Indian Debates on the International Left: Selected Writings of Lajpat Rai 9789354792137

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Dilemmas and Challenges for the Left Intellectual
CHAPTER 1: The Left Intellectual
CHAPTER 2: Making Best of Both Worlds
CHAPTER 3: Responsibility of the Intellectual
Part II: Debates amongthe International Left Parties:The Challenge to Conformity
CHAPTER 4:
Traditional Communist Parties
CHAPTER 5: From Polycentrism
to Disarray?
CHAPTER 6: Proletarian Internationalism and the Socialist Camp
Part III: Latin American Movements: The Rise and Fall of the Left
CHAPTER 7: Cuba’s Way
CHAPTER 8: Castro Unmasks Peking
CHAPTER 9: Cuba
CHAPTER 10: Peaceful Transitionto Socialism
CHAPTER 11: Responses to Chilean Coup
CHAPTER 12: Uruguay
Part IV: Indochina and the USA: Solidarities and Betrayal
CHAPTER 13: Vietnam and the Socialist World
CHAPTER 14: Vietnam and the ‘Third Communist Front’
CHAPTER 15: Vietnam: Whither the Paris Peace Accords!
CHAPTER 16: Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina
About the Author and Editors
Index

Citation preview

POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN INDIA AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH

INDIAN DEBATES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LEFT Selected Writings of Lajpat Rai Edited by

SHIRIN M. RAI ANAND PRAKASH

SAGE was founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune to support the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative and high-quality research and teaching content. Today, we publish over 900 journals, including those of more than 400 learned societies, more than 800 new books per year, and a growing range of library products including archives, data, case studies, reports, and video. SAGE remains majority-owned by our founder, and after Sara’s lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures our continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

Advance Praise

Lajpat Rai’s writings urged communist activists and Marxist intellectuals to reassess the meaning of their commitment, the shape it should take and, especially, the connections between the local and the global. Shirin Rai’s ‘Introduction’ is valuable in suturing these political visions to her father’s life. Apart from providing important historical testimony, these chapters provoke us to think afresh about political dilemmas and aspirations today. —Ania Loomba Catherine Bryson Professor of English University of Pennsylvania Lajpat Rai was a persistent fighter for the great global causes of our time. Through his writings, some of which appear here, organizing and participating in memorable campaigns, such as the ones in the defence of the Vietnamese people’s liberation struggle, the Cuban Revolution and its sovereignty and the campaign against Apartheid in South Africa, he demonstrated an indomitable commitment to building people’s solidarity for peace, freedom and equality in the world. At a time when the atmosphere in India was hostile to China, he was an active leader of the campaign to promote India–China friendship. As one who was greatly inspired by his initiatives and joined them, I am especially happy that this collection comes out at a great moment to recall the contribution of that extraordinary teacher and activist. —Manoranjan Mohanty Retired Professor, Political Science University of Delhi

Lajpat Rai’s writings, brought together by Shirin Rai and Anand Prakash, and prefaced with a biographical ‘Introduction’ by his daughter Shirin, offer an entry into a forgotten—though profoundly significant—history of Indian communists. Lajpat Rai lived through a turbulent, yet stimulating period of world and Indian communism, and he brought to bear upon it an independent, critical and prescient gaze that was rather unusual. The biographical sketch vividly describes his gradual involvement with Marxist intellectual currents, his Party activism, his participation in debates on global communism and his eventual disenchantment with the Party. It also offers us a rare glimpse into the genuinely socialist ambience which his family inhabited. —Tanika Sarkar Retired Professor, Modern History Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

INDIAN DEBATES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LEFT

Politics and Society in India and the Global South

The series is a collaboration of SAGE and the M. S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP). It aims to publish books that explore core issues that are of concern in modern globalized societies. The ideas of ‘politics’ and the ‘political’ have become a key point of discussion in contemporary social science, philosophy and cultural history. The changing agencies of prime actors and objects of the political have ignited an intensive and interdisciplinary debate on the ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’. Today, ‘the political’ changes its form continuously, encompassing new fields of social practice. Instead of the political system or politics in the narrow sense, this series will explore questions of what constitutes the ‘political’ in the contemporary environment. The volumes will concentrate on multiple areas of politicization: the role, forms and advances of civil society and social movements, the politicization of law and rights, the drive for democratization, including modal changes of democratic procedures, and the diversification of forms of governance regarding state and non-state actors. They will also cover forms of social and political exclusion, and questions of recognition and justice. With respect to all these topics, the Indian subcontinent and the Global South feature as the major areas of contestation and as centre of scholarly debate. The series will mainly feature edited volumes incorporating innovative social science research on the above-mentioned themes. These volumes will offer cross-disciplinary insights where the collaboration of many top-ranking scholars on a single topic will ensure

state-of-the-field studies. These will be highly focused with contributing chapters that will be linked to the overarching theme of the respective volumes. A strong introduction will not only introduce the chapters and draw linkages between them but also bring new ideas and insights to the fore. ICAS:MP is an Indo-German research collaboration of six Indian and German institutions. It combines the benefits of an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange with the advantages of a cutting-edge research centre. Located in New Delhi, ICAS:MP critically intervenes in global debates in the social sciences and humanities. Series Editors •• Niraja Gopal Jayal, formerly at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi •• Shail Mayaram, formerly at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi •• Samita Sen, University of Cambridge, UK •• Awadhendra Sharan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi •• Sanjay Srivastava, University College London, UK •• Ravi Vasudevan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi •• Sebastian Vollmer, University of Gottingen, Germany The e-books in this series may be accessed at https://micasmp.hypotheses.org/pol-soc-in-india-and-the-gs

INDIAN DEBATES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LEFT Selected Writings of Lajpat Rai POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN INDIA AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Edited by

SHIRIN M. RAI ANAND PRAKASH

Copyright © Shirin M. Rai and Anand Prakash, 2021

This book is an open access publication. It can be downloaded from www.sagespectrum.com. This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits copying, adapting, remixing, transforming and building upon the material and redistributing the material in any medium or format. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. The images and third-party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise. If the material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. If your intended use of any material included in the book’s Creative Commons licence is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission from SAGE.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. First published in 2021 by

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in

Typeset in 10.5/13 pt Adobe Caslon Pro. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021917147

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9789354792120 ISBN: 978-93-5479-211-3 (PB) ISBN: 978-93-5479-213-7 (eBook) Disclaimers: The findings/views/opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the respective authors/contributors/editors and do not necessarily reflect those of Max Weber Stiftung or ICAS:MP. All the pre-published chapters have been edited for typographical and basic grammatical errors in order to make them suitable for inclusion in this book.

For Arjun Sean Tara Uday

Contents

Acknowledgementsxi Introduction. Many Shades of Red: A Personal Reflection on the Life and Times of Lajpat Rai Shirin M. Rai

1

Part I: Dilemmas and Challenges for the Left Intellectual 1. The Left Intellectual

43

2. Making Best of Both Worlds

47

3. Responsibility of the Intellectual

54

Part II: Debates among the International Left Parties: The Challenge to Conformity 4. Traditional Communist Parties

69

5. From Polycentrism to Disarray?

77

6. Proletarian Internationalism and the Socialist Camp

89

Part III: Latin American Movements: The Rise and Fall of the Left 7. Cuba’s Way 

119

8. Castro Unmasks Peking 

123

9. Cuba: Pressures to Conform 

130

10. Peaceful Transition to Socialism: The Prospect in Chile  139 11. Responses to Chilean Coup 

162

12. Uruguay: Rule by Military Proxy 

173

x  Indian Debates on the International Left

Part IV: Indochina and the USA: Solidarities and Betrayals 13. Vietnam and the Socialist World 

187

14. Vietnam and the ‘Third Communist Front’ 

198

15. Vietnam: Whither the Paris Peace Accords! 

225

16. Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina 

235

About the Author and Editors Index

243 245

Acknowledgements

That this book is being published is a testament to the need for looking back to look forward. This book is a labour of love for Shirin M. Rai, Lajpat Rai’s daughter, but it is also, together with Anand Prakash, a reflection of our political commitment to retrieving Left debates of the 1960s and 1970s, to uncovering debates that might guide us today as we grapple with rather bleak political contestations, which are shared by many who helped us bring this volume together, directly and indirectly—family, friends and colleagues. The articles in this volume are taken from two journals/magazines: Economic & Political Weekly and Mainstream. Our gratitude to both these magazines and their editors—Sumit Chakravartty and Gopal Guru, respectively—in allowing us to include here the articles that first appeared between their pages. In editing Lajpat Rai’s articles for this book, Anand Prakash and I have kept the original notations; at times, the details of references are present, at other times, they are not. Some articles included abstracts, while others had notes from the journal editors contextualizing the text; we have included these in footnotes to maintain consistency. Shirin Rai would like to thank Anand Prakash, without whose help this book would not have seen the light of day. An old friend and comrade of Shirin’s, his enthusiasm for this project, close reading of the materials and writing the short but insightful Part Introductions were invaluable. Grateful thanks to Jeremy Roche who worked closely with Shirin to sift through the Mainstream volumes, photograph the relevant pages, read the papers to advise on the structure of the volume and proof read the entire manuscript. Shirin would also like to thank the M. S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the

xii  Indian Debates on the International Left

Political’ (ICAS:MP), where she held a Senior Visiting Fellowship from 1 October 2019 to 31 March 2020. While there, conversations with and encouragement from Shail Mayaram and Martin Fuchs (Directors of ICAS:MP) and Debjani Mazumder (Publisher, ICAS:MP and Shirin’s office mate) helped shape the book. Throughout the visit, ICAS colleagues—Laila Abu-Er-Rub, Himanshu Chawla, Nikita Jaiswal-Shankar and Prateek Batra—were extremely helpful. Shirin would also like to thank Gargi Chakravartty for her generous help in accessing Lajpat Rai’s papers from the archives of Mainstream offices, and Mr Negi, who worked in these offices for over 30 years and was extremely helpful in hunting and dusting down the precious volumes from the 1960s and 1970s. Thanks also to Sean Rai-Roche, who helped with typing up some of the nondigitized articles from Mainstream, and Ayesha Venkatraman, who downloaded the articles from Economic & Political Weekly and made them editable. The introduction to the book is both a personal and political account that situates the work of Lajpat Rai. Several friends have read the Introduction and commented with honesty, robustness and generosity—Molly Andrews, Jaikishan Desai, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Silvija Jestrovic, Catherine Hoskyns, Randolph B. Persaud, Anand Prakash, Tarun Rai, Jeremy Roche, Tanika Sarkar and Vidhu Verma. Shirin would like to thank them all; this was one of the most difficult pieces of writing, and the comments from friends undoubtedly improved the text. Conversations with Upendra Baxi, Neera Chandhok, Uma Chakravarti, Pratiksha Baxi, Bishnupriya Dutt, Mallarika Sinha Roy, Adnan Farooqui and Indrani Mazumdar all helped in thinking through Left debates in India, the split in the Communist Party and its different trajectories; thank you to all for giving the time to discuss these with Shirin. Shirin would also like to thank friends from outside the academic community who made her time in New Delhi so amazing and allowed her to work well and play hard; friends from school whose generosity and hospitality made this a very special time—Vidhu Verma, Geeta Sudan, Bindu Dewan, Neeraj and Kavi Ghei, Ajay Verma and many more.

Acknowledgements  xiii

Anand Prakash remembers with fondness the long discussions he had with Jeremy Roche on the nature of the change-oriented politics. These occurred during sittings in his house in Delhi, and helped him gain clarity about the decline in people’s movements the world over in the 1950s and 1960s—precisely the subject covered by Lajpat Rai in his intellectual endeavour.

Introduction Many Shades of Red: A Personal Reflection on the Life and Times of Lajpat Rai Shirin M. Rai

Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues—and in terms of the problems of history making. Know that the human meaning of public issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles—and to the problems of the individual life. Know that the problems of social science, when adequately formulated, must include both troubles and issues, both biography and history, and the range of their intricate relations. —C. Wright Mills ([1959]2000, p. 226)

There is a time for everything. And now, 17 years after Lajpat Rai left this world, it is time to face that singular, non-negotiable fact. I wonder if he were with me today, what he would say about the current assortment of traumas confronting us: a global pandemic that also reveals deep-seated inequalities and their painful effects, the brutalities of populism and the continuing ascendency of neoliberalism affecting both our social and physical worlds. The world needs alternative visions of society and politics today, and this book reminds us that those visions and vocabularies were available to us once, recently. These vocabularies were imperfect, incomplete and perhaps, in some

2  Indian Debates on the International Left

ways, incommensurate with our imaginaries today, but they were also inspiring. Working on this book reminded me yet again that we are walking in the paths made by others, by a Left movement in India that was vibrant, passionate and angry at the exploitation of working and marginalized people and had a vision for change that went beyond representative politics. As the essays by Lajpat Rai testify, those who participated in this movement did not always agree with each other, but they tried to communicate their disagreements with honesty, vigour and respect. Platforms such as Mainstream and Economic & Political Weekly provided spaces in which these debates could be held and ideas developed. The book also encapsulates the international solidarity that was a hallmark of the Left movement; it analyses both international socialist alliances and the fractures that appeared within these as competing visions of a socialist future collided. The writing on Cuba in particular opens up the way to discuss the importance of democratic thinking for Left politics. The divisions in the international Left movement had human costs, which were often paid in friendship and organizational splits. But these sharp debates also ensured challenges to ossified political frames and opened up new political possibilities as the search for alternatives continued. We need another egalitarian and socialist politics today—one not constrained by state socialist straightjackets and that builds on the desire for free and democratic spaces, new ideas and expanded vision of a good life. I hope this book will contribute to a resurgence of new visions for the Left. In this introduction to the work and life of Lajpat Rai, who was my father and my friend, I try to provide a sketch of his life (Part I), the political context in which he was writing (Part II) and some thoughts about why we need to pay attention to his work today (Part III). It is never easy to write about those closest to one. Biography allows us to ‘explore the interlinking of political activism with personal passions, politicising the private sphere and giving activism—and even large-scale emancipatory moments—dimensions of intimacy’; it also allows us insights into ‘a kind of daily life practice of relations, actions, negotiations, radical refusals, disappointments, acts of solidarity, betrayals, intimacies’ (Jestrovic, 2021, pp. 2–3; also see Badiou & Engelmann, 2015). Of course, intimate political biographies of family and friends must contend with memory and the

Introduction  3

gaps in it—where the political might recede in the face of intimacy, where we look for clues in photographs, scraps of writing, everyday objects and letters to piece together the jigsaw of a personal/political life. Archives are ambiguous areas that offer the opportunity to bury the past or for others to unearth what has been purposefully hidden. Camera Lucida, the book Roland Barthes wrote before he died, was inspired by a photograph of his mother; ‘that has been’, he wrote, ‘is what the photograph tells us. In so doing, it also alerts us to our death, to mortality—what has been is not with us’ (Barthes, 1993). Photographs are both auto/biographical and archival, a kind of registry of a moment in a life lived at a particular place and time.

Figure 1  Lajpat Rai Being Interviewed on Cuban Radio, 1962

4  Indian Debates on the International Left

This photograph of my father that my brother, Tarun and I chose for his memorial service in May 2004 was his favourite—it was taken during a radio interview with him in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. However, it did not find favour with his friends and family that day—it was too indistinct, they asserted, they could not recognize the man, they said. But, to my brother and me, this photograph captured the essence of the man—engaged, passionate—and its blurriness only served to remind us of his huge presence receding from our lives. I see this photograph also as a call to continue the fight. To value the future. Look at the open hands, hands that defy the enclosure of the frame. Perhaps this is also the distinction between the ‘stadium’ and ‘punctum’ that Barthes underlined—the understandable, recognizable acceptance of an image versus ‘that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)’ (Barthes, 1993, p. 27). Barthes also started writing the essay, ‘One Always Fails to Speak of What One Loves’ before he died; I have found it difficult to write this introduction not because I find it difficult to speak of my father, which I do often, but because I find it challenging to sift through memories and facts, between ‘the real and not-real’ (Andrews, 2014, p. 2) in my narrative of the man, his life and work. Curating a life/work that makes both intelligible has been a painful as well as rewarding task. Through it, I have found myself returning to old political conundrums, reading literature that I had left far behind, and revisiting my childhood in Delhi, which, in the absence of both my parents, is no longer home—and yet always home. The time I spent in Delhi as a Senior Visiting Fellow at ICAS:MP helped me collate this work; I also rediscovered and reunited with friends that I grew up with, at school and university, rebuilding old/new links with this city, seeking and finding new ways of being in its spaces, with my memories as I made new ones. As a result, I have written this piece in different registers—the personal and the political—giving the reader a flavour of the person and the political landscape that he traversed in his writing.

Part I Lajpat Rai was born on 15 June 1926 in Lyallpur,1 Punjab, and passed away on 14 May 2004 in Delhi. He often used to cite the Biblical ‘three score and ten’ as the age he would like to be; but he

Introduction  5

was so full of life and so hungry for living it that 78 seems unfairly short for a life such as his. Lajpat Rai was a great walker and every morning he picked up his baton2 and went walking on the Delhi University Ridge; he was also a music lover, a writer, a political activist and, most importantly, a family man—a husband and a father. Seventeen years later, I sit down to write about him, my father, his life, his work and the world in which he was politically active; a world that has receded and yet remains important, if only as a counterpoint to the politics of today. The value of looking back to look forward was something that he understood; in a letter dated 15–17 March 1999, he wrote to me: The Indians of the altiplano (living close to the Cordillera of the Andes) set much store on the past. This is how they put it: ‘Past is the most important part of life. One can be sure only of the past from which draws knowledge and experience. The future does not exist and the present rolls on.’ Yes! Past is the most important part of life. It teaches you many lessons if only you have the capacity and also the courage to learn them. Some people don’t have them. I had only little of both—the capacity and the courage.

The past lives on in many registers, of course. One of them is memories—in this case, his and mine. Several years before he died, I asked my father to write to me about his life. At first, he resisted, unclear of the purpose of such an exercise. At my persistence, he obliged, as he always did, and eventually sent me four letters between March and May 1999 in which he described his early years. He reflects on this exercise. It is easy and at times pleasant to bask in one’s memories (It is because memory has a quality of rejecting the unhappy, unpleasant and sorrowful happenings in one’s life and sticking on to the happy and the pleasant episodes that happened long ago). But it is not so easy to put these memories on paper, even when someone you love so much has asked you to do it. How much of the past can a man carry around with him in his seventies? Not very much as I can see. Going back and forth in memory lane, especially when it is a long one is an exhausting experience. When I scan

6  Indian Debates on the International Left

through it, I am quite bewildered. I can only see a few milestones clearly, but much of it is full of grey, misty areas where scanning becomes difficult. There are also some brightly lit patches and some green tree-lined avenues where memory travels again and again with joy.

Figure 2  In the Rose Garden, University of Delhi, 1970

Introduction  7

As I re-read these letters, I find that he was both a romantic and quite self-aware; he knew the temptation of altering, forgetting or embellishing the past for best effects. Sometimes when he was telling a story, my mother would correct him, ever the historian and the scholar, on facts, dates and exaggerations, to which he would reply, ‘we can’t always let facts get in the way of a good story, Satya’! And yet, he wrote in his first letter to me: The man who writes his autobiography or cares to write about himself and his life on request from a dear one, has one privilege. It is that he can hide the negative aspects of actions of his past life and reveal only the positive ones with the view to making an impression on the public. In this case when I write to you, the girl I love so much, and also who has watched me live and work for so many years as an adult and whom I have always treated as a close friend, I will have little tendency to hide things. Also, I will not tend to put a shine on my life as in both cases I will be caught, as you know your Papa so well. I may do a little mischief only on my early life when you were not there and I and Satya had not met. So what I write to you will be more or less the truth as I think and remember it at a point in time, without hiding or embellishing it.

My father’s letters to me are signed ‘Papa Lajpat’—fiercely familial but also democratic, he wanted a relationship of friendship with his children even though his passion for his family meant he constrained us all in an embrace that felt at times too constricting. After these four letters, he stopped writing; why, I ask myself often, did I not sit him down and record his life history? He was an amazing raconteur and would have given me many hours of listening to his strong voice, booming laugh and thoughtful insights; a regret that I will always carry with me. I did learn from my regret. After his death, I interviewed my mother, Satya M. Rai, his life-long love and soulmate, about her life, their lives and our lives. My own memories, of course, span a long period, from childhood to motherhood. I grew up in Delhi in a small family of four—my parents and my brother Tarun—with the narrative of forwardlooking modernity underpinning our schooling and everyday life

8  Indian Debates on the International Left

of nation-building through school textbooks on civics and history, exhortations on state-owned media and Bollywood films that confirmed this approach to India’s march from freedom to development. In the conversations around our dining table, the past was just that: a past, occasionally invoked, often humorously, when my parents spoke of their ‘home’ and pretended to quarrel over the various merits of their cities and cultures—Lyallpur and Multan, peri-urban and urbanized. I could only guess at this past through occasional comments, momentary recall shared sometimes in the context of anniversaries, of days of birth, death and festivals: we did this … my father always said that … my mother insisted we went there … we played so … fragments of memory casually brought into view, which I lapped up and stored. I, too, asked questions and got honest answers: I didn’t like Multan, always wanted to get away from it (from my mother) … I escaped to Lahore as soon as I could and tried not to go back home to Lyallpur (from my father) … answers to be picked at later, carefully lifting the many layers of meaning. It seemed to me that there was this world behind a curtain—an opaque yet definite world—that I wanted to devour but could only do so in small morsels; I couldn’t disturb the curtain, rip it away—it was too fragile, insubstantial and important to those who took their place in front of it. Slowly, however, a picture began to emerge of a different life that linked so directly to mine. A picture of border crossings—borders of nations, citizenships, minds and hearts, and new beginnings. It felt good to finally connect with a world I had never seen, people I had never met, and sounds and smells I had never experienced. When I was around 10 years old, a clear memory I have of the history of my family is about discovering that when my father said he ‘was underground’, he did not mean that literally; he had not dwelt in tunnels underground as I had imagined for many years—it was a political statement; he had been a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), a ‘whole-timer’ who worked ‘underground’ for the Party. That was when he had met my mother, who had remained on the periphery of the Party; she was not a member and yet donated 10 per cent of her salary as a college teacher in Amritsar to Party coffers—a tithe that she was happy to pay even with many family

Introduction  9

responsibilities. My aunt Asha, my mother’s elder sister, recalled in a letter to me: Satya was called by her friend Surjit to go to her at Kanpur  … Surjit’s brother … was a whole-timer … Surjit also had Communist ideas. So Satya also developed sympathies with communism. She read Carl Marks [Karl Marx] and Lenin, etc. So when she joined Government College at Amritsar … she was attending Communist Party meetings. That is where she met Lajpat.

