100,000 IN RIO DE
JANEIRO PROTEST POLICE KILLING OF STUDENT
Sharp clashes between the army and students in Brazil threaten to precipitate the most serious political crisis for the dictatorship since it seized power four years ago.
The crisis began when police in Rio de Janeiro fired into a student demonstration March 28, killing a seventeenyear-old student, Edson de Lima Souto.
Irénée Guimaraes, special correspondent of the Paris daily Le Monde, reported April 3 that more than 100,000 people attended the student's funeral held the day after he was killed.
The New York Times said that some of the marchers in the massive funeral parade shouted, "Viva Che Guevara!"
Student organizations called nationwide protest actions for Monday, April 1.
TIrénée Guimaraes, writing from Rio in the April 3 Le Monde, gives the following account:
"The revolt and indignation turned very quickly against the regime. Since the student organizations decided to call a protest meeting for Monday, the authorities took precautions. But the violence extended to all the large campuses in the country The tally was: two dead, several dozen wounded, and hundreds of arrests.
"The authorities seem overwhelmed. An insurrectionary wind is shaking the country. The most extravagant rumors are circulating and fear is growing of an unforeseen tempest.
"At Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, the demonstrators set fire to cars, burned American flags and broke store windows. Police bullets wounded four students.
"In Goiania, near Brasilia, there was an exchange of gunfire between police and students resulting in the wounding of one of the demonstrators....
"In SdHo Paulo, where the governor decided to close his eyes, the university students! march took place without incident, but the speakers denounced 'military dictatorship whose time has run out.'
"In Rio de Janeiro, early Monday morning, the police occupied the center of the city. Night fell, the students, using a well-conceived tactic, began a provocative maneuver; they ran into the streets shouting 'Down with the dictatorship!' and disappeared at once into the middle of the traffic. Under cover of
traffic jams they organized lightning po-
litical meetings. The first clashes were
sharp. Jittery police used their clubs
on the crowd.
"A longshoreman was killed, sev-
eral police were wounded, and governor
Negrdo de Lima, recognizing that he no
longer had sufficient forces to assure
order called on the army to occupy the
city. By the time the tanks moved in,
however, the demonstrators had vanished."
In its April 3 issue the Christian
Science Monitor added to the account of
the April 1 clashes:
“Tanks and armored personnel car-
riers loaded with combat troops patrolled
Rio after student rioting Monday in the
metropolis and four other cities....At
least one person was killed in Rio and
another death was reported in Goiania,
where an estimated 4,000 demonstrators
battled 600 police. Other clashes were
reported at Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza
and at the university campus in Brasilia
"Machine~gun fire was heard in
downtown Rio when federal troops came in
after 11 policemen had been wounded by
gunfire. Unofficial reports said more
than 100 persons were hurt."
Other reports put the number of
police wounded at seventeen. The Minister
of War, General Lyra Tavares, ordered
army commanders to take "any steps needed
to maintain order."
Student assaults were said to have
been made on the United States Information
Agency offices in Fortaleza and Pérto
Alegre.
The commander of Rio's military
zone said April 3, on the eve of a new
series of memorial meetings by students,
that demonstrators would be treated like
"an enemy attacking the fatherland's ter-
ritory and threatening the nation's basic
institutions."
The students went ahead with their
memorial meetings in spite of the threats
of the military dictatorship. In Rio
mounted police, wielding clubs, broke up
a demonstration in front of Candelaria
Church, arresting two dozen students. The
police used tear gas against the crowd.
Churches throughout Brazil held
masses for the slain student Edson de
Lima Souto on April 4. At this writing
the army has threatened to declare a
"state of siege," the equivalent of
martial law. The next move is up to the
students.
MEXICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS TO JOIN DEMETRIO VALLEJO IN HUNGER STRIKE
Mexico City
APRIL 2 -- On March 29, Demetrio Vallejo, the head of the railway workers union, who has served nine years of a fourteen-year sentence in Lecumberri prison imposed on him for leading a nationwide railway strike in 1959, went ona hunger strike.
According to Mexican law, having served this much time, he is entitled to "confinamiento" -- release from prison, but confinement to a limited area. The authorities have failed so far to even reply to an application made by Vallejo months ago. His hunger strike is aimed at eliciting a definite yes or no.
When the news of Vallejo's hunger strike reached university circles, the response was immediate.
