Martin Luther King has been prominently identified with the movement against racial segregation for thirteen years. He was first propelled into the national limelight by his participation in the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, once the capital of the Confederacy. This city-wide action, which came a year after the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, marked the beginning of the civil-rights movement. Through this suc-— cessful 48l-day boycott, the young Baptist preacher first popularized the pacifist teachings of Gandhi and Thoreau as the way to equality and emancipation.
When his own home was bombed, he counseled the angry neighbors, who rallied to his side, to use the "weapon of love" rather than hate.
This remained the center of his philosophy and program to the very end. Late in 1963, at a meeting of poor blacks in Gadsden, Alabama, who had been brutally beaten by local police, King urged: "Some of you have knives, and I ask you to put: them up. Some of you have arms, and I ask you to put them up. Get the weapon of nonviolence, the breastplate of righteousness, the armor of truth, and just keep marching."
King kept marching in this spirit. In 1960, after the first sit-ins in the South, he launched the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], based on Negro ministers, business and professional men. By its emphasis upon mass mobilizations, this middle-class civil-rights movement represented an advance over the previous tactics of the principal Negro organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People {NAACP], which had largely limited itself to legal and legislative measures.
The SCLC organized campaigns designed to put pressure upon local, state
and federal authorities to secure civil
and legal rights for oppressed Negroes.
In 1961 it helped initiate the freedom
rides to integrate Southern buses. The
next year it conducted a struggle to de-
segregate public facilities in Albany,
Georgia, which failed. The high points
of King's influence were reached in
August, 1963, when he was the star in
the assembly of 250,000 people at the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and in
March, 1965, when he led 25,000 marchers
from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in a
drive for voter registration and deseg-
regation.
These actions succeeded in focus-
ing national and international attention
on the racial conflict in the U.S., im-
pelled the Kennedy and Johnson adminis-
trations to pay lip service to the griev-
ances of the black population, and forced
Congress to pass several civil-rights
bills. But they did nothing to relieve or
remove the basic problems agitating the
black community: police brutality, unenm-
ployment, inadequate education and hous-
ing, and other built-in evils of the
racist capitalist system.
The flagrant failure to achieve
the main objectives of King's civil-
rights crusades after a decade of strug-
gle from 1955 to 1965, and the paltry re-
sults obtained from his liberalistic pol-
icy of pleading with capitalist politi-
cians for improvements, ushered in a new
stage of the struggle. The outstanding
representative of this more militant and
radical phase was Malcolm X, who rose to
challenge Dr. King's Christian pacifist
principles and dependence upon the powers-
that-be before he, too, was gunned down
by assassins in February, 1965.
King and his associates aspired to
eliminate racial inequalities through in-
tegration into official white society by
peaceful, legal and electoral means. They
brought the presence and pressure of the
masses to bear upon the authorities in
limited ways, hoping to make them more
responsive to the just claims of the
black minority. But, whenever the masses
threatened to move too aggressively
against the racist system and its offi-
cial upholders, King hastened to curb and
call off their activities.
The Democratic administrations of-
ten turned to the compliant King and his
organization to hold the aroused black
communities in check. Thus, after the
1964 outbursts in Harlem and other cities
of the North with large black populations,
King signed a statement calling for "a
broad curtailment if not total moratorium
on mass demonstrations until after the Presidential elections."
This moderate course won him the Nobel Peace Prize. At the time of his murder, he still had the largest personal following of any Negro leader, especially among middle-class blacks and whites. However, he had lost his hold upon the vanguard of the black liberation struggle and, above all, upon the youthful rebels who were in its front ranks.
His loss of influence over the militant youth was most dramatically evidenced in the evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNICK was established in 1960 under his sponsorship as the student counterpart of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. By 1967 most of SNICK's leadership and members had repudiated King's civil disobedience methods, turned away from his pacifism, and adopted Malcolm X's ideas. They became forceful advocates of the "black power" and black nationalism which King opposed.
