CANADIAN CP ON OLAS
(The Communist party of Canada reacted to the revolutionary orientation of the Havana conference of the Organization of Latin-American Solidarity (OLAS) exactly as was expected. It lined up solidly with the right-—wing opposition.
[For example, as reported in the August issue of Combat, the French language publication of the Canadian CP, General Secretary William Kashtan, in a speech in Québec, took up the cudgels against Che Guevara. The latter's message calling for more Vietnams, said Kashtan, "is a point of view also advanced by the Chinese. For them, peaceful coexistence must be abolished. If you examine Guevara's point of view you find implicitly a lack of confidence in the socialist countries and in the international revolutionary movement. Why didn't he demand instead, three or four Cubas?"
{But that was precisely what Guevara was calling for, three or four more Cubas. He had the good sense and the good taste, however, to point to the area of the world where the freedom fighters are actively engaged in combat with the imperialist aggressors. If Kashtan's argument were taken at face value, it would have to be concluded that he is against the struggle being waged by one Vietnam and therefore against any struggles like it, including more Cubas.
[The antirevolutionary view of the Communist party of Canada was expressed even more blatantly and crudely, if that is possible, by Catherine Vance in an article in the September issue of Combat entitled "OLAS, HELAS?" (OLAS, Alas?). This remarkable polemical effort deserves a place in the record. World Outlook has therefore made the following translation. ]
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It seems that the Havana conference of the American [sic] Organization of Solidarity ended with a deplorable emphasis on the differences within the socialist and national liberation movements.
The unpublished resolutions which were designed to denounce the Soviet Union and the Communist parties and which, it seems, follow the line of Guevara in calling for “more Vietnams" and a continental guerrilla organization in all of South America are contrary to revolution~ ary experience and place in danger the parties and peoples of South America.
The composition of the delegations at the conference soon led to a hardening of positions which brought about the final resolution. Three of the main Communist parties were not represented; those of Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. The Communist party of Chile, through its representative, reaffirmed the Marxist position which recognizes that the struggle of the proletariat, while being socialist in content, is national in form -- each working class must get rid of its own bourgeoisie.
The representative of the CP of Chile called for a struggle on national fronts and placed the accent on the autonomy of the different parties. He spoke for preparing to utilize all forms of struggle demanded by specific conditions and preparing the people for struggle; in addition, he supported electoral, legal and illegal actions, according to circumstances as well as the need for unity in nonviolent mass action and for armed struggle where the situation requires it. The delegate of the Communist party of Chile, moreover, warned against the glorification of guerrilla war as such, as a tactic, which, if it is utilized without the support of the masses will necessarily lead to disaster. The Communist party of Chile struggled also for recognition of the need for flexibility and the desirability of consultation among the national liberation movements and the parties of Latin America in order to overcome the differences and to facilitate the required common action.
It was against this position that the "ultraleft" spokesmen of a large number of guerrilla groups coming from countries represented there ranged thenselves. A large part of the time of the conference was utilized in an attempt to find a compromise that would not be a complete rupture between the Communist party of Cuba -- which supported Guevara's appeal in favor of a continental organization of guerrilla war -- and the Communist parties, including that of the USSR, whose position was defined at the conference by the Communist party of Chile.
The counterrevolutionaries linked with the CIA, who were captured during the conference, provoked the anger of most of the delegates and added water to the mill of those who favored continental guerrilla war against the detested U.S. imperialists. They lost sight of the need to combine international solidarity with an autonomous national struggle; and the final resolution condemned the Soviet Union for not having broken relations with the countries made victim of military dictatorships supported by the USA.*
*Whether deliberate or not, this is a grave misstatement of fact. The resolution did not name the Soviet Union; and it did not call for any rupture in either
It seems that Marxist principles were lost at Havana. The formula of the Communist Manifesto which says "though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie” is true in South America although the conditions of imperialist domination and intervention require the raising of new demands for Latin-American solidarity to defend the gains of the revolution and to advance the struggle where the victory has not yet been assured.*
diplomatic or trade relations. It criticized those "socialist countries" that have granted technical and financial aid to the dictatorships and oligarchies participating in the blockade of Cuba.
*Miss Vance says nothing about. one of the main conclusions of the OLAS conference; i.e., that Latin America. in reality constitutes a single country in which the unity of the Latin-American oligarchies and bourgeoisie is further sustained by the continentalwide policy and active intervention of American imperialism. Her attitude, of course, drew Marx's fire in the Communist Manifesto itself.
In every country, it is the local
revolutionaries who must determine the
various aspects and different tasks of
the revolution. They know the domestic
situation better than anyone else and
are in an advantageous position to
delimit the aims and objectives that
must be faced there. In Havana, however,
it would seem that this principle was
not recognized and it will be from their
own experience that the peoples of Latin
America will discover the organizational
forms and tactics which will bring them
victory and democracy.
He said of the utopian socialists: "Hence,
they reject all political, and especially
all revolutionary action; they wish to
attain their ends by peaceful means, and
endeavor, by small experiments, necessar-
ily doomed to failure, and by force of
example, to pave the way for the new
social Gospel." Contrariwise, Marx, it
seems, would have felt a certain kinship
with the views of Guevara, for he said
in the Communist Manifesto:
"The Communists disdain to conceal
their views and aims. They openly declare
that their ends can be attained only by
the forcible overthrow of all existing
social conditions."
SOCIALIST SENATOR ARRESTED IN CHILE
Following his appearance on a television show in Santiago September 22, Carlos Altamirano, a