Government of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam has stated on many
occasions: Talks between the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam and the United States
will begin as soon as the United States
has proved that it has really stopped un-
conditionally the bombing raids and all
other acts of war against the Democratic
Republic of Vietnan.
This just stand and goodwill atti-
tude of the Government of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam has elicited warm ap-
proval and support from broad sections of
public opinion in the world. Peace- and
justice-loving peoples over the five con-
tinents demand that the United States
meet the reasonable and sensible require-
ment of the Government of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, stop definitely and
unconditionally the bombing raids and all
other acts of war against the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, and put an end to
its aggression against Vietnan.
Recently, in the face of an extremely critical situation with no way out in South Vietnam and the heavy setbacks in the war of destruction in North Vietnam, in the face of great difficulties -~- political, social and financial -- due to the aggressive war in Vietnam and in the face of ever stronger pressure from world public opinion and from progressive American opinion, President Johnson has had to announce the "limited bombing" of North Vietnan.
This is a defeat, and at the same time a perfidious trick of the U.S. Government to appease public opinion. In fact the U.S. Government keeps sending more U.S. troops to South Vietnam, makes every effort to strengthen the puppet army and asks for additional appropriations to pursue the aggressive war in Vietnam. In fact the United States continues to bomb an important part of the territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, from the seventeenth to the twentieth parallel, and refuses to stop unconditionally the bombing raids and all other acts of war on the whole territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
It is obvious that the U.S. Government has not seriously and fully met the legitimate demands of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, of progressive American opinion and of world
opinion.
However, for its part, the Govern-
ment of the Democratic Republic of Viet-
nam declares its readiness to appoint its
representative to contact the U.S. repre-
sentative with a view to determining with
the American side the unconditional ces-
sation of the U.S. bombing raids and all
other acts of war against the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam so that talks may
start.
So long as the United States pur-
sues its aggression against Vietnam, the
Vietnamese people, responding to Presi-
dent Ho Chi Minh's sacred appeal, will
resolutely fight on till final victory
to defend the North, liberate the South,
proceed toward peaceful reunification of
the fatherland and thus contribute to the
defense of peace in Indochina, Southeast
Asia and the world.
The Government of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam earnestly calls on
the Governments and peoples of the fra-
ternal Socialist countries, peace-loving
countries in the world and the progres-
sive American people to extend still
stronger support to the just struggle and
correct stand of the Vietnamese people
and the Government of the Democratic Re-
public of Vietnan.