Johnson's critics in Congress and other high places are becoming increasingly alarmed at his recklessness and angered by his arrogant disregard for their counsels of caution. On the day that the president announced his choice of Clifford, Senator George D. Aiken, the conservative Vermont Republican who is the second ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee, delivered one of the strongest denunciations of the official policy yet heard on the Senate floor.
He accused the administration of resorting to "military strength" in Vietnam to cover up its "political ineptitude." According to him, the problem there involved an internal conflict over the direction of nationalist aspirations rather than a centrally directed international communist conspiracy. "To make out that the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong even today are integral parts of a unified monolithic world communism is simply selfdestructive fantasy," he declared.
Aiken said that "the Administration has had to create a monolithic enemy to
justify its refusal to admit past mis-
takes. By clinging to its inventions
the Administration is simply duping
Americans at home and undermining cred-
ibility abroad in the sincerity of our
purposes and the efficiency of our di-
plomacy."
In fact, he said, the administra-
tion has "so trifled with words" that it
has managed “to endanger the peace of
the world and to embitter our society at
home in a manner not seen in a century."
Aiken's speech was commended by Democrat-
ic Senator Fulbright, chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee, and Repub-
lican Senator Cooper of Kentucky.
On January 22 Senate Democratic
leader Mike Mansfield warned that "the
logical consequence of greater American
involvement is still greater American
involvement. At some point in this pro-
cess, if it continues, the escalator may
well go out of control. The war could
then spread throughout the Asian main-
land and push headlong toward a catas-—
trophic world conflict."
Johnson does not show the least
inclination to conciliate the growing
array of his opponents. He made that
plain in the key passages on Vietnam in
his "State of the Union" address to Con-
gress. His attitude on continued U.S.
intervention in the civil war in Vietnam
remains substantially the same as Gold-
water's.
In a January 22 television inter-
view Rostow set forth some of the strate-
gic considerations behind the present
policy. He stated that the United States
had drawn a firm line in Korea, Laos,
Vietnam and Germany beyond which it would
not permit any "Communist aggression" and
was fully prepared to uphold that boundary
by military force.
Moscow had already learned in the
Berlin and Cuban missile confrontations
that Washington's will was unshakable,
he said. Now Peking and Hanoi (and by
inference Havana) had to be taught that
subversive guerrilla movements aiming at
the overthrow of Western-backed regimes
could not succeed. U.S. forces were in
Vietnam to protect American interests in
that area and these would be defended
come what may, Rostow emphasized.
That the administration is animated
by such blatant imperialist motives is
confirmed by Senator Eugene McCarthy, who
in somewhat subdued fashion, is challeng-
ing the president for the 1968 Democratic
nomination. He wrote in the February 6
issue of Look: "My decision [to run] was strengthened by indications that the Administration has no plans for Vietnam other than continued escalation and intensification. It seems to have set no limits on the price it will pay for military victory."
McCarthy complained about the seerecy cloaking the designs of the administration. "As a senator and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I find it increasingly difficult to gain information about the conduct of the war, let alone exercise the constitutional responsibility of influencing it. To raise questions in public is to bring down showers of ridicule and invective. The Secretary of State refuses to come before the committee to give public testimony." -75-
The public at large is being kept even more in the dark than the senators who are delegated to advise on foreign policy. It is being systematically misled about the real state of affairs in Vietnan. The official optimists present a picture of steady improvement in American military and political prospects when in actuality these are deteriorating from one month to the next.
The American people strongly suspect they are being hoodwinked and lied to. Johnson alluded to this uneasiness when he observed in his annual message that "there is in the land a certain restlessness, a questioning." Although he tried to minimize its depth and extent, there unmistakably exists a tremendous groundswell of disenchantment with his administration that is going to find expression in new antiwar actions and ghetto revolts during 1968 and at the polls next November.
BUT WHY CLIFFORD?
It has been explained by those who make a living reporting the inside dope on Washington politics that Johnson decided to remove Robert S. McNamara from his cabinet because the man had grown soft and was no longer suitable for the immensely important post of secretary of defense, his mind having become affected by doubts about the wisdom of continuing to escalate the war in Vietnan.
According to this account, Mc- Namara was moving toward a "dove" position. This was surprising news to the ornithologists who had listed him up to that time among the bolder variety of hawks. However, in light of the news, they conceded that perhaps from the standpoint of the Pentagon, McNamara might have become a bit dovish.