They met when my mother went to buy People’s Democracy at the People’s Bookshop where my father was helping out; ‘she will get me into trouble (phasai gi)’, he told his friend—he laughed telling us this story for the nth time; my mother blushed and smiled—a shy and most lovely smile and I sat there thinking if I would ever find such love as between them. But where was this all happening? Multan, Lyallpur, Lahore, Hansi, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Delhi—places

Figure 3  Satya and Lajpat Rai in China, 1979

10  Indian Debates on the International Left

that told seamless stories of my family, leaving traces that I had to follow to and fro but never really with them. Their place was my home in Delhi; first, a small flat off Rohtak Road, New Delhi, with three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, a study full of books and, as I seem to remember, flags of Cuba and Palestine, and a beautiful handmade desk that my mother used all her life. My father wrote the articles presented in this book sitting on a divan (he used to call it takhte taus) resting his papers on a small wooden ‘desk’. He wrote until this postural flaw resulted in sciatica and much pain. He had a Czechoslovakian typewriter, blue and cream, encased in a handsome leather case, on which he used to type with his two index fingers, cursing when he made mistakes. I was six years old, I think, when we left Rohtak Road for a bright airy flat in Roop Nagar, a neighbourhood within walking distance from the University and Hindu College where my mother taught. My father had to take the bus to go to Delhi College (later Zakir Hussain College, predictably, he didn’t like the change of name). They had decided that he would join the evening classes because that way there would always be a parent in the house to oversee Amma, our nanny; I  took this for granted, but my mother reminded me that it was a radical step for a man not to put his own career before his wife’s. We didn’t have a garden, but my father had ‘green fingers’ and soon made our large balcony into an arbour full of plants and flowers. He was also the aesthete in the family; he recalled that while his own paternal home was comfortable, it was utilitarian. Eleven persons living cheek by jowl in a small house was not a happy situation for a growing boy. Most of the time I stayed away from the house—on the street, but mostly in the Company Gardens,3 which was only 20 minutes’ walk from our house…I carried my books and sometime food and spent long hours reading or just looking around. From that time, as a little boy (not so little in height) I love nature…. During winter, I remember, the garden was full of flowers of all types exuding fragrance that could be smelled even while approaching it. I loved it there…and sometime having a dip in the canal naked when nobody was watching. I think these

Introduction  11

Figure 4  Roop Nagar, Balcony, 1970s early visits to the garden sharpened my sense of appreciation of beauty and aesthetics.

We moved to the Hindu College campus in 1984; this gave Lajpat Rai the opportunity, with its gardens (front and back), Jacaranda

12  Indian Debates on the International Left

and Mango trees and Dhukhi Ram, the gardener, to indulge in his passion for nature by spending long hours designing the planting and admiring the results. The house was on the Delhi Ridge, where he went walking in the morning from 5 am to 6.30 am every day. This was also the home where my mother was diagnosed with cancer; my father was devastated and did not leave her side throughout this period, going to the hospital every day and coming back exhausted and sharing with my brother and me the day’s events, conversations with my mother and the doctors’ encouragement. My mother survived this ordeal. Finally, in 1985, just as I left home to go to Cambridge University for my PhD, my parents moved to Vaishali (a university cooperative in which my mother invested without telling my father to sidestep his objections about owning property!) to a home, the building of which my father oversaw—travelling from the University each day, wearing a Sola hat, and returning tired but excited to report on progress. Here too, much to the surprise of their neighbours who built on every bit of land that they could, he ensured that there was a small garden in which my parents could sit and read, entertain friends and play with their grandchildren. In each of these locations, Lajpat Rai ensured that the aesthetic and the political found equal space. All these homes were full of pictures on the walls, objet d’art that appealed, books and political magazines crowded the rooms, as did political friends, comrades and acquaintances, and music—Hindustani and Carnatic, ghazals and bhajans—always spilled over and through the rhythms of our everyday lives. Lajpat Rai loved literature; he introduced me to all the Russian and Victorian classics and Latin American writers, read aloud Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, and every time we went to Connaught Place, he took us to Progress Publishers bookshop to buy books. His love of English and other literature was hard-won, and it was strongly reflected in all four of his letters to me. It would not be wrong to say that I was a man shaped by his reading and his imagination…My first serious encounter with books was

Introduction  13

at the age of 12 or 13 when in my 8th standard I was awarded a prize for standing first in History and English and second in Urdu. I remember the books: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and stories by those two Germans—the Grimm brothers. These were three glossy books produced in England…. It was from this time my struggle to learn English started and another ‘book’ came in my hands called the ‘dictionary’. This ‘book’ remained my constant companion for years… To look for the meaning of a word in the dictionary was a frustrating experience in the beginning… Hated it. And then again a nice sounding English word would dance before me and promise to explain to me the sense of what I was reading, and I would grasp the dictionary… It was only when I reached the 10th class, aged fifteen that I could read and enjoy books in English without the help of the dictionary.

Lajpat Rai was a self-made aesthete; he came from a middle-class family in Lyallpur, Punjab. My father had to do two jobs in order to support a large family and one of the jobs was the librarianship of the Coronation Library of Lyallpur…He met all his children only on Sundays or during holidays… [I] had a home which provided me with all the basics of food, clothing and shelter (though not the goodies of life) and I had a small room for myself though it was often invaded by my brothers and sisters… I didn’t go to Modern School in Delhi, but to the Municipal Board School, where a bearded Maulvi taught me not English but ‘Hinglish’. My teacher of English did not know English. So I had to unlearn what I ‘learnt’ from him before I could learn it with my own efforts.

When he went to college for his higher studies, he felt he had escaped from the small-town constraints of Lyallpur to Lahore, this burgeoning and vibrant city where he could spread his wings, which indeed, he did. I came to college with a new suit and a new bicycle. I was only fifteen and a half—a romantic and a high-spirited boy. I took courses in Physics, Chemistry and Maths and English… I had

14  Indian Debates on the International Left

passed my intermediate (ten + two) in a poor second class. How could I concentrate on physics, chemistry and maths when my mind was full of romantic tales—Shakespeare’s plays, Shelley’s poems and plays by G. B. Shaw and Oscar Wilde? But I managed to pass and decided to take Economics as my major subject for my BA.

He was brought up by his stepmother, whom he adored; his biological mother died in the plague when he was one year old and left him a legacy which was important for his further education and saw him on to the next phase in his life. She [my biological mother] was the only child of a well-off family which left a lot of property at Gurdaspur town right in the main bazaar. It is here we came as refugees from Lyallpur. When my mother died, the entire property came to me—the child Lajpat according to my grandmother’s will…which could be used only for my education. And it was thus used when I came to Lahore for my MA…at Forman Christian College. But for this money I could not have come to Lahore for it was not possible for my father to support his six children and send money to me as well. My total expenditure per month (college fees and stay in an ‘expensive’ hostel) came to `80 which was later increased to `100.

I remember him telling me that his time at Forman Christian College was one of the best times of his life. This was the time of his political awakening, as he called it. The books that I now read did not give me happiness. They made me sad, though they also gave me hope. They showed how poverty and misery and inequalities could be wiped out through human action…I am sorry to be boring you with my talk of books, but you know, I was not a socialist [who was] a product of class struggle but a socialist whose consciousness was elevated by books. The two books that were suggested to me by my seniors in college were Mother Russia by Maurice Hindus and The Soviet Union: A New Civilization (I am not sure of the title) by Beatrice and Sydney Webb. I devoured them in two weeks though both were

Introduction  15

big, fat books, especially the latter…. Bauji [his father] was the librarian. He got me a few good books on socialism, not knowing what effect they were going to produce on his son…. Later I read what Nehru and Tagore had written about the Soviet Revolution after visiting socialist Russia, not suspecting at that time that I will visit that ‘new civilization’ a dozen times and later get disillusioned with it.

This was also the time when he met other socialist students, joined the CPI and became a student leader in the Party in Punjab. And when he started travelling, which continued until the 1980s, first to Punjab as a student leader (and a tennis player too), and then to the Soviet Union and other Soviet satellite states, Austria and the United Kingdom,4 as a CPI member, Cuba, China and even North Korea at the invitations of friendship societies and other groups. In the 1990s, he travelled to Europe to see me and for holiday. This is the point at which he stopped writing his autobiography in his letters to me; ‘it was too difficult’, he said; perhaps it was because I was unable to type up these letters at the time as he had instructed me: ‘If I continue to write (and it is a big if ), you will have to not only put the letters together but also correct the language and make many improvements in the narrative. Also, you must send me back a typed version of the same whenever you find the time to do so’. My young family commanded my attention and the urgency of the everyday sometimes came perhaps at the expense of what might have been a longer conversation with my father. This is where my own memories take over—of the father, the man and the political activist. We will, however, return to these letters a bit later to discover how he viewed the Party he had joined, and how he saw the role of the Left intellectual, about which he has written (Chapter 3). India achieved its Independence in 1947, but it was also partitioned at the same time. My father’s family, like millions of others, had to leave their home and travel across dangerous borders to what became India. He told me how, during the tense days before the partition, when communal violence was rending communities apart, he had carried a letter in his pocket given to him by his teacher at

16  Indian Debates on the International Left

Forman Christian College, Mr Lucas, addressing him as his nephew, David—a flimsy but powerful protection in case a mob from either community stopped him. His stepmother had to take the responsibility of leaving Lyallpur with her seven children for India in the absence of her husband, who was on tour in the interior of Punjab. A neighbour had offered them a place in his truck, but he could not wait for my grandfather’s return. In Amritsar, his stepmother urged my father (the eldest son in the family) to go from camp to camp looking for his father. What Lajpat Rai must have seen during that search I cannot imagine; he never once spoke of witnessing the evidence of the violent rupture of the country. He did, however, tell us about his anger when he did find his father, who had come through with the family’s household goods—‘He brought pillows, but left my books behind’, my father used to say, laughing and yet still annoyed at his loss. The family settled in Jalandhar, where they got a house in lieu of the one they left behind. By this time, as a Party whole-timer, my father was semi-detached from the family and stayed in Amritsar. There is a significant literature on political narratives (Andrews et al., 2013; Plummer, 2017; Reissman, 2013). The focus is on the stories of political activists in the public sphere; the terrain of politics may be different and shift over time, but the focus largely remains on the participation of individuals (perhaps groups) in the public/ political—social and national movements, political parties, electoral politics, charity work, etc. I build on this work. There is also a growing literature on Left activists (see, e.g., Andrews, 1991, 2007; Loomba, 2019), again in different contexts, historical and national, Party political; there are political biographies based on oral histories of men and women who participated in Left movements. I build on this work too. What I emphasize here, however, is the link between the personal/ political, the everyday and the public sphere. When I read his letters and then his articles presented in this book, what strikes me is how clearly the narrative arc of both is recognizable—the anger, passion, rhetorical flourish, imaginaries and romanticism, and the arguments about autonomy, democratic functioning and creative thinking (or lack thereof) of the Left movement.

Introduction  17

My early life (and youth) has been quite a complex one with plenty of thinking, feeling and action. It has always been full of idealism, fantasy and a deep desire to change this world to one in which all people will be free, equal and happy. And this desire was there before I came in touch with Marxism…. Teaching for me was a radical activity and not merely a means of livelihood. All my life I tried to combine idealism with robust realism. I never succeeded. Realism always took the back seat.

When he retired from Zakir Hussain College, he came back home with a plaque that his students (not his college) had given him; the last question they asked him, he told us, was how could they make a revolution in today’s world? He must have convinced them that change was possible. He was clearly touched that they looked to him for guidance on how to achieve it. He was also clear that this awareness of political values had to be introduced to his children; the dominant values of our society were not egalitarian. In my efforts to raise our two children (who were formed in the era of hippies and socialist dreams), I along with Satya, assiduously and conscientiously, tried to give them a constructive, intelligent and a socialist upbringing. Here again idealism came first. How far we succeeded in this, you know best.

As I have written elsewhere, one day, my father came back from his morning walk rather subdued. This is what he related. I have been taught a lesson today. I was sitting on the roadside bollards and admiring the mountains when a coolie came and rested beside me. I turned to him and asked him ‘Aren’t you a lucky man to live in Shimla? You have these mountains as companions all the time, while I will be going home to hot and busy Delhi soon.’ He looked at me and said ‘Sahib, when do I have the time to lift up my head to see the mountains? I am a coolie; I always look down to make sure I don’t stumble.’ (Rai, 2018, pp. 7–8)

My father was angry with himself about his narrow understanding of beauty and his assumptions about who can appreciate it. He wanted

18  Indian Debates on the International Left

Figure 5  Walking in Shimla, 1972 me to remember this story and I always have. He also was one person I knew who always asked the name of anyone he met. Names, he said, are an important part of our identity, and if you wish to treat people equally, you must know and use their name. He might not have focused on the politics of caste, but the politics of class taught him to respect everyone equally in this way. Raju, a sweeper in Vaishali, reminded me of this after my father’s death. Joining the CPI in his third year of college had once been an answer to how to overthrow the status quo, but though he gave decades of his life to the Party, he was always a misfit. The most important thing that I have learnt from my own political past is that one must be a non-conformist, one must not accept anything on faith, must be audacious in thinking and, as Marx counselled, ‘Must doubt everything’… I discovered the virtues of non-conformism rather late in the day, though I was one of the first in the Indian Communist Movement to do so. A fortnight

Introduction  19

ago Rajinder Sandhu brought a guest to our house to meet us… a friend of my youthful years (in the 1950s at Amritsar). Dhira [was in the Party but]… is now settled comfortably in New Jersey, USA. He told us that the Party people warned the student cadres against ‘Lajpat’s slandering of the Soviet Union’. And Satpal Dang (the one Punjab Communist I admire most for his personal integrity) was the most vociferous in criticising me for my ‘subjective’ criticism of the Soviet Union, which I could visit often because of my work in the [World] Peace Council. And I must confess that it made me keep quiet and sometimes wondering that ‘I may be wrong’, until I visited the USSR again and saw things for myself again. It was only in 1962, when you were two years old, that I wrote my first criticism of the land of the Soviets in a little journal called Frontier,5 published from Calcutta and then continued in Mainstream and Economic & Political Weekly. No wonder I was out of the Party soon!

But before leaving the Party, Lajpat Rai had been a loyal member. Unlike my mother, who was very critical of CPI’s positions before and immediately after the Independence of India in her writings and arguments with him, he was a whole-timer and had accepted wholeheartedly at the time that the real Independence was yet to come—that a Congress-led independence was a bourgeois freedom; that true Independence could only be achieved through a socialist revolution. Soon after India’s Independence, in 1948, my father went to prison on charges of bomb-making that were never proven; laughable, as he was the most impractical man I have known, even calling an electrician home to change a light bulb! The Party had given a call for strikes and confrontations with police and army and in prisons under the leadership of B. T. Ranadive. The 18 months that he spent in YOL jail (now in Himachal Pradesh) were formative and perhaps the start of his long goodbye to the Party. He was in solitary confinement because he was a political prisoner6 with a Master’s degree, so he was isolated from the ordinary prisoners, had an ardalli (a pickpocket who used to entertain my father by picking his pocket to demonstrate his skills) to look after him, and any number of books

20  Indian Debates on the International Left

he could read, once they were approved by the prison authorities; I read his copy of Howard Fast’s My Glorious Brothers sent to him in prison by his friend Roshan Khosla, which bore the stamp of the jail authorities. While in prison, he also participated in the hunger strike that was called to challenge state authority from within; the strike lasted for 80 days during which, my father, like others in the movement, was force fed. My father’s anger at this ‘Left adventurism’ of BTR, as Ranadive was called, was palpable whenever he spoke of the strike. ‘It was madness—I stuck it out, not because I believed it was the right thing to do, but because I was not going to let any working-class Party member tell me that I as a bourgeois member couldn’t stick it out!’, he would say. Perhaps this time in prison was also a time of reflection, about his politics, his life and the political direction of the CPI. Feeling a misfit in the CPI, Lajpat Rai left the Party in 1964, when the CPI split over ideological and political issues in the aftermath of the Sino-India war of 1962, and he never joined any political party again. This exit from Party politics did not however lead him to negating Marxism, socialism or the possibility of progressive change. He also continued to hope and campaign for, in various ways through different channels, the possibility of socialism in India. He could do this not because of personal wealth or influence, but because of a firstclass degree in Economics, which allowed him to pursue an academic career, a route to independence from dependence on the Party that was not available to many; because he was not, as Loomba has noted of many comrades, ‘dependent, economically and politically, upon the Party…[and] thus vulnerable to its dictates’ (2019, p. 4). It is because of this dual position as an insider/outsider that his writings provide a unique lens on Left politics. So this is not a history of the Indian Left as such, but of Left debates within the international communist movements and states, as seen through the eyes of a man who remained fiercely committed to socialism even after he left the organizational form—the Party— that was seen as the only way to bring it about. This book brings together articles on international Left politics and the communist

Introduction  21

world—Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China are all subject to critical (often rather harsh) analysis from a Left perspective.

Part II The chapters in this volume focus on the international Communist Movement and its various phases, debates and disagreements. In order to situate these chapters, we need to understand the context of these debates, and the relationship between the Indian Communist Movement and international currents of socialist thought and communist organizations. The CPI, which led the Left movement until its split in 1964, was founded in 1925 and held its first congress in 1943. As with other political parties of the time, it was dominated by bourgeois, male and upper caste intellectuals, who were largely influenced by Marxism as articulated by the Communist International (Comintern), an international network of groups and parties advocating communist politics that was under the control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Habib, in his work, ‘The Left and the National Movement’ argues that, ‘while supporting revolutionary bourgeois nationalists in a kind of alliance of mutual tolerance, [as suggested by the Comintern] the communists would still project a rival blue-print for the nation after its liberation’ (Habib, 1998, p. 6), which M. N. Roy disagreed with.7 The overall approach of the Left in colonized countries was thus set by the Comintern, which in 1929 declared a period of crisis of capitalism and the beginning of revolutionary uprisings in the colonies. In the context of India therefore, this was the period of rejecting Left-leaning nationalist leaders such as Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose (Datta Gupta, 2006; see also Habib, 1998; Haithcox, 1971). Because of the strict control of political strategy by the Comintern, this international network of communist groups was a support to the Indian communists as well as a constraint upon their intellectual and political horizons. In both India and China, in this period, communist parties were decimated and lost opportunities to build a strong political mass base

22  Indian Debates on the International Left

because of their rejection of nationalist movements in order to comply with Soviet interests rather than their own struggles on the ground. For example, at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, in August 1935 in Moscow, the Soviets called for an extensive, ‘people’s united front’, recognizing the emergence of fascism as a worldwide phenomenon of extreme danger, especially after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933. But after the signing of the German–Russian Non-Aggression Pact in 1939, communist parties across the world, including the CPI, were asked to oppose the war effort against Nazi Germany in the name of opposing imperialism. This policy was again reversed when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and the nature of the war was again redefined from an imperialist war to a people’s war. As Chattopadhyay (2007, p. 2507; see also Habib, 1998) notes: The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) took particular care to ensure that the CPI follows the new line by helping the British war effort. This went directly against the nationalist movement against the British rule. The CPGB violently clashed with the Congress, R. Palme Dutt calling Gandhi ‘the pacifist evil genius’.

This was particularly problematic during the Indian nationalist struggles as the Soviet ‘line’ overrode the political strategies needed in India. For example, in 1942, the CPI opposed the Quit India Movement, earning it the label of anti-nationalist while simultaneously gaining legal status as an organization (Habib, 1998). Embroiled in the international Left debates, and compliant to the Soviet Communist Party and the Comintern, the CPI approached India’s Independence with ambivalence, which proved politically detrimental. Stalinist control of the international Communist Movement during the 1930s and the 1940s was complete, and dogmatic toeing the line was expected from and delivered by the CPI, which limited the CPI’s capacity to respond to the Indian political situation, including the impending partition of the country, creatively and proactively. BTR was elected Party Secretary in 1947; the Party now declared the end of the progressive role of the bourgeoisie and proclaimed that the Indian partition had ‘accentuated the hatred between religious communities, contributed to the communalisation of the army, and helped

Introduction  23

to reinforce imperialism’ (Reynolds, 2020, p. 7). BTR then presented the agrarian movement of Telangana as proof of the progress of the democratic revolution to illustrate the success of his policy (Habib, 1998). During this period, Party activists in prisons, such as Lajpat Rai, were exhorted to lay down their lives for the sake of communist struggle: ‘Cadres outside and toiling men and women are laying down their lives every day. There is no reason why cadres inside jails should have to be preserved in a different manner’, a Party document argued (cited in Singh, 2001, p. 260). While not absolving the CPI leadership of responsibility for adhering to the Comintern line (which they actively accepted and pursued), Bidwai calls the influence of the Comintern toxic (2015, pp. 3–8). By the time of Indian partition and Independence, the post-Second World War global situation had played a significant role in the development of Left strategy—the wartime alliance between the West and the Soviet Union had come to an end, Europe was divided, its economy had been devastated and it was facing an increasing challenge by independence movements, such as in India and China, to its power in its colonies; USA was emerging on the world stage as the new power that took the place of old colonial regimes as the ‘new imperialism’. At the same time, the rise of the Soviet Union as a military power saw it take its place on the world stage, even as many colonized countries struggled for Independence and found inspiration in socialism and looked to the Soviet Union for support of their aspirations. The institutional form of this new political landscape was established through the United Nations, which sought, often unsuccessfully, to establish a more equal world order. The old order was changing, generating new tensions. Lajpat Rai’s first visit to the Soviet Union was in 1950; indeed, he told me that he increased his age by one year when he got his first passport so that he could go to the Soviet Union in a CPI delegation. He also told me how, as a young cadre, he sat outside Stalin’s office in Moscow, when the CPI leaders went to meet Stalin; his amazement at being near the leader of the communist world was palpable. This is also when he first witnessed the economic hardship of the people, war-torn cities and the general sense of being ground down by the huge loss of life in the Second World War; but he was not

24  Indian Debates on the International Left

allowed to speak of this or to ask any questions about the policies that were in place to address this economic and social erosion. He resented the fact that, on the contrary, he had to parrot the official CPI line that the Soviet Union was the most developed country in the world. In the 1950s, we also witness the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement after the Bandung Conference (18–24 April 1955); it was here that leaders of nationalist movements in Asia and Africa came together to call for an end to colonialism, apartheid and racism. The host countries were Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, which co-hosted 24 other Asian–African countries at the Bandung Conference. This was the time when Asian–African solidarity first found its voice. The decision to invite the People’s Republic was driven by the fact that increasing US–China tensions might lead to a new major war in the region. India supported this move and the inclusion of communist China in the conference. These were the days of Hindi Chini bhai bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers)! India had recognized Tibet to be part of China in 1954 and Zhou Enlai, under pressure from the Soviet Union, agreed to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in its relations with India. Much later, my mother, Satya M. Rai, would remind my father of his rejection of this slogan of solidarity; at the time, the CPI’s position was firmly opposed to the Bandung statement as the Soviet Union had not been invited and the Bandung statement had been critical of the growing arms race between the superpowers. Bandung was a marker of postcolonial solidarity, demonstrating that the divisions created by colonialism would not find recognition in a new period of cooperation. As Kahin (1956) noted, Bandung played a ‘significant…if relatively minor’ role in the first, brief post-Stalin8 ‘détente between the Communist and non-Communist worlds’. However, Bandung was itself always part of Cold War games and strategies. Major debate centred upon the question of whether Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. Major schisms among the sponsors of and participants in the original conference emerged in 1961 and again, in 1964–1965, when China and Indonesia pressed for a second Asian– African conference. In both instances, India, together with Yugoslavia

Introduction  25

Figure 6  Prague, World Peace Council Visit, 1950s and the United Arab Republic (Egypt), succeeded in organizing rival conferences of non-aligned states that refused to take the strong antiWestern positions urged by China and, in 1964–1965, Indonesia. In November 1965, the second Asian–African conference (to have been held in Algiers, Algeria) was indefinitely postponed. All these events and political shifts affected the Left movement in India. In the context of the Cold War, these international networks were important sources of solidarity. One of these networks was the World Peace Council (WPC),9 which was set up in 1949–1950

26  Indian Debates on the International Left

as an ‘anti-imperialist, democratic, independent and non-aligned international movement of mass action’ (World Peace Council, n.d.). Although the WPC was supported by the Soviet Union, it was also supported by the cream of international Left intellectuals who believed peace and socialism went hand in hand; Pablo Picasso donated his drawing of the Dove of Peace to the WPC as its logo, and writers and poets Sartre and Camus, Neruda and Riviera all participated in its meetings. Throughout the period of his membership in the Party, the CPI was entangled with the Soviet-led socialist bloc through cultural exchanges, political alliances and economic dependency. Lajpat Rai was involved in the WPC and became one of its vice-presidents and lived for six months in Vienna to perform his duties. I remember him handing the medal he got from the WPC in recognition of his work to my son, his grandson, Arjun, rather casually, saying he might like to know that his nana also got medals in his time. Before its phase of conformity, and in the contemporary context of the rise of narrow nationalism, the Left debates outlined in the articles collected in this volume remind us that the proletarian movement was always marked by progressive internationalism based on a forward-looking, anti-colonial and secular nationalism. However, as Iber notes, ‘The arrival of the Cold War meant that the left’s internal conflicts would be inscribed onto superpower competition, and thus that struggles for justice around the world would be refracted through the imperial interests of the United States and the USSR’ (2015, p. 3); peace as an idea came to be aligned with the interests of the Soviet Union. Also aligned with the Cold War and the USA–USSR antagonism was the way in which the USSR treated other communist-inspired struggles: the Cuban Revolution and nationalist struggles in Vietnam, Cambodia and Palestine, all were approached with the interests of USSR centre stage. Détente with the USA, for example, led the Cubans to sharply criticize the Soviet Union and attempt to forge an independent path in the international Left movement, which so attracted Lajpat Rai. At the Tricontinental Conference of Asian, African and Latin American revolutionaries held in 1966, the Cubans openly criticized the Soviet Union and called for armed revolution in Latin America, following the Foco Theory espoused by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (Katz, 1983).