Today eleven students were conduct-— ing a solidarity hunger strike in the gardens of the Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales. Those participating were Romeo Gonzalez, chairman of the Executive Committee of students of the above Facultad; Iuis G. De Alba, chairman of the Executive Committee of students of the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras; Oscar Rivera; José Gonzalez; Antonio Alonso; Vicente Lépez; Armando Rendén; Rafael "Padilla; Fernando Trejo; Gustavo Gordillo; and Jorge Madero.
An even more sensational development was the announcement by twelve other political prisoners in Lecumberri that unless the authorities responded to Vallejo's request, they would join him April 8 in his hunger strike.
The twelve political prisoners are Adan Nieto Castillo, Fabio Erazo Barbosa, Enrique Condes Lara, Francisco Luna Leal, Pablo Alvarado Barrera, Daniel Camejo Guanche, Iuis E. Del Toro, Gerardo Pelaez Ramos, Gilberto Balam Pereyra, César Catalan Sanchez, Justino Juarez Martinez, and Ysaias Rojas Delgado.
Daniel Camejo is the brother of Peter Camejo, a well-known leader of the Socialist Workers party in California.
The twelve belong to different political tendencies but decided to join in a common action in behalf of their fellow prisoner. They drew up a statement addressed to the workers, peasants, intellectuals, students, and people of Mexico:
"Demetrio Vallejo is a symbol. Honest and incorruptible, a synthesis of the best qualities of his class, while also expressing its limitations and present level of consciousness: refusal to go beyond the bourgeois legal order, concern about restricting his demands to the bourgeois 'constitutional' framework, etc.
"But the bourgeoisie are not mis-— taken; they know that in the workers they find a mortal enemy that will finish by sweeping them into the dustbin of history. Conscious of what he represents, they became rabid over Demetrio Vallejo -- nine years in prison on the 'basis' of the most absurd juridical technicalities.
"The arbitrary action against Demetrio Vallejo is a clear expression of the policy of repression against the peasantry, the working class, and other oppressed layers of the Mexican scene, in behalf of the privileged class, particularly the big investors, representatives and partners of Yankee imperialisn.
"That is why Vallejo decided to begin an indefinite hunger strike until he wins confinamiento, meaning the limited freedom of having one city as prison.
"Vallejo's decision, which constitutes an individual form of struggle, dramatically expresses the inability of the revolutionary movement to organize a broad, deep-going struggle for the release of all the men and women political prisoners in Mexico.
"In this situation of crisis in ‘revolutionary leadership, it is up to us to assume full responsibility in carrying out our obligation of struggling in support of Vallejo and the release of all the political prisoners.
"That is why we are signing this appeal, putting aside our ideological and political differences. We have decided to likewise go on an indefinite hunger strike (beginning at 9 a.m., April 8, 1968) in support of Compafiero Demetrio Vallejo.
"We appeal to the workers, peasants, students, and the entire Mexican people to mobilize and demonstrate their solidarity with the struggle of Demetrio Vallejo. Free Demetrio Vallejo. Free all the political prisoners, both men and women. For independence of the unions and the right to strike which have been tram— pled on. For unity in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and Yankee imperialism. For the destruction of the big capitalist estates and genuine return of the land to the peasants. For observance of democratic rights."
The Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners in Mexico is urging actions in behalf of the prisoners. Protests should be sent to Lic. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Palacio Nacional, México 1, D.F., México.
ANTBAL ESCALANTE, MIKE BANDA, AND WHITEWASH. FOR THE KREMLIN
By Ernest Germain
The trial of Anibal Escalante and his "microfaction" in Cuba has been seized on by The Newsletter, the organ of an isolated ultraleft group in Britain that split from the Fourth International, to renew the attack it has been conducting for some years against the Cuban revolution and the world Trotskyist movement. After some initial sniping on the subject, Gerry Healy, the leader of the group, ordered up the heavy artillery; and in the March 16 issue of the weekly, editor Mike Banda turned loose with two entire pages, featuring his contribution under a ten-column headline.
The most revealing passage deals with the Moscow trials. Mike Banda says: "The trial is analogous with the Moscow Trials where people were executed for their alleged intentions and plans -- and not for what they did or did not do."
It is hard to believe that any "Trotskyist," even a self-proclaimed one, could write these lines. It is absolutely untrue that people were executed in the Moscow trials for alleged “intentions and plans." They were executed for alleged acts of treason.