King was fully aware that he had passed the peak of his effectiveness. He sought to regain his authority and attune himself to the more militant moods of the urban masses by radicalizing his positions to a certain extent in two directions. In 1966 he became the first moderate civil-rights leader to oppose the Vietnam war, which he characterized as "one of the most unjust wars ever fought in the history of the world."
At the same time he intensified his campaigns to improve slum conditions in Chicago, Cleveland and elsewhere in the North but with no success. He was killed while preparing for a Poor People's Crusade, scheduled to begin in Washington on April 22.
His organization was planning to bring 3,000 Negroes from the South to camp out in the nation's capital as a means of pressure on Congress to provide decent jobs and a living income for the black poor.
King's ambivalent role as a leader of the black community was highlighted by the events preceding his assassination. He had gone to Memphis to assist the organization of Negro ministers named COME (Community on the Move for Equality] which had been formed to support the three-months-long fight of 1,300 sanitation workers for union recognition. The entire black community was actively behind the strike, which was likewise endorsed by the local AFL-CIO.
On March 28 King led a massive solidarity march of 15,000, including thousands of black students, down the Memphis streets. Hundreds of demonstrators were injured and one black youth was killed when the Memphis cops assaulted the marchers with tear gas, clubs and chemical sprays. The National Guard was sent in to intimidate the strikers and their supporters. King had returned to head a second protest march when he was shot down.
While King's ministerial associates were calling upon their followers to rededicate themselves to "nonviolence as a way of life," the reaction of most black Americans was best articulated by Floyd McKissick, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE]. He said that King's death by violence meant the end of the nonviolent philosophy. "Dr. Martin Luther King was the last prince of nonviolence...nonviolence is a dead philosophy and it was not the black people that killed it. It was the white people that killed nonviolence and white racists at that."
This was the prevailing sentiment among the black community and its most forceful spokesmen. In Washington, Stokely Carmichael is reported to have told about 400 black militants to "go home and get your guns" for self-protection. After the news of King's assassination spread, there were scattered outbursts of outrage and protests in black communities in all sections of the country.
The real attitude of the ruling class was made plain, not by the condolences of its representatives, but by the actions of its officials. The Tennessee government sent 4,000 troops into Memphis an hour after the shooting to keep the black people subdued. The federal government prepared to move elite army troops swiftly against any troubled areas. The 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg,. North Carolina, opened its emergency operation headquarters; while David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, General Harold K. Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, and General Counsel of the Army Robert Jordan, went to Army Operations Center at the Pentagon.
The full returns of this bloody deed have yet to be registered. The death of Dr. King removes from the arena of action the most reliable personality that officials could turn to in times of extreme tension between the infuriated black masses and the authorities. The two assassinations, first of the militant and uncompromising Malcolm X, and now of the moderate and conciliatory Martin Luther King, have dealt mortal blows to the philosophy of nonviolence.
Millions more Afro-Americans are now convinced that it is the black skin and subject status, rather than the special ideas and programs of their leaders, that matter most. They see that the U.S. is ruled by a gang of killers, who
operate with equal ruthlessness abroad and at home, that they can rely only upon themselves for security, and that they
must be armed for self-protection against
official and unofficial genocidal as-
saults.
UPRISINGS ROCK CITIES IN U.S.
By Joseph Hansen
Within hours of the slaying of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thursday, April 4, Afro-Americans in the ghettos of more than forty cities in the U.S. were in the streets. To most of them the assassination of the leading Negro advocate of nonviolence was clinching proof that white America had declared war to the finish against the blacks.
Chicago was swept by fires declared to be the worst since 1871. In Washington, to find a parallel for the columns of smoke rising over the dome of Congress, commentators had to go back to the war of 1812. Violence flared in doz-— ens of cities as police, the National Guard and troops moved in with armor and tear gas like "pacification" forces in a colonial conflict. The April 7 New York Times pictured the scenes as “warnings of catastrophic civil war at home."
In truth, the social and political crisis facing America's capitalist ruling class was the most acute since the eve of the Civil War a century ago.