Introduction  27

The other major rift in world politics and within the state socialist camp at this time was, of course, the schism between the Soviet Union and China; this affected the CPI powerfully, ultimately contributing to its break-up. Within India, this was reflected in tension within the CPI on its leadership’s ‘parliamentary socialism’ stand, support for the Nehru-led Congress government under the influence of the Soviet Union and China’s increasing distance from the Soviet Union following the 20th Party Congress and Khrushchev’s policy of ‘peaceful coexistence’ (Zagoria, 1962). This rift was to have serious consequences for the CPI, especially as the early phase of Indo-China friendship, marked by the Bandung Conference, non-alignment and mutual recognition, deteriorated with the flight of the Dalai Lama to India and the growing support of the Soviet Union for Nehru in the context of the Cold War. The Party split over the Indo-China war in 1962, when the leadership largely supported the Nehru government while many members were arrested in the name of anti-government activities. The CPI (Marxist) was formed in 1964, taking a more radical political stance against the Congress government. This realignment of the Left in India was, of course, the point of departure for my father. The intellectual and political conformity of the CPI had longterm implications for the Party. On the one hand, the support of the Soviet Union and the involvement of Indian intellectual elites in the Communist Movement (e.g., membership of the Party and the establishment and flourishing of Indian People’s Theatre Association) meant that the Indian Communist Movement in the 1940s had an impact on Indian politics that was perhaps bigger than its organizational strength (Bidwai, 2015). On the other hand, despite the early clash between the Nehru government and the CPI, which led to the dismissal of the elected Kerala government in 1956 (Ajayan, 2017; Jeffrey, 1991), the CPI came to support Nehru and, later, Indira Gandhi, in line with the Soviet Union’s support for the Indian National Congress. As Stein (1967, p. 165) noted: overt Soviet support for the Indian positions on Kashmir and Goa, and more covertly for India’s position vis-à-vis China after 1959, were of critical importance [for cordial Indian–Soviet relations]. The USSR respected and encouraged India’s desire to remain

28  Indian Debates on the International Left

nonaligned in the Cold War… In addition, the Soviets provided substantial aid for Indian developmental programs after 1955, particularly for heavy industrial projects in the public sector. Moscow also encouraged the Communist Party of India to develop along ‘peaceful oppositionist’ lines within the framework of the Indian parliamentary system.

The CPI’s support for the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975 led to its marginalization from which it has not recovered. Praful Bidwai identifies several reasons for the retreat of the Left in India: ‘a rigid, ossified ideological theoretical framework, inadequate comprehension of the peculiarities of Indian capitalism…flawed conjunctural analysis and absence of a tradition of open and free debate on issues of strategy’ (Bidwai, 2015, pp. 23–24). These weaknesses in the end have resulted in the diminished role of the CPI and the Left parties in general, in times when a radical alternative to neoliberalism is sorely needed.

Part III Reviewing his critique of the CPI, Bidwai (2015, pp. 21) notes: During its best phase, the Left formed itself and educated itself through several kinds of activities or practices: first, a lively interaction and dialogue with the trade unions, kisan sabhas and other mass organizations in whose work it participated; second, its own theoretical reflection developed in intellectual debates in Party and non-Party circles; third, its participation in social and cultural initiatives and its conversation with grass-roots movements active on these issues; and finally its practice of standard or conventional parliamentary politics including the exercise of state power.

Arguably, Lajpat Rai felt that this best phase was when he was active in the Party; he definitely felt that he left the Party as its best phase was coming to an end. The key issue for him was the increasing conformity of Party politics—the toeing of the Soviet line which started with its inception and which became more problematic with CPI’s alignment with the Congress under the influence of the Soviet Union, where

Introduction  29

the spaces for those earlier open debates contracted and the distance between ground reality and ideology grew wider. It was the lack of breathing space for new ideas, such as encapsulated by the early years of the Cuban Revolution, that troubled him; he could not keep quiet as doubts grew about the nature of Soviet polity and society, India’s social reform and the dourness of the Left landscape. After returning from Cuba in 1962, he told my mother that the Cuban Revolution ‘danced’! That defiance of a small nation against the Goliath of US superpower, as well as the ideological conformity demanded by the Soviet Union, and the breathless sense of joie de vivre he encountered—leaders being

Figure 7  Cuban Embassy Party, New Delhi, 1970s

30  Indian Debates on the International Left

called by their first names, music and dancing in political rallies, camaraderie on the streets he witnessed on his first visit to Havana enchanted him and underlined the fact that the ossified Party politics of the CPI gave him no room to breathe. The conformity of the Left and its political consequences no doubt affected Lajpat Rai’s approach to Party membership, political activism and the responsibilities of Left intellectuals in bringing about change and challenging the dogmatic thinking that prevented it from being brought about; he often quoted Marx’s dictum to me: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it’. He continued to be involved in Left politics, serving in the Delhi University Teachers’ Association, organizing demonstrations against the Vietnam war, giving lectures to Left groups (especially student groups) and, later, in the 1980s, becoming president of the India–China Friendship Society and, of course, writing letters to editors of newspapers, and many, many articles. Perhaps his work in the WPC attuned him to international debates on communism, which resulted in his life-long engagement with international Left politics; this engagement is reflected in his writings selected for this volume. His work on Latin America, in particular, found recognition, as is evidenced by its inclusion in an article in International Studies journal on the ‘Indian Opinion on World Affairs’ published on 1 July 1965 (International Studies, 1965). As Rameshwari Nehru wrote in her Preface to his book: ‘Shri Lajpat Rai has done a real service to the nation by writing this—the first informative book by an Indian on Latin America’ (in Rai, 1963, p. x). My father spoke often with pride about leaving the Party rather than being expelled. But he did not speak much about the emotional toll that that decision took—how did he experience the excommunication? How did this exit affect his friendships? His sense of self? The CPI was an all-encompassing organization, so how did he find a new fulcrum? I think marriage to my mother in 1959 (when he was still a whole-timer working for the Party), having his own family and getting a job that he loved might have tided him over the break, but he also lost many friends during this period, which would have been difficult. Silvija Jestrovic (2021, p. 25) has noted

Introduction  31

that ‘political friendship [can be regarded as] as an individualised and self-reflexive form of political belonging; and comradeship as its more collective and action orientated form. In practice there is an opportunity for these two categories to serve as modifiers to one another’. But does Party discipline make such modification difficult? Growing up, I remember a close group of friends of my father who were all Left-wing academics, but none was a Party member; the Party comrades/friends fell away, I think, when he left the Party. The space for friendship and comradeship, imbricated as it is within the organization, finds life ‘outside’ difficult. The network of support that Party members could take for granted was not available to him. Like the partition, his parting of ways with the CPI was ever present, but not really spoken about, at least, I do not recall any regret, though stories of his time as a whole-timer, his stay in YOL jail and his stay in Vienna peppered his narrative about his youth. Lajpat Rai’s decision to leave the Party and its consequent social fallout was also difficult because my mother continued to work with the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW; the CPI’s women’s wing) and was vice-president of the organization in the 1970s. The gap between my father’s emphatic rejection of CPI politics and organization and my mother’s work with NFIW was often revealed over discussions at the dining table, where neither gave way. They were, however, supportive of each other’s work; I remember my father taking care of us during a bitterly cold winter when my mother went to the NWIF’s Calcutta conference. My mother left NWIF during the Emergency in opposition to the CPI’s support for Mrs Gandhi. Always attempting to get away from narrow CPI perspectives in both India and the socialist bloc, and a fierce calling to account of communist parties when they compromised Marxist–Leninist ideology for real politic, underlines the impulse of the writings presented in this book. Independent of Party discipline, his free spirit and speech found voice in articles he wrote for Economic & Political Weekly10 and Mainstream,11 the two premier magazines of the Left in India. It is from these two sources that Lajpat Rai’s articles have been retrieved and published in this volume. My own introduction to my father’s work is recent; indeed, it is only now that I am reading the work

32  Indian Debates on the International Left

presented in this volume. Until now, it was his words not his text that I remember and engaged with. Tentative feelers about this project led to engaged conversations and enthusiastic support from those who valued the history of the Left and international debates on the Left. Anand Prakash immediately saw the merit in bringing this work into the light; Tanika Sarkar connected me with Gargi Chakravartty so that she could help me access the Mainstream archives; Gargi Chakravartty, who knew my mother well, put me in touch with Mr Negi, the keeper of the Mainstream archives, who was wonderfully helpful. Mallarika Sinha Roy helped with contacts in Kolkata in trying to trace my father’s work in Frontier, even though this was unsuccessful. And Debjani Mazumdar, my office buddy in the ICAS offices, allowed me to sketch out the project, engaged with it and suggested ways of organizing it. I take all these names here because this allows me to trace the importance and generosity of the Left movement; these networks enable the preservation, retrieval and projection of Left histories and debates such as this volume. I have explored three archives in bringing this volume together: Economic & Political Weekly, which is completely digitized and therefore easy to access; Mainstream, which is digitized from 2006 onwards, and Frontier, which is partially digitized. These three archives are important repositories of the Left writing in India, and they work across a spectrum of political differences. Preserving these (in the case of Mainstream and Frontier) needs to be urgently addressed. I understand that Ashoka University has taken over the Mainstream archives; many researchers working on Left politics in India would be grateful for this, even as they worry about the privatization of higher education in India. My husband, Jeremy Roche, and I spent a day in the Mainstream offices, sifting through volumes between the 1960s and the 1970s, which was the period when Lajpat Rai was writing for it. Seeing the actual physical copies of this journal brought back many memories of volumes of this weekly around our home in Delhi. The histories of Left debates find place in the volumes of these journals and allow us to understand the complexity and the passion with which these were engaged. The debate on the Role of the Left Intellectual

Introduction  33

(Chapter 3), for example, drew responses from several scholars, including Dr Gyan Chand, a member of Nehru’s First Planning Commission and a dear and close friend of my parents; robust exchanges and passionate rebuttals form part of these exchanges just as they did around our dining table. Anand Prakash and I hope that by bringing to light these chapters, this book will be able to contribute to the study of the Indian Left movement in the following ways: first, the book will specifically contribute to the Left historiography through revealing the arc of communist politics writing presented here. The 1960s and the 1970s— periods under review—were years when socialism, both as a concept and as a state practice, had a strong presence on the world stage in multifaceted registers. The Cold War was at its height, the USA was particularly hostile to Left movements and governments, the world was divided among satellite nations and Non-Alignment was viewed as either a necessary strategy or a political cop out. The divisions were, however, not only between the capitalist West and the socialist East but also fundamentally within the socialist bloc, especially between the Soviet Union and China, and the Soviet Union and Cuba. Given the international nature of the socialist movement, these divisions affected socialist movements on the ground in all countries where communist parties existed, and India was no exception. By rendering visible the debates and issues that affected communist parties and state socialist societies, through the writings of an insider/outsider, we can revisit the history of the Left in India. Second, we hope that the book will shed new light on the Indian Left’s engagement with international communist debates. What is fascinating in the writing presented here is the staunch internationalism on view here—my father’s interest in and concern for how socialist countries developed new modes of political and social life or not. He is concerned not only with the issues of making of people’s movements, their struggles and the establishment of a socialist state but also with the sustainability of socialist ideas and ideals in a context of the Cold War, where two hegemons vie for the support of Third-World nations by offering both inducements and threats. This is what makes him look beyond the struggles and compromises of the Indian Left to new

34  Indian Debates on the International Left

experiments in socialism further afield—to Cuba and Vietnam—and to threats that loom over socialist movements—Chile and Uruguay. It is here we see why this body of work is important to access and reflect upon today. The Left movement everywhere, as well as in India, is in doldrums. In India, it has lost its electoral base and, some would say, its political compass too; its mass base has been eroded under the onslaught of neoliberal policies, and it has been unable to respond with fresh ideas and radical politics. At the same time, the international Left movement has disintegrated after 1989, particularly 1991, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed. In this political vacuum, we find neoliberalism and populism thriving and posing grave challenges to humanity; we urgently need a critique of capitalism that is not bound by narrow Party discipline, which is able to think outside the box, connect the national with the international and be, at the same time, self-critical. We find clues to such a politics in the writings of Lajpat Rai presented here. Third, as the papers are from two Left-wing magazines— Mainstream and Economic & Political Weekly12—the arc of the book also reveals the history of Left political writing and publishing in India in the 1960s and 1970s—the sources, the catalysts and the tone of debates are revealed through these papers. It may be noted that Lajpat Rai particularly dwelt upon the lapses that occurred in the thinking of the communist parties and particularly in that of their leaders. The graph of distortion of Left ideas can be read from the top to bottom in these chapters; they bring into focus the contemporary communist history as viewed from the lens of the actual practices therein. One can see in the chapters the working of a mind impatient with deliberate mix-ups and double talk. They compel scholars and concerned viewers of the political scene to rethink established Left positions and seek inspiration in experiment and creative thought. Finally, the contemporary relevance of these debates is significant as the Left finds itself largely helpless in its response to the rise of Right-wing populism in India; clearly, there has been a failure of the Left leadership to recognize challenges emanating from a strongly integrated and organized finance capital on the one hand,

Introduction  35

and increasingly self-aware identity politics on the other. It is not sufficiently realized by the contemporary Left that, in the new situation, democracy, rather than bureaucratized and hegemonic thought centres, needs to be the backbone of any meaningful struggle. The book underlines the spirit of debate and the role of the Left intelligentsia in comprehending from a sharply egalitarian socialist angle the ever-shifting paradigms of an unstable world and helping bring about progressive change. As Lajpat Rai writes in his article ‘The Left Intellectual’: a Left intellectual’s first commitment is to the struggle of his [sic] people for changing the present social order based on exploitation, inequality, hunger, illiteracy and disease;…[the second is] to oppose imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and racialism everywhere… Left intellectual is thus a champion of the people right at home and consistent anti-imperialist abroad.

The times in which we live demand such an engagement—academic, theoretical and political—to challenge contemporary inequalities and generate new visions of a better world.

Notes   1. Named after the then Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir James Broadwood Lyall, it was built on a grid reflecting the Union Jack. My father was upset when its name was changed to Faisalabad, not because of any affection for Lyall, but because Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, bought this accolade with money. He would rather have had it named after a national leader, such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz.   2. He was afraid of dogs and monkeys, and felt safe having a stick in his hand.   3. Now called Jinnah Gardens.   4. He remembered London as engulfed in fog dense enough for CPGB comrades taking the Indian delegation quickly out of there to Cambridge.   5. Alas, I have not been able to track this article down despite much effort. I suspect it is not in this journal he wrote this critique as the Frontier was established in 1968. The journal was founded by Samar Sen, who edited it until his death in 1987. Frontier was regarded as a far Left ‘Naxalite’ magazine, politically far removed from the CPI, so I doubt that my father (in 1962 still in CPI) would have written for it, though he did write for it

36  Indian Debates on the International Left

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9. 10.

11.

12.

many times later. Memory plays tricks, I suppose. Frontier continues to be published from Calcutta by Timir Bose. ‘The system of a two-tier classification based on mode of living, status and education and entailing inequality of treatment was ideologically deplorable to the detenus’, writes Singh (2001, pp. 197–198). For post-Independence debates on the status of the ‘political prisoner’, also see Singh (2001, pp. 225–228). M. N. Roy, the international revolutionary who is credited with founding both the Mexican and Indian Communist Parties, left the Comintern in 1929 because of disagreements with the Soviet Union’s analysis of the national question. The responsibility of developing Comintern’s ‘colonial policy’ then fell to the Communist Party of Great Britain (Datta Gupta 2006). Many CPI cadre were traumatized by de-Stalinization undertaken after the 20th Party conference. I am sure that this would have affected my father too. I cannot, however, recall him discussing it; nor do I have any of his writings that refer to that period. The USA set up the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom at the same time. The journal was established in 1949 as Economic Weekly; its first editor was Sachin Chaudhuri. Its name was changed to Economic & Political Weekly in 1966. It was edited by Krishna Raj for more than three decades and is among the most prestigious scholarly journals in India. Its editorial stance is left of centre and it has been critical of both CPI and CPM politics, as well as the Congress and the BJP. Mainstream was founded by Nikhil Chakravartty in 1962. It was regarded as close to the Communist Party of India, so it is not surprising that Lajpat Rai wrote for it. It is also not surprising that he did not publish in it after he left the Party. The magazine has been edited by Sumit Chakravartty since his father’s death in 1998. Lajpat Rai also regularly wrote for the New Age Weekly, the ‘Central Organ of the Communist Party of India’ (see International Studies, 1965), as he did for Frontier.

References Ajayan, T. (2017). Dismissal of the first communist ministry in Kerala, and the role of extraneous agencies. The South Asianist, 5(1), 282–303. Andrews, Molly. (1991). Lifetimes of commitment: Ageing, politics, psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2007). Shaping history: Narratives of political change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Introduction  37

Andrews, Molly. (2014). Narrative imagination and everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andrews, M., Squire, C., & Tamboukou, M. (Eds.). (2013). Doing narrative research (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications. Badiou, A., & Engelmann, P. (2015). Philosophy and the idea of communism: Alain Badiou in conversation with Peter Engelmann. Polity Press. Barthes, R. (1993). Camera Lucida, Reflections on photography. London: Vintage Classics. Bidwai, P. (2015). The phoenix moment: Challenges confronting the Indian Left. HarperCollins. Datta Gupta, S. (2006). Comintern and the destiny of communism In India 1919– 1943: Dialectics of real and a possible history. K P Bagchi & Company. Habib, Irfan. (1998). The Left and the National Movement. Social Scientist, 26 (5/6, May–Jun), 3–33. Haithcox, J. P. (1971a). Communism and nationalism in India: M. N. Roy and Comintern policy, 1920–1939. Princeton University Press. Iber, P. (2015). Neither peace nor freedom. Harvard University Press. International Studies. (1965). International studies, Part II: Indian opinion on world affairs. International Studies, 7(3), 492–514. https://doi. org/10.1177/002088176500700307 Jeffrey, R. (1991). Jawaharlal Nehru and the smoking gun: Who pulled the trigger on Kerala’s communist government in 1959? The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 29(1), 72–85.doi:10.1080/14662049108447602 Jestrovic, S. (2021). Revolutionary Intimacies: Friendship (theatre and love). Paper presented at the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Golden Jubilee Online Conference Social Movements, Performance and Democratic Practices, 26 March. Kahin, G. M. (1956). The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955. Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press. Katz, M. N. (1983). The Soviet-Cuban Connection. International Security, 8(1; Summer), 88–112. Loomba, A. (2019). Revolutionary desires: Women, communism and feminism in India. Routledge. Mills, C. W. ([1959](2000). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Plummer, K. (2017). Narrative power, sexual stories and the politics of story telling. In I. Goodson, A. Antikainen, P. Sikes & M. Andrews (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history (pp. 11–22). Routledge. Rai, L. (1963). Latin America: A socio-economic study. The Institute of Afro-Asian and World Affairs. Rai, S. M. (2018). The good life and the bad: Dialectics of solidarity. Social Politics, 25(1), 1–19.

38  Indian Debates on the International Left Reynolds, N. (2020). Failure of the revolutionary path: Mid-life crisis or terminal decline? Sustainable Development Policy Institute. http://www.jstor.com/ stable/resrep24387.5 Riessman, C. K. (2013). Analysis of personal narratives. In A. E. Fortune, W. J. Reid & R. Miller (Eds.), Qualitative research in social work (pp. 695–710). Columbia University Press. Singh, U. K. (2001). Political prisoners in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Stein, A. (1967). India and the USSR: The post-Nehru period. Asian Survey, 7(3), 165–175. World Peace Council. (n.d.). Who we are. https://www.wpc-in.org/about-wpc Zagoria, D. S. (1962). Sino-Soviet conflict, 1956–1961. Princeton University Press.