The monstrous character of these trials did not lie in a perversion of the legal distinction between "intentions" and “acts," but in the completely slanderous, lying, invented nature of these "acts." Honest revolutionists were executed under the false accusation of having conspired with Hitler, the Mikado and world reaction in order to overthrow the socialized property relations in the USSR, restore capitalism, and carve up the homeland by agreeing to let the imperialists annex wide areas. They were executed on false charges of having wrecked factories and mines, of having poisoned workers, of having murdered government figures, and of having committed a series of other heinous crimes.
To say that the victims of the Moscow trials were found guilty of only “intentions and plans" is to whitewash Stalin's falsifications and to minimize the monstrousness of his crimes. But whitewashing the Moscow trials is a necessary part of The Newsletter's attempt to establish an "analogy" between the Escalante trial and the Moscow trials. Stalin utilized the Moscow trials in exterminating the entire generation of leading Russian Bolsheviks after submitting them to inhuman torture, whereas in Cuba not a single partisan of the Kremlin has been tortured or executed. But aside from this, the central fact remains that all the accusations leveled against the vic-
tims of the Moscow trials were complete-
ly untrue, fabricated and slanderous.
Escalante was not accused of a single
thing he did not actually do.
Would Mike Banda venture to main-
tain that the political views attributed
to Escalante were not really his views,
the same views to be found in the polem-
ics of the Latin-American Communist par-
ties against Fidel Castro? Would Mike
Banda venture to deny that Escalante
sought to have the Soviet bureaucracy
bring economic pressure to bear on revo-
lutionary Cuba? Does he conclude from
his analogy that Zinoviev, Radek and
Bukharin actually “intended and planned"
to overthrow Stalin with the help of
Hitler? It is sufficient to state the
case to see that Mike Banda is guilty
of a despicable slander against the
Cuban revolution, and, by implication,
against the victims of the Moscow trials
as well.
Freedom of Tendencies
and the Struggle Against Bureaucratism
The attitude of the Trotskyist
movement toward workers democracy in any
country in the world, including Cuba, is
crystal clear. It has been stated over
and over again. We are in favor of free-
dom of expression for tendencies that
proclaim adherence to the working class,
defense of the socialist program and re-
spect for the broad framework of social-
ized economy in all the workers states,
whether they be bureaucratically degen-
erated, deformed or simon-pure. We are
for freedom of the press, for the right
to demonstrate and to organize, for all
working-class groups. On the other hand,
we are for the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat; i.e., under the rules of normal
proletarian justice, we are for the pun-
ishment of all acts committed against the
interests of the workers state.
In our opinion, Escalante should
have been tried in such a way that it
became clear that sentence was passed on
him because of acts committed by him and
not because of ideas he held. The way the
case was conducted by the authorities was
unfortunate, since his ideas and his acts
were mixed together. But the verdict it-
self made it clear that he was condemned
because of his acts and not because of
his ideas. As Livio Maitan pointed out,
Escalante himself made the same distinc-
tion. (1)
(1) See Livio Maitan: "The Condemnation
of Anibal Escalante." In World Outlook,
February 23, 1968, p. 155.
On the level of principle, the distinction between proletarian democracy and defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat is completely clear. What has made it less clear in practice is the appearance of malignant bureaucratic social layers within the working-class movement.
This is not a new problem. Lenin had to deal with it in "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder. Under normal conditions of working-class democracy, a certain minimum number of rules should be observed inside the labor movement by the members of all tendencies. But bureaucratized trade unions and mass organizations do not abide by the normal rules of working-class democracy. Their bureaucracies have divided loyalties, to say the least. They do not hesitate to collaborate with the bourgeois state apparatus, even with the police and the secret services of imperialist powers, in order to fight against revolutionary "agitators." Under such conditions, it would be suicidal were revolutionists to prove so naive as to abide by rules which the bureaucrats do not respect in relation to them.
If this holds true between workingclass tendencies and the bureaucracies of the labor movement in the capitalist countries, it applies a thousand times more to working-class tendencies internationally (including those that have conquered power) in relation to the most hardened and privileged of all the labor bureaucracies wielding state power, the Soviet bureaucracy.
Normally, a certain number of selfevident rules should govern relations between workers states. Elementary solidarity and collaboration in face of the class enemy should be observed. A minimum amount of mutual economic and military help should be extended. Ideological differences should be thrashed out by purely ideological means; i.e., through open political discussion. This implies free circulation of the documents of any tendency in any party among the members of any other party; and, within certain linits, even among all the workers of all countries. As long as imperialism endures, this rule would apply only to party documents; and, of course, would not mean that confidential state documents could be freely circulated.