McNamara went down with tributes from all sides that could hardly have been more laudatory if he were already laid out in his coffin. The man with the computer brain was credited with having reorganized the defense establishment from top to bottom, with having put this colossal, sprawling, worldwide enterprise -- America's biggest business -- on an efficient, cost-accounting basis.
Then came the surprise. McNamara was not replaced by a military strategist -- nor by another executive type. Johnson chose, instead, Clark M. Clifford -- a lawyer.
Why would Johnson want a lawyer at the head of the war department? It is true that his escalation of U.S. intervention in Vietnam is completely illegal. The U.S. constitution specifically places
NEW IMAGE
NEW IMAGE
the war-making powers with Congress, and Congress has not declared war. Moreover, in his conduct of the war, Johnson has violated international law and custom in countiess ways. The International War Crimes Tribunal has found his administration guilty of deeds as unspeakable as those committed by the German imperialist government in World War II, for which leading Nazis were hanged by the victorious Allied powers.
The truth is that Johnson already has his legal flank well covered. Congress, by passing the Tonkin Gulf resolution, gave Johnson power of attorney to act in Vietnam. The congressmen knew what they were doing when they put their names to this document, since nearly all of them, both Republicans and Democrats, are lawyers well acquainted with fine print. In addition, as reserves on the legal front, Johnson can count on the entire Supreme Court. These nine men, of course, are all lawyers, the most distinguished and powerful in the land.
So why Clark Clifford?
To unravel the mystery, it is necessary to know what Johnson considers to be the most important and pressing problem facing the United States at the moment. The January 1 New York Times indicated Johnson's thinking on this through a dispatch from Saigon. An unnamed official of the puppet government told the Times correspondent:
"It was in a briefing the other day, and the man briefing us came out and said it: 'An election year is about to begin. And the people we work for are in the business of re-electing President Johnson in November.'"
The acuteness of the problem arises from the fact that Johnson's popularity, with ups and downs, has steadily declined so that at points it has appeared that any Republican, even Nixon, could beat hin.
Johnson himself has pictured the situation as comparable to the one faced by Truman in 1948. An analyst as authoritative as Walter Lippmann has disputed this, saying that Johnson's situation comes closer to the one faced by Herbert Hoover in 1932.
Johnson has dismissed with contempt both Lippmann and his conclusions, insisting that the real parallel is with Truman. He has already sought to find a solution along the lines which worked out so well for the man who beat Dewey and then took the country into the Korean war.
The press has described Johnson's efforts to change his image in some detail. Thus the public has been kept well -76—
informed on how the president has let his hair turn silver, or had it tinted silver; how he has let it grow long, even putting a seductive wave in locks that are not yet flowing but are commendably close to the style made popular by Everett Dirksen, the Republican party charmer.
The extreme nature of the latter bit of image reconstruction can be judged by the fact that in his younger days Johnson would probably have been sooner caught dead than with his hair marcelled. But anything for the American people! If they want a touch of the hippie in their president, Johnson is ready to oblige.
This is exactly where Clark Clifford comes in. A book about the 1948 election, now in the press, describes the key role played by Clifford, who was called in by Truman for some badly needed advice.
Clifford, who is a realist in these matters, saw that the situation was very bad, if not desperate. He drew up a fortypage memorandum which is cited in the book and which is now being quoted in the press.
"The Democratic party," Clifford told Truman, "is an unhappy alliance of Southern conservatives, Western progressives, and Big City labor....The success or failure of the Democratic leadership can be precisely measured by its ability to lead enough members of these misfit groups to the polls."
"The blunt fact is," this lawyer told his client, "that the party has been so long in power that it is fat, tired, and even a little senile."
He then outlined how Truman should go about his campaign. The key thing was to change his image. He must put on an act, playing the role of "a man of the people trying to do his best." He should, moreover, "take the offensive."
Noting all this, James Reston, the Washington correspondent of the New York Times, points out why Johnson has now turned to the same lawyer for advice on the difficult problem facing him in 1968: ",..it is not surprising that Clark Clifford, the architect of Truman's spectacular victory of 1948, should suddenly appear on the Washington scene."