The entire communications media rallied to the emergency with singular unanimity. The television companies in particular pushed aside their regular programs to saturate the channels with material aimed at assuaging the feelings of the black community, keeping them pinned to their television screens and subjected to Martin Iuther King's image and voice on the single theme of nonviolence.
The tapes showing scenes in King's life were carefully selected and edited to emphasize nothing but his Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence. Little was shown of the marches he organized, the demonstrations he headed, the masses he led into the streets.
No shots were shown even of his last action in Memphis in behalf of the striking sanitation workers, the action that was disrupted by the Memphis police, who shot one of the demonstrators, thus inciting the atmosphere of violence which King's assassin only carried to its logical conclusion.
Similarly by-passed on television were King's denunciations of the failure of the powers-that—be to act, his warnings of what could happen if the lawmakers persisted in their course of dis-
regarding the basic causes of the mount-
ing unrest and rebellion in the ghettos.
Likewise disregarded was the last
phase of Martin Luther King's public ac-
tivity in which he joined the opposition
to the war in Vietnam and sought to help
link up the antiwar and civil-rights
movements. No television channel, for in-
stance,ran tapes of Martin Luther King
addressing what he said was the largest
audience he ever spoke before -- the huge
throng of 400,000 persons who partici-
pated in the April 15, 1967, antiwar demn-
onstration in New York.
In addition, a striking aspect of
all this propaganda was the prominence
given to Negroes like Roy Wilkins of the
National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People and Whitney M. Young Jr.
of the National Urban League, long notori-
ous as house servants of the white capi-
talist power structure. More militant
spokesmen of the black people were given
minimum time, and the best-known advo-
cates of black power, like Stokely Car-
michael and H. Rap Brown, were virtually
excluded.
But anger was running deep in the
ghettos. John C. Waugh reported from Los
Angeles in the April 6 Christian Science
Monitor:
"Many blacks here, in the shadow
of Watts, where the first violent out-
break of the black revolution erupted
three summers ago, think the King murder
opens a whole new and troubled era in
American race relations.
"'Now the black man really feels
threatened,' one Negro here said. ‘If a
man like King can't survive, then where
is there room for peaceful protest?'"
Three correspondents reported from
New York in the same issue of the Monitor:
“But a local preacher, the Rev.
Jesse Truvillion, seemed closer to the
general Harlem reaction with his word:
'rage.'
"tand that,' he said, ‘is prob-
ably the mildest feeling you'll find in
Harlem. Who could expect less? We've en-
dorsed hatred in this country for so long
that we get to expecti something like
that [the assassination]. '
"The Rev. Mr. Truvillion, asked what he might say to his congregation next Sunday, thought for a moment, then said: 'I would not advise them to engage in violence. However, I don't think one man did the shooting. There are a few million people in this country whose hatred pulled that trigger.
"'We have warned for years that the white man must learn to love the Negro before the Negro learned to hate like the white man does. Now it's too late, brother. We've learned to hate.
"tT cannot climb into my pulpit on Sunday and in good conscience preach the love of Calvary.'"
Again in the same issue of the Monitor, Howard Janes reported from Louisville, Kentucky, on a conversation with Samuel Hawkins, a devoted follower of Martin Luther King, who spent much of last summer in jail in Louisville because of his participation in civil-rights marches.
At a Baptist church, Samuel Hawkins announced the news about Dr. King. "Then he slowly turned to me and said in measured words: ‘That's it. That's it. Nonviolence died with Dr. King.'
"As his anger obviously rose, he turned away from me and said to no one in particular, ‘That's white America.'
"Then he turned back to me [a white reporter].
"'Mhat's what happens to the decent guys. He didn't say nothing about black power. He didn't advocate violence. He preached love, man. And they killed him. Carmichael was right. He was right.'"