But anybody today who demands that workers states that have escaped the control of agents of the Kremlin should inmediately apply such rules must be taken as either a fool or an agent of the Soviet bureaucracy. For it is obvious under the given conditions, in whieh, in place of workers democracy governing all the workers states, the Soviet bureaucracy exercises a dictatorship over many countries, these rules would turn against workers democracy and become weapons in
the struggle of the Soviet bureaucracy to
crush its opponents, both at home and
abroad.
In the first place, it would mean
that they would be applied unilaterally
by the anti-Stalinists alone. The Cuban,
North Vietnamese, Yugoslav, and Chinese
leaders would be asked to divulge all
their state secrets to agents of the
Kremlin, which, of course, would never
hand any of its secrets over to these
states. As a result, the Stalinist lead-
ers could maneuver with much greater ease
in their efforts to maintain control of
the parties they still dominate and to
develop factions subservient to them in
all the parties where they have lost
control.
In the second place, the Soviet
bureaucracy does not limit itself to
purely ideological means of struggle. It
defends its power and privileges by any
means, including subversion, economic
pressure, and military repression. In-
formation obtained through the naiveté
of those who insisted on granting work-—
ers democracy to agents of the Kremlin,
too, would be utilized exclusively to
bring them into line or else to over-
throw them. Between Stalin's attempt to
overthrow Tito through a military con-
spiracy backed by concentrations of
troops on the borders of Yugoslavia;
Khrushchev's crushing of the Hungarian
revolution through direct military in-
tervention; and Kosygin's and Brezhnev's
economic blockade of China, there are
only quantitative, not qualitative dif-
ferences.
Anyone who claims that merely "in-
tending" to bring economic pressure to
bear against Cuba was a normal thing
which the Cuban workers state has no
right to punish should also state clear-
ly that any Hungarian Stalinist who mere-
ly "intended" to bring on Russian mili-
tary intervention against his country's
revolution at the beginning of November
1956 was, after all, only representing
an "ideological faction" inside the Com-
munist movement and the correct attitude
was to let him alone.
The Cuban Revolution
and the Soviet Bureaucracy
In the field of Marxist theory,
Mike Banda handles himself with all the
ease and grace of the proverbial bull in
a china shop. "The Escalante trial is
another demonstration of the proof that
Cuba is a bureaucratic and capitalist [!]
dictatorship," he boldly proclaims. Fur-
ther on he draws the infamous analogy be-
tween the trial of Escalante and the Mos-
cow trials. Are we to assume, then, that
the Moscow trials proved that the USSR is
a bureaucratic and capitalist dictator-
ship, too? But for our unlucky "theoreti-
cian," busily whitewashing Stalin, the Moscow trials were not as serious as the trial of Escalante...perhaps they were a lesser evil. (We shall return to this "lesser evil.")
What about the crushing of the Hungarian proletariat, then? Wasn't that, to follow Banda's logic, ample proof of the capitalist character of the Soviet Union? Bringing grist to the mill of all the state capitalist revisionists, Banda forgets the ABC's; i.e., that the social nature of the state is not determined by the degree it applies the norms of workers democracy. To proceed otherwise would make it impossible to find a single workers state on this unhappy planet.
The American imperialists, of course, have a better appreciation of the theory of permanent revolution than a clown like Mike Banda. From the moment the Cuban revolution began to actually solve bourgeois-democratic tasks; i.e., began to carry out a radical agrarian reform, the imperialists understood that a mortal conflict had opened between all the propertied classes (including thenselves) on the one hand and the revolutionary government on the other. They understood, in other words, that a workers state was being established.
This was officially acknowledged a few years later by the Castro leadership itself. Since then, U.S. imperialism has maintained a tight economic blockade on the Cuban revolution, trying to bring down the Cuban workers state through crippling material shortages and hunger. Up to now, it has not had much success.
Castro not only led a victorious socialist revolution. Ever since the Second Declaration of Havana he has advanced a second fundamental thesis of the theory of permanent revolution which should be of special interest to anyone claiming to be a Trotskyist. Castro is the first leader of a workers state since Lenin and Trotsky to make international extension of the socialist revolution a matter of government policy.
