Vietnamese people is now running more than $23 billion a year.
Attempting to put this in understandable terms, Dr. Oscar ‘N. Rambo Jr., professor of pathology at the University of California Medical Center, compared it in the following way, according to the January 4 San Francisco Chronicle: os
"For the daily cost of the war (now more than 866 million a . aay, seven “aays ao week), we could operate this medical center for two years, or pay every educational expense of every medical student in the United States for four years.
"The monthly cost would provide the training for four ' years of 169, 000 school teachers, and-125,000 nurses, and: 50,000 physicians."
Dr. Rambo gave the figures at a press conference January 3 in announcing an antiwar rally the next day at the UC Medical Center. The rally was scheduled as part of-a nationwide protest by the medical profession against the war.
"SPARTACIST" PUBLISHES OPEN LETTER CALLING FOR HEALY'S OUSTER
[The Januery-February issue of Spartacist, which is published in New York by the Central Committee of the Spartacist League and edited by James Robertson, carries an open letter to "other supporters" of the "International Committee," calling for the ouster of Healy as national secretary of the Socialist Labour League because of his role in the beating administered to Ernest Tate in front of an SLL meeting in London last November 17. The letter, entitled “OUST HEALY!," is of special interest in view of the respect and admiration shown by this group toward the top leadership of the SLL up until last April when this leadership threw them out of a joint conference. In addition, the letter reveals new details about the antidemocratic regime in the SLL.
{The first paragraph of the open letter states that there is a "gross scandal in the Trotskyist movement, involving charges of an extremely serious nature" leveled ‘against the leadership of the SLL. In view of the "political similarity between the Spartacist League and the SLL, and the close organizational relations existing at various times in the past, we feel it our responsibility to make our views on the matters involved clear and unambiguous."
[The content of the charges is revealed in a letter circulated by Ernest Tate (see World Outlook, particularly December 2, 9 and 23, 1966), which Spartacist quotes in full. In the letter, Tate describes how, in order to prevent him from selling socialist literature in front of an SLL meeting, he was set upon by a gang in the presence of Healy and beaten so savagely that he had to be hospitalized. Spartacist then continues as follows (subheadings are by Spartacist). J
*x* * *
Following the circulation of this letter among Left and labor circles in England and its reprinting by several radical publications, the SLL instituted legal proceedings against Comrade Tate and threatened publications printing Tate's letter with the same treatment. .
"Alighting from Coaches"
That Healy had Tate beaten is not disputed -- in fact it is defended, as being within the framework of bourgeois "law and order." According to Healy's.lawyers, the Tate letter “described a disturbance on the pavement outside Caxton Hall, where the meet-— ing was being held at which our client was _a_speaker. The letter states that Mr. Healy indicated to his followers that the writer of the letter should be removed from the front of the Hall and that he was assaulted by_supporters of the Socialist Labour League. We are instructed that this is inaccurate. Mr. Healy, in fact, asked a steward to clear the pavement in front of the entrance to the Hall in order to allow Passengers alighting from coaches to enter the Hall without being obstructed."
This grotesque legal language only serves to point up the hypocrisy of a man claiming to be a proletarian revolutionary leader using such a law -- from the period when lords and ladies descending from their coaches had the right to smash beggars, petitioners, children and anyone else in their way -- against another member of the labor movement.
Healy's legal action was clearly intended to intimidate other publications from printing the letter and to end public discussion of the whole matter. Two of the papers which had printed the letter, the Socialist Leader and Peace News, issued retractions and paid the costs demanded by Healy.
Perhaps Healy's having Tate beaten might have been rationalized as an uncontrolled individual outburst of anger; but the appeal to "the Queen's Justice" implicates the entire SLL leadership, both in the initial hooliganism and in the attempt to suppress discussion within the workers' movement.