"The only surprising thing," continues Reston, "is that he did not take over as chairman of the Democratic Committee, which is where Mr. Johnson really needs a secretary of defense. Nevertheless, the appointment is logical and in some ways even welcome, for Mr. Clifford is not only a brilliant lawyer, but a good public speaker with a sense of humor and a sense of history."
James A. Wechsler of the liberal
New York Post has suggested a further consideration in Johnson's calculations. Wechsler, in his colum of January 22, quotes a "shrewd Johnsonologist" as follows:
"If Eugene McCarthy suddenly got moving or Robert Kennedy decided to get into the fight himself, the cold fact is that Johnson can manipulate the war to keep his critics on the defensive.
"If the pressure gets strong enough, he can somehow get himself to the peace table -- and leak word that his bargaining power was being undermined by his domestic opponents. And if the talks collapse, he can blame them for what happened."
Conversely, if the war is widened, Johnson "just keeps running against Ho Chi Minh right through to November."
Wechsler then declares, "Clifford is not only remembered as an architect of the Truman 'miracle' of 1948. He is an instinctive political man. In accepting the assignment and renouncing all his private ties, he said deftly that hence-~ forth his ‘only client would be the United States.' This was a euphemism; his primary client will be the President, and a large part of his mission is a repeti-
FOUR H-BOMBS IN GREENLAND AND
It was a record week for the Johnson administration.
On January 21, a B-52 crashed in Greenland, near Thule, with four hydre-sen bombs on board. Some of the bombs probably sank in about 800 feet of water. Radioactivity was later discovered in the snow, however, indicating that at least one of the bombs had broken its casing.
The accident came in the wake of immense publicity about Johnson's success in negotiating a nuclear nonproliferation treaty with Kosygin-Brezhnev. The sudden proliferation of radioactivity in Greenland cast a revealing light on the true nature of the treaty. While other countries are to be denied bombs, the U.S. retains the "right" to fly them continuously over the territories of all countries too weak to resist.
In Copenhagen, pickets immediately responded. They carried such placards as "Stop U.S.A.'s Death Flying" and "Atom Weapons Are Now on Danish Soil."
While the White House was trying to brazen it out, as in the previous fifteen accidents involving nuclear weapons, the North Koreans on Janu 23 seized a spy ship caught red-handed in "electronic"
-77~-
tion of the Democratic victory two de-
cades ago.
"The commitment involves no per-
sonal conflict of interest; unlike Mc-
Namara, Clifford has suffered no tortures
of doubt about our role in Vietnam and,
if anything has echoed the Achesonian
‘hard-line’ view as unofficial counsellor.
He is no doubt persuaded that Mr. John-
son's renomination and reelection are
crucial to the continuity of our course
in Southeast Asia. But his selection also
presents the prospect that there will be
more direct 'manipulation' of the con-
flict -- both military and diplomatic."
In short, Johnson has decided that
the electorate in 1968 will act somewhat
like a jury. As a war criminal, he needs
genuinely competent legal advice. Clif-
ford is the best he can get. To make it
possible for this Machiavelli to operate
with maximum effectiveness in shaping the
appeals to the jury, he must be in posi-
tion to pass judgment on every key move
in the most sensitive area affecting John-
son's case. The indicated thing was to
have him serve as Johnson's first lieu~
tenant in conducting the war in Vietnan.
For the sake of efficiency, Mc-
Namara had to make room for a different
expert.
ONE SPY SHIP IN NORTH KOREA
activities near Wonsan.
All of Washington at once set up
a howl about "aggression" on the part of
North Korea. They dared to lay hands on
our spy ship!
An authority on codes, David Kahn,
former president of the American Crypto-
gram Association and the New York Cipher
Society, explained what the Pueblo was
up to. The crew was trying "to pick up
as much radio and radar emissions as pos-
sible." The ship operated less than
twenty-five miles from the coast "for
the obvious reason that weaker signals
fade out, so they wanted to get in as
close as they could to get as sig-
nals as possible and as loud as possible."
This accounts for the radio silence ob-
served from time to time by the spy ship
as it cut close to shore.
The North Korean government issued
three specific warnings -- on January 6,
11 and 12 ~-- on U.S. spy boat activities.
These were disregarded by the Pentagon
and the CIA. Thus Johnson finds himself
in a position like Eisenhower's when the
famous U-2 spy plane was shot down deep
inside the Soviet Union in 1960. Will he
admit the truth like Eisenhower or in-
sist on standing on the lies?