Howard James reports another conversation, this time in the home of the Rev. A.D.King, Martin Luther King's brother:
"Marshall Jackson, a Negro college student who accompanied us, stood on the front lawn and said words that seemed to reflect the mood of all young Negroes that surrounded me:
"'l feel anger all over me. I feel hate swelling up in me. If a [white man] came down the street now I think I could kill him in revenge.'
"But even as he said it, it became clear he was lashing out at prejudice, hatred, and violence -- not really at white men.
"For he said these words to me, and I am white. Because I stood beside him there on the Rev. Mr. King's lawn, he forgot about my color."
This should be sufficient to indicate how closely in tune Stokely Carmichael was with the prevailing mood in the ghettos when he spoke at a news conference in Washington April 5. Here is the account as published in the New York Post the following day:
"Black Power spokesman Stokely Carmichael says 'white America is incapable of dealing with the [race] problem' and warned of increasing violence in the streets.
"He spoke first at a news conference in the headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later at a Howard University rally.
"Speaking softly at his news conference, Carmichael told the reporters:
""*When white America killed Dr. King last night she declared war on us... We have to retaliate for the deaths of our leaders. The executions of those deaths will not be in the courtrooms. They're going to be in the streets of the United States of America...'
"He went on to say: 'The kind of man that killed Dr. King last night made it a whole lot easier for a whole lot of black people today. There no longer needs to be intellectual discussions. Black people know that they have to get guns. White America will live to cry since she killed Dr. King last night. It would have been better if she had killed Rap Brown and/or Stokely Carmichael. But when she killed Dr. King, she lost it.'
“Carmichael termed King's murder America's 'biggest mistake’ and added: ‘When white America killed Dr. King, she opened the eyes of every black man in this country...He was the one man in our race who was trying to reach our people to have love, compassion and mercy for white people. When white America killed Dr. King last night, she declared war on us...
The shift in mood in the ghettos, precipitated by the assassination of Dr. King, constitutes a change in the American political scene of the greatest portent. Its first consequence was a nationwide explosion of anger. The fires that lit up the night in such metropolitan centers as Chicago will die down, but the feeling of hate, of intolerable suffocation and provocation, will endure.
This now becomes a new force which every political tendency in America will have to take into account from here on out. It derives not from a passing incident but from the superexploitation, the poverty, the segregation, indignities and violence that constitute life in America for some twenty million black people.
How will the capitalist ruling class seek to deal with this force?
The administration's immediate reaction gave a good indication. What up to that moment had been a crisis of the first order in foreign policy -- the war in Vietnam -- was pushed aside. Johnson cancelled his projected trip to Hawaii where he was to consider Hanoi's response to his reduction of the bombing of North Vietnam. The day after the assassination of King, President Johnson declared a state of "domestic violence and disorder" in the nation's capital. By Sunday the local police force of 2,800 men had been supplemented by 12,500 troops; the city resenbled a battlefield, and the White House, surrounded by machine guns and battleready troops, reminded onlookers of the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the "Tet Offensive."
The line behind which the ruling class appeared to be uniting was expressed in an editorial in the April 7 New York Times: "There can be no hesitation, no timidity in protecting endangered cities. Burners and looters must be repressed by a massive show of police force and arrests."
In Chicago, Mayor Richard J. Daley, an influential boss of the Johnson mechine, spoke even more clearly. With 7,500 national guardsmen and 5,000 federal troops in the streets and with casualties already at eleven dead and more than 200 wounded, the mayor, speaking over television April 6, demanded "sterner methods" and indicated that it was time to begin "shooting looters."
Johnson made the dramatic move of
calling a special joint session of Con-
gress. There were indications that he
might make a demagogic ploy of insisting
on passage of new civil-rights legisla-
tion, but Congress was described as ina
"“packlash" mood.
The legislators have in fact been
rescinding concessions already granted,
particularly in medical aid and social
security. They have been allocating funds
instead to the “war against crime in the
streets," their way of describing the war
they have declared against the dwellers
in America's ghettos.
Thus the Senate Judiciary Commit~
tee recently approved an administration
bill granting $100,000,000 the first year
to help local authorities in their "war
against crime in the streets"; while the
House approved a cut of $100,000,000 in
emergency appropriations for two poverty
programs to help youth in the slums.
