world capitalist leadership in disarray
_by PIERRE FRANK A succession of imperialist reverses and defeats The rout on the Indochinese peninsula is not an isolated blow received by American imperialism during the most recent period. U.S. imperialism might have thought that the heavy defeat it inflicted on the Chilean people in September 1973 had turned back the march of history and inaugurated a prolonged period of success at the expense of mass revolutionary struggles. Of course, the Chilean defeat has had grave consequences, but in spite of everything, these consequences have been essentially limited to Latin America. In less than a year the United States, and more generally capitalism itself, has suffered serious reverses in the rest of the world. Some of these have resulted from the decomposition of archaic or worm-eaten regimes, as in Ethiopia, or from errors committed by the State Department. For example, in extending support to the operation the Greek colonels conducted in Cyprus with the aim of eliminating Makarios, who was considered too neufralist, Washington had not counted on the Turkish intervention, the success of which provoked the fall of the Greek military dictatorship itself. Consequently, both Turkey and Greece, although divided on the question of Cyprus, have now taken some distance from the Atlantic alliance, thus weakening it. The inability to find a solution to the Palestinian question that would satisfy both Israel and the Arab regimes (which is what Washington needs in this part of the world, so decisive for its oil riches and its strategic position) has deflated Kissinger, this "Metternich" of the twentieth century, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! In combination, the Pales-
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BOURGEOIS LEADERSHIP CRISIS tinian and Cypriot affairs are considerably weakening NATO's power in the eastern Mediterranean. But the sharpest blows have been dealt to capitalism by the revolutionary upsurge of the masses, in Portugal in the first place. What began a year ago as a military coup aimed at putting an end to hope less colonial wars has opened the way for a formidable eruption of the masses onto the political scene. Within just a few months the fall of a dictatorship that had lasted nearly half a century has generated a powerful revolutionary upsurge of the masses, who are tending to escape the control of the traditional workers parties and to make serious inroads into capita list propertyThe upsurge of the Portuguese working masses is accelerating that of the Spanish masses, who are becoming increasingly audacious in their struggle against the Francoist dictatorship in its death agony. Portugal and Spain are near France and Italy, two countries that since May 1968 have been experiencing nearly uninterrupted movements in which all categories of the toiling population, most especially the youth, have been involved. Crisis, disarray of the leadership of the capitalist world The defeats of imperialism are, occurring in a capitalist world profoundly affected by recession, the first recession since the end of the second world war to develop simultaneously in the major capitalist countries. As is known, this economic crisis is combining inflation and unemployment. The rise of prices has recently slowed somewhat, but it has not stopped. Unemployment, on the other hand, is only growing. Just at the moment when it is being hit most strongly from the outside, American capitalism is exhibiting the greatest indecision in the realm of economic orientation. At the most, it plans on slowing down the spread of unemployment by increasing the budget deficit, which in 1975 could hit $60,000 million, $80,000 million, or even more. This would again stimulate inflation and threaten to make it difficult to control. But the most important and essential phenomenon in the present situation is the crisis of leadership of American imperialism, the disarray with which it is now afflicted, which inevitably must have international consequences. The rout in Indochina did not create this crisis and disarray, but it has brought them to light with exceptional and aggravated sharpness. In spite of its riches and still gigantic resources, Washington presents a picture rarely seen in history• 6
Nearly fifteen years ago the defeat at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba began to tarnish the American presidency, held at the time by Kennedy, the first to • commit the American army to Vietnam. Kennedy was succeeded by Johnson, who in 1965 under the lying pretext that there had been a North Vietnamese attack on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, began to extend U.S. military operations and was finally forced by the daily rising condemnation of the war in Vietnam to renounce seeking a second term. After that, Nixon, who had tried to impose his own "peace" on Vietnam by the merciless bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, went under amid the most sordid scandals. This whole heritage of crimes, worthy of the pen of a Shakespeare, was passed on to a Gerald Ford, who was brought to power in spite of his notorious intellectual incapacity, essentially because he was an "honest" man. But since he acceded to power only a few months ago, the list of crimes and scandals has only lengthened. And finally, there is the debacle in Indochina, which has offered the world the at once repugnant and grotesque televised spectacle of the power of the United States, of Ford's idiot laugh in response to a reporter's question about Vietnam, and of this monstrous assertion by a White House spokesman: "Vietnam is not our war. " As if the United States had not sent half a million soldiers there; as if the $5,000 million worth of military equipment captured by the PRG did not bear the trademark, "made in USA"! No resolute initiatives to attempt to overcome the economic crisis or to work out an alternative policy after so many reverses on the international field! That is the result of the decay of American hegemony, a decay that the regime in the United States had in no way anticipated. All the other bourgeois governments, including those that had a certain understanding of this retreat by the United States, are dismayed and uneasy about the disarray now being manifested in Washington. There are two reasons for this: First, in spite of its deterioration, U.S. hegemony remains very great in most areas; second, no alternative political leadership exists anywhere in the world. West Europe could perhaps have been able to play such a role had it been united. But it has only painfully managed to hold itself together economically; not a single step toward political unity has been taken. The fear the European and Japanese bourgeoisies are expressing about a possible return to isolationism by the United States is indicative of the inability of these bourgeoisies to replace