Part I

Dilemmas and Challenges for the Left Intellectual Written in the 1960s, the chapters in this part explore the role of the Left intellectual in challenging bourgeois regimes in the context of the Cold War. As the battle of ideas between the USA and the Soviet Union raged and affected people’s struggles in the post-colonial world, Rai focuses, in this part, on the threats to writers and writing at the time and on the duty of the Left intellectual to pursue knowledge as an integral part of revolutionary change: a change needed by societies and peoples to break the stranglehold of bourgeois systems of knowledge. The Left Intellectual is a response by Lajpat Rai to an issue raised by Mohit Sen, a major thinker of the Communist Party of India (CPI). At the centre of the response is a not-so-veiled reference to a party bigwig and his group taking advantage of their position in the power structure to grab plum assignments in the intellectual sphere irrespective of where the funding and sponsorship came from. Rai tears into the hypocrisy of these intellectuals, seeing them precisely as ‘making best of both worlds’. The comment reminds us of the previous essay

40  Indian Debates on the International Left

about Pablo Neruda’s ‘wrong’ decision. Rai argues that the development of socialist values involves two commitments: ‘participating in the struggle for changing an unequal social order and an international commitment to oppose ‘imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism and racialism’. A Left intellectual cannot compromise these commitments by engaging with cultural coexistence. In this part, in all three chapters, the point that Rai makes is about the middle-class outlook of the Left intellectuals, putting a premium on professional standing and personal gain in the context of international conflict, such as in Vietnam. The issue, Rai argues, is not just the wrong choices made by some Left intellectuals but also the justifications offered for these choices. It is a slippery slope, he argues, as any criticism is silenced by party bosses. Was this stifling of open debate about important questions of cultural coexistence and the responsibility of Left intellectuals the reason many idealists in the communist parties felt compelled to leave as members and take an independent position? The question gets posed squarely in these three interventions. The second chapter in this part is scathing in its tone and uses the expression ‘making best of both worlds’ quite sharply by critiquing the fence-sitting on the part of a section of intellectuals who otherwise promote the Leftist cause. The immediate reference is to Pablo Neruda accepting the invitation of the PEN Congress in the USA in 1966 at the behest of Arthur Miller. The poet was treated like a rock star by the cultural establishment of the USA, and he gave readings of his poems to packed audiences during his visit. In a New York Times interview, he was asked what he thought of America, he said, ‘Your country—how shall I say it?—seems more prepared for peace than for war. Peace and poetry…’ Fiercely polemical, Rai reminds the readers that this was the time when the USA was engaged in ruthless, overwhelming violence against the people of Vietnam. Rai poses the question: cultural coexistence or cultural resistance? Rai rejects the idea of ‘cultural coexistence’ as undermining radical thinking. He is critical of the poet and indeed uses an open letter to him written by a group of Cuban intellectuals protesting Neruda’s acceptance of the invitation. Writers on the Left had till then remained at one with progressive regimes

Dilemmas and Challenges for the Left Intellectual  41

in Latin America and Africa in addition to Vietnam. What could be the reason for the shift? Rai argues that the priorities of the USA had changed. In the new situation, the capitalist lobby decided to blunt the protests of students and intellectuals that had begun influencing world opinion. Was Neruda overlooking this? Unwilling to assign such a motive, Rai nevertheless gives us one of his sharpest critiques—‘But Neruda, who cannot be dishonest, can be wrong.’ From there on, the question is enlarged to cover the intellectual scene in Third-World countries, in general, and India, in particular. Rai comes down heavily on the self-seeking tendency among intellectuals, specifically of the Leftist orientation. It is suggested that, for the intellectuals, there is many a slip on the course since pressure works on them from many sides; it is not easy to resist temptations. Third-World thinkers and writers, he suggests, were lured from the path of commitment by the power of money; scholarships, fellowships and financial grants played a part. Rai gives it a precise theoretical colouring—for him, the acceptance of ‘cultural coexistence’ is ‘imperialist penetration into the field of culture’. In sum, cultural coexistence weakened the pursuit of socialism by writers and intellectuals ranged on the side of the Left. In the third chapter, ‘Responsibility of the Intellectual’, Rai analyses the Havana Cultural Congress, which declared that the forces of change draw their energy from the new intellectual tools forged by actors engaged in debate and innovative thinking. In Rai’s opinion, challenging the ideological world view of the new imperialist powers, as well as the intellectual dynamism and energy of the Left intellectual, is central to the process of ushering in a new era. So too is the need to defend critical and creative thinking from the endeavours of both superpowers to keep in check politically active writers, scientists and thinkers by the closing ‘of universities,…[and imposing] censorship of films and plays’. Rai considers it imperative that intellectual endeavour is continued with independence, vigour and commitment; that for such work bridging the gap between the thinker’s ‘words and deeds, between his…theory and practice’ is essential. Of particular significance in the first chapter is the emphasis on intellectual work forming a conscious link with the wider revolutionary struggle. Thus, knowledge needs to be put in a conversation with revolutionary praxis. The third chapter, ‘Responsibility of the Intellectual’, also brings into

42  Indian Debates on the International Left

focus the cultural wealth signified by art, which combines well with the notion of energy and excitement accompanying human–social creativity. In a conventional sense, excitement and energy are kept separate from the revolutionary cause of novelty and change. Whereas socialist knowledge and art aim for oneness with the humanity of the time and use it as a weapon to augment revolutionary forces, Rai argues that bourgeois intellectual endeavour sticks to success, glamour and pragmatic utility as the governing principles.

CHAPTER 1

The Left Intellectual*,**

Mohit Sen’s article ‘The Left Intellectual’ (Mainstream, November 26) is helpful only in so far as it puts into focus the question: who is a Left intellectual and what are his obligations and commitments at the present time. But Sen ceases to be helpful the moment he begins to answer the question posed by himself in the article. His definition of the Left intellectual, as broad as the seas, included everybody except Mahatma Gandhi, whom he chooses to name as not belonging to this august group of Sen’s imagination. Sen’s intellectual comes from the ‘vanguard’ of India’s intelligentsia ‘who is trying to shape as well as advance a system of consciousness’. * Lajpat Rai wrote an article titled, ‘Making the Best of Both Worlds’ (Mainstream, 8 October 1966) in which he made reference to the Cuban writers’ protest at Pablo Neruda’s visit to the USA and acceptance of a decoration from President Belaunde of Peru. Lajpat Rai’s reference to some Indian Left intellectuals accepting overseas study scholarships has risen to a lively controversy. Mainstream published a number of comments, both critical and favourable, in the issues of 29 October and 19–26 November. Lajpat Rai in the present chapter has replied to some of the points raised by Mohit Sen in his article, ‘The Left Intellectual’, (Mainstream, 26 November 1966). ** Lajpat Rai, ‘The Left Intellectual’, Mainstream 4, December (1966): 28–29.

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He (the Left intellectual) is at ‘a point at which the growth of national mind shows itself’. He is a Marxist of the ‘plain Marxism’ variety of C. Wright Mills, etc. His commitments, according to Sen, are first ‘to science and scientific method’, second to ‘social change’, third to ‘mass enlightenment’, fourth to ‘hard work’, fifth to trade unionism in his own sphere and lastly to ‘moral values’. Having thus spread the wide, rather too wide, net of his own definition of a Left intellectual and having assigned to him certain diffused and vague commitments, Sen passes on to humour and accommodate this motley crowd of his own creation by defending some of their indefensible traits. Beginning with a homily that the Left intellectuals should shun ‘acquisitive spirit and careerism’ and calling for ‘a certain minimum of sacrifice and suffering—without too much personal discomfort or intellectual deprivation, etc.’ Sen hastens to assure him that he need not refuse either ‘opportunities’ or ‘highest posts’ only he should not hanker after them. To quote the esteemed writer: The growth of capitalism in India has placed many opportunities and pitfalls before the Left intellectual… It is not suggested that opportunities should not be used nor that the highest posts should be refused. But the spirit of hankering after them is totally incompatible with the claim to be Left intellectual.

But the learned writer does not mention what type or kind of ‘highest posts’ and ‘opportunities’ he has in mind. Neither does he want to, as knowing about the opportunism of the pseudo-Leftist intellectuals in grabbing highest posts of any and every type, he simply panders to this opportunism by saying that such posts and opportunities need not be refused. It is one thing that a Left intellectual who is a lecturer or a reader in a university is promoted to the post of a professor or director of an institution, or he is asked to serve on a board or expert committee (say a pricing committee or a wage board) constituted by the government, but it is quite another matter when he accepts the high salaried post

The Left Intellectual  45

in the World Bank—that instrument of neocolonialism—or accepts an opportunity like a Rockefeller grant to write his thesis in India or to secure a position in an American university with the Rockefeller Foundation paying all his expenses including a travel grant for his entire family. These are two different things. Nobody can have an objection to the first category of jobs and opportunities. But to accept the latter jobs and opportunities and at the same time to be classified as a Left intellectual even by such eminent persons as Mohit Sen is nothing but making the best of both the worlds. Sen, however, is not worried about distinction. His only objection is against ‘hankering after’ jobs and opportunities. But how and by whom will be it decided that someone hankered after a particular ‘highest post’ or an opportunity? The World Bank post was ‘requested’ and Rockefeller grant was ‘brought’ to the Leftist scholar on a silver platter. Who hankered after what? Sen projects the same logic to foreign trips. First, he conveniently ignores the question of who pays for these trips. It is one thing that a Leftist intellectual goes to the United States, the UK or West Germany in the course of his extracurricular activities financed by a local university, institution or government. But it is quite another thing when he lands in the United States with his family on a Ford or Rockefeller Foundation grant to conduct research in, let us say, a topic on Indian history. Sen obviously sees no harm in this. For him, ‘all depends on the purpose and whether it was really necessary academically and politically’. But again, who will decide whether the visit of a particular Leftist scholar paid by a US agency was necessary academically or politically? What Sen does consciously or unconsciously through his logic is to condone opportunism nothing else. His logic is ‘Don’t refuse any high post or opportunity, from whatever quarter it comes…but don’t hanker after it. I go to the USA, UK or West Germany on anybody’s money but go when my visit is academically or politically important’. His ‘buts’ mean nothing. His riders are meaningless. He gives a green signal for the opportunist line of making the best of both worlds.

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Then, who is a Left intellectual and what are his commitments? The Left intellectual has two basic commitments: (a) his first commitment is to the struggle of his people for changing the present social order based on exploitation, inequality, hunger illiteracy and disease; based on the hypocritical slogans of ‘secularism’, ‘planned economy’ and ‘equality of opportunity’, etc. The Left intellectual stands by the people, helps them, through his writing and other means, to see their problems in the true perspective, exposes the hypocrisy and demagogy of the reactionary circles and, if possible, shows the people the way to achieve their ends. Having greater insight into the working of modern imperialism, commonly called neocolonialism, he fights against imperialist attempts at subjecting his country’s economy and political life to its interests. He exposes neocolonialism; its various forms of manifestation and organisation and instructions through which it operates. (b) The Left intellectual has an international commitment also, that is, to oppose imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism and racialism everywhere. Being a socialist and understanding the historic significance of the socialist world, he critically studies and popularises the achievements of the socialist countries among his own people, thus creating respect for socialism in their minds. Left intellectual is thus a champion of the people right at home and a consistent anti-imperialist abroad. And if he stands by these two commitments, there is no possibility whatsoever of him being offered ‘highest posts’ and ‘opportunities’ from certain affluent quarters. He is, instead, likely to earn the wrath of somebody in a position of power and may have to make a little, or much more than the ‘the minimum of sacrifice’ which Sen has considerately assigned to him. But then he will be a Left intellectual and not just a ‘point at which growth of national mind shows itself ’.

CHAPTER 2

Making Best of Both Worlds*

The open letter written to Pablo Neruda, the well-known revolutionary poet of Latin America, by a group of Cuban writers and intellectuals led by Alejo Carpentier, Nicolas Gullien and Juan Martinello, protesting against his recent visit to the United States and his acceptance of a decoration from the Peruvian President Senor Balounde, an acknowledged American stooge, has invoked great interest among the literary and intellectual circles all over the world. Neruda, who was denied a United States visa for the last twenty years, even during his years of exile from Chile, was welcomed to the United States where he went to participate in the PEN Congress. Also with him were a number of Latin American Leftist writers visiting the United States for the first time. The Cuban letter does not doubt the bona fides of Pablo Neruda, nor does it take the position of automatically censuring him for visiting the USA or participating in the PEN Congress if, as the letter says, ‘your participation could bring forth positive results for the causes we all fight for’. * Lajpat Rai, ‘Making Best of Both Worlds’, Mainstream 4, October (1966): 23–25.

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But the results of the PEN Congress were quite different. The Congress instead gave the call for ‘cultural coexistence’ extending the wise and accepted policy of peaceful coexistence into realms of art, literature, education, science, etc.

First Results The Cuban letter points out the first results of this theory of cultural coexistence in the acceptance by Emir Roderiquez Monegal—a known Leftist writer—of the editorship of a CIA-financed cultural magazine in Spanish, and in the regular contributions in the Spanish edition of the Life Magazine by no less a person than the revolutionary Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes. The second question raised by the Cuban intellectuals with Pablo Neruda is: what motivates now the United States to open its doors to Leftist writers and intellectuals—the doors which remained shut for so long not only against the Leftist writers but also against ‘liberal suspects’ and even some conservatives who did not see eye to eye with the official US policies. Answering the question thus posed, the Cuban letter says: …some believe that this is a sign of the beginning of the end of the so called cold war. However, at what other time in the years since the war in Korea has a socialist country been subject to the systematic physical aggression that Vietnam is suffering today? Can any evidence of our entry into a period of universal harmony be found in the recent coup d’etats organized with the participation of the United States in Indonesia, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina? No honest person can hold such an opinion. If the US despite this reality, grants entry visas to certain Leftists, this must have some other explanations.

Diverting Attention The obvious explanation for this is that the presence of well-known Leftist intellectuals in the United States helps to create the belief that the world tension has released. It helps to divert the attention

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of the people from the crimes the United States is committing on the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America; and, above all, it helps to neutralize the growing opposition to the US policy among students and intellectuals not only in Latin America but also within the United States itself. The example here of Jean Paul Sartre, who does not claim to be a super-Leftist or ultra-revolutionary, is instructive. Last year, he rejected an invitation to visit the United States in order to avoid being made use of, and also to give concrete expression to his repudiation of the US aggression in Vietnam. Instructive also is the example of the 94-year-old Bertrand Russell who by organizing his ‘Paris Trial of the war criminals of Vietnam’ is, unlike some ‘great’ Leftist intellectuals, giving an uncompromising battle to the US imperialists. And also we can remind ourselves of the attitude that Jawaharlal Nehru took in refusing the invitation of dictator Mussolini to see him, as a protest against the invasion of Abyssinia and the wrathful letter of our poet Tagore denouncing the Japanese atrocities in China. These great intellectuals are and were no ‘Leftist revolutionaries’, no slogan-mongers, but unlike the members of the ‘New Left’ of today, are and were consistent anti-imperialists who did not believe in the spurious slogans of ‘coexistence in culture, art, science’, etc.

Peru’s Fighting Partisans The Cuban letter very rightly criticizes Neruda for accepting a decoration from the Peruvian President and for having a ‘much publicized’ lunch in the Presidential Palace. How could Neruda do such a thing is beyond the comprehension of all those who are acquainted with the political situation in Peru. Recently through rigged-up elections and the open support of the CIA, Belaunde was elected the President of Peru. In the mountains of Northern and Central Peru an armed guerrilla movement is challenging his regime. The people are being denied all civil liberties; police clashes with the common people in the cities are the order of day. In January this year, the Tricontinental

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Conference in Havana pledged full support to the fighting guerrillas of Peru against Belaunde. But such is the force of the prevailing wind of the ‘cultural coexistence’ that a man like Pablo Neruda could not resist its buffets. The Cuban intellectuals writing to Neruda say: When you were in exile,† Pablo, what would you have thought if any writer or political figure of Latin America who permitted Gabriel Gonzalez Videla to decorate him and chat cordially with him? Would you have thought it strengthened the bonds between Chile and the writer’s country? …You can easily imagine, therefore, the present thoughts and feelings of not only those in exile but also of the guerillas in the mountains of Peru…the numerous political prisoners and some of whom, such as Hector Befar lie slowly dying: of others who are living under constant threat of the death sentence imposed by Belaunde regime….

Incidentally, Pablo Neruda, in his short and curt reply to the Cuban letter, does not touch upon this point at all.

Mushrooming Intellectuals Neither the Cuban intellectuals nor the present writer doubt the honesty and revolutionary integrity of Pablo Neruda. But Neruda, who cannot be dishonest, can be wrong. His example can help those numerous ‘Leftist’ intellectuals who are mushrooming in the developing world today and for whom Leftism has become a lever for personal aggrandizement to reap the harvest of American dollars, luxurious trips to the US with families, financing of publications, fat scholarships of millionaire Foundations, etc., and yet remain ‘Leftist’ and ‘revolutionaries’. This malady of a degenerate ‘Left’ is confined not only to Latin America. All over the developing world, a new kind of coexistence is developing—a coexistence between the ‘Leftist’ intellectuals and the † Neruda was forced to go into exile during the regime of the Chilean dictator Gonzalez Videla.

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literary research and educational organizations of the United States. Sometimes, this coexistence extends even to the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The US agencies are now paying special attention to the ‘Leftist’ intellectuals. They seem to have used up the conservative liberals, the reactionaries—their first crop of agents. Now they must speak in terms of ‘the Left’ since otherwise they would have no audience outside the worst reactionary circles. All their efforts are now directed towards the purchase or at least the neutralization of the intellectuals of the resurgent countries in order to leave these people without a voice. And no price is considered too high for this.

Political Castration In our country, this programme of political castration of intellectuals has already begun to function smoothly, almost methodically. Here, we see the Leftist intellectuals walking shamelessly into the lavish American parlour attracted by overseas study scholarships, Foundation research grants which generally include a trip to the United States for the entire family of the ‘scholar’, the financing of the publications which are never seen on the bookshops; heavy grants for collecting ‘book materials’ in the United States, etc. But for the Indian ‘Leftist’ intellectuals, in this period of neutralism and cultural coexistence, the doors of the socialist world are also open in the same measure. They are at equidistance from Washington and Moscow, they are at equidistance from the Congress for Cultural Freedom on the one hand, and Peace Council or AfroAsian Solidarity organization on the other. It is not uncommon or embarrassing for an Indian ‘Leftist’ scholar—a university reader or a professor—to attend an economic seminar in Algeria organized by the Afro-Asian organization where the US is denounced as an imperialist and a neocolonialist power, threatening the independence of the countries of the Third World and, in the same year, to proceed to the United States on a US Foundation scholarship to enjoy la dolce vita in the dollar world.

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Did Not Speak Recently, some Indian intellectuals including a group of about fifty scholars from the capital in a memorandum to the government opposed the proposed Indo-US cultural Foundation. Some of them had pronounced Leftist leanings. One of their objections against the proposed Foundation was that it would dole out scholarships to our students and teachers for studies and research in the United States, thereby influencing their ideas and cultural life in certain specific directions. The case of one of the signatories—a senior lecturer in one of University of Delhi Colleges and pronounced Leftist at that—who would perhaps sneer at Mainstream as being not Red enough for his taste—is typical of the behavior of these new Leftists. His ‘Leftism’ always found him criticizing the Soviet Union for not sending troops to Vietnam to defeat the hated American aggressors, without bothering to find out the feasibility of his demand. But suddenly something happened. A few days after signing of the memorandum, a discussion was organized in his campus on the same subject of Indo-US Foundation. For the first time since he joined the University, he did not speak at such a meeting despite many requests from his friends. And two weeks later, he left along with his family for the United States on a fat Ford Foundation grant just after getting his book published post-haste by a Leftist publishing house of Delhi. How this process of castration of Leftist intellectuals is taking shape was demonstrated again in the case of an ‘expert’ on Southeast Asia belonging to a well-known research institution of Delhi amply fed by monies from the US Foundations. This former Leftist after a ‘deep study’ of the problems of this region and particularly of the Vietnamese war has reached the profound conclusion that the US action in Vietnam is not only good for that country but for entire region of Southeast Asia as well. Surely a Foundation scholarship is at the back of this important research conclusion. But the wind of coexistence blows outside the universities as well. There is a growing group of ‘Leftists’ and ‘neutrals’ in the capital and

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other big cities of India who find comfortable positions on both sides of the fence. They are welcomed by the embassies of the socialist countries as well as find friendly welcome in the embassy of the United States. They are platform speakers both in the genuine Leftist organizations and in the organizations run by the CIA. They are invited by both sides to visit their countries and they find words of appreciation for both all in the name of coexistence, mutual understanding, toleration and anti-dogmatism. This ‘new Leftism’ and ‘literary coexistence’ has been rightly nailed down by the Cuban letter which says: We must proclaim an alert on this imperialist penetration into the field of culture; against plans such as ‘Project Camelot’‡, against the scholarships which place our students on imperialism’s pay roll…against certain kind of insidious ‘aid’ to our universities; against the guises assumed by the Congress for Cultural Freedom; against the publications financed by CIA; against the conversion of our writers into trained parlour monkeys and Yankee sycophants.

‡ A plot hatched by the CIA to gather information regarding political orientation of the students and the teaching staff in the University of Santiago de Chile under the cover of a research project, which was abandoned in the face of strong protest from the students and democratic parties.

CHAPTER 3

Responsibility of the Intellectual*

I There is today at the Third-World level a profound relationship between the problems of the revolution and those of culture. Colonial and imperialist domination deforms and annihilates the cultures of the subjugated peoples. Imperialism and colonialism perform against the peoples of the Third World a real cultural genocide. Against this genocide, there exists the antidote of revolution. It is not possible to have a cultural development without a radical break with the imperialist neocolonialist systems. There can be no culture where there is no independence because in the regimes of oppression highest cultural expressions are denied equally to the people as well as to the intellectual. Oligarchies, whether they boast of their contempt of culture or not, know that it is not a luxury item, but a weapon against their power and privileges. That explains the closing down of magazines, publishing houses and newspapers, the closing or the military occupation of universities, the burning of books, the censorship of films and plays, * Lajpat Rai, ‘Responsibility of the Intellectual’, Mainstream 6, March (1968): 21–23.

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the persecution, torturing and even murder of intellectuals. Every struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism, thus, automatically becomes a struggle for the access of people to culture; the struggle for national liberation assumes the heroic form of a defence of knowledge and beauty. The intellectual is, therefore, twice bound to them; his struggle is at the same time to change the world and to transform reality in the domain of art and science. It cannot be denied that there exists an intimate relation between the misery of the Third World, on the one hand, and the conditions which have made the discoveries of Western art and science possible on the other. The people of Asia, Africa and Latin America have served for centuries as human fuel to keep up progress extending from the Age of Enlightenment to the most recent conquest of modern technology. But, even today, in the midst of the age of cybernetics and the conquest of the cosmos, imperialism and neocolonialism persist in keeping these countries in the sewers of history. The revolution that liberates the land also brings to an end the culture latifundists and restores to the people their right to come into possession of it and to produce the most complex forms of knowledge and art. The artist, the writer and the scientist find once again a sense of their mission and, therefore, a new dignity. Art, science and literature cease to be articles of luxury and become indispensable social needs. In this situation, the intellectuals of the Third World have an inescapable duty which begins with their incorporation into the struggle for national independence and which becomes more profound as the movements for the attainment of these goals develop. As the final resolution of the Havana Congress put it: ‘If the defeat of imperialism is the inevitable prerequisite to achieve authentic culture, then the cultural fact par excellence is the revolution itself.’ Only through the Revolution can a truly national culture be conceived and that is why there is no alternative for the intellectual, who really wants to be worthy of his noble calling, than to join the struggle against imperialism and to contribute to the liberation of his people from the imperialist and neocolonial exploitation. Or, otherwise,

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he acquiesces in a situation depicted by Michel Butor at the time of signing the ‘Declaration of 121’ on the Algerian War. Butor wrote: There are times when he who enjoys the immense privilege of being able to work in relative tranquility in a room or a laboratory, devoting his efforts to increase human knowledge to improve our stay on earth and our life, becomes a traitor to everything he does, to all who follow him and really understand him, whether he is a mathematician, a composer, or an architect, if he does not drop into the balance a little moral or spiritual authority of which he is at that time invested.