It can be argued whether Castro has done this out of genuine theoretical understanding, out of moral solidarity with the oppressed and exploited in Latin America, or simply out of a pragmatic realization that the Cuban workers state cannot survive, isolated at the doorstep of the imperialist fortress, if the revolution is not extended into the continent of Latin America. Probably all three motives are involved. But the result is of the utmost importance. It vindicates forty years of struggle by the Left Opposition and the world Trotskyist movement. It makes possible a convergence of the revolutionary ist movement in Latin America with the tendencies inspired by the Cuban revolution in pursuing the common goal of extending the socialist revolution into several Latin-American countries where prerevolutionary situations obtain today.
The Kremlin has not failed to grasp the historical significance of this position taken by the Cuban leadership. Everywhere, its agents are actively condemning Castro and his followers as "Trotskyists." Ernesto Che Guevara, who remains one of their main targets, has been especially singled out as a "Trotskyist adventurer." This was likewise the line taken by Escalante and his "microfaction" in Cuba itself. All this is another "denonstration of the proof" that Castro and Guevara should be labeled "capitalist dictators," of course...
When the imperialist blockade was first imposed on Cuba, Castro turned to the Soviet Union for help, and rightly so. So far as we are aware, Mike Banda did not offer at the time to send large quantities of coal, oil and wheat to Cuba. As for revolutionary propaganda, vital as it is, it is not sufficient, unfortunately, to help fill stomachs or to produce electric power, even with the help of Mao's and Healy's thought.
There was nothing wrong in Cuba's turning to the Soviet Union. Banda, who sneers irresponsibly about the $350 million in aid received by Cuba each year from the Soviet Union, remains strangely silent about the $1 billion in aid received from the same source each year by Ho Chi Minh, whom he admires so much. The revolutionary struggles carried on by the peoples of these two lands in the face of violent aggression from U.S. imperialism have created so much sympathy and such a strong current of solidarity among the workers of the world, including the workers of the Soviet Union,(2) that the bureaucracy does not dare refuse a ninimnum amount of aid to these revolutions.
The analogy, however, holds still further. The Kremlin remains faithful to its strategy of "peaceful coexistence" and maintenance of the status quo. It helps the Vietnamese -- but only enough to strengthen their resistance, not enough to inflict a crushing defeat on the imperialists. It helps Cuba -- but only enough to permit bare survival under the imperialist blockade, not enough to permit the
(2) The demonstrations that occurred in the Soviet Union during Castro's visit there, were the largest and most spontaneous since the end of World War II. Many observers, in fact, were of the opinion that Khrushchev organized a tour for Castro of several Soviet towns in order to gain something for himself out of Castro's popularity.
blossoming of genuine socialist economic construction.
In both cases, furthermore, granting of military and economic aid is conmbined with increasing pressure to modify the revolutionary orientation. In Vietnam this pressure is exerted to bring Hanoi to the conference table with the imperialists, even without the Front for National Liberation, if necessary, and in any case without concern for the revolution-~ ary gains scored by the South Vietnamese masses through countless sacrifices. In Cuba this pressure is aimed at compelling Castro to liquidate the revolutionary strategy projected for Latin America and to give up extending political and material support to revolutionary groups engaged in action to the left of the Moscowled Communist parties.
To complete the picture, it should be added that at this very moment U.S. imperialism is so anxious to block revolutionary developments in Latin America that Vice-President Humphrey is even speaking of accepting "peaceful coexistence" and lifting the blockade, if the Cubans will only stop their revolutionary propaganda and stop helping the Latin- American revolution. The parallel action of the State Department and the Kremlin (with the Pentagon skulking in the background) is obvious here.
And it is in such a situation that Banda, instead of denouncing the Krenlin's conspiracy against the revolution in Latin America and Cuba, instead of leveling his fire and scorn against the way the campaigns of Johnson, Kosygin, and Escalante coincide, rushes to the defense of Escalante and sneers at Fidel, because, you see, the Cuban revolutionist does not dare publicly denounce the Krenlin, being condemned because of the imperialist blockade to polemicize with the Soviet bureaucracy in an indirect way. How low can you sink, Banda? By the same’ token, why don't you denounce Ho Chi Minh's "silence" about the Kremlin's counterrevolutionary strategy in Vietnam?