American leadership today. So long as the "independent nuclear striking force" remains only a vague
project for the future in West Europe, not to mention Japan, there is no salvation for Washington's competitors outside the American nuclear umbrella. Moreover, Washington is using the specter of isolafionism solely for purposes of blackmail, for the loss of West Europe or Japan would decisively modify the worldwide relationship of forces to the detriment of U.S. imperialism, an eventuality just as little acceptable to U.S. imperialism as nuclear exposure in face of the USSR is to the European imperialisms. The decline of American hegemony does not mean the disappearance of that hegemony, and Washington's present disarray does not at all mean that American imperialism can no longer be noxious and cruel or that it can only retreat from now on. Its resources are still enormous, and it is well known that a ferocious beast is especially dangerous when it is wounded and feels cornered. U.S. imperialism is temporarily paralyzed, but after some time it may once again throw its real forces into the balance. Even in Southeast Asia it can still commit new crimes, as is proven by its furnishing of asphyxiation" bombs to the Saigon puppets, who made use of these weapons. (See Le Monde, April 24, 1975.) In addition, it still commands allied armies (in Brazil, Iran, etc.) that are prepared to crush revolutionary movements. Throughout the world there are powder kegs where armed conflicts can break out; this is particularly the case in the Arab East, where the decisive interests of American imperialism could commit it to acfions whose repercussions could run out of control. Fundamental cause of the crisis of imperialist leadership Neverthe less, the fundamental cause of the paralysis with which the leadership of the capitalist world is now afflicted lies neither in the depth of the economic crisis, nor in any supposed loss of military superiority (which is far from proven), nor in the intellectual poverty of the leading personnel, nor, especially, in the alleged diplomatic successes of Moscow or Peking. Rather, it lies in the shift in the worldwide relationship of forces between the classes, especially in the major imperialist coun tries themselves. For the moment, this makes it politically and socially impossible for imperialism to take the initiative again. The cases of Cambodia, South Vietnam, and Thailand are most significant in this regard. Technically and militarily, Washington is no less ready to intensify its military intervention in this region than it was in 1961 or 1965. In fact, it is even more ready to do so. But what has changed in the meantime is that formidable opposition to any new massive military adventure abroad has arisen among the American masses. So long as the bourgeoisie is unable to alter this situation in the United States, the price it would have to pay for such an operation would be a political and social crisis of catastrophic proportions in its own country. The same is true of the sociopolitical situation in West Europe. Of course, the imperialist bourgeoisie could seek to take advantage of the economic crisis to try to break the organized strength and combativity of the workers by stabilizing massive unemploy ment for years and by systematically dismantling democratic and trade-union rights, above all the right to strike. But given the current relationship of forces, such initiatives would strongly risk provoking responses from the workers that would threaten the very survival of the capitalist system. At bottom, then, the paralysis of imperialist leadership is an expression not of the absence of bourgeois "solutions, "but rather of the impossibility of applying these solutions under the existing relationship of forces. The bourgeoisie has to try to alter this relationship of forces, to change the political atmosphere in the United States, and to inflict a serious defeat on the European and Japanese working class before it can try to take the initiative again. Silence of the Soviet and Chinese leaderships It is not possible to appease or disarm American imperialism by refusing to exploit the defeats it has suffered or even by exhibiting fear in face of those defeats, which is what the Soviet and Chinese leaders are presently doing. They are exercising rare discretion in regard to the American debacle in Vietnam; when they do open their mouths, it is only to speak of the defeat of the Thies and Lon Nols and not that of American imperialism. The Brezhnevs and Maos, separately and each in their own ways, are acting so as to allow the American imperialists to save face and, worse yet, to recover from the blows they have received and to strengthen themselves for the future. The aid of the Soviet and Chinese leaderships to the peoples of Indochina has been extremely limited in comparison with the human and material expenses of the United States in this same region of the world. On the other hand, the Soviet and Chinese leaders are expending enormous resources waging a frantic competition among themselves in several other areas of the world, particularly Africa and the Middle East. Moscow, which sent more arms to Egypt and Syria than to Vietnam, maintained Lon Nol's embassy in Moscow until the eve of his departure from