We are surely living through such times.

II It is on the basis of such a struggle that a great question is posed for all men and for the intellectuals: which class are they going to fight for? The specific field of the intellectual’s function is the field of the ideological struggle. An intellectual creates elements which are integrated as the foundations of the subjective field of society. These elements are the values, the ideas, the behavior, the customs, the techniques and the sciences. Such ideological field is also a field of class struggle. It is a field of ideological struggle between values, ideas, behaviour and the customs and hopes of different classes at the service of various classes. It is, therefore, a field for decisive struggle. An intellectual’s militancy and specific output are accordingly defined on the basis of the ideological struggle. It is on the basis of such an inevitable option that a bourgeois intellectual and a revolutionary intellectual are defined. Such a distinction becomes evident at least at three essential levels. On the Nature of Intellectual Production Since his production defines his class position, the nature of his production expresses a defined class content. A bourgeois intellectual expresses the class content of the bourgeoisie, its ideas, values,

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aspirations, anguish, behaviour in short, his vision of the world. A revolutionary intellectual starts from a criticism of this very bourgeois content and strives to express the values, ideas, behaviour and hopes of the revolutionary classes. On the Objectives of Production Both the bourgeois and the revolutionary intellectuals serve class objectives in their productions. Here, strategies and tactics are subtle and complex, difficult to be perceived. Whom does this production benefit? Whom does it mobilize and for what? The bourgeois intellectual, whether he affirms it or denies it, objectively produces with defined class objectives, expresses the objectives of the dominant class. He makes his contributions to consolidate the dominant ideology of the dominant class. The revolutionary intellectual produces not only to criticize the dominant ideology of the dominant class but also to create the theoretical–ideological weapons for the liberating struggle of the working class. On the Methods and Forms of Production A bourgeois intellectual is a man already situated in his class. His individual expression tends to be the most accomplished expression of his class. A revolutionary intellectual, generally speaking, is a converted one whose class origin may be bourgeoisie, in nearly all the cases. The first stage of this conversion is expressed in the theoretical criticism of the bourgeoisie, its class positions in political, social and artistic fields. But then a second period becomes necessary. It is that he must ally himself concretely to the class he has decided to serve. This is a decisive moment: this is when a theoretical identification requires practical identification with the values, the anguish, the struggle, the life and the world of the class he is about to serve. Such an identification is one of the essential elements in the change of methods of production by the revolutionary intellectual. His own world and his form of expression are changed. His audience, his life is changed. Otherwise, he has to

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endure eternal anguish, the sense of guilt when testimonies of other men challenge his omission—when they challenge the gap between his words and deeds, between his declarations and actions, between his theory and practice.

III The worthy exercise of literature, art [and] science constitutes in itself a weapon and the intellectual who resists the flattery and the threats of the neocolonialists and the local oligarchies can feel satisfied carrying out his intellectual task with dignity; but the truly revolutionary criterion for the intellectual, in his highest and noblest degree, is his disposition to share in the combat duties of the students, the workers and the peasant when circumstances demand it. In every historical people’s movement, there are many forms of participation, but we can only call an intellectual revolutionary who, guided by the great and advanced ideas of his age, is willing to face all risks and to whom ‘death is only the supreme possibility of serving his country and his people’. In the intellectual field, he finds himself before the double necessity of assuming an autochthonous culture and of using a culture which has been imposed upon him. He thus runs the risk of immobilizing himself, while being obliged to analyse his quality with theoretical instruments which are foreign to it. On the other hand, he lives intellectually and emotionally the drama of his own identity, and he must rediscover for himself and for others the real face of his people. He cannot renounce the cultural machinery of the metropolis—its technical scientific and artistic achievements—as he needs it to survive in the modern world. But instead of permitting himself to be destroyed and alienated by it, his duty is to appropriate and to develop with it his own vision of the world and to be able to project it into a universal dimension. Thus, the instruments that in the hands of colonialists contribute to the economic and spiritual oppression of the people, when recovered by the revolutionary intellectual and used with a critical

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sense become a means of liberation of their social reality and of their conscience. In this field, he must fight against the false values of the metropolitan culture as well as against the stereotypes and mystification of national culture.

IV The scarcity of cadres, the low levels of culture and education, the mass illiteracy forces the revolutionary intellectual to become himself a propagator and an educator for his people. This militant dedication should not, however, mean lessening of the artistic or scientific quality of his work which also constitutes his high responsibility. On his shoulder must fall the inspiring task that Che Guevara assigned to Regis Debray: explain to the world the struggle of our people, and to the people how to struggle. Explain the guerrilla struggle to the world, yes, but also explain to the people the vital need of their liberation; help them to understand the scope of their own struggle; show them how the best part of their tradition has been buried by colonialism; correct their aesthetic sensibility, institutionally deformed by the degenerate exported by metropolis and aid them in enriching the culture they themselves created and which has been corroded, fragmented and isolated by imperialism. And this is action also, and every book is action, though not every book generates an action. The Communist Manifesto changed the world and Ulysses many ideas. To be an intellectual is to stand out from the common level; it means to have knowledge, aptitudes and enough formation so as to show a higher sensibility in facing the sociopolitical problems of the environment in which he lives. But these conditions cannot be used to fan his personal pride acting as a barrier between himself and the people. On the contrary, they should be placed at the service of his ‘equals’, they should enable the individual to know how to devote himself to the noblest causes and no cause is greater than the cause of the liberation of man. That is why an intellectual cannot be conceived as a simple spectator, as a neutral observer of the social drama which develops around

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him. In the Third World today, there is no place for the so-called ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ group of intellectuals, who try to appreciate in all ‘impartiality’ the confrontation between freedom and slavery, justice and exploitation, truth and falsehood. This is not possible. One is in favour of freedom or in favour of slavery. It is not possible to be in favour of freedom with a but nor in favour of slavery with a yet. Yet there are men in the realm of intellect who do not want to be ‘engaged’, who would like to judge like Daniels from their ‘neutral’ position, without ‘getting entangled’. They are not ‘committed’ for the sake of ‘impartiality’, ‘truth’, ‘objectivity’ and what not. More often than not, their ‘objectivity’ and search for ‘truth’ ends in supporting the positions of those whose interests do not coincide with the interests of their struggling people. For a revolutionary intellectual, there is no choice between freedom and slavery, between justice and exploitation. He, therefore, cannot afford the luxury of ‘neutralism’, of hypocritical objectivity, of bourgeois prudence and temporizing. Time has come when the intellectual after accepting Marxism as a method of knowledge and a revolutionary theory has to define himself before Marxism in more than one way. One of them is the dogmatic abstract form. Through a purely formal adherence, an intellectual accepts Marxism principles as if Marxism were a religion, a metaphysics, a truth for him to contemplate, a dogma. It is seen as a complete whole, a finished product whose only role is that of consecrating the realities upon which it touches, attaching to them the character of absolute truth. It is then used as an absurd antiscientific and anti-dialectical vision. Second, an intellectual may transplant to Marxism an idealistic contemplative attitude and by means of such an attitude he not only kills Marxism’s creative and dialectical power but also composes a rationalized justification for omissions in the field of theoretical practice, that is, advancing the work in theoretical field. Similarly, he rationalizes his omissions in the field of political practice, that is, political revolutionary work. This is nothing but fundamentally a bourgeois attitude for confronting the revolutionary theory and practice.

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Another erroneous form is the non-critical adherence to Marxism seen as a simple product of the practice which in the end is not dialectically related to Marxist science. This is empiricism pure and simple. The expression which defines this position is the famous phrase ‘This will work out in practice’. Empiricism is, in fact, a form for weakening and defeating Marxism as a science, as a theory of the revolution. The revolutionary intellectual, therefore, has to resolutely defend the purity of Marxism, its inherent quality and essence, while at the same time rejecting both the idealist and empiricist postures [that are] fundamentally opposed to Marxism. The responsibility of the intellectual increases and does not decrease with the completion of the revolution in a developing country. He must not become a docile tool of official thought. The indocility of the intellectual fits imperfectly within a revolution; even more, it enriches it, gives it more life, makes it more sensitive and more creative. A true revolutionary intellectual will never become a pliant tool of the man of action and if he becomes one, he will be betraying his vocation as a revolutionary and, as an intellectual, since his natural role within a revolutionary society is to be a sort of vigilant conscience, its imaginative interpreter and its critic.

Part II

Debates among the International Left Parties: The Challenge to Conformity This part offers a comprehensive critique of what Lajpat Rai witnessed as going on  in the name of the international communist politics in the post-Second World War years. All the chapters in this part have been written in the early 1970s and address a range of political practices, from policymaking, governance, structuring of relations among communist and other countries to the constraining of intellectual and ideological debates by state socialist powers. The title of the fourth chapter, ‘Traditional Communist Parties’, suggests that these parties are no longer in touch with current political realities. The term ‘Traditional’ hints at the continuing adherence to old and time-worn ideas that may have been appropriate and necessary at an

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earlier point in time but have outlived their utility. Rai examines the international communist scene with a mixture of anger and dismay. For him, in the new, post-war context, hope comes not from longestablished communist parties but from dynamic human activity at the margins. He observes that non-communist socialist movements that exist in the present world are no longer engaged with or even recognized as socialist forces by traditional communist parties. Rai looks to Castro in Cuba to help us understand the dilemmas that Marxism faces in  the contemporary era. As Rai would put it, the non-communist Castro showed the spirit of commitment to socialism in a stronger and clearer way than his contemporaries caught in their respective party structures. While state socialism hit a roadblock around the end of the Second World War, smaller countries like Cuba appeared on the scene and showed new ways of re-imagining and building socialism. In the chapter, ‘Traditional Communist Parties’, the first point raised is that of economism—now a largely forgotten term that encapsulated an approach where economics, instead of politics, is placed in command of society—an issue that defined the central trait of all existing communist parties to a greater or lesser degree. According to Rai, economism works for the ‘rising [economic] standard of unionized labour’, but not for the vision of equality and mass participation in policymaking. The two are clearly distinct, and economism leads to narrowing spaces and conformist propensities of managing dissent and differences of opinion in communist states and communist parties. Rai takes the question of involving the common people in political processes head on. For him, the option of seizing power, if the situation permitted, has been abandoned, and the sole emphasis is on the use of the ballot box. In his opinion, this is a case of ‘disorientation’, which results from political opportunism and conformity. When Castro asked whether revolution-making was not the goal of a social movement, notes Rai, the ‘traditional’ communist parties looked the other way. This had important theoretical and political ramifications. The question Rai posed was pointed: Should communist politics in the post-Second World War scenario isolate itself from its ‘natural allies, the peasantry and the intelligentsia?’ It is suggested that pushing the issue to the side lines suited the ‘minority’ of top leadership that

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controlled communist party structures in many countries. Rai argues that ‘traditional’ communist politics has lost the capacity of independent critical thought: ‘How much empty talk has been wasted waiting for a liberal, progressive and anti-imperialist bourgeoisie?’ The pain of disillusionment is clear here. The fifth chapter in this part appeared originally in the form of a review article in 1972, a period covering the Sino-Soviet schism in the 1960s and 1970s. The reviewed book bore the title, The Communist States in Disarray, 1965–1971, whereas the review itself was titled ‘From Polycentrism to Disarray?’ There is reference here to the many ‘brands of communism’ in the said period and to ‘the ruins of the communist monolith’. Rai is unrelenting in his critique since, as he shows in the discussion, note is not taken of the existing malaise. We may wonder whether polycentrism and diversity mean the same thing in the context. The issue had international ramifications. The Soviet Union did not, Rai notes, help the Vietnamese nationalist and communist movement to repel the forces of the USA and caused grave difficulties for the struggling Vietnamese people. The same lack of support is evidenced in the case of the Palestinian cause against Israeli annexation of Palestinian land with the support of US imperialism. Sadly, the Soviet Union and its allies also added to the woes of the targeted countries in the Arab world. The end result of all this was that the international communist movement was weakened. Looking back at international communist politics suggests that the crisis of socialism manifested itself at both the local and international levels. The critical observations in this chapter lay bare the day-to-day working of communist parties across the world; in each case, the governing principle was of narrow national interests. The cost to be paid was heavy. On the one hand, a divided Left strengthened the hegemonic USA, while, on the other hand, the cause of the Third-World countries and smaller socialist regimes was compromised. The need of the hour was, as Rai has observed, an open debate and critical engagement for a dynamic socialist world view. This did not happen. The sixth chapter in this part is  focused on proletarian internationalism. It is an oft-repeated phrase among communists in

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the 1970s, though not accompanied by the required seriousness. In ‘Proletarian Internationalism and the Socialist Camp’, Rai takes it up as an imperative and underscores its relevance for addressing difficult choices. For him, a serious note of it has to be taken in order to expose a host of ills associated with state socialist practice for scrutiny. From the vantage point of the late 1960s and the 1970s, Rai is of the view that the post-Lenin lapses committed by the Soviet bureaucracy queered the pitch for a strong socialist bloc to emerge. The slide down from the heights of the Bolshevik Revolution began in the 1920s. Till that time, Marxism had dictated the terms in the fight for social justice and equality. With this in view, the possibility of a world revolution had increased manifold on the strength of fundamental changes in the USSR and a focus on extending revolutionary boundaries beyond Soviet Russia. Yet, after the death of Lenin, Rai argues, grave errors of judgement were made. The concept of ‘socialism in one country’ put paid to the necessary progress of Marxism and proletarian internationalism: ‘Workers of the world unite’ no more. In this chapter, indicative of the deep sense of pain that Rai feels, we read about the mechanics of communist practice in detail. The rot of nationalism, so to say, kept on spreading and one revolution after another was stymied both in the West and the East. The flouting of internationalism prevented change from taking place in China for a long time; only in the 1940s was Mao Zedong able to do course correction and snatch victory for the communist party. Soon, however, says Rai, the Sino-Soviet schism began affecting the world political scene. The criticism about the lack of internationalism was made by both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara from Cuba. Other calls for internationalism came from smaller countries such as Vietnam, North Korea and Romania. Rai does not forget to mention the specific relevance of national movements in the colonies, where the political struggle was aimed to dislodge an imperialist power. In that sense, national movements in the colonies weakened the stranglehold of imperialism. Thus, for Rai, the criterion of judging the veracity of a political struggle is the blow against imperialism. We also notice in this analysis the concern for meaningful social struggles when waged with a view to opposing imperialist manoeuvrings. Rai casts

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a glance ruefully at the drama unfolding to the detriment of socialism in the context of undermining of socialist internationalism with the ‘ascendancy to power of a bureaucratic regime in Soviet Russia’, and ‘the [power of] communist chieftains in Peking and Moscow’. These are harsh statements, but they express the disillusionment with the collapse of proletarian internationalism as a route to egalitarian politics. The chapter is also prophetic in that it bears forebodings of the crisis that set in following the downfall of socialism in the USSR in the early 1990s and the rise of neoliberalism thereafter.

CHAPTER 4

Traditional Communist Parties*

Abstract: Conformity has slowly become a ‘Marxist’ habit and Lenin’s imperative for communists to think boldly, speak boldly and act boldly has been thrown overboard. Their total allegiance to the orthodoxies consecrated in Moscow and in other centres of state power has interrupted every reflex of critical thought. Parroting meaningless phrases, mouthing outworn clichés and indulging in sterile quotation-mongering, the traditional communists have emerged as nothing more than comprador intellectuals living off the crumbs of other people’s thoughts.

What ails the traditional communist parties? What has led to their slow transformation from revolutionary vanguards into defeatist staffs, shorn of all fighting spirit and absolutely incapable of seizing power? What has led to their disorientation—their search for respectability, their opportunistic alliances with the bourgeoisie, their giving up the ghost even of revolutionary pretence? What has prompted revolutionaries like Fidel Castro to brand them as ‘spurious vanguards’ and declare that revolutions shall now be made ‘with or without party?’ The defeat of the Communist–Socialist candidate in the recent French * Lajpat Rai, ‘Traditional Communist Parties’, Economic & Political Weekly 9, no. 31 (1974): 1256–1258.

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elections and the disastrous events in Chile have added a further sense of urgency to such questions. Of the factors responsible for the situation, the corrupting influence of economism injected into the working-class movement by the communists and others stands out prominently. The traditional communists stress the role of the organized working class. According to them, the peasant is basically petty bourgeois because his main concern is obtaining land for himself. The worker on the other hand is not tied to the factory or place of work; he has nothing to lose but his chains and hence can be genuinely proletarian in his way of thinking. But, thanks to the poison of economism, the worker’s desire for higher wages and worldly possessions has acquired, over time, petty bourgeois overtones. Besides, modern capitalism still has some dynamism left in it which permits it to create enough social mobility to generate the myth of overall mobility, especially in the industrially advanced countries. By giving into demands for higher wages and better working conditions (recouped through higher prices and added efficiency, etc.), the capitalist can and often does reinforce the reformist, Fabian aspect of the labour movement, thus corrupting the proletarian consciousness of the workers. The peasant’s demand on the other hand can only be satisfied by such total restructuring of the economy that it necessitates full-scale revolution. There is not much one can promise the landless, exploited peasant besides land, which is a revolutionary demand, whereas the worker’s demands for higher wages, better working conditions, etc., can be met within the existing framework of capitalism and the union leadership can gain a strong following simply by promising and obtaining shorter hours of work, higher wages, bonuses, none of which is especially revolutionary. It is this false sense of growing prosperity and the rising standard of living of unionised labour which has de-radicalised the working class. The trade union has become the culminating agency in the deradicalisation of the workers. It is now as inbuilt in the system as the corporation and almost as readily acceptable to the capitalist class. And as the unions become more powerful, their vested interests in the existing order increase proportionately. The leadership acquires satisfaction in terms of money, influence and honour. Soon it begins

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to have a separate interest from the rank-and-file—it no longer stands for the working class, but for the union organisation’s own instinct for survival, the specific interests of the organisation’s top leadership and, finally, the narrow sectarian interests of the communist party which supplies leadership to the trade union (the CPI’s role in the recent railway strike is a case in point). Precisely because of this, the communist leadership is trapped in the economist well of its own digging. It must constantly agitate for trade union demands and, since it keeps winning them (except when they are declared unreasonable by a ‘socialist’ prime minister), it must keep making such demands lest it loses hold on the workers now accustomed to fighting only for bread-and-butter issues. As the communist party becomes more and more respectable, more and more ‘patriotic’, more and more Fabian, so does the labour organised under its wings and vice versa. The next step in the process is elections, positions of responsibility and finally a big respectable party like in France and Italy, complete with a bureaucratic establishment housed in a palatial building, a private telephone exchange, official cars, a string of newspapers and other such paraphernalia that are associated with a ‘national party’ whose worries extend from keeping the economy afloat to the defence of the bourgeois constitution.

Minions of the Establishment Placed in this situation, though they are strong and disciplined, the communist parties cannot even envisage seizing power except through the ballot box. Instead of acting as the vanguard of the proletariat, they not only abandon their revolution[ary spirit] but they also become a part of the establishment. The French Communist Party is a classic example. It generally speaks with two voices, combining Leninist ideological phrases with electoral reformist practices—during May 1968, when the French bourgeois establishment was in danger of being overthrown, the party’s language and practice became one, all in defence of the established order. The Western proletariat is thus deprived of its glorious battle flag. Strong communist parties such as those of France and Italy, whose powerful influence no one can deny,

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are brought to an unthinkable condition in which instead of organising the seizure of power by taking advantage of favourable conditions, they have preferred to cooperate with the bourgeoisie in the consolidation of the capitalist economy, all in the name of peace, peaceful transition and other repugnant phrases that make up the present ideological arsenal of the traditional communist parties. This has made most of Europe, where the first socialist revolution exploded with an elemental force shaking the world, and where more such explosions were predicted, a safe haven for the free and unfettered development of capitalism. In the Third World, the communist parties which were once the focal point of the liberation movements are no more so. These movements have now a tendency to bypass the communist parties to evolve outside them, without them and sometimes in opposition to them. The only socialist revolution in Latin America—the Cuban—totally bypassed the Communist Party, which did not initiate the event, but only rallied to it at the end after opposing it in its initial stages. Elsewhere in the continent, great social forces are unfolding themselves creating an explosive situation in which the traditional communists have a marginal role or no role at all in black Africa, where the people are locked in struggle with colonialism and neocolonialism, the communist parties are almost non-existent. The communists form only a tiny segment of the great movements in the Portuguese colonies, often held in suspicion by other sections within the movements. Amilcar Cabral, leader of the PAIGC, on more occasions than one, had to tell the communists some home truths. Similarly, in the Arab world, the socialist movement is bypassing the communist parties who have often to trail behind this or that reactionary regime for sheer survival. In Asia, the communist movements—except in Vietnam and North Korea—have either been decimated as in Indonesia or split asunder as in Japan, Burma and India. Another factor which has led to the disorientation of the communist parties is their pathetic subservience to the leadership of the CPSU. When Fidel Castro declared that the duty of a revolutionary was to make the revolution, the traditional communists looked the other way for they have always accepted another definition of a ‘revolutionary’ supplied to them by Joseph Stalin 35 years ago which

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said: ‘A revolutionary is one who is ready to protect and defend the USSR without reservations, without qualifications, without wavering, unconditionally…. In the unconditional support and defence of the USSR lies the true essence of internationalism.’ And it is not the defence of the USSR against foreign oppression alone. It is the defence of the totality of the internal and foreign policies of the Russian state and the CPSU, including its mistakes and aberrations, its purges and persecutions, its high-handedness against other parties (Yugoslavia and China), even its aggression against brother socialist countries (Czechoslovakia). By accepting this perverted definition of a revolutionary, the traditional communists have emerged in a new light. From the vanguard of the world revolution, they have become more or less the pacifist frontier guards of Soviet Russia, a mere appendage of the successive Soviet bureaucracies defending Stalinism as a creed when Stalin lived, supporting the ‘de-Stalinization’ of Khrushchev when he occupied the seat of power in the Kremlin, denouncing him when he was overthrown and now proclaiming the revisionist line of Brezhnev and company as the eternal truth. No Soviet bureaucracy was ever wrong so long as it controlled the CPSU and the Russian State. And plague be on the homes of those who dare criticize the official line current at the moment; they overnight change into ‘anti-Soviet’, ‘anti-communist reactionaries’ and ‘supporters of US imperialism’. This abject falling in line of the communist parties before the successive Soviet bureaucratic groupings has cost the movement dear. Sartre was not exaggerating when he remarked that the ‘allies of the communists in the United Fronts do not heed as much the programme of the party as how the wind blows from the Kremlin’. In India, Indira Gandhi knows the direction of the wind from the Kremlin and finds no difficulty in roping in the communists in defence of her ‘socialist’ bastion, unmindful of what a Bhupesh Gupta or a Dange may occasionally say about the ‘capitalist path’ or ‘yielding to the Right’, etc. All this adds up to making the communist party a counterfeit political force, a distortion of the idea of a revolutionary party, a parody of a working-class party, which is not only not indispensable for revolution but entirely superfluous to it, and sometimes even harmful to revolutionary advance.