Gangsterismn
Such tactics applied internally are not new to Healy. We have not previously spoken of the atmosphere of physical intimidation that surrounded the April London Con~ ference, but it was present. We have since heard well-authenticated accounts of the use by the SLL leadership of calculated violence ("punch-ups") to silence internal critics. We already knew that Healy had developed a technique which destroyed the revolutionary morality of those around him by systematically forcing them to make false confession against themselves.- It was for refusing to do this that Spartacist v was expelled from the April Conference of the International Committee. .
What has now led Healy to employ these tactics outside his movement? This summer the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) issued for their own purposes a pamphlet on the April Conference entitled "Healy 'Reconstructs' the Fourth International," the one Tate was attempting to sell outside the SLL meeting. The pamphlet consists mainly of correspon-~ dence ‘between Spartacist and' the SLL prior to and following the Conference. It lays bare -- most clearly in Healy's own words -- the criminal wrecking tactics he employs within the international Trotskyist movement. In denouncing the pamphlet in the 20 August Newsletter, the Political Committee of the SLL stated: "We shall not hesitate to deal appropriately with the handful of United Secretariat agents who hawk it around the cynical | fake-left in England."
"Outside the Working Class"
Healy has attempted to put a theoretical face on his actions against supporters of the SWP -- one similar to that used by the Stalinists in the thirties to justify their gangster attacks on Trotskyists. Then Trotskyists were labelled "counter-— ~revolutionary" and beaten when they attempted to circulate literature explaining what was happening in the Soviet Union. The SLL at a "Special Conference" held 26 and 27 November passed a Declaration on the Socialist Workers Party, printed in the 3 December Newsletter and reprinted in the Bulletin. The document describes the SWP as "turning completely away.from-the working class." The dispute between the SLL and the SWP is "a fight between the working class and the servants of the class enemy." It states: "We — tell the SWP: The days when you could ‘address us as ‘comrades' are long since gone. Your political actions have placed you outside the camp of Trotskyism and of the working class....There can be not the slightest question of your telling us what we must do to re-establish our reputation with you." At the conclusion of the document appears the statement: "The issues raised in the Nov. 2lst letter by Farrell Dobbs, Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, about what happened at Caxton Hall on the night of Noven-~ ber 17th, we cannot discuss at this stage for legal reasons." Yet even if supporters of ‘the SWP must be cleared from the streets as "servants of the class enemy," the appeal against them to the bourgeois courts is not explained. The Trotskyist movement has always opposed any appeal to the bourgeois state, even against Fascists.
Healy Exposed
The turn by Healy and the SLL leadership to the political methods of the petty bourgeoisie and to thé bourgeois ‘courts is not the action of either genuine revolution-— ists or of "ultraleft sectarians." Such methods have no relation to.the formal politics of the SLL, the politics of revolutionary Trotskyism. How is’ this contradiction to be explained? We say that Healy is an aggressive and greedy adventurer whose particular - politics have changed frequently. At the present he is claiming to adhere to the revolutionary Marxist program of Trotskyism. Tomorrow his politics will be something else, just'as they were only a few years ago when Healy was indistinguishable from the Bevanites in the Labour Party. Furthermore, Healy is an adventurer peculiarly preoccupied with sharp financial deals and with technical and material matters. His Plough Press does heavy commercial work -—- using his comrades' labor. He believes that "weak" national sections should financially support the "strong" one, i.e., his. Thus in 1961 he took over $1,000 from those of us who were then his supporters in this country in order to make a world tour. The. tour never materialized, nor was the money returned or. otherwise accounted for. (Copies of the relevant correspondence and cancelled checks would be available to any bona-fide workers' investigating commission.) Since then Healy has always sought, successfully, to conduct his relations with comrades in the U.S. at a profit. Churchill once described England as a nation of small businessmen. Healy stands as the left wing of his nation.
Sack Healy!