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Phnom Penh. During this same period, Peking made overtures to politicians as reactionary, as Franz Josef Strauss and extended no aid to the victims of Pinochet's repression. Although the interests of the socialist revolution, and consequently those of the workers states, require that considerable support be given to all revolutionary struggles, especially when they are targets of imperialist military aggression, the similar policies of Moscow and Peking are dictated by the interests of these bureaucracies, each of which defends its own "socialism in one country." For them, the defeats of American imperialism do not constitute victories, for they know that the victories of the Vietnamese and Indochinese revolutions, far from strengthening their domination of the masses in China and the Soviet Union, can on the contrary give these masses greater confidence for freeing themselves from the bureaucratic regime to which they are subject and for establishing socialist democracy in their countries. Exploit the defeat and disarray of imperialism During the great French revolution, the bourgeoisie of France considered the royal budget deficit as the "treasury of the nation. " It is in this spirit that the situation created by the defeat of imperialism in Vietnam and the resulting disarray in Washington must be approached. Any span of time that is not utilized now by the masses to wage intensified offensives against capitalism will instead be used by the imperialists to catch their breath and work out alternative policies against the masses. It is in the first place in Southeast Asia that the imperialist rout will be exploited: in Thailand, where eighteen months ago the masses overthrew a regime of terror and where guerrillas are struggling in the northern part of the country; in Burma and in the Philippines, where struggles will certainly experience a new expansion. In the Middle East, although the Kurds and the Palestinians have suffered serious defeats, a reawakening has recently occurred among the most proletarian, most concentrated, and numerically largest working class in the region: the Egyptian working class. This can give an impulse to the class struggle throughout the Arab world. In Africa, the disappearance of Portuguese colonialism has transformed the situation south of the Zambezi River. The overthrow of white domination is now on the agenda. It will be stopped neither by the maneuvers of the Vorster government, which is seeking to preserve this domination in South Africa by casting off Namibia and even Rhodesia, nor by
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- BOURGEOIS LEADERSHIP CRISIS the fundamenal cause of the paralysis... lies in the shift in the world relation- ship of forces between the classes
certain African leaders inclined to make an arrangement with Vorster. Even in Latin America, scene of the defeat of the Chilean revolution and the savage repression of the vanguard and the workers in Argentina, where the situation is characterized with only a few exceptions by a retreat of the masses, the rout of imperialism in Southeast Asia will inevitably have favorable consequences. Nowhere has capitalism been able to establish stability of any durability. In Brazil, the military dictatorship is beginning to show some weaknesses, even though it has benefited from exceptionally favorable economic conditions. In the United States itself, the rout in Southeast Asia cannot but have at least indirect repercussions on the development of the closs struggle. It is difficult to conceive of a repetition of the phenomena of the 1960s: the eruption of various movements (the antiwar movement, the Black movement, the women's movement) which did not deeply penetrate the working class and eventually declined, the coun try falling back into political apathy. Inflation, which has significantly reduced living standards, has not generated big reactions from the working class. It is only rather recently, in face of a recession that has provoked the greatest unemployment since the end of the war, that the toiling masses have begun once again to demonstrate, especially against unemployment itself. But West Europe will also certainly be affected by the rout of the bourgeoisie in Indochina. It was the defense of Vietnam, along with the fight of Che, that contributed most to mobilizing a vanguard in West Europe prior to May 1968 and during the mobilizations that followed. It is in Europe that the struggles of the workers are continuing to pose the question of power. Since the drafting of the document on "the building of revolutionary parties in capitalist Europe, " which was approved by the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International, the dictatorial regimes that still existed of the time have disappeared, with the exception of the Francoist regime in Spain; and it can be affirmed without fear of error that the days of that dictatorship are numbered.
The only important country in Europe where the workers upsurge has not found significant expression is West Germany, where the experiences of coalition government between the Social Democracy and the liberal bourgeois party threaten to lead the Christian Democracy to power (because of the very impotence of these coalition governments). But such a possibility could in turn contribute to radicalizing the working masses. It is not necessary to spend a lot of time here describing the policy of the traditional reformist leaderships, Social Democratic or Stalinist. The "social contract" in Great Britain, the "historic compromise" in Italy, and "advanced democracy" in France all have the avowed aim of reforming the capitalist system. The example of Portugal, where the crisis of the system is most advanced right now, is significant: The Socialist party, led by Mario Soares, openly appears as a more determined defender of the Atlantic alliance than do the officers of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA). The Portuguese CP gives the appearance of wanting to go beyond "bourgeois democracy"; but that is not really the policy being consciously followed by the Cunhal leadership. This leadership is making timely use of leftist phrases in order to gain control of the masses, who are not yet lined up and are listening with sympathy to the revolutionary organizations. At the same time, the CP is seeking to limit the struggles and is unconditionally serving the MFA, within which the same officers who today pronounce themse Ives for "socialism" threaten to fur to a "regime of order" tomorrow, The crisis of bourgeois leadership is being prolonged by the loss of authority of these old leaderships of the workers movement, especially in the eyes of the new generations, who more and more are not satisfied with simple economic demands and traditional forms of struggle. Forms of workers control, of bodies of self-organization of the masses, are beginning to emerge. The rout that imperialism has just suffered in Indochina will act as an enormous stimulus during the period of the great struggles that are now taking shape in Europe and can in their turn lead to great victories for the workers. April 30, 1975
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