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Undemocratic Character A third factor which has led to the dissimulation of the communist parties and their isolation from the revolutionary broad stream is their undemocratic character. Lenin organised the Bolshevik Party on the principle of democratic centralism whose purpose was to combine internal democracy with unity and discipline. However, the content of the Bolshevik Party has been distorted through Stalinism. Stalin overthrew democratic practices within the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and succeeded in transforming it into an instrument of his own domination and that of the bureaucracy he headed. Stalinist parties elsewhere began to be characterised by an almost total lack of internal democracy, an increasingly disciplined and hierarchical membership. They ceased to be parties of the people and became political elites which used all means available to modern dictatorships to enforce the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the socialist states. The functions of the party were merged with those of the administrative apparatus till they were indistinguishable. This resulted in the emergence of totalitarianism, obsession with command, mania for governing through political and administrative flat carried to unheard of extremes and to vanity, intolerance, domination of influence and privilege. In such a system, the political leadership looks down on the party and non-party masses as perpetual minors without minds of their own, incapable of deciding for themselves what they can and should know, what they can and should do. The identification of the leading role of the party with the ruling position of an elite group creates a situation in which the party is controlled by a ruling minority which claims the exclusive right to speak on behalf of the party mass which just fulfils the function of a transmission belt, and society is split into two groups: an anonymous majority and its manipulators. In such a system, the working class ceases to play a political role and becomes isolated from its natural allies, the peasantry and the intelligentsia. While the ideology of the leading role of the working class is promoted to the level of a state religion, any genuine activity of the workers is reduced to a minimum. It has now become obvious to all, except the traditional communists, that the working class cannot play a political role in a socialist system without freedom of the press,

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freedom of expression and information. Without these democratic rights, it is blocked within the horizon of one factory or workshop. As for the peasantry and the intelligentsia, they hardly play any political role in the present-day socialist states—the former being confined to their farms and the latter to their libraries. Thus, the old slogan of the alliance of the working class, peasantry and intelligentsia has been reduced to a meaningless cliche. The ideal of the party–state bureaucracy is a closed society based on the sectarian limitation of various classes and rationing of information. This deprives each of these classes of its individuality and transforms each into a politically uniform and expressionless mass. It is this travesty which led a revolutionary like Fidel Castro to say: We want to liberate man from dogmas and free his economy and society without terrorising or binding anyone. We have been placed in a position where we must choose between capitalism which starves people and (bureaucratic) communism which resolves the economic problem but suppresses the liberties so greatly cherished by man.

This dilemma facing revolutions can be resolved only by democratizing the communist party from base upwards, by providing safeguards for the rights of dissenting minorities within the party—their right to be heard by the entire membership, their right to circulate documents on the same basis as the leadership’s documents and in general to organise legitimate campaigns based on their policies to take over the leadership. This dilemma can be resolved by democratising the existing socialist societies, where the party should not enforce its authority, but win this authority again and again by sustained and continuous party activity. It should not enforce its line by means of directives but by the work of its members and by the truthfulness of its ideals. There are, however, no indications that such efforts are likely to be made.

Cretinous Conformism Another ailment from which the traditional communist parties suffer is their incapacity for independent thinking. Conformity has slowly become a ‘Marxist’ habit of thought and Lenin’s imperative

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for communists to think boldly, speak boldly and act boldly has been thrown overboard. Their total allegiance to the orthodoxy consecrated in Moscow has interrupted inside their brains, as it were, every reflex of critical thought. Parroting meaningless phrases, mouthing outworn cliches and indulging in sterile quotation-mongering, the traditional communists have emerged as comprador intellectuals living on the crumbs of other people’s thoughts. They claim they have the monopoly of revolutionary truth as revealed in the holy books and manuals. This has also resulted in putting a straitjacket on ideas and smothering the critical spirit which is so essential to effective revolutionary action. Disgusted with the ‘cretinous conformism’ of the Cuban and Latin American communists, Fidel Castro exploded with titanic wrath on the Soviet leaders and the communist parties. He refused to accept the so-called ‘self-evident truths’ traded about by the communists and asked for the renewal of Marxist literature. Attacking the traditional communists and their ‘famous thesis’ about the role of the national bourgeoisie, Castro declared: Meaningless phrases are bad, of course, but so are the supposed meanings of certain phrases…there are those that are forty years old—the famous thesis concerning the role of the national bourgeoisie, for example. How hard it has been to become convinced that this idea does not apply on this continent; how much paper, how many phrases, how much empty talk has been wasted waiting for a liberal, progressive, anti-imperialist bourgeoisie.

Denouncing the ‘narrow-mindedness’ and ‘bigotry’ displayed by the communists, Castro said, ‘And they believe that they have a monopoly on revolution or on revolutionary theory. And poor theory how it had to suffer at their hands; poor theory how it has been abused and how it is still being abused!’ Castro clinched the issue by advising revolutionaries to think with their own heads and not to take anything for granted, not to consider anything as sacred: ‘And we shall always think with our own heads and if we make mistakes we shall make our own mistakes…how hard it is to make other people’s mistakes!’

CHAPTER 5

From Polycentrism to Disarray?*,**

The East European communist states were born with serious deformations. With the exception of Yugoslavia, the overthrow of capitalism in Eastern Europe was carried out primarily by the power of the Soviet army with little participation by the masses themselves. The transformation, therefore, was carried out bureaucratically from top down and was inevitably stamped with the Russian seal characterised by forced collectivisation of agriculture, mass hysteria whipped up around frame-up purge trials, police terror, regimentation of all aspects of art and culture, and the elimination of the most basic domestic freedoms. Thus was born the monolith ruled by Stalin from the Kremlin with an iron hand that permitted no dissent and demanded complete conformity. In 1953, Stalin died and the monolithic political empire that he had dominated since the late 1940s began to crumble. The June 1953 demonstrations of East German workers took the form of an uprising involving two million workers, which could be put down only * This is a review of The Communist States in Disarray, 1965–1971, edited by Adam Bromke and Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone (pp. 363). University of Minnesota Press, Oxford University Press. ** Lajpat Rai, ‘From Polycentrism to Disarray?’ Economic & Political Weekly 7, no. 48 (1972): 2333–2337.

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with the intervention of Soviet troops. During the 1950s, Khrushchev tried to consolidate the monolith on the so-called ‘liberal basis’ but without success. The 1960s saw the culmination of the process leading to the fall of the monolith and the rise of polycentrism with different brands of communism contending with each other over a whole range of political–ideological questions and vying with each other for supremacy in the world socialist camp. The book under review, a collection of essays by different writers, professors and experts, deals with this polycentric commonwealth of socialist nations which, according to its editors, have moved from imposed unity to cross-roads and finally to disarray. The 1960s saw the emergence of four brands of communism over the ruins of the communist monolith. At one extreme, Albania adheres to the militant Chinese type of communism, while Yugoslavia had developed its own version at the other, the most moderate of all and one most resembling Western social democracy. The Romanian brand stands in the middle and permits it to remain on good terms with both China and Yugoslavia. The remaining East European countries follow the Soviet model while Cuba, North Korea and North Vietnam, having emerged as distinct entities, have been projecting their own militant nationalist brand of communism with emphasis on anti-imperialism and independence on the controversial ideological and political issues dividing the communist camp. Four causes have been identified for the emergence of polycentrism in the world communist movement and the group of socialist states. First, there has been a marked decline in the role of ideology. Doctrinal pluralism in turn has led to pragmatism. Second, there has been a noticeable growth of nationalism. National traditions have been revived and communist governments have shown greater concern for national interests. Third, there has been a steady widening (despite occasional reverses and zigzags) of personal freedom. Finally, there has been a gradual restoration of East Europe’s relations with the West, with practically all countries of the area expanding their economic, cultural and political contacts with the Western world. The most recent development in the field is the Sino-American deterrent, non-official US overtures to Cuba and the official contacts between North and South Korea over the question of reunification.

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There are, however, currents flowing ‘in the opposite direction to polycentrism, seeking to “unite” the communist camp under Soviet hegemony’. Czechoslovakia and Poland are still apprehensive about Germany and look to Russia for protection; the ruling communist elites have a vested interest in maintaining close bonds with Moscow; and, at last, there is the reality of the preponderant Soviet power, especially in Eastern Europe. Indeed, since the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the direct Soviet threat has been considerably intensified. It is now enshrined in the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty—a doctrine which is being opposed by the communist states both overtly (by Yugoslavia, Romania) and covertly (by most others). In the last two decades, of the eight communist states in Eastern Europe, three have successfully defied the USSR: Yugoslavia, Romania and Albania. Of the remaining five, four have tried to do so but failed! East Germany in 1953, Poland and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Thus, even after two decades of Soviet hegemony in the area, the will of the East Europeans for independent national existence has by no means been extinguished; the Polish political crisis and working-class riots in December 1970 are a testimony to this widespread feeling. An important factor in this process has been the Sino-Soviet schism. The conflict between the Soviet Union and China is an important development not only because of its impact on the two nations themselves and because it further impaired the unity of the socialist camp but also because it afforded some leeway to the smaller countries of the Soviet commonwealth to take independent stances. The antagonism between the two socialist giants has developed into an all-inclusive conflict in which its components—ideological differences, material interests, personalities, race, etc., are inseparably interwoven. As one of the contributors to this volume, John W. Strong, has put it: ‘the dispute had developed into a type of Hegelian phenomenon where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.’ As to the causes of the great schism, Strong quotes Chairman Mao while giving the Chinese view of the origins of the conflict. In September 1962, Mao stated: The roots of the conflict were laid earlier. They [Russians] did not allow China to make revolution. This was in 1945, when Stalin tried to prevent the Chinese revolution by saying that there should

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not be any civil war and that we must collaborate with Chiang Kai-shek. At that time, we did not carry this into effect and the revolution was victorious. After the victory they suspected that China would be like Yugoslavia and that I would be a Tito.

In Chou En-lai’s view, the split between Moscow and Peking developed ‘because the Russian leaders took the road of revisionism, collaboration with US imperialism and peaceful co-existence with imperialism in general rather than continuing vigorous revolution….’ On the Russian side, the factors leading to the conflict are seen as follows: China’s proximity and its ever-growing demographic size, the Soviet concern at the development of Maoism as a rival ideology, the fears of a military bureaucratic regime taking over in China, the petty bourgeoisie adventurist political line emerging from ‘the seminatural, semi-feudal economy of the Chinese village’, the idea of continuous stages of revolution with its vague similarity to Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolutions, the Maoist disregard for the dangers of a nuclear war, etc. The dominant role of the PLA in the Cultural Revolution further led the Russians to believe that China under Mao had already become a ‘military–bureaucratic’ dictatorship and was no longer a socialist state. Three important world issues which further aggravated the SinoSoviet schism were the situation in Vietnam, the Arab–Israeli war of 1967 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Seen logically, one might have surmised that escalated war in Vietnam would have helped to [improve] Sino-Soviet relations. Instead, the contrary happened. The Chinese accused the Soviets of failing to give Hanoi and Vietcong sufficient aid. To the Chinese, this meant that the Soviets were in effect cooperating with the United States to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. The reason for this, according to Peking, was that the new communist regimes in Southeast Asia would naturally gravitate into the Chinese orbit. To the Russians, an American presence in Southeast Asia was preferable to Chinese influence in the region. The Soviets countered the Chinese accusations by retorting that Peking was doing little except paying lip service to the North Vietnamese. Worse than that, the Chinese were continually interfering with Soviet aid to Vietnam and actually stealing some

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Soviet hardware being sent by rail across China to Hanoi. This, however, was repudiated by the Chinese and denied by Hanoi. All in all, the Vietnam War provides the Chinese leadership with visible proof (on the doorstep of China) of American aggressiveness and of China’s need to remain united and vigilant against further US escalation. The war also provided the Chinese an excellent propaganda weapon to be used against the USSR. It did not matter whether the Soviets did much or little for the Vietnamese, they were bound to be exposed to the Chinese criticisms which were embarrassing and difficult to answer. Similarly, in the Chinese view, the Arab cause has been sacrificed at the altar of Soviet–American collusion. Peking feels that the Russians actually have little interest in the Arab nations’ struggle but are simply using it to increase their own imperialistic ambitions in the Arab world. As the Peking Review of January 18, 1970 stated: ‘Social imperialism has always worked with US imperialism against the Palestinian people. It has viciously slandered and abused the Palestinian people’s armed struggle as “terrorist operations” thus revealing its fear and hatred of the Palestinian people’s armed struggle….’ The Chinese (after a period of hesitation and silence) denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as a ‘revival of old Russian imperialism’. In an article titled ‘Down with the New Tsars’ published in Peking Review, the Chinese said: They [the Soviets] have ruthlessly plundered and brutally oppressed the people of some Eastern European countries at will, and even sent some hundred thousand troops to occupy Czechoslovakia and turned a vast expanse of land in East Europe into their sphere of influence in an attempt to set up a Tsarist-type colonial empire.

In Czechoslovakia, Peking again saw evidence of Soviet–American collusion. The latter had become almost an obsession with the Chinese. A Chinese comment on the Soviet–Czechoslovak Treaty of October 1968 stated that the treaty ‘met the needs of US-Soviet collusion in re-dividing the world and intensifying their global counterrevolutionary collaboration’. As to the future of the Sino-Soviet relations, according to the author, they will remain in a ‘State of hostile co-existence, characterised

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by bitter propaganda polemics, limited border disputes and mutual national suspicions, fears and hatreds’, a state of ‘no peace no war’. He rules out a full-fledged atomic war between the two neighbours. The combined effect of de-Stalinization, which began with the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and the Sino-Soviet schism has been the undermining of the very legitimacy of the Soviet system and its claims to universality. The impact, tentative but spreading in the Khrushchev era, has now resulted in a general malaise of communist elites which have begun to question ideological and institutional orthodoxy and to search for a new legitimacy and novel ways of building a socialist society. This search for a new legitimacy in the socialist camp and the problems arising therefrom have been dealt with in an outstanding contribution by Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone under the heading ‘Patterns of Political Change’. According to the author, the crisis of legitimacy and the Chinese challenge combined have released forces of change which inexorably press forward towards ever greater differentiation in the domestic and foreign policies of communist states, undermining the unity of the international communist movement, rendering questionable the Soviet interpretation of the Marxist dogma, the Soviet model of economy and society, and the very principle of Soviet leadership. ‘There is no going back to status quo ante’. The crisis of legitimacy started with the 20th Party Congress. The shattering impact that the denigration of Stalin had on Communist intellectuals may best be compared to the shock a believer experiences when the certainties of his faith are suddenly declared invalid. The impact of this sudden shattering of faith among communist intellectuals is described vividly through a letter written by the East German scientist Robert Hanemann, a lifelong party member (since expelled), published in the Free German Youth periodical Forum: Before the 20th Party Congress I was a Stalinist My complete turning away from this mental attitude resulted from the revelations of the 20th Congress in 1956…. The foundations of my belief crumbled under the impact of its earthquake. Before the 20th Congress everything the party said was sacred to me. The party had the right to censor and to suppress all those ideas which it did not share. Today, I know the party leadership does not have the right

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of censorship. I know that everyone of us, inside and outside the party, has the right and the duty to form an independent judgment, to have an independent view.

The same idea was given expression to by Fidel Castro when he called upon the Cubans to ‘follow their own line’ and to ‘make their own mistakes’. ‘The saddest thing in the world’, he said, was ‘to make someone else’s mistakes’. He also called for ‘thinking with one’s own brains’. One result of this new attitude was the questioning of the credibility of the Soviet model of society, the questioning of old formula, the questioning even of the Marxist dogma itself. The late sixties saw new efforts (though cautious ones) being made in a number of communist countries to evolve one’s own ‘national model’ of a socialist society. Among communist elites, ‘apparatchiks’ still survived, but the groups now in ascendancy were the pragmatists, who represented a strong nationalist commitment. Younger and frequently better educated than the old-style leaders, they were impatient with the ‘Byzantine murkiness’ and the appalling inefficiency of the system and they attempted to run their countries in more efficient ways, giving first priority to national needs and demands. Ideology and proletarian internationalism were distinctly of secondary importance. In this search for a new legitimacy, these ‘reformers’ made efforts to broaden the popular base of support in their own countries. This has led to economic reforms as a part of the new model in most of the communist states. These economic reforms have come increasingly to serve the purpose of new legitimation, reflecting the leader’s preoccupation with improving the standard of living and thus satisfying the material demands of the hitherto deprived and restive populations. The primacy of politics, enforced under the Stalinist model of economy, through centralised planning and the party’s control over supply, distribution, wages, prices and currency, gave shape to a model which was characterised by general stagnation and waste, decline in productivity, and shortages and poor quality of consumer goods. The new economic models fathered by Libermann and Ota Sik and many other lesser known economists call for a degree of decentralisation and what is now called ‘planning from below’, which allows greater scope tor the interplay of the market forces on the one hand and greater

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decision-making authority for the individual enterprises or groups of enterprises on the other. In most cases, however, (exceptions are Yugoslavia, Hungary and Dubcek’s Czechoslovakia) reforms have consisted of half-measures, the leaders in each country being caught ‘between demands of economic rationality on the one hand and the imperatives of party’s monopoly of power on the other’. The reforms are being sabotaged by the ‘apparatchiks’ because if such reforms are carried to their logical end, they would threaten the power of the machine. The leaders face a serious dilemma. ‘In order to remain in power, the regime must change and evolve, but in order to preserve itself everything must remain unchanged.’ This simplistic statement contains an element of truth in it and partly explains the limited nature of reforms in the socialist countries. The collectivist aspects of the traditional cultures in the Asian communist states have minimised the pressure for European type of liberalisation. But their different political heritage and their mass peasant base made the search for new economic and political models even more imperative than in Eastern Europe. Here, the emphasis on nationalism is especially crucial for mobilisation of popular support in view of the peasant’s traditional identification with his locality and his memory of colonial domination. This ‘locality identification’ seeks the local charismatic leader and not a vaguely understood theory like Marxism–Leninism to give expression and outlet to the common man’s feelings, aspirations and hopes for the future. It is a Mao, Ho Chi-Minh or a Kim II Sung and not Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin, not to speak of the theory of Marxism–Leninism that can be the focal point of popular mobilisation for revolution or socialist construction. The origins of the personality cult lie in the peasant’s identification with the locality. In Asia, the nationalist communist alliance has characterised developments since the Second World War (and even before) because from the very beginning communist movements there identified themselves with the anti-colonialist struggle and hence the growth of fiery nationalism. This alliance has been at the roots of the popularity of Asian communist governments. It has also made them reluctant to obey Soviet dictates, adopt Soviet models and accept Soviet leadership. The same would apply more or less to Castro’s Cuba—another peasant-based society. Revisionism has been replaced

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in China by permanent revolution (a la Mao, not Trotsky) and the individual rights and freedoms by collectivist mass participation in the building of a new society on Maoist foundation. Cultural revolution was only one expression of this trend. Also, masses in direct personal communication with the leader serve to combat the same twin evils of Stalinism, bureaucracy and privilege. Castro has used this direct leader–mass communication to the best advantage and has effectively utilised ‘direct democracy’ for the education and the mobilisation of the people. Both Castro and Kim II Sung have evolved a system of ‘on-the-spot guidance’ by the leader with extensive tours of cooperatives, state farms, factories, schools, hospitals, military establishments, housing complexes, even places of amusement and recreation, thus setting into motion a process of double identity—identity of the masses with the locality and the identification of the leader with both. Practically, all the Asian communist states and Cuba have laid emphasis on the formation of a ‘new man’, a new socialist man, unsullied by the ideas of the consumer societies and unmoved by the lures of money and high living standards. They have denigrated the emphasis on economic incentives which create ‘men with $ sign on their hearts’. Instead they have emphasised austerity, simple living, voluntary labour, international solidarity and philosophical contempt for money, as well as resolute opposition to imperialism. With regard to cultural freedom, the position remains frozen throughout the entire communist world. Intellectuals are persecuted. In most countries, following brief, limited and varying periods of thaw, repression and new emphasis on ‘ideological re-education’ were characteristic of the late sixties. The seventies promise little change. The Soviet Union has had its writers’ trials, the expulsion of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Writers’ Union, the resignation of Tvardovsky from the editorial staff of the one liberal journal, Novyi Mir, and his subsequent death described by Solzhenitsyn as caused by ‘isolation, loneliness and a feeling of uselessness’, the arrest of Andrei Amalrik and the confinement of intellectuals in the so-called ‘psychiatric hospitals’ after being declared ‘unaccountable for their actions’. But, unlike in the days of Stalin, an opposition has emerged—with a ‘scientific opposition’ joining a ‘literary opposition’. The famous

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Soviet nuclear physicist, Academician Andrei Sakharov, the President of Human Rights Committee and the author of Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, heads this opposition along with a number of other well-known Soviet men of science. The exuberance of the Prague Spring is no more. On the contrary, new purge trials of the intellectual under Gustav Husak’s regime have begun lately. The views of dissident intellectuals on freedom and human values are typified by a courageous letter (suppressed in the Soviet Union) by Solzhenitsyn written in response to his expulsion: It is high time to remember that we belong first and foremost to humanity. And that man has distinguished himself from the animal by Thought and Speech. And these naturally should be free. If they are put in chains we shall naturally return to the state of animals.