A NEW CURRENT IN THE DANISH LEFT
(The elections to the Folketing in Denmark January 23 registered a shift to the right. The leftist parties, headed by the Social Democrats, lost their parliamentary majority, and Jens Otto Krag handed in his resignation as prime minister. The shift is shown by the following table: 1966 1968 Social Democrats 69 63 People's Socialist party 20 11 Radical Liberals 13 28 Agrarian Liberals 35 35 Liberal Center 4 fe) Conservatives 34 38
[In addition to the 175 seats listed above, the Faroe Islands and Greenland are each entitled to two deputies, making 179 in all.
(Various smaller parties ran candidates but did not succeed in winning any seats. The Communist party vote was 1% as compared with 0.8% in 1966. The newly formed Left Socialist party won 2%.
{The background to the election, as well as an explanation of the trends in Danish politics today, is provided by the following article, written on the eve of the election by a Danish correspondent of World Outlook. ]
Copenhagen
"The People's Socialist party has been split. The vote last night showed that in less than a decade the PSP has come under bourgeois influence to an extent reached by the Social Democrats only over the course of two or three decades.
"It also showed that the revival of healthy organizational forms in political work, which we expected from the PSP, has not been forthcoming and that the party has accepted the autocratic form of leadership which exists in the old parties.
“And finally, it showed that the left wing, which stayed in the party to guarantee such a revival, would no longer be tolerated."
These are the opening words of a statement issued December 19, 1967, to announce the formation of a new socialist party, the fourth workers' party on the Danish political scene. (The others are the Social Democratic, the Communist, and the People's Socialist parties.
The new party was founded by roughly half of the delegates to an extraordinary congress of the PSP. This move came in the wake of a decisive vote on December 18 that split the party irreconcilably down the middle. It was the culmination of a bitter struggle by the left wing of the PSP against the arrayed forces of the PSP right wing, the Social Democratic party as a whole, and the trade-union bureaucrats.
The ramifications of this struggle included, among other things, the collapse of the Social Democratic government on December 16 and the scheduling of an election January 23.
For a better understanding of the situation, a look at the history of the People's Socialist party is necessary.
The PSP was founded in 1958, thereby becoming one of the first "new left" currents in Europe to begin building its own political party. And it succeeded, in fact, in breaking the monopoly over working-class politics held by the Social Democrats and Communists.
The PSP example served as an inspiration for left socialist currents in other Scandinavian countries -- for the founding of the People's Socialist party in Norway; the de-Stalinization of the Swedish CP; and the development of a left wing in the Finnish Social Democracy.
In the first election in which the PSP took part, in 1960, it won all six of the previous Communist seats in parliament, and took another five away from the Social Democrats. This rapid success was attributable, in part, to the nature of the new party's leadership, which included wellknown politicians and trade-union leaders -- among them, Aksel Larsen, former head of the Danish CP, an excellent speaker and experienced debater. Nearly all the leading cadres were old Communists.
It is here also that the reason for the party's rapid degeneration is to be found. The CP in Denmark, like many other Communist parties, found itself isolated from the vanguard of the workers as a result of its Stalinist policies.
To break out of this isolation was the chief aim of Larsen and company. Unlike the young members of the PSP, he and most of the old Stalinists never understood that the root of the problem was Stalinism. Instead of settling accounts with this reactionary theory, they formulated a "new" political line for the PSP, which included hostility toward the workers' states and confinement to parliamentarianism at home.
The "parliamentary road to socialism" in reality became the road of transformation into a new Social Democratic party. As for the inner life of the PSP, the old Stalinists remained true to their traditions, using any and every means against any opposition.
During the first eight years of the PSP's existence, its narrow parliamentary orientation did not cancel out its positive features in the eyes of its supporters. The Social Democrats who dominated the government had no interest in the new party as far as parliamentary deals and maneuvers were concerned. They considered the PSP the same old Communist serpent, even though it had sloughed its skin. The Social Democrats preferred to base their governments on coalitions with bourgeois parties.
The result was a long row of neocapitalist ("welfare state") compromises, which placed on the backs of the workers the burden of keeping capitalist society functioning. Since the PSP did not participate in these compromises, it gained increasing sympathy from the workers.