Even if Johnson makes a dramatic
grandstand play at the projected joint
session of Congress, it remains to be
seen whether this body, which is complete-
ly monopolized by the capitalist class,
will suddenly change its course and offer
a few concessions to go along with the
harsh repressive measures that have al-
ready been decided on.
As for the Afro-Americans, in-
creasing numbers of them will now undoubt-
edly come to the conclusion that the great
need now is effective political organiza-~
tion. The explosive force of the ghettos
needs a revolutionary program, competent
leadership and disciplined action to give
it irresistible power.
JOHNSON'S BID TO "NEGOTIATE" THE WAR IN VIETNAM
The world is still speculating over the meaning of Johnson's withdrawal March 31 as a presidential candidate and his ordering a "limitation" on the bombing of North Vietnam.
The official interpretation is that Johnson put the interests of peace above his personal ‘political ambitions and decided to remove himself as a center of division and controversy, the better to "unite America" and to "convince Hanoi" to come to the negotiations table.
Several more plausible explanations are circulating in political circles in the U.S. One is that Johnson became convinced by the latest polls and by the results of the primary elections in New Hampshire that he could not win the nomination in the Democratic party and that even if he did win he might well be defeated by even a Nixon in the Novenber elections.
The timing of his announcement was
related to the primary elections in Wis-
consin on April 2 where he was absolutely
certain to be defeated, and even more de-
cisively than in New Hampshire. To save
face, he had to withdraw before April 2.
Johnson's "limitation" of bombing
forays in North Vietnam is accounted for
in parallel fashion as recognition of the
staggering defeat dealt to the U.S. ag-
gression by the "Tet Offensive." The vic-
tory won by the Vietnamese freedom fight-
ers showed how illusory Johnson's pursuit
of a military victory had become. The
fresh impetus this gave to the antiwar
movement in the United States deepened
the fears of that sector of the ruling
class that has long doubted the wisdom
of Johnson's tactical course, won new ad-
herents among the ruling class to this
view and thus increased the pressure on
Johnson to such an extent that he had no
choice but to concede.
It is a curious fact that not even this explanation, so damaging to the standing of the president since it amounts to accusing him of truly colossal errors, is wholly convincing to wide sec-— tors of the population. After the first reaction of relief and even gratitude, many asked themselves, "What does this slick, conniving, lying capitalist machine politician have up his sleeve?"
Obviously Johnson's move had one immediate benefit for his potential candidacy. It gave him a plausible excuse to avoid campaigning, to evade facing the hostile crowds that have made it inpossible for him "to carry his case to the people," as the capitalist politicians put it.
Another immediate benefit was to clean up his image a bit and give him more of the appearance of the lofty president standing above sordid politics which he has sought to achieve since the beginning of the year.
Johnson's "peace offensive" ties in with such Machiavellian calculations. If "Hanoi" turned down his seemingly generous offer to negotiate "peace," he could in the months before the Democratic convention seek to convince the American people that the onus for continuation of the war rested solely with "the enemy" and that, like it or not, no choice was left open but to further escalate the war -- and on a qualitatively higher level.
The natural concomitant of this would be to draft a man who had gone to such extreme lengths to show his eagerness to end the war -- a man who at the same time had also shown his capacity to conduct a war in the style of a Churchill or Roosevelt.
That there might be a grain of truth in this account is indicated by the reports from Saigon that both the U.S. command and their puppet forces confidently expected that the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam would reject Johnson's "offer" out of hand. The first reaction in these circles, when news came that the Vietnamese had tentatively agreed to open talks, was deep dismay and even panic.
The corrupt layers around the Thieu-Ky government immediately began looking for escape hatches. Beverly Deepe reported in the April 5 Christian Science Monitor:
"Some are trying to buy Chinese Nationalist passports, selling under the table for 300,000 piastres -- $3,000, a sizable sum of money in Vietnam. Others are attempting to buy Lao passports, less expensive, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000, depending on one's connections....Other
Vietnamese are arranging to be smuggled
to Cambodia, and there try to buy Cambo-
dian passports, reliable sources report."