The Class Nature of the Political Conflict
The political degeneration of the Socialist Labour League, of which Mike Banda is a leader, is rooted in its need to justify its existence as a sect separated from the world Trotskyist movement. Because of this need it is unable to remain objective in political analysis; everything is bent to serve the aim of "fighting revisionism." We warned the SLL leaders repeatedly that by permitting themselves to drift in this way, they could become unconscious instruments of alien social forces. This prediction has now been fully confirmed.
The SLL leaders set out by denying that Cuba is a workers state. We have repeatedly shown how this theoretical mistake has led these sectarians into inextricable contradictions and continual revision of the theory of permanent revolution.(4) Revolutionary cadres able to maintain minimum self-discipline and capacity to use the tools of analysis in an objective way would have realized after a few years that they had made a mistake and would have tried sooner or later to correct. this mistake.
Occasions for this have not been lacking. The Cubans themselves announced their adherence to Marxism-Leninism. They themselves called their revolution a socialist revolution. They themselves proclaimed the leading role of the proletariat in their revolution. They became established as a working-class tendency far to the left of both the pro-Moscow and pro-Peking Communist parties by rejecting any bloc with the "national bourgeoisie" in struggling for the Latin-American revolution and by clearly stating that this revolution could triumph only as a socialist revolution under a workers and peasants alliance led by the working class. Surely, never in history have we seen any "bourgeois" or "capitalist" party come out. for the victory of the socialist revolution and for extending it internationally! '
In Cuba itself, the socialization of the means of production and exchange has proceeded much further than in the Soviet Union ten years after the October revolution. In agriculture and trade, it is even further advanced than in the Soviet Union and China today. To picture Cuba, under these conditions, as a "bourgevis state" is, of course, to make a travesty of the elementary principles of Marxism. ; :
But caught in the trap of petty factionalism, and lacking the moral courage to admit a mistake, the SLL leaders have performed one somersault after another until today they have lined up objectively with the Stalinist bureaucracy of the Kremlin against the revolution in Cuba and internationally.
The conflict between the leaders of the Cuban revolution and the Escalante group is, of course, a political conflict; yet it must have a social explanation.
Mike Banda admits that politically
(3) See Ernest Germain: Marxism vs. Ultraleftism -- Key Issues in Healy's Challenge to the Fourth International. [Available from Merit Publishers, 873 Broadway, New York, or from Pioneer Book Service, 8 Toynbee St., London, E.1, England. ]
Escalante stands for reformist policies in Latin America. Banda admits that the Soviet leaders “are trying desperately to freeze the status quo in Latin America." So far so good. But what does Castro stand for? Here Banda engages in sleight of hand typical of the school of Stalinism: "Castro, on the other hand, would like to see sympathetic [?], or even less hostile regimes on the mainland in place of military juntas who govern at present. This implies [?] armed struggle against dictatorship, but armed struggle devoid of a working-class basis and under pettybourgeois leadership."
What nonsense! In Banda's analysis, social classes are dissolved into vague moralistic notions! You lie, Banda, when you suggest that all Castro wants is to have “military juntas" replaced by "less hostile regimes." One of the main arguments of both the Social Democrats and the Stalinists against Castro is that he fights against the "constitutional" regimes in Chile and Peru as strongly as against the "military juntas" in Brazil or Paraguay. You keep the truth from your readers when you remain silent about the fact that Castro stands against collaboration with the "national bourgeoisie" and for socialist revolution in Latin America. You revise Trotskyism in the most vulgar way by presenting things as if it were possible for a government that has broken with imperialism and the native propertied classes, that has expropriated the capitalists, to remain "petty bourgeois" and to be based on anything but a workers state. In the theoretical field, the logic of your factionalism has led you to support Menshevik Khrushchevism against Trotskyisn.
Not only in the theoretical field, unfortunately. For once you become prisoner of the nonsense that the state in Cuba is bourgeois in character, then it is only logical to conclude that it is necessary to "defend" a reformist Kremlin agent like Escalante against the Cuban government. Banda took this position long ago. We predicted what this could lead to, but things have become even clearer than we could have expected at the time. Banda has now reached the conclusion that Castro's struggle against the Kremlin and its agents, his struggle against the line of peaceful coexistence in Latin America, is a struggle...against the working class!
This may sound incredible. But here it is, spelled out as clearly as one could wish:
"Thus every struggle against imperialism [by Castro] is accompanied or followed by a corresponding repression of the working class. The Escalante faction, by virtue of its historical connections and its social composition, and despite its reformist line, stands closer to the
Cuban working class than the bourgeois
and petty-bourgeois leadership of Castro,
which continually oscillates between im-
perialism and the USSR.