In the general elections in Novenber 1966 the PSP won twenty seats, doubling the number won in 1964. In many working-class districts in Copenhagen it became the biggest party. The background to the voting at that time was a measure carried by the governing coalition a few months before, which "solved" the housing problem by a formidable rise in rents.
The PSP campaigned with the promise to repeal this measure and to fight against the imposition of a new ten percent sales tax on all goods, including food. They called on the electorate to put a "workers majority" in parliament.
When the vote was counted, it showed that the combined strength of the PSP and the Social Democrats would give them a one-seat majority. At a moment's notice the entire attitude of the Social Democrats toward the PSP changed. The day after the election the leaders of the two parties met to discuss forming a coalition government.
Such a coalition was blocked, however, by the rank and file of the PSP, who for the first time threatened an open revolt. Instead, the two parties worked out an agreement to collaborate in support of certain measures. These included a "tax reform," the first step of which would be to impose the very sales tax that the PSP had campaigned to prevent. ~
The cause of this about-face lay in the opportunism of the PSP leadership and in its senselessly exaggerated election propaganda. It had portrayed the establishment of a “workers majority" as
~79-
a veritable coming of the millenniun.
The Social Democrats refused to
form a “workers majority" unless the
PSP agreed to their conditions. If the
PSP would not comply, the blame would
rest on PSP shoulders for not establish-
ing the millennium they had promised.
In Aksel Larsen the Social Demo-
crats found a willing instrument to carry
this message back to the PSP. However,
the left wing in the PSP failed to see
all the blessings of such a "workers
majority" government. The forces opposing
Larsen's line grew rapidly.
In April 1967 the left wing suc-
ceeded in having an extraordinary congress
of the party called. At the congress the
left wing dominated: it had an overwheln-
ing majority of seats on the executive
committee and held seven out of eight
seats on the secretariat. The eighth seat
was reserved for Larsen as head of the
party.
From this point on, the party in
fact had two leaderships: the executive
committee, dominated by the left wing;
and the parliamentary group, headed by
Larsen, who founded his own organ and
"party office" and claimed the right to
call a new extraordinary congress.
In the very bitter struggle that
now began, all means were used. Seconded
by sensational articles in the bourgeois
press, the old Stalinists charged the new
leadership with being under "foreign in-
fluence." A bourgeois member of parlia-
ment even demanded that the prime minister
give an account "of the influence of the
Fourth International on the policy of the
Danish government"!
The new executive committee of the
PSP immediately took measures to combat
this right-wing drive. They maintained
that the duty of the PSP could never be
to guarantee to Social Democrats the op-
portunity to carry out their antisocial-
ist policies. On the contrary, the task
of the “workers majority" should be to
carry out policies in the interests of
the workers and to prepare the road to
socialism through "anticapitalist struc-
tural reforms" -- a term ascribed to the
Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel.
If necessary, said the left, the
PSP should vote against the Social Demo-
cratic government, even if that meant its
fall.
It was not long before the new
strategy was put to a decisive test. In
connection with the devaluation of the
Danish currency, the krone, the govern-
ment proposed a law according to which
certain automatic cost-of-living wage in-
creases would be canceled.
This meant that the workers would again have to pay the main cost of averting an economic crisis. Furthermore, it meant interference in the contracts, and hence in the independence, of the trade unions beyond anything yet attempted by a bourgeois government in Denmark
The union bureaucrats gave their sanction to the proposal immediately, but the bourgeois parties, who saw a chance to topple the Social Democratic government, campaigned against it, craftily assuming the role of defenders of the workers rights.
The fate of the bill, as well as of the government, turned on the votes of the PSP.
The executive committee of the party instructed the parliamentary group to vote against the proposal. It worked out an alternate proposal and asked for negotiations with the Social Democrats. For one whole night, a 25-year-old student, not himself a member of parliament, negotiated with the skilled bureaucrats of the Social Democracy. But the Social Democrats were not interested in an agreement. They wanted to see the PSP destroyed.
Thus, the executive committee had no choice but to instruct the parliamentary group to vote against the bill. Fourteen members of the group, led by Larsen, refused to follow these instructions. But Kai Moltke and five younger members conplied.
Before the entire nation, which viewed the debate over television, the six left-wing spokesmen explained, one by one, why they could not support the reactionary policies of the Social Democrats and had to vote in a way that would mean the fall of the government. Their objective reasoning as well as their brave and honest attitude won respect in the population to an extent that could not have been foreseen.
