AUTHORITY CLAIMS
U. S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk is being quoted in diplomatic circles, according to J. Alvarez del Vayo, the National Guardian's Geneva correspondent, as having said privately to a foreign diplomat:
"We cannot lose in Vietnam. On the contrary, we are winning on three counts.
It would be enough for us to keep part of
South Vietnam joined to Thailand, South
Korea and the rest of Asia which is op-
posed to China. But second, Vietnam has
been an excellent laboratory in which to
test new American weapons. And third, we
are learning guerrilla warfare, which is
of great importance in regard to Latin
America."
DOMINICAN CP BACKS LINE TAKEN AT OLAS CONFERENCE
[At the OLAS conference the role of the orthodox Communist parties adhering to the Moscow line was to try to weaken the stand in favor of armed struggle. The CP of the Dominican Republic was a prominent exception.
(A statement published by the Dominican Communist party (PCD) in the bourgeois paper El Caribe at the height of the conference (August 7) indicated another healthy divergence from the line of most Latin-American Communist parties. We have excerpted below the most significant parts.
{The first passage, from the introductory part of the statement, is noteworthy for two reasons. First, in denouncing any effort to stage a counterconference to OLAS, the PCD clearly dissociated itself from the rightist leaders of the Venezuelan CP, who were pushing for such a meeting.
[Second, in solidarizing themselves with Cuba, the Dominican Communists noted the parallel between attacks on the Cuban revolutionaries by those like the Venezuelan CP and the propaganda themes of imperialism. Fidel Castro, too, strongly underlined this parallel in his closing speech to the OLAS conference (August 10).
(The second part of the PCD statement listed eight points that the Dominican CP delegates were proposing at the conference. Noteworthy here are the rejection of the alliance with the national bourgeoisie and the explicit statement that the revolution must be socialist. Significant also is the recognition of the importance of the black struggle and the antiwar movement in the U.S. and of the dialectical relation between the colonial revolution and the movement in advanced countries.
CIn the point on guerrilla warfare and the relative weight of the urban and rural arenas in armed struggle, some important lessons from the Dominican experience are singled out. The tactical formulations here are far more flexible than those, say, of Régis Debray on the same subject.
[A similar, realistic flexibility on such questions was expressed in Castro's August 10 speech. For example, in the relevant passage of his speech, after discussing the case of Santo Domingo, Castro generalized: "Guerrilla warfare is the main form of struggle, but that does not exclude all other expressions of armed struggle that may arise."] * * x Socialist Cuba shows its solidar-
ity with deeds not with words. It does
not waver before threats and slander, nor
will it retreat in its policy of aiding
the people in struggle despite the con-
crete possibility of aggression.
But Cuba today has not only to con-
front the smear campaign promoted by Amer-—
ican imperialism and its puppet goverments,
but also the slanders and falsifications
preached by sectors that present themselves
to the people in revolutionary apparel and
even proclaim themselves "Marxist-
Leninists."
Both the "ultrarevolutionaries" who
deny the existence of socialism in Cuba
and the pacifists who characterize as
"intervention in the internal problems of
their countries" the material aid given
and the relations maintained by Cuba with
other revolutionary movements, shake hands
with imperialism and the Latin-American
bourgeoisie in the anti-Cuba campaign
aimed at isolating the only socialist
country in America.
Our party has rejected every move
aimed at weakeni. the OLAS conference,
at holding [rival] meetings or other
parallel events. At the same time we con-
bat any position denying Cuba as the pri-
mary revolutionary bastion of America.
*x* * *
(1) It is necessary to organize
the struggle for the revolutionary defeat
of all the bourgeois and proimperialist
governments of the continent.
(2) The leading role in the rev-
olutionary process in Latin America, be-
cause of the development of capitalist
relations and the nature of the epoch we
live in, belongs to the proletariat. But
it is an indispensable condition for vic-
tory that the peasantry be incorporated
in the struggle, that is, that the worker-
peasant alliance be realized in practice.