Whether Johnson counted on his "of-
fer" being rejected out of hand is, of
course, uncertain. That fact that his
order to “limit" the bombing nevertheless
permitted bombers to continue their for-
ays to within a few miles of Hanoi is
highly suspicious. The continuation of
bombing on this scale may have been in-
tended as a provocation, the idea being
that the continued raids would cause the
Ho Chi Minh government to spurn the "of-
fer" as fraudulent on the face of it.
In the resulting confusion and dis-
appointment among the American people,
Johnson might have figured he could still
Pin the onus on "the enemy."
This scheme, if that was what John-
son had in mind, was spoiled by Hanoi's
countermove.
At the time of the "Tet Offensive,"
the Johnson administration discounted the
Vietnamese victories as "only" psycholog-
ical or political. If we take Johnson's
March 31 speech at face value, then it
must be said that the White House propa-
ganda of last February was extremely
light-minded. Among the political gains
to be chalked up to the Vietnamese thrust
was nothing less than Johnson's own can-
didacy for reelection.
Direct credit for Johnson's forced
withdrawal goes, of course, to the develop-
ment of the antiwar movement in the United
States with its huge demonstrations and
its increasingly militant tone.
But the Vietnamese victory in Feb-
ruary served to precipitate things. It
opened a new stage of struggle in Vietnam
with immense repercussions not only in
Vietnam but in the entire world, the
United States in the first place for once.
The swift intensification of the
black liberation struggle in the U.S. is
part of the new pattern.
Another sector that may soon be
heard from is the half million U.S. troops
sent to Vietnam. They are in strategic
position to cut through any fraudulent
"peace" maneuvers emanating in Washington
and play a decisive role in bringing the
dirty war in Vietnam to an actual end.
A popular slogan in the antiwar
movement in the U.S. is, "Bring them back
alive -- NOW!"
Judging from various reports, the
GI's may soon be of a mood to reword
that slogan: "We're coming home -- NOW!
And don't let Johnson or anyone else try
to stop us!"
THE DOLLAR CRISIS
By Ernest Mandel
Will the dollar follow the pound? Many capitalists both big and little asked themselves this question worriedly in the aftermath of the English devaluation. A couple of weeks ago this worry turned into panic. As a result there was a run on gold, and the central banks of the main capitalist countries had to do something. They instituted a dual "market" in gold -- one market for central banks, in which gold continues to be valued at $35 an ounce; and a private or free market in which its price is to be established by the law of supply and demand.
The apparent parallel between the pound and the dollar should not deceive us, however --— the position of American capitalism is fundamentally different from that of British capitalism.
In Great Britain, the pound sterling's international function as a reserve currency was in contradiction to the country's economic decline. Although British industry no longer plays anything but a secondary role in the world econony, the British bourgeoisie stubbornly insists on hanging onto “the good old pound." Nonetheless, sooner or later the pound will cease to serve as a reserve currency, and the sooner this readjustment is made, the better it will be for the British workers. (Their livelihood has just been brutally cut by $1,200,000,000 to comply with the demands of the international bankers.)
In the United States, on the other hand, the dollar's international role matches the economic power of American imperialism. If for two decades central banks, private banks, and capitalist enterprises have competed for dollars, it is because these dollars represented and still represent a means of purchasing a practically unlimited range of commodities -- both consumer goods and machinery. The dollar's function as a reserve currency corresponds to the balance-of-trade deficits which most capitalist countries have with the United States.
If tomorrow the United States had to practice a rigorous deflationary policy, or had to devalue the dollar, this would again strike panic in the other capitalist countries. They would risk losses in three respects. First their sales to the United States would drop and as a result the economic situation of their countries would take a turn for the worse. Secondly, American exports to Europe and Japan would rise and competition would become increasingly stiffer. Finally, the threat of a new dollar shortage would arise and this would precipitate endless difficulties in trade and finance.