Two days after this decisive vote in parliament came the extraordinary congress of the PSP. The report of the executive committee was rejected by a fourvote majority, and the left wing immedi-
FAMINE REPORTED
A famine in Indonesia on the island of Sumatra, said to have already claimed forty-eight lives, was reported in an Agence France-Presse dispatch of January 24.
The famine victims were among immigrants who had arrived from East Java and Bali, where the price of rice has -80-
ately moved ahead to form its own party. Cooperation between the two wings of the PSP was no longer possible.
How should the Left Socialist party be characterized, and what are its chances of becoming a force in the workers movement?
Like the other Danish workers parties, the LSP lacks a revolutionary program; it has for the moment retained the basic PSP program, which, however, is an honest attempt to apply Marxist methods to Danish realities.
The history of the LSP, however -the way it came into being -- constitutes a basis in experience that can lead to revolutionary conclusions. The party has directly encountered the true nature of the "neocapitalist" economy, the role of the state in relation to the economy, the role of parliament, and that of the Social Democrats and the union bureaucrats.
In the campaign for the January 23 elections, the Left Socialists have stressed the important role of extraparliamentary forces in the fight for socialism. They have also called for solidarity with the national liberation movements in the "third world." There is no doubt that the new program being worked out will base itself on the struggle for anticapitalist structural reforms.
Taught by bitter experience, the LSP has dropped the old forms of leadership. It practices collective leadership, without the office of chairman or other autocratic symbols.
The party begins with an already existing national base. In nearly half of the old PSP local branches the leadership went over to the Left Socialists, followed by half of the PSP town councillors, the whole youth and student organization and, most important, the majority of union leaders formerly in the PSP.
The fact that the Danish left is forced, for the second time in ten years, to build a new party has not diminished the enthusiasm with which, above all, the youth have gone to work.
IN INDONESIA
tripled and signs of desperation among the people are evident. Suicide is said to be mounting among the poor. Many parents no longer able to feed their children are trying to give them away.
The army is reported keeping close watch to prevent the appearance of slogans calling for cheaper rice.
K. S. KAROL'S FOUR DAYS WITH FIDEL
An extensive interview with Fidel Castro, granted to the internationally known journalist and political analyst K.S.Karol, appeared in the February issue of Evergreen, the literary review published in New York.
This is the interview that Karol obtained at the time of the conference of the Organization of Latin-American Solidarity held in Havana last July and August. It is published under the title, "Four Days With Fidel."
The two met at two o'clock in the morning in the newly built village of Los Arados at the extreme southern tip of Cuba. Together with a group of Cuban army officers, Castro and Karol spent two days on a tour by jeep through the Sierra Cristal, arriving at last at an experimental agricultural project at Pinares de Mayari.
Castro talked about Cuba's economy, stressing projects to increase the volume of free goods and services in order to eliminate money as a regulator of social relations.
"This isn't a poor country," Cas-— tro said. "It has a number of natural resources (precious metals and iron in particular) and is an extremely fertile land for a country with a relatively small population. What made Cuba an underdeveloped country was imperialist exploitation. More than half of our land was not cultivated, and we had no clear idea of its resources."
As one example, Castro pointed to the increases in milk production:
"We have always had plenty of cattle in Cuba, but our herds were never good dairy cattle and we used to import milk. Even now it remains rationed. Then, two years ago, we bought some bulls reputed for their dairy qualities; we've studied various methods for improving our pastures, we've created almost 2,000 insemination centers....By 1970 we'll be producing 20,000,000 liters of milk per month, and our maximum domestic needs will be only 2,000,000 liters. Free milk is not a pipe dream."
At Pinares de Mayari, Karol was shown a vast agricultural project: 25,000 hectares of citrus fruits, truck gardens, and precious wood on land which had lain fallow before the revolution. It is worked by 7,000 young people, all volunteers.
Karol questioned Castro about the still significant number of small private farms.
"You asked me why we helped the
small landowners," Castro replied, "giv-
ing them credit and furnishing them with
fertilizer and free installations: they
represent the private sector resisting
control, whose existence is, to all in-
tents and purposes, diametrically opposed
to our socialist plans. My answer is: pri-
vate property will disappear in Cuba the
day when the socialist sector will have a
productive capacity sufficient to make
family businesses obsolete."