The persistent adherence by the Spartacist League to the revolutionary principles and program of Trotskyism, to which Healy gives lip service, have twice led Healy to break with and attempt to destroy us. Because of this adherence, the Spartacist League is not now besmirched by the public exposure of the gangster tactics Healy uses. Just as Farrell Dobbs' telegram of condolences to Mrs. Kennedy came as a revelation even to those who were most aware of the deepening revisionism of the SWP,* so Healy's outrageous beat-
* [The "telegram" refers to a statement made to the press by Farrell Dobbs, national secretary of the Socialist Workers party, on November 22, 1963, immediately after the news came that Kennedy had been assassinated. Dobbs ascribed the murder of Kennedy to the atmosphere created by the racists and ultraconservatives and reiterated the opposition of the SWP to political assassinations or similar acts. The SWP spokesman,. who had campaigned on a revolutionary-socialist platform against Kennedy and Nixon in the 1960
ing of Tate, compounded by dragging the victim before the courts of Elizabeth II's England, is a striking exposure of his and his leading committee's bankruptcy as revolutionists. To the members of the SLL and the other sections of the IC, we say: OUST HEALY!
In the United States the American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI) has consistently aped Healy. Its members have now individually defended Healy's attack on Tate by saying, "Well, we want to smash Pabloites, don't we?" while the Bulletin reprints Healy's cynical statement that questions pertaining to "the events around Caxton Hall" cannot be discussed "for legal reasons." The ACFI members, whose initial weaknesses were exploited by Healy in typical Comintern fashion, are now being made to accept and justify ever greater departures from revolutionary practice. As with Stalin's Comintern, sections that have developed along this path have no inner stamina to resist any threat or any "opportunity" domestically. At the first opportunity we will see ACFI's vaunted "internationalism" (i.e., loyalty to a British clique) change into the most vicious American nationalism. coe
As for the SWP, it is certainly their right to factionally use against their political opponents this act of hooliganism. However, as Oscar Wilde once pointed out, hypocrisy is the acknowledgment vice pays to virtue. The SWP today is chasing after the same pacifists, Stalinists and middle-class elements who have been and will be guilty of the most serious violence against the working class and its left wing, both directly and through the bourgeois state. However, despite the motives of the SWP, its objective call at the present time for democracy within the labor movement is correct. We concur, only insisting that’ this democracy be applied impartially to all sections of the workers' movement. Furthermore, we are for the defense by any measures necessary of the right of Tate or anyone else within the workers' movement to press their opinions. The legal defense imposed on Tate certainly merits the support of all militants, and contributions for this purpose may be sent to him c/o Pioneer Book Service, 8 Toynbee Street, London, E.1, England.
Trotsky's Method
In addition to the defense of Tate, what can be done to apply the maximum pressure against repetitions of this conduct? Trotsky has offered us an example of how to proceed in his article, "A Case for a Labor Jury -- Against All Types of Gangsterism in the Working Class Movement; On the Murder of the Italian Stalinist Montanari." In this emigre quarrel the killer had apparently been victimized by the Stalinists and after resorting to violence he was for a time falsely linked by them to the Trotskyists. The conduct of the Italian Communist Party then roughly corresponds to the SLL's now. The conclusion of the article from the New Militant, 5 October 1935, is reprinted here:
"...The Montanari-Beiso case is important precisely because a conflict on the political plane has led to a supremely senseless act of murder of one emigre by another. In this there lies an ominously serious warning, and it is necessary to grasp its significance in time! ;
presidential elections, and who had put defense of the Cuban Revolution as the first plank of his proposed foreign policy, included the following: "We extend our deepest sympathy to Mrs. Kennedy and the children in their personal grief."
(Healy -- not exactly a humanist, socialist or otherwise -- considered such an expression of sympathy in personal grief to be an unprecedented betrayal of socialist principles. As an archivist, Robertson should know better.
[When Count Mirbach, the German ambassador to the Bolshevik government, was assassinated by an ultraleftist in Moscow on July 6, 1918, Lenin, Trotsky and other top officials discussed what to do in the emergency. It was decided that a delegation should be sent at once to the German embassy -- a delegation headed by Lenin personally.