Recently, the Polish Communist Party Central Committee issued the following warning to the Polish Writers’ Congress held in Warsaw in February 1969: ‘The party will consistently oppose and eliminate from cultural life all that is politically hostile and ideologically alien to socialism and combat signs of antisocialist activities waged under a cloak of freedom.’ It appears that a new pattern will be the last to emerge in the field of cultural freedom in the communist world, but when it does it will produce far-reaching changes in the entire sociopolitical structure of communist regimes. Another important aspect of the changing political pattern in the communist world is the emerging new relationship among the communist parties. Since 1917, the CPSU has insisted that the material interests of the Soviet state are identical with the interests of the world communist movement. Early defiance by national parties was suppressed and all such rebellious acts were forbidden by Stalin, even though the first successful challenge was made by Yugoslavia in 1948. No concession in this respect was granted to the national requirements of states within the Soviet bloc until the fifties. The establishment of the Red Chinese regime, the death of Stalin, the rapprochement with Tito and events in 1956, all compelled the CPSU to recognise, however reluctantly, that each communist country had a

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right to pursue its own road to socialism ‘provided it does so within the framework of proletarian solidarity’. The Sino-Soviet conflict, characterised by fierce competition between the two great socialist states, has offered the smaller states their first opportunity to take advantage of this right to pursue their own brand of socialism. Polycentrism is now a permanent fixture despite Moscow’s attempt at unity under Soviet hegemony—attempts which are only successful when backed by armed Soviet might. It was out of this sense of independence that Fidel Castro declared: ‘This revolution will follow its own independent line, its own independent course. This revolution will not be a stooge, a “yes man” of anyone, however mighty or powerful.’ In the same speech, Castro also declared that Cuba would follow its own road to socialism and would insist on building socialism and communism in its own way: ‘Let there be no mistake. You follow your own road to socialism, we shall follow our own!’ This spirit of independence was, however, not to last very long. The famous Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty, formulated to legalize intervention in Czechoslovakia, put severe limits on the concept of ‘our road to socialism’ and made it difficult to distinguish it from the Soviet conception of ‘our way’. In other words, ‘proletarian internationalism’, as penned by the Soviets, takes precedence over the attempt of a nation’s ‘our road to socialism’, especially in Eastern Europe. But even there Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania have been able to hold their own positions, either in cooperation with China or by developing relations with the West and the non-communist world. The search for material advantage has made even the ‘loyal’ states seek relations with the West in the hope of acquiring economic and technological benefits and pursue national goals regardless of the needs of ‘fraternal’ states and their common, Soviet-inspired policies. On the Asian continent, North Vietnam and North Korea have stuck to their independent postures, thanks to their ability to utilize the Sino-Soviet differences for maintaining independence as well as taking material aid from both. The repercussions of Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia indicate that despite a temporary halt in the process of increasing freedom in the socialist camp, future trends point to the same direction. Relieved of their ideological straitjacket, preoccupied with economic needs and increasingly responsive to national demands for popular approval, each nation state and party

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is found to follow its own independent course. This progress towards the goal of independence can be stopped or temporarily reserved but, in the long run, cannot be checkmated. The book under review is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the problems facing the communist bloc countries. It is a composite of some really outstanding essays such as by Adam Bromke, John W. Strong, Philip Urcti and Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, some just good but lacking in depth, while some others, especially on the Asian communist states and Cuba, pedestrian and dealing mainly with obvious and superficial aspects. In the case of the essays on the Asian communist states and Cuba, the authors have completely failed to bring out the ideological differences of these countries with the two great socialist states and their efforts to chalk out their own road independently despite their economic dependence and relative weakness as well as their efforts to join together in a ‘bloc within the bloc’ to realise their aim. The range of the topics discussed and problems touched upon concerning the socialist states, however, make the work indispensable for serious students of the problems of world communism.

CHAPTER 6

Proletarian Internationalism and the Socialist Camp*

Abstract: Since the warm, honoured-guest treatment given last year to Nixon in Peking and Moscow by the leaders of the communist parties of China and the Soviet Union, at a time when American B-52 bomber planes were blasting life out of existence in Vietnam and when his navy had just ruined and blockaded the major supply ports of North Vietnam, many people have begun to wonder if the classical concept of international proletarianism has not become obsolete, a mere slogan, or idea worthy of no respect. Some have even begun to question the veracity and correctness of this idea on which Marx and Engels had based their epoch-making Communist Manifesto and on the basis of which they had brought into existence the first viable international organization of the working class. It might, therefore, be worthwhile to examine the importance and the objective roots of the concept of international proletarianism, its vitiation and betrayal by the Soviet bureaucracy after the death of Lenin and its vulgarization and misuse by Stalin and his present-day successors, with a view to restoring some of its lost lustre by exposing those who have converted it into a convenient tool for harnessing the world * Lajpat Rai, ‘Proletarian Internationalism and the Socialist Camp’, Economic & Political Weekly 8, no. 12 (1973): 601–609.

90  Indian Debates on the International Left working class and communist movement in the service of their narrow national interests.

I When in his famous message to the Tricontinental magazine,1 Che Guevara spoke of developing a ‘true spirit of proletarian internationalism with international armies’ and of the duty of an American, Asian or European revolutionary to fight and ‘die under the flag of Vietnam, Venezuela, Laos, Bolivia…’, he was laughed at and ridiculed as a ‘visionary’ in the European socialist countries, just as Fidel Castro was called a ‘political charlatan’ for demanding in the name of socialist solidarity that ‘no socialist state will lend financial and technical assistance to governments that are engaged in suppressing the guerrillas fighting for freedom and socialism.’2 And when Castro exhorted the socialist camp to ‘take all necessary risks for Vietnam’ and equated the Cuban Revolution with the Latin American Revolution and the Latin American Revolution with the world revolution, he was dubbed a ‘dogmatist’ and ‘immature petty bourgeois’ who had yet to qualify as a Marxist in the capitals of Eastern Europe. This reaction is indicative of the changed ideological climate prevailing in the socialist camp in which the concept of proletarian internationalism has been reduced to a mere cliché and where nation states imbued with the spirit of political opportunism are fighting desperately, singly or in groups, for preserving their own peace and advancing their own economic interests, even at the cost of each other and the people of the Third World, often in cooperation with imperialism. There was a time when the Cuban leaders were not only invoking the spirit of proletarian internationalism but were also practising this basic principle of the world communist movement in Latin America by actively helping the guerrilla movements (both with men and material resources) in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and even Brazil. In its ‘position paper’ at the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) conference, the Cuban delegation while emphasising internationalism had quoted Lenin—the head of the newly born workers’ state—who had declared: ‘We do not fight for power…we do not defend national interest. We state clearly that the interest of

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socialism, the interest of socialism in the whole world would come before our national interest, before the interest of the Soviet state’.3 But Lenin’s successors have turned this principle upside down, namely the interests of the Soviet state now come before the interests of socialism, the interests of socialism in the whole world. And the ‘visionary’ Che Guevara, when he spoke of the international proletarian armies ‘fighting to redeem the sacred cause of humanity’, had perhaps in his mind the appeals and statements of the First Congress of the Communist International in which the Red Army was presented as ‘the army of the international working class’ and in which it was stated that ‘the moment is coming near in which the international red army will be created.’4 But the winds of change have even swept away the Cuban exuberance for international solidarity, whose leaders have now washed their hands of the guerrilla movement of Latin America and declared supinely that they have ‘utmost faith’ in the foreign policy of a socialist country which was not too long ago accused by them of having forsaken the idea of internationalism. Since Nixon’s visits to Peking and Moscow in February and May 1972, where that imperialist chieftain was given warm, honoured guest treatment by the leaders of the communist parties of the two countries, at a time when his B-52 bomber planes were blasting life out of existence in Vietnam and when his navy had just ruined and blockaded the major supply ports of this brave little country of the socialist camp, many people have begun to wonder if the classical concept of international proletarianism has not become obsolete, a mere slogan, an idea worthy of no respect. Some have even begun to question the veracity and correctness of this idea, of this great concept, on which Marx and Engels had based their epoch-making Communist Manifesto and on the basis of which they had brought into existence the first viable international organisation of the working class. It might, therefore, be worthwhile to examine the importance and the objective roots of the concept of international proletarianism, its vitiation and betrayal by the Soviet bureaucracy after the death of Lenin and its vulgarisation and misuse by Stalin and his present-day successors, with a view to restoring some of its lost lustre by exposing those who have converted it into a convenient tool for harnessing the

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world working class and communist movement in the service of their narrow national interests.

II According to Lenin, nationalism has an intermediate social content and can serve as a vehicle both for bourgeois chauvinism and revolutionary self-determination. The early Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin, were closely concerned with relations between the national and social revolutions in backward and oppressed countries and were first to analyse their interconnections. Thus, in his last ‘testament’, Lenin decried the great Russian chauvinism displayed by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and expressed the apprehension that it would permeate the Soviet state apparatus. Such chauvinism, Lenin feared, would do infinite harm ‘not only to us, but to the whole international, and to the hundreds of millions of people in Asia who are destined to come forward on the stage of history, following us’.5 The early Bolsheviks considered their national triumph the mere beginning of an era of world revolution. ‘To the Russian proletariat has fallen the great honour of beginning the series of revolutions which the imperialist war has made an objective inevitability’, wrote Lenin in March 19176 and, as noted earlier, he emphasized after the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution that the interests of the Soviet state would be subordinated to those of world socialism. For the Bolsheviks, proletarian internationalism was not, therefore, a mere sentimental notion which ‘falls apart at the first rumbles of a war’ or can be sacrificed at the altar of petty economic or political advantage. For them, it was a fundamental concept, the very basis of the international revolutionary movement telescoped in a single slogan by Marx: ‘Workers of the World Unite!’ In this famous phrase, the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed that the worker had no country; that those like the workers, who lacked property, also lacked bourgeoisie rights and representation and were ‘outside bourgeoisie society’ and thus had no stake in the bourgeoisie ‘nation’. The Manifesto’s declaration that the workers had ‘nothing to lose but their chains and a whole world to win’ merely expressed the revolutionary side of the same social pattern. The historic Communist Manifesto (now a forgotten document in the socialist camp) also laid

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emphasis on the fact that the developing productive forces break out of the national framework, create the world market as well as the proletariat whose mission is to destroy the capitalist world system. Pointing out the specific features of the working-class struggle, the Manifesto declared: ‘Though not in content, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie’.7 Thus, for the founders of scientific socialism, while the form that class struggle takes is primarily national because the proletariat has to win power in separate countries, the content of this struggle is international because its objective—creating a socialist society—is international in character. Later, at the time of the founding of the First International, Marx emphasized: ‘that the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national problem, but a social problem embracing all countries in which modern societies exist’.8 Marx reaffirmed the same positions in his critique of the Gotha Programme which was directed against those who ‘conceived the workers’ movement from the narrow nationalist standpoint’.9 Marx severely castigated Lassalle for ignoring the international functions of the German working class in the programmatic document of the German labour movement by pointing out that it contained ‘not a word about the international functions of the working class whose professions of internationalism are even infinitely below that of the Free Trade Party’.10 The First International disappeared, but it was reconstructed and, until 1914, its theoretical and political necessity as well as its authority was never seriously challenged. The outbreak of the First World War marked the failure of the Second International as a revolutionary rallying point for the world working class. The Second International’s betrayal of proletarian internationalism in August 1914 flowed from the opportunistic degeneration of this organization and its various sections. The First World War exposed the fundamental feature of reformism in the international working-class movement— reformism based on the adaptation of working-class parties in each country to their respective bourgeoisie in the name of national interest. In defending revolutionary Marxism throughout the First World

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War, Lenin and also Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg reaffirmed the fundamentally international character of the class struggle and the necessity of putting proletarian internationalism above all else in order to prevent any recurrence of the betrayal of August 1914. They all declared themselves for reconstructing an International in which the so-called national interest would be subordinated to the needs of world revolution anywhere. Any tendency that might encourage ‘social patriotism’ would be rooted out. With the victory of the October Revolution, the question of proletarian internationalism took on new dimensions and thereby much greater complexity. The Second International had attacked the revolutionary politics of the successful Bolsheviks and in effect had joined forces with the international counter-revolution. Lenin’s call for a Third International was, therefore, equally a call for solidarity with the existing Soviet regime and an affirmation of its specific violent revolutionary path to power. The workers of the world mobilised their forces against imperialist intervention on Soviet territory, and the Soviet regime and the Third International, while practising a certain separation of tasks, supported all revolutionary actions of the workers against capitalist rule taking place throughout the world. But soon after Lenin’s death and with the ascendancy to power of a bureaucratic regime in Soviet Russia around 1922–24, new conceptions made their appearance leading to the distortion of proletarian internationalism as well as the perversion of the policy of the Communist International and its sections. This began with the acceptance of the theory of ‘building socialism in one country’ which introduced a dichotomy between the development of the Soviet Union and the advance of the revolution in the rest of the world, for according to this theory socialism could be built in Soviet Russia irrespective of what happened to movements in other countries. Defence of the USSR in isolation from the revolutionary developments in the rest of the world became a prime element in the policy of the Communist International and its sections. From there, it was only a short step, and one quickly taken, to subordinate the policies of their organizations to the needs of defending the Soviet Union as conceived by the Stalinist bureaucracy. This led ‘not to the

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lessening of the nationalist emphasis, but to its intensification in international communism’.11 Russia’s insulation also gave rise to a leadership with a sharply nationalistic and bureaucratic orientation, for whom internationalism soon became a one-way affair, with the Marxist parties straining to the utmost in defence of the first workers’ state. The combination of these factors led to a reformist orientation among the parties of the Cominform who in their anxiety to avoid collision between the bourgeoisie states and the Soviet Union confined themselves within the bourgeoisie stage of the revolution instead of pushing it towards the socialist stage, adopting thereby a reformist posture towards bourgeoisie power and the capitalist status quo. And this primary emphasis on external coexistence with the bourgeoisie nation states inevitably led to a policy of coexistence between social classes within these states. Thus, the roots of reformist deviation in the world communist movement can be directly traced to the abandonment of the concept of true internationalism by the Cominform parties at the behest of the Soviet leaders who dominated this international organisation. The Cominform and its sections did not base their policies on the objective course of the struggles of the world people, but on the exigencies and requirements of the Kremlin’s diplomacy. For the Kremlin, the future of the Soviet Union no longer depended on revolutions in other countries but on maintaining the status quo. As a result, more than one mass revolutionary movement (the German Revolution of 1923 and the Chinese revolutionary wave of 1925–27) was sacrificed and abandoned to suit the needs of Kremlin diplomacy. The case of China is highly instructive. China was a typical semi-colonial country economically more backward than Czarist Russia. At the same time, the relationship of forces in China was more advantageous for a proletarian victory as its belated bourgeoisie–democratic revolution had already demonstrated its feebleness and inability to solve the urgent questions of national and democratic development. Yet the Comintern imposed on the Chinese CP a diametrically opposed strategy which led to disastrous results. Anxious to preserve the detente with the West, which was by then the sheet anchor of Soviet foreign policy, and in contrast to the essence of Lenin’s approach in Russia, it ascribed to the Chinese bourgeoisie the leading role in the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle and ordered the communists to join the

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Kuomintang and submit to its discipline. Although a bourgeoisie nationalist party, the Kuomintang was even allowed representation in the Communist International with rights of an associate member, while Chiang Kai-shek was given an honorary seat on the Comintern’s executive. The tragic denouement of this class-collaborationist and opportunistic line imposed on the Chinese Party came in 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek proceeded to massacre tens of thousands of disarmed (disarmed by the CPC at the orders of Stalin) Shanghai workers and party activists, including the helpless communist leaders. This purge of the communists by the Kuomintang was carried well beyond the Shanghai events as were the Kremlin-dominated attempts by the Chinese communists to continue to collaborate with Chiang by helping him to stem the leftward surge of the Chinese masses. In the end, the Communist Party of China took years to recover from this deadly blow and re-emerged as a political force only after disregarding the Comintern’s advice and by rediscovering in its own terms the theory and practice of the Chinese Revolution under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung. Discounting the possibility of a successful socialist revolution in China, a scepticism maintained until 1948, the Kremlin leaders, dominated in their outlook by the short-term security and diplomatic interests of the Russian state, were rapidly led to subordinating revolutionary internationalism to raison d’etre. They never gave up invoking ‘internationalism’, but always to demand the loyalty of the communist parties on the fallacious premise that the interests of the Soviet state and the world revolutionary movement were and are the same and could never be in conflict with each other. And, as Isaac Deutscher has put it, ‘Russian nationalism was thus elevated to the position of revolutionary internationalism and a myth was created according to which the highest duty of a communist was to act in the defence of Russian national interests, beginning with the defence of the Soviet Fatherland.’12 This led to, what E. H. Carr calls, ‘internationalism becoming an “internationalism” of a very “special type,” expressing as it did solidarity with a particular national expression’13 of the world revolution. The concept of international proletarianism propounded by Marx and Engels, and nurtured by Lenin and his Bolshevik colleagues

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was thus vitiated by Stalin and the successive Soviet bureaucracies and sacrificed at the altar of the Soviet state’s strategic, political and diplomatic interests. Today, this line is expressed, allowing for new circumstances and relationships of power in the post-World War II period, in the Soviet Union’s limited support to Vietnam, where the objective is not victory for the Vietnamese revolution but merely a modus vivendi with imperialism within the framework of economic cooperation and peaceful coexistence.

III Despite the fact that Stalinist policy at the end of the Second World War successfully blocked the revolutionary upsurge in Western Europe, new socialist states emerged in Eastern Europe independently of that policy and sometimes even in opposition to it. In addition, the post-war world saw a new spirit of resurgence in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The question of proletarian internationalism thus had to take account of these new factors arising as a result of the changed balance of forces in the post-war world. It was obviously natural for the leadership in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to lay strong emphasis on the national side of their struggle, whose international aspect lay in worldwide solidarity against imperialism—a solidarity which often waned after the achievement of independence, especially when the revolution did not go on to the socialist stage. But matters appeared in a scarcely better light even for those movements which claimed they were socialist or Marxist. Now for them the question could no longer be one of defending an isolated workers’ state—the Soviet Union—as before the War. An attempt was made to replace the slogan, ‘Defence of the Soviet Union’, with the concept of ‘Solidarity of the Socialist Camp’, in which the interests of the Soviet state were once again to prevail over the rest. This was witnessed first of all by Stalin’s indulging in a policy of pillage in the territories occupied by the Red Army, a policy modified only slightly among countries which eventually fell into the ‘socialist camp’. The same trend was witnessed when Stalin established ‘normal trade relations’ with the newly formed workers’ states. This ‘normal trade’ later called

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‘mutually beneficial trade’ was conducted on a basis which meant that in commercial relations between socialist states—as between capitalist ones—the economically more developed countries absorbed part of the surplus of the less developed ones. This fact was pointed out first by the Yugoslavs and then the Romanians and later by the Cubans. Che Guevara in his characteristically frank manner made a scathing attack on the rich industrially developed socialist countries who were indulging in the exploitation of the less developed ones in the name of ‘mutually beneficial trade’. He appealed to them to abandon their selfish practices of international trading—practices no better than those of Western capitalist exporters—and come to the aid of the poor Third-World countries in the name of proletarian internationalism. In his famous speech at the Economic Seminar in Algiers in 1965, Che Guevara said: How can one describe as mutual benefit the sale, at world market prices, of raw materials produced with infinite suffering in the third world and the purchase at world market prices, of machines produced in the great automated factories of today? If we make this kind of comparison, then we are forced to conclude that the [rich] socialist countries are, to some extent, accomplices in the crime of imperialist exploitation…. The socialist countries have a moral duty to end their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.14

Che did not limit himself to this accusation. He declared quite openly that in the name of proletarian internationalism and solidarity ‘the development of countries on the path of liberation must be paid for by the established socialist states’.15 This was, however, a cry in the wilderness by an idealist, though a statement in conformity with the true internationalist spirit. Even among the socialist countries themselves, complaints were raised about ‘taking economic advantage’, ‘subordinating interests’ and ‘forcing of decisions’ by the more advanced ones against the backward members of the socialist fraternity. The Yugoslavs denounced Soviet misuse of the mixed trading companies set up by Stalin to exploit the resources of the East European socialist countries. In June 1964, the Romanian press openly criticized the

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Russian plan, advanced through Comecon, which envisaged a single electrical grid for Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Soviet Ukraine. It described the plan as ‘injurious to Romania’s independence and working against Romania’s economic self-sufficiency’. The Romanians were also critical of the so-called Danube Scheme and later refused to participate in any of the Comecon’s regional development schemes. They advanced the slogan of self-sufficiency to counter Khrushchev’s advocacy of ‘socialist integration’ and ‘international division of labour’ within the socialist camp. Similarly, the North Koreans complained of pressures applied on the Workers Party to accept a Russian-sponsored plan in which the Koreans were to concentrate on agriculture, light industry and housing at the cost of building their heavy and basic industries. In 1966, Kim-Il-Sung addressing a party meeting said: A group of Korean flunkies supported by foreign revisionists talking about international division of labour [within the socialist camp] opposed our party’s line of building, heavy industry and maintained among other things that our country did not need to develop the machine building Industry but would do well to produce only minerals and other materials…of course could not follow their views.16

Instead, Kim-Il-Sung advanced the idea of Juche which means selfreliance in the economy, defence and ideology, the last meaning the taking of independent positions on political–ideological issues confronting the socialist countries and the world communist movement. By the late fifties, the Russian bureaucrats had thrown all pretences towards the concept of proletarian internationalism to the winds. They resorted to breaking relations and withdrawing Soviet technicians as means of blackmail to pressurise parties and leaders expressing serious differences with them. In 1960, Moscow cut off all economic aid to the Chinese, at a moment when the Chinese economy was going through severe economic strains due to the failure of the second phase of the ‘great leap forward’. It thereby arrested industrial development in China in several key fields. It refused assistance in the development of nuclear weapons previously promised to the Chinese, thereby objectively contributing towards the imperialist nuclear blackmailing of

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China. It went so far as to give military aid to the Indian bourgeoisie at a moment when it was likely to be used against a brother socialist country. Later, they openly sided with India against socialist China providing the former with more military assistance, moral aid and diplomatic support. Here, one might also recall Castro’s denunciation of Khrushchev’s action in unilaterally withdrawing the Russian missiles from Cuba on US terms which the Cubans had rejected as they constituted an infringement of Cuban sovereignty. All this is reminiscent of diplomatic, economic or political relations among states regardless of the social regimes they represent, where narrow nationalist interests dominate over all other considerations. The lowest ebb of this fast-degenerating situation was reached when the Russians and the Chinese clashed militarily over the disputed border on the Ussuri River, killing several border guards of both sides, thus desecrating the classical concept of proletarian internationalism in full view of the whole world and to the joy of the imperialists. It was this disgrace that prompted Castro to say that perhaps ‘imperialists were more internationalist than some socialist states’.