"Why haven't you tried to group
these peasants into cooperatives?" Karol
asked.
Fidel answered, "What, after all,
is a cooperative? It is a certain number
of individual farms brought together, and
if one or two families are hostile to us,
that's enough to influence the entire
group. The cooperative does not represent
a socialist form of property; it even
threatens to create another form of pri-
vate property on the land, and consequent-
ly impede real socialism later on. It is
not my impression that this problem has
been solved in the other socialist coun-
tries."
Castro said that there are still
250,000 peasants who own their own land
in Cuba.
Karol asked Castro to comment on
the charge that Cuba's economy is "subsi-
dized" by the Soviet Union, citing esti-
mates of $600,000,000 per year that the
Soviet Union spends on Cuba.
"Our economic relations with the
socialist countries are quite clear," Cas-
tro said. "The Soviet Union and other so-
cialist countries have made a political
choice by establishing economic relations
with us at a time when the United States
was trying to eliminate us. This decision
enabled us to reorient our foreign trade
and thwart our enemies' economic maneu-
vers. Russia also supplies us with arms,
because not only must we cope with an eco-
nomic war but also with sabotage and the
constant threat of invasion by the United
States....
"But, aside from the arms we re-
ceive free of charge, we pay for all the
merchandise we import from socialist coun-
tries. No one gives us any gifts or 'sub-
sidizes' us....When we owe money to France
or England, no one thinks that they are
‘subsidizing' our socialism. They profit
by their trade with us, as does the social-
ist bloc."
During the last lap of the trip
through the Sierra Cristal, the revolu-
tionary leader and the reporter discussed Cuba's position in the world revolutionary struggle:
While very concerned with the development of Cuba's socialist econony, Castro declared, “We're not crazy enough to want to try and build here at home a ‘national communism' which would work out a modus vivendi with the United States and, little by little, become reintegrated into the American economy. Such an attitude would be both immoral and unrealistic....
"The American leaders....will agree to coexist with us if we will issue an invitation to the rest of Latin America to accept the status quo.
"This kind of ‘peaceful coexistence' is of no interest whatever to us."
The last meeting between Karol and Castro took place just after the end of the OLAS conference, August 10.
Karol concludes on the basis of this discussion that Castro does not view the OLAS as a new international. This flows, he says, from Castro's statement to him that "The Communist parties have their place in this movement..." and Fidel's insistence that guerrillas cannot be led from outside their country. "It is the adherence of each [member organization of OLAS] to internationalist principles," Karol says, "which will guarantee the cohesion of this new organization, with the task of the permanent committee being simply to coordinate mutual aid among then."
He quotes Castro as saying of the dispute with the Kremlin-oriented Communist parties, "No one has a monopoly on revolution or revolutionary theory. We make no claims to playing the role of guide, nor do we think that our party should serve as a model. We believe in the virtues of discussion and constant reexamination of certain truths which for thirty-five years have been considered as
self-evident and which, in fact, are not
at all."
Later the discussion shifted to
the war in the Mideast. Castro attributed
Egypt's defeat to its army's "lack of rev-
olutionary spirit."
“A truly revolutionary force," he
said, “can sometimes retreat in the face
of an enemy who is better equipped, but
it is always capable of continuing the
fight under another form and of wresting
final victory."
He said that even if Egypt had
been entirely overrun, if it had the nec-
essary cohesion and revolutionary deter-
mination it could have carried on guer-
rilla warfare and eventually beaten the
Israeli forces.
Karol said that Castro was "pro-
foundly shocked by certain Arab propagan-
da" on the eve of the war: "True revolu-
tionaries," Castro declared, "never
threaten an entire country with extermina-
tion. This propaganda unwittingly helped
the Israeli leaders mobilize their peo-
ple's patriotism which they then used in
a war of conquest, carried out under the
protection of Yankee imperialism. Our con-
demnation of Israel is unequivocal, but
we do not dispute its right to exist."
Karol says that he was able to ver-
ify that Cuba is a country of armed peo-
ple, ready to defend themselves if the
United States should attempt to invade.
Castro told him that "Our only
guarantee in the face of aggression is
our capacity to defend ourselves and our
determination to fight to the last man.