What is the source of the sudden
lack of confidence in the dollar? It cer-
tainly does not lie in American private
capital exports because these are in bal-
ance with the repatriation of capital
dividends to the United States.
"The-Americans-who-are—buying-'our'-
factories-with-the-paper-—dollars-they-are-
sending-us" is a Gaullist myth. In reality
the American monopolies are buying up the
European factories with the capital which
the European banks advance as loans. And
these banks loan them this capital because
the American monopolies are richer, more
solid, make higher profits, and offer more
security than the European monopolies. What
must be challenged is the whole logic of
the capitalist system, not Wall Street's
diabolical use of the dollar.
The lack of confidence in the dol-
lar has been created by the persistent
deficit in the American balance of payments
which arises from U.S. government expendi-
tures abroad. Hidden behind this discreet
rubric are two dramatic operations: financ-
ing the Vietnam war; granting military aid
to reactionary and dictatorial regimes in
many countries (from the military dictator-
ship in Indonesia to General Mobutu's mili-
tary dictatorship in the Congo-Kinshasa and
-- Macpherson in the Toronto Star
Credibility Gap
bao) the regime in Seoul to the one in La Paz).
It is these dollars that account for the constant flow of gold from the United States; it is these dollars that created the recent panic. One need only pose this problem to recognize the impasse in which the international bourgeoisie finds itself.
For, these dollars are not being spent for narrowly "American" aims; they are being spent to maintain the whole world imperialist system, which is more and more shaken. The real answer to the gold crisis would be to say: “Americans, dissolve your Atlantic pact, SEATO, and your assistance pact with Japan! Liquidate your overseas bases. Bring your soldiers home."
But the international bourgeoisie does not dare give this answer; first of all, because it would risk rapidly provoking that worldwide dollar shortage which I have just spoken about; and, secondly, because it would risk leaving world capitalism defenseless against the rising tide of anticapitalist forces throughout the world.
In urging Washington to reestablish its balance of payments, not by eliminating its unproductive foreign spending but by balancing the budget in the United States, the international bourgeoisie would like to force the American workers to pay the full cost of the Vietnam war. Washington, however, is not particularly entranced by this idea because the opposition to the Vietnam war is already very great. It would like to prevent this opposition from spreading too much among the working class. So, the American answer was, "Pay part yourselves." And the agreement on a dual market in gold does, in fact, imply that the European capitalists will pay part of the costs of this dirty war.
The dual market is only a temporary measure. The free market is precipitating a rise in the price of gold. It is hoped that this increase will bring gold back on the market held in the form of savings (more than a billion dollars a year over the last years). In this way the price would become stabilized and another panic would be avoided.
But two conditions are necessary for this system to function perfectly. First of all, it is necessary that the two markets be completely separate, that is, that no central bank buy gold at $35 an ounce in Washington for resale later at $40 an ounce (or tomorrow at still higher prices) on the free market. But for many small poor countries the temptation is sure to prove too much. Thus there will be lapses.
Let us not forget either that American monopolies control some of these countries. For these monopolies, patriotism does not exist, no profits are too small to be overlooked: and they can make sure and substantial profits by trafficking in gold.
Secondly those holding gold must be sure that the American government will not, despite everything, jump the price to #50 or even more. As long as they retain this hope, gold will not be released. And as long as it is not released the price on the free market will threat-— en to rise apace -- that is, specylation will continue and the pressure for devaluing the dollar will grow.
The Americans can "break" the price on the free market by throwing on it a great quantity of gold, that is, by officially demonetizing gold. But they hesitate to take such a step in the absence of complete solidarity among the central banks of all the imperialist powers. Such solidarity is chimerical, however, in the capitalist system where competition reigns. In these conditions, the plans to create a world currency detached from gold have slight chance of success. This means that the monetary crisis will persist, or more precisely that it will last as long as the capitalist system endures.
BOURGUIBA