{And what should the head of the delegation say? Lenin's preference was to offer "sympathy" to the German imperialist government; but the final decision was that he should use a stronger word -- "condolences."
(Lenin did it, although Trotsky observed that "it was probably one of the most difficult moments of his life."
CLenin was capable of such flexibility because, among other things, he thought through each situation concretely and sought to avoid reducing principles to dogmas, tripping over them and falling flat on his face the way ultraleft sectarians insist on doing. -- World Outlook.]
"The . matter is now in “the hands of the bourgeois law courts. The official investigation, is.obviously not intended to cast light on the bloody tragedy from the standpoint of revolutionary morals of the proletariat. The prosecution will probably try only to compromise the proletarian emigres and the revolutionary organizations in particular. But the agents of the Comintern will.also try to exploit the trial for every vile purpose as they are.obliged to do. The duty of .workers' organizations, without any regard ‘for political. hanners , lies.in one thing: in shedding the greatest light possible on this case, and thereby, insofar as it: ‘is Possible, to prevent the repetition of gunplay in revolutionary, circles... . : ;
"In our opinion, the labor organizations must establish, without any further -delay, ,an authoritative and non-partisan Committee which would go over the entire material, including Beiso's letters mentioned in 1 'Humanité, to examine all the witnesses and representatives of the parties and groups who are concerned or interested in the case, so that the political, moral and personal circumstances in the case be clearly established. This is necessary not only in memory of Montanari, not only to reveal Beiso's real motives, but also to purge the atmosphere of all working class organiza-— tions of treachery, calumny, hounding and gun play. Naturally the interests of ‘the case would be best served if the representatives of l'Humanité and of the Central Committee of the Italian C.P:, were to take part in this Committee. But we may safely predict that they will most certainly refuse: these politicians stand only to lose from an impartial investigation, and much more than would appear on the surface. But the invéstigation ought not .to. be wrecked | by their refusal to participate. Every hornést participant in the labor. movément is deeply interested in seeing to it that this abscess is opened which can otherwise develop into gangrene. “The tragic case of Montanari-Beiso must be brought before a labor jury." . . .
dovkers' Inquiry
In the event that the grip of Healy's clique. on the Socialist Labour League is too strong, or Healy's leading collaborators on the International Committee too cowardly, to intervene directly. to oust Healy, we think it appropriate to force a workers' inquiry ‘to expose this fraud who disorients. and corrupts the Trotskyist. movement by _posing as a revolutionary leader.
INTEREST IN TROTSKY ON RISE AMONG KERALA INTELLECTUALS
Bombay
Literary and political circles in Kerala, where a United Front sponsored by the left Communist party of India is "bidding for power through the ballot box," appear: to. be losing interest somewhat in the ideology of both the left and right CPI's and turn— ing toward the writings of Leon Trotsky.
An indication of this is the publication in Mangalodayam of a. lengthy article entitled "Trotsky --'a Great Cultural Leader." The study of Trotsky's contributions in the literary and cultural fields is by V. Aravindakshan, a leading intellectual who: was a member of the editorial board: of the right CPI daily Nava Jeevan (New Life):.
Mangalodayam is an influential Malayalam culturalr-literary magazine edited by Professor Joseph Mundasseri, a leading literary figure, who worked as Education Minister in the former Communist party ministry in Kerala (1957-59) before that government was dismissed by Nehru.
Professor Mundasseri has severed connections with the CPI; and Aravindakshan is also said to have been removed from Nava Jeevan as "punishment" tor having written an article: praising. Trotsky. i ce ae Lo
Mangalodayam also published a letter from M. Rashid, editor of. Chenkathir correcting some errors in Aravindakshan's article concerning Trotsky's concept of democratic centralisn.
Chenkathir is a Marxist journal appearing in the Malayalam language under the auspices of dissidents in the Revolutionary Socialist party in Kerala who have rebelled against the leadership as a protest against its opportunistic electoral alliances.