In my speech in Santiago I said that, if
ever there were an American invasion of
Cuba, there would never be a cease-fire
here, and whoever might employ these
words, no matter what his position or
past attainments, would be considered a
traitor. The Americans know I mean what I
say."
MOSCOW REACHES ACCORD WITH BOGOTA
Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Colombia were restored January 19 after several months of very peculiar secret negotiations.
The preliminaries were kept so confidential that even the subject of the press conference announcing the move was not disclosed in advance. While diplomatic relations are not wrong, the secret diplomacy involved raises doubts about what the Soviet bureaucrats may have agreed to in possible under-the-table clauses.
Only last summer the Latin American
Solidarity Organization objected to "so-
cialist" countries giving aid to oligar-
chic regimes that are fighting guerrillas.
This resolution was mainly provoked by the
visit of a Soviet mission to Colombia to
discuss technical aid to that oligarchy.
Colombian President Lleras Restrepo
recently stated that the “only obstacle"
to establishing relations with "socialist"
countries would be "their support of sub-
versive movements that seek to change our
institutions."
NEW WAVE OF REPRESSION IN PERU
(The following is a translation of a letter sent from Lima by the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights.]
*x* * *
A new wave of repression is sweeping Peru. In recent days ferocious persecution has been unleashed against militants of the left. Hundreds have been detained. Hundreds of outrages have been perpetrated. These include holding incommunicado the families of defendants alleged to be implicated in a bank robbery in Lima which the authorities say was committed by “extremist commandos" and which was utilized as the pretext for unleashing the present wave of persecution.
The reactionary press has likewise opened a scandalous anti-Communist publicity campaign as a means of covering up and camouflaging the current infractions and violations of the law.
In Trujillo, the chairman of the Federacién de Estudiantes del Pert, Ruffo Carcamo, together with many student leaders, was seized. Student meetings have been broken up by the police with force, resulting in many injured, even shotguns being fired at the demonstrators. Several students were each blinded in one eye.
This is the atmosphere in which it was announced that the trial had been set in January for Ricardo Gadea, Erik Arata and Dante de la Cruz, guerrilla fighters and leaders of the 1965 insurrectional movement, who have been held in prison for two years, and Enrique Amaya Quintana and Oscar Alvarado Araijo, who are named as “fugitives from justice." The prosecution is demanding sentences ranging from four to eight years in prison.
The trial, however, is a travesty stained with blood. Enrique Amaya was arrested last April by army forces. He then "disappeared" while being held. His captors have refused up to now to respond to the inquiries and denunciations made by our CODDEH [Comité de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos -- Committee for the Defense of Human Rights] and other organizations and figures in Peru and the
rest of the world. After refusing to give
any information whatsoever on the circun-
stances surrounding the disappearance of
the political leader and guerrilla fight-
er, Enrique Amaya Quintana, the Peruvian
military now seek to serve him with a
five-year prison sentence as a "fugitive
from justice."
In addition, it is clear that the
minimum legal rights are not being ob-
served in the trial against Gadea and his
comrades. It is possible that the sen-
tences demanded against them [which are
unexpectedly mild in view of the possible
death sentence provided by new legisla-
tion] are only a smoke screen designed to
lull public sympathy for the defendants,
and that in the trial itself the sentences
will be arbitrarily increased to accord
with the repressive goals of the military
judges.
Justifiably alarmed, the CODDEH
appeals for solidarity from all progres-
sive individuals and organizations
throughout the world in the form of pro-
tests against the travesty of justice
represented by the trial. We must demand
that the Peruvian government and the mil-
itary, who presume to sit as judges,
reply to our requests for official in-
formation on the death of Enrique Amaya,
and that minimum legal norms be observed
in the trial of Ricardo Gadea, Erik Arata,
Dante de la Cruz and others. Let us show
them that they cannot act without being
called to account and that the world is
watching them. This is the kind of im-
mediate aid needed by the people of Peru
in their struggle to uphold human rights
and to put an end to the continual re-
pressive aggression.
Comité de Defensa
de los Derechos Humanos
P.S. Cables and letters should be sent
to the president of the republic, Fernando
Belaande, and to the chairman of the Con-
sejo de Guerra de la II Zona Judicial de
Policia, Lima, Peru. Copies should be sent
to Ricardo Gadea's defense counsel, Dr.
Alfredo Battilana, Av. Nicolas de Piérola
966, oficina 215, Lima, Peru.
U.S.