The national bourgeoisie, though
in certain circumstances it participates
in the anti-imperialist struggle, is in-
capable of leading the revolution. It
bears within itself a tendency toward
conciliation with imperialism.
(3) The destruction of imperialist
domination, principal enemy of our peo-
ples, implies the unleashing of the rev-
olutionary process to the very end. No
force on the national level, once impe-
rialism is defeated, is capable of stop-
ping the revolution's course toward so-
cialisn.
(4) The road to revolution in Latin
America is through armed struggle. The
peoples of our continent will not only
have to defeat the national army but also, once the proimperialist military structure is destroyed, will have to face the Yankee army. It will be a long war against the invading army, military arm of the Yankee monopolies, which faithfully come to the aid of their allies in the spirit of bourgeois internationalisn.
The development of the revolutionary struggle in the various countries of the continent will have its specific features, according to the conditions in each. But in all, or almost all, it will necessarily have the character of a national anti-imperialist war.
That is, the use of armed violence by the oppressed classes and sectors will be necessary on a national scale [culminating in] the armed confrontation of the workers, peasants, and other patriotic sectors with the American army.
(5) The imperialist war potential, which necessitates a prolonged resistance; the importance of the terrain on which a war against an army with great technical resources is waged; and the numerical weight of the peasantry in most Latin- American countries -- these are decisive reasons for considering the countryside the fundamental arena for revolutionary war in the continent.
This criterion does not rule out armed action in the cities, like that which occurred here in April 1965. Events of that type can take place even before the development of guerrilla focos and must be pushed ahead by the revolutionaries. In fact, they could even be the point of departure for extending the armed struggle toward the peasant zones.
It is therefore indispensable for the Latin-American revolutionary movement to prepare itself to put into practice all forms of armed struggle and in particular guerrilla warfare.
In the present conditions of the intensification of the revolutionary process in Latin America, the responsibility of revolutionary leaders is to know when, how, and with what degree of preparation armed actions should be put into practice.
(6) Yankee military intervention is a law in the Latin-American revolutionary process, and this necessarily gives a continentwide character to the revolutionary war.
"The G.A.O. (U.S. General Accounting Office] quoted from a briefing paper presented at the Guam conference last March, that said the United States and South Vietnam 'do not consider the present overcrowding of hospitals or limited access to medical treatment in remote areas critical to our success in the political-psychological side of the war effort.'" -- New York Times, Oct. 12, 1967.
Imperialist military power can for
a time prevent the revolutionary victory
in a single country. This will make it
quite difficult to have a second victori-
ous revolution separate from the others.
Concrete reality indicates that
the most likely way that revolutions in
our continent will come about is through
the gradual incorporation into armed
struggle of a number of countries. Impe-
rialism will be obliged to disperse its
forces, steadily increasing the contin-
gent of troops at each guerrilla foco, a
situation which will contribute to its
overall weakening.
(7) The revolutionary struggle of
the dependent countries is the main factor
in the internal decomposition of the de-
veloped capitalist countries and mainly
of the U.S. The deepening of our [revolu-
tionary] process leads necessarily to the
increase of internal resistance in the U.S.
Therefore the main internationalist
duty of the revolutionary proletariat of
that country consists in solidarity with
the national liberation struggle.
In the same way the anti-imperialist
movement in Latin America must give full
support to the internal resistance in the
U.S., which today reaches great proportions
with the violent struggle of the black peo-
ple and the great protests that have devel-
oped for an end to the Vietnam war and
against the high cost of living.
American imperialism is in process
of decomposition. The systematic blows of
the oppressed peoples, together with its
own internal contradictions and the
growth of the revolutionary movement in
its own territory, are destroying it
little by little.
Let us unite these two great revo-
lutionary forces into a single torrent!
(8) In the present conditions of
the internationalization of the military
forces of capitalism, a more firm and
militant stand by the socialist camp is
necessary, one that would impede the ad-
vance of counterrevolution and ensure the
victory of the world proletarian revolu-
tion.
Material aid to the peoples in
struggle should be unlimited and gauged
to counterbalance imperialist military
intervention at every step.