"In this sense -- and in a very
qualified way -- the repression of Esca-
lante represents a blow aimed against a
section of the working class which has
tried to organise itself independently
of the Castro-ite apparatus." (Emphasis
in the original.)
There are three criteria which are
applicable in judging the social nature
of a tendency: program, objective role in
society, and social composition. From the
viewpoint of program, there is no doubt
that the conflict between Escalante and
Castro represents the conflict between
the reformist, peaceful coexistence line
in Latin America and the revolutionary
tactics and strategy adopted at the con-
ference of the Organization of Latin-
American Solidarity. From the viewpoint
of objective role in society, Escalante
is a direct agent of the Soviet bureau-
cracy and Castro is the leader of a genu-
ine revolutionary movement, even if it is
one whose program does not coincide in
all questions with the program of the
Fourth International. From the viewpoint
of social composition, Banda has concocted
out of nothing the "working class" his-
torical connections and "composition" of
the Escalante group. In reality, Escalante
recruited his followers exclusively from
the top layers of the state apparatus. He
tried to build a privileged bureaucracy
composed of factory managers, their sec-
retaries and families. He lost his job
as secretary of the Cuban Communist party
because by following this course he alien-
ated the mass of Cuban workers and risked
alienating them from the party and the
revolution, too.
As for the Cuban Communist party,
while its leadership has not yet been
democratically elected at a congress, its
members have been elected in the shops,
factories and farms. It is the only Com-
munist party in the world which has used
this type of selection in order to
strengthen its ties with the urban and
rural working class. And when the first
elections of representative bodies took
place in Cuba -- the elections to munic-
ipal committees, or "local power bodies"
as they are called officially -- the out-
come was an absolute majority of workers,
12,565 out of 21,838 members, according
to the October 8, 1967, weekly edition
of Granma. Let Banda compare the "social
composition" of these bodies with that of
the state bodies in the USSR, not to speak
of China, and draw the appropriate con-
clusions.
So, no matter which approach we
take in trying to solve the problem of
the political and social nature of the
contending groups in Cuba, we reach the same conclusion -- the conflict is between leaders of a socialist revolution seeking to extend that revolution internationally and representatives of the Soviet bureaucracy seeking to block that extension. But in this conflict, Banda and The Newsletter support the agents of the Soviet bureaucracy ainst the genuine Cuban revolutionists(4) and consider them a lesser evil. This shows how much the SLL leaders have degenerated.
If there is a single key question in world politics today permitting a revolutionist to separate friends from foes it is the Vietnamese revolution. Where does Castro stand on this question in comparison to the Kremlin and its agents like Escalante? The Kremlin is unhappy about the splendid development of the Vietnamese revolution -- it upsets the apple cart of "peaceful coexistence." The Kremlin seeks to convince the international working class that it is all right to let the Vietnamese fight alone against the concentrated power of the strongest imperialist country in the world, provided some "material aid" is given (in insufficient quantity). A more revolutionary policy is denounced as "provocative" and "adventuristic," if not "Trotskyist."
On the other hand, Castro and Guevara, like the Fourth International, have condemned this policy of the international Stalinist movement as dangerously insufficient. They have called for international extension of the revolution as the most effective way to help the heroic Vietnamese masses. They have criticized the Communist parties that limit their action to "peaceful demonstrations" in support of the Vietnam revolution, viewing the struggle the way the Roman spectators viewed the battles of gladiators. On this key question, too, the Cubans stand far to the left of the Kremlin and the Stalinist parties.
The Vietnamese Communist party leaders, whom Healy-Banda & Co. admire so much, consider Castro and the party he leads to be their closest ally. Again
(4) We should stress here that even if the Cuban revolution were not yet a victorious socialist revolution and were still in the process of developing in that direction, it would be our duty to defend it against the right-wing Kremlin agents. No Trotskyist in his right mind would have "defended" the leadership of the Indian Communist party against the July 1942 revolutionary upsurge in India under the pretext that the leadership of the upsurge was bourgeois -- as it really was! In India, in 1942, the Kremlin served the interests of imperialism as it does in Latin America today. and again they have proclaimed solidarity with the Cuban line. They sent an official delegation to the OLAS conference, which Healy-—Banda despise, and they approved the resolutions issued by that conference. By what ludicrous twist of the mind can one then characterize the closest ally of the most outstanding