IV Thus, while the Russians reduced proletarian internationalism to a doctrine which was honoured more in the breach than in its observance, it was thought by many that the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Tse-tung would uphold this doctrine and be its new standard-bearer. In fact, in the early period of the Sino-Soviet schism, the Chinese opened their attack on the Russians by accusing them of ‘the exploitation of the socialist camp’ in direct contravention of the Marxist–Leninist principle of proletarian internationalism. In March 1964, People’s Daily published a detailed report which the New Zealand communist party leader, V. G. Wilcox, had given in China of the negotiations he had with the Russian leaders in Moscow. According to this report, Wilcox upbraided the Russians for trying to ‘advance at the cost of exploitation of other countries of the socialist camp’ and ‘growing fat and happy on the backs of socialist peoples and communist parties of other countries’.17 In the same month, the Chinese Communist Party had published ‘Sixth Comment on the

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Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU’ which was a devastating attack on the Russian thesis of peaceful coexistence and on their ‘unprincipled compromises’ with imperialism. The ‘Comment’ accused the Russian revisionists of ‘reviling and vulgarizing’ the Marxist–Leninist principle of proletarian internationalism and embarking on a policy of ‘national chauvinism and betrayal of the international working-class movement’.18 According to the Chinese, the US imperialists through a policy of ‘accommodating the Soviet Union’ sought to tie the hands of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and forbid them to support the revolutionary struggles of the people of the capitalist world, particularly of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Chinese maintained that the heart and soul of the general line of peaceful coexistence pursued by the leaders of the CPSU was the ‘Soviet–US collaboration for the domination of the world’, in which the Soviet Union was a junior partner. The Chinese Sixth Comment ended with a ‘A Few Words of Advice to the CPSU’ which were: The United States is an imperialist country and the Soviet Union is a socialist country. How can you expect co-operation between two countries with entirely different social systems…. How can you imagine that the imperialist United States will live in harmony with the socialist Soviet Union?19

This was two years before the Chinese declared, the USSR to be a society based on ‘state capitalism’; a year later they described it as ‘social imperialism’. Soon after the publication of the ‘Sixth Comment’, Red Flag published an article titled ‘A Wolf Is a Wolf’, describing an old Chinese parable about the ‘Chungshan Wolf and Schoolmaster Tungkuo’. The school master once found a wolf wounded by hunters and saved it by hiding him in his bag. Instead of showing gratitude, the wolf wanted to devour the schoolmaster but was killed by a passing peasant who understood well the nature of a wolf. The lesson of the parable as stated by Red Flag was ‘A wolf is a wolf and its man-eating nature does not change. The modern wolf is US imperialism which will always retain its predatory nature and will be killed by the people thus saving the modern schoolmaster Tungkuos’.20

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The reference was obviously to the Soviet revisionists. The same article accused the leaders of the CPSU of ‘abandoning proletarian internationalism’ by letting down the people of Indochina. The Russian–American detente based on appeasement of imperialism was ‘a standing invitation to American aggression’ and if the Russians had acted over Vietnam with anything like the firmness with which President Kennedy had acted on the Cuban missiles issue, the Americans would not have dared to be so aggressive in Vietnam. It also charged the Russians with being ‘lukewarm’ and ‘mean’ in allocating aid to Vietnam while giving liberal grants to the bourgeoisie governments, and asked the Russians: ‘Can detente with imperialism flourish on the poisoned soil of American aggression?’ The Chinese urged the Russian leaders to adopt ‘principled positions vis-a-vis imperialism—positions of confrontation rather than seeking detente, of international class struggle rather than all-round co-operation’.21 They appealed for the unity of the socialist world on the basis of ‘revolutionary internationalism’—‘a unity which will be the corner-stone of the broader unity of the oppressed people all over the globe’. Later, they spoke of imperialism as the ‘paper tiger’ and in 1967 Lin Piao came out with his thesis of guerrilla warfare on a world scale (People’s War) in which the ‘countryside’ would surround the ‘cities’—the citadels of imperialism. ‘The cities are the capitalist strongholds of Europe and North America, while the countryside is the underdeveloped world’. The Chinese leaders thus appeared on the scene as the defenders of the pristine purity of Marxism against revisionism, defenders of international proletarianism and the idea of world revolution. Their watchwords, ‘countryside surrounding the cities’ and ‘East Wind prevailing over the West Wind’, caught the imagination of people all over the world, particularly in the Third World, whose hopes, having been belied by the leaders in Moscow, were now pinned on Peking. But the hopes these new Messiahs had raised by their theories and revolutionary pronouncements were once again to be frustrated by their actions and compromising practices. In 1958, while the United States and China were ‘eyeball to eyeball’ over the question of the Formosa straits, Washington was inviting Premier Khrushchev to visit the US for talks. For, as Moscow continued to develop its economic and nuclear power and its missile capacity,

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the United States was more and more compelled, despite Dulles’ opposition, to accept the necessity of accommodation and coexistence with the Kremlin. At the same time, US policy towards China remained as implacably hostile as before, as unreconciled to Chinese rights (e.g., Formosa), as determined to impose the maximum tension and strains on China. It was also designed to deny China the muchneeded external respite in its fierce struggle with economic scarcity, cultural backwardness and the immense problems of industrialisation of a backward country. Indeed, as US–Soviet relations improved, the United States intensified its hostility towards China, which now began to replace Russia in US strategy and Cold War rhetoric as the primary menace to American global security. To the Chinese, the growing understanding between the US and the USSR looked like rank betrayal by Moscow, while the growing divergence in US policies towards the Russian and the Chinese regimes—accommodating one and seriously threatening the other— deprived the communist states of the basis of their previous unity and eventually provoked a split. In the underdeveloped world, the combination of US dominance and hostility and China’s industrial and military weakness (especially in strategic weapons) served to maintain Peking’s isolation, thereby inducing China to seek security in revolutionary agitation against imperialism and a hostile status quo. But, even then, despite its rhetoric of irreconcilable struggle, its disposition to coexist with those capitalist regimes that were willing to accommodate themselves to its presence (e.g., France and Pakistan) was already manifest and also its willingness, like that of the Russians previously, to subordinate revolutionary principle to raison d’état. When France recognised China and established diplomatic relations with Peking in January 1964, the Chinese propagandists began to speak with an undertone of admiration, almost of tenderness, about France’s brave President (de Gaulle) ‘who has dared to defy American imperialism’. It was suggested by Chinese propaganda organs that by proclaiming the right of every nation to have a nuclear capability, Charles de Gaulle had acted as a champion of ‘equality of all nations and races’.22 The Chinese leaders even urged their supporters in the Afro-Asian countries to treat French nuclear tests, carried out either in the Sahara or in the Pacific with indulgence and to muffle their protests against them, reserving their full-throated indignation for American nuclear

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armament. Another curious twist in Chinese policy could be seen with regard to Malaysia. At first, Malaysia was treated in all communist capitals (including both Peking and Moscow) as a sinister creation of British imperialism. In view of China’s close relations with Indonesia, this was understandable. But suddenly the Chinese leaders changed their mind and advised their adherents to soften their opposition to Malaysia. In 1965, the Chinese rashly declared their support for Colonel Boumedienne, who had overthrown Ben Bella through a military coup, while most of the Algerian Left was still desperately resisting Boumedienne’s onslaughts—all for securing the Algerian dictator’s help in the convocation of the Afro-Asian conference in Algiers and in excluding the Russians from it. Then, during the conflict between India and Pakistan, the moral support that Peking gave to Ayub Khan outraged many of its Leftist friends and supporters who wanted it to take a neutral position in this conflict between two reactionary bourgeoisie states. In fact, Peking’s leaders were now anxious to meet their Russian counterparts on the latter’s own ground—in diplomatic manoeuvring for peaceful coexistence. Most important was the case of Indonesia where Soviet and Chinese policies converged tragically. It was the Chinese who had encouraged the Communist Party of Indonesia led by Aidit to subordinate its class orientation to a bourgeoisie nationalist regime which pursued a ‘progressive’ foreign policy in accord with China’s own narrowly conceived national interests. For years, the Indonesian communists, supported by the Chinese, cultivated the so-called Front of National Unity under Sukarno, hailing him as Indonesia’s ‘national and revolutionary hero’. Even at the height of 1965 army coup, triggered by the reactionary officers, in which an estimated one million communist leaders, sympathisers and members of mass organisations were massacred, the Indonesian CP did not cease to appeal to Sukarno for protection. ‘This triumph of the Right and the sudden destruction of the largest communist party in the non-communist world’, writes David Horowitz, ‘only served to illustrate once more the fatal short-sightedness of the communist states—even from a purely national point of view—in basing their policies on the status quo in an era of permanent revolutionary instability and change’.23

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But the policy that the Chinese leaders adopted towards Ayub’s government after he got himself elected as the President of Pakistan in 1966 and later in 1971 towards the dictatorial and murderous regime of General Yahya Khan beats even the Kremlin leaders in their game of serving narrow national interests at the cost of revolutionary and Leftist movements of other countries. Since there is no Chinese equivalent of the Comintern, it is not possible to speak about ‘wrong advice’, ‘let-down’, ‘betrayal’ in the official sense. But any discerning student of Sino-Pak relations would be compelled to reach the conclusion that the policy of the Chinese government has been one of class collaboration on an international scale in the true Khrushchevian sense. This policy resulted in utter confusion in the Leftist ranks in Pakistan, leading ultimately to their open and shameful collaboration with the dictatorship of Ayub Khan. This process got accentuated after Maulana Bhashani visited Peking in 1963 as the leader of a government delegation to the October Day celebrations. In his welldocumented and analytical work, Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power, Tariq Ali quotes from a tape-recorded interview he conducted with the Maulana in East Pakistan in June 1969: ...I asked the Maulana during the course of a tape-recorded conversation; When you went to China what did Mao discuss with you when you met him? The Maulana’s reply was quite unequivocal… ‘Mao said to me that at the present time China’s relationship with Pakistan was extremely fragile and that the United States, Russia and India would do their utmost to break this relationship. He [Mao] said, ‘you are our friends and if at the present moment you continue your struggle against the Ayub government it will only strengthen the hands of America, Russia and India. It is against our principles to interfere with your work, but we would advise you to proceed slowly and carefully. Give us a chance to deepen our friendship with your government…’24

‘It was no coincidence, that after the Maulana’s return from Peking a section of the NAP adopted an ambivalent attitude towards the Ayub government and turned down its opposition’,25 concludes Tariq Ali. Nobody in his right mind can object to Chinese endeavours to build up relations with Pakistan with a view to breaking the imperialist

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encirclement, but to do so at the cost of the weak socialist movement in that country is to follow in the footsteps of the ‘Soviet revisionists’ and to infringe the principle of proletarian internationalism in the most blatant and cynical manner. But the worst was yet to come in 1970–71, when the Chinese leaders gave unconditional and blanket approval to the Yahya Khan regime in its attempt to crush the resistance of the Bengali people. In a fulsome personal letter26 to the Pakistani dictator, dated April 13, 1971, Chou En-lai openly accepted and defended the right of the Pakistani army to trample on the aspirations of an oppressed people. He also accepted the charge that the whole upheaval was the work of a handful of separatist leaders of the Awami League conspiring in concert with the Government of India. The Chinese government thus deliberately aligned itself with a murderously reactionary capitalist state against a popular upsurge which included many supporters of the Chinese Revolution. Moreover, China did not limit itself to merely vocal support for the Pakistani dictatorship. Its military and economic assistance was crucial to Yahya’s regime. The tanks used to raze workers’ districts in Dacca were Chinese made. When Islamabad confronted a grim economic crisis because of the war, Peking stepped into the breach with a generous loan of $100 million, delivered to Yahya without any interest.27 There could be no doubt that this moral and material support given by the Chinese to the Pakistani rulers benefited the cause of counter-revolution in Pakistan and in Asia. The same story was repeated in Ceylon in April 1971 when Ceylonese youth led by their organisation, the Janatha Vimukhti Peramuna, challenged a repressive and corrupt government—a combination of right and pseudo-Left parties. The Chinese leaders once again rushed economic and military assistance to a government which had murdered in cold blood thousands of Ceylonese youth during its punitive measures against the insurgents. And this time, the Chinese were in the company of US and British imperialists, Russian revisionists and Indian and Pakistani reactionaries. Once again, the exigencies of diplomacy and national interest prevailed over the spirit of revolutionary solidarity. Commenting on this dubious role of the Maoist leadership, a generally sympathetic journal of Calcutta commented thus: A section of the Ceylon Maoists are now with the Che Guevarists impervious to what Peking has to say about the movement (they

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called it CIA inspired). The closest parallel in the immediate situation one can think of is in East Bengal where Maoists led by Toaha are in the struggle despite Peking’s dubious stance. Maoism sans classic loyalty to the CP of China might be a new Asian development…28

‘Leninism sans loyalty to the CPSU’ and ‘Maoism sans loyalty to the CPC’ is the lesson communists not only in Asia but all over the Third World are drawing from the cynically nationalistic postures of both the Russian and the Chinese leaders. This attitude was reinforced by the recent spectacle of Nixon’s welcome in Peking and Moscow when his air force was systematically and mercilessly pounding Vietnamese cities and towns, killing and wounding thousands, and when his navy had just blockaded Vietnamese supply ports by mining its waters.29 This was nationalism run amok and a blow at the classical concept of proletarian internationalism, if it still had life left in it to receive one. It was this ideological and political sell-out that compelled the Vietnamese in their anguish to remind the ‘parties of Lenin and Mao’ of their ‘crime by default’ in the Vietnamese struggle for liberation and their duty towards the principle of international proletarianism. A recent article in Nhan Dan, the organ of the Workers’ Party of Vietnam, warned the erring Chinese and the Russian leaders: For a country to care for its immediate and narrow interests while shirking its lofty internationalist duty, not only is detrimental to revolutionary movement of the world but will also bring unfathomable harm to itself in the end. The vitality of Marxism-Leninism manifests itself in revolutionary deeds, not in empty words.30

Commenting upon the perfidious nature of the detente developing between US imperialism and the Chinese and Russian leaders, Nhan Dan stated: The imperialist pursue a policy of detente with some big countries in order to have a free hand to consolidate their forces, oppose the revolutionary movements in the world, repress the revolution in their own countries and stamp out national liberation movements while never giving up their preparation for a new world war.

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The Vietnamese were thus clearly accusing the communist chieftains in Peking and Moscow of becoming accomplices in imperialist efforts to stamp out national liberation movements (including the Vietnamese one) through their policies of what Nhat Dan called ‘unprincipled detente’. Distinguishing between a ‘genuine détente’ and betrayal of world revolution, the article commented thus: Genuine detente between the nations rests on respect for independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of all countries, big and small. But for US imperialism detente is but a perfidious policy aimed at carving out schemes of aggression, enslavement, subversion and peaceful regression… To achieve detente in certain concrete conditions in order to push forward the offensive of the revolutionary forces is correct. But if in order to serve one’s own narrow national interests, one is to help the most reactionary forces stave off dangerous blows, one indeed is throwing a lifebuoy to a drowning pirate; this is harmful compromise advantageous to the enemy and disadvantageous to the revolution.

Throwing a lifebuoy to the drowning pirate Nixon is exactly what the Russians and the Chinese have been doing during the past few months in order to serve their ‘own narrow national interests’. This open accusation of betrayal levelled by the heroic Vietnamese Workers’ Party against the rulers in the Soviet Union and China will be an eye-opener to millions of militants fighting against imperialism, all over the world, particularly in the Third-World countries. Further, teaching them a lesson in international proletarianism, the article stated: The triumph of revolution in one country does not mean the end but the beginning of the thousand league road leading to world communism…. The revolution is a path strewn with fragrant flowers, opportunism is a fatal quagmire. We communists must persevere in revolution and not compromise with our adversaries.

The above passage clearly tells the self-styled leaders of the international communist movement that the revolution in Russia, China and a few other countries is not the end, but a beginning for the impending

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world revolution. It asks them to rise from the ‘quagmire’ of opportunism in which they are wallowing at the moment by compromising with the adversaries of the world liberation movement. This charge of perfidy levelled by the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, made in no uncertain terms, against the leadership of the two greatest socialist states will go a long way in opening the eyes of those who, having fallen victim to political ‘flunkeyism’, had blindly supported the policies pursued by them in their own selfish interests and to the detriment of the revolutionary cause. It will also go a long way in refuting the theory which equated proletarian internationalism with the interest of either of these socialist nation states. In this above analysis, one point stands out with sterling quality. It is that there exists a fundamental contradiction between the concept of proletarian internationalism and building socialism in separate countries as nation states. Marx and Engels, and later Lenin and his early Bolshevik colleagues, understood the significance of this concept in the background of the ‘permanent revolution’ overtaking the world. For them, socialist revolution was ‘national’ only in form but in content it was international. They placed the interests of socialism in the whole world above the interests of the newly born Soviet state. But this classical doctrine was put on ice when Stalin, after liquidating the entire Bolshevik old guard, decided to build socialism in Soviet Russia irrespective of what happened to the revolutionary movements elsewhere and invoked international proletarianism in his rhetoric only to be used as an instrument for rallying the international communist movement in defence of Russian national interests—military, strategic and political. This was the negation of the principle of international proletarianism telescoped by Marx and Engels into a single phrase ‘workers of the world unite’ to which Stalin and his successors had added the words ‘in the interest of the Soviet state’. History repeated itself when Chinese communism rose in Asia on the crest of a successful civil war led by the communist party and won the admiration and support of the people, especially in the Third World. The same happened when the Cuban Revolution made its revolutionary impact in Latin America. Threatened by US imperialism and blockaded in their island fortress, the Cuban leaders too emphasised international

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solidarity and the idea of continental revolution. They became the most outspoken champions of the ‘continuing revolution’ in Latin America and openly declared that it was not only their ‘duty’ but also their ‘traditional right’ to give moral and material support to the armed guerrilla contingents on the continent which were fighting for liberation and socialism, much like the great ‘Libertadores’, such as Bolivar and Higgins, who liberated not only their own countries but also other countries from the Spanish yoke. ‘Internationalism is in the very veins of Latin American history’, declared the Cuban leaders. The OLAS conference which decided upon a continental armed revolutionary programme for Latin America was conducted in Havana Libre Hotel’s Ambassador Hall with a backdrop of a huge portrait of Bolivar. Later, they conducted, in Havana again, the Tricontinental Conference to emphasise the idea of the ‘unity in struggle’ of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. They not only helped the armed guerrilla foco with men and money in Venezuela, Columbia, Peru and Argentina but also created such foco themselves with Cuban personnel and resources, such as in Bolivia. Internationally, the Cubans considered imperialism to be a ‘world system [which] must be defeated in a world confrontation’. The aim, thinking retrospectively, of this display of solidarity and emphasis on internationalism was to break the Cuban isolation which imperialism had imposed on it. Their fullthroated solidarity for Vietnam too was given with the understanding that the Vietnam war, by keeping US hands tied in Asia, was diverting its attention from the blockaded island, giving it breathing space— hence the slogan ‘create two, three…more Vietnams’. The Cuban leaders also launched a vigorous public attack on the Soviet leaders’ policy of peaceful coexistence and detente with US imperialism and repeatedly accused the Soviets and the Chinese of dereliction of duty towards Vietnam by not uniting to confront imperialism in order to save a brother socialist country. But once Cuban security was assured with an understanding between the Russians and the Americans (on the condition that the latter will not invade the island and Cubans will not promote ‘trouble’ in other Latin American countries), the Castro leadership made a surprising volte face. They fell in line with the Russians, suddenly acquiring confidence in the Soviet leadership and taste for their ‘revisionist’

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policies—policies which they had condemned so vehemently only a short time ago. Castro too paid lip service to the principle of proletarian internationalism in his subsequent speeches but became more and more silent on the fate of the armed guerrilla forces which languished without Cuban aid. The great rebel, Castro, ended up by getting official recognition from the Russian bosses in the form of the Order of Lenin which they conferred on him in a Kremlin ceremony last year. Along with him was decorated Tito, whom the Cuban leader had described (in 1965) as an agent of imperialism. This cynical betrayal of international proletarianism by the leading socialist states and communist parties will, however, in the long run cost them dear. Imperialism has been, and will in future too, exploiting the sharp differences and contradictions between socialist states resulting from their intensely nationalistic postures. They must heed the warning of the Vietnamese communists contained in the above quoted Nhan Dan editorial: ‘For a country to care for its own immediate and narrow interests while shirking its lofty internationalist duty, not only is detrimental to revolutionary movements of the world, but will also bring unfathomable harm to itself in the end…’

Notes   1. Tricontinental, Special supplement, Havana, April 16, 1967.   2. Fidel Castro, Speech at Havana University, March 13, 1965.   3. Vladimir Lenin, ‘Report on International Situation’, in Collected Works, Vol. 31 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1920).   4. L. E. Mins, ed., The Founding of the First International: A Documentary Record (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1937), 39.   5. Lenin, ‘Questions of National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism’, cf E.  H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1961), 131.   6. Lenin, ‘Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers’, in Collected Works, Russian edition, Vol. 23, 712.   7. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Russian edition (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1956), 11.  8. Mins, The Founding of the First International, 42.   9. K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1952), 13. 10. Ibid., 12.

112  Indian Debates on the International Left 11. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 76. 12. Isaac Deutscher, Russia After Stalin (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), 102. 13. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 170. 14. Che Guevara, Speech at the Algiers Economic Seminar, June 1965 (Published by Book Institute [Havana], 1966), 7. 15. Ibid., 7. 16. Kim-il-Sung, ‘Report on the Conference of the Workers Party of Korea’, in Selected Works, 4th ed. (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1966), 32. 17. People’s Daily (March 17, 1964). 18. Chinese Communist Party, ‘Sixth Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU’, published in The Polemic of the General Line of the International Communist Movement (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), 302–307. 19. Ibid. 20. Red Flag, ‘A Wolf Is a Wolf’ (March 27, 1964). 21. Ibid. 22. Peking Daily, ‘The Nuclear Blackmail’ (March 17, 1964); cit Deutscher, ‘The Russo-Chinese Schism’, in China, Russia and the West, ed. Fred Halliday (London; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1970), 172. 23. David Horowitz, Imperialism and Revolution, Pelican edition (London: Allen Lane, 1969), 221. 24. Tariq All, Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), 140. 25. Ibid. 26. Premier Chou En-Lai’s letter to General Yahya Khan, dated April 13, 1971 (New Left Review, June 1971). 27. Financial Times (May 14, 1971). 28. ‘An Island of Police’, Frontier (April 24, 1971). 29. For a detailed analysis of Nixon’s visit to Peking and Moscow, see my article ‘Vietnam and the Socialist World’, Economic & Political Weekly 8, no. 30 (1972). https://www.epw.in/journal/1972/30/special-articles/vietnam-andsocialist-world.html 30. The article ‘Revolution Will Win’ has been published in full in People’s Democracy (January 7, 1973).

Part III

Latin American Movements: The Rise and Fall of the Left The chapters in this part focus on Lajpat Rai’s writings on Latin America, which went through significant political turmoil during the 1960s and 1970s. The first three chapters in this part relate to Cuba, where the American-supported regime of President Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on 31 December 1958. The revolution was led by a group of idealists with imagination and conviction, described by Lajpat Rai in the seventh chapter, ‘Cuba’s Way’ as ‘a devoted band of young revolutionaries’. Cuba became an example of egalitarian assertion at the doorstep of the American superpower and an inspiration to other Latin American countries. Overall, ‘Cuba’s Way’ is a statement in support of the young socialist country that inspired masses all over the world by developing an innovative model of political and social justice. That is the feel of this piece. The eighth chapter, ‘Castro Unmasks Peking’, brings the emphasis back to the Cuban scepticism about the political

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compromises made in the communist bloc—in this case, the growing détente between China and the USA—when Rai suggests socialism stood on the brink of becoming short-sighted and opportunistic. Rai’s eye is on the slippery slope that such compromises can result in, thus endangering the cause of a dynamic socialist politics. Admitting that Cuba may have taken ideological positions on broader issues similar to the Chinese, Rai’s emphasis is rightly on the political. He writes: What directly affects the people is the political and economic blackmail of their countries, interference by a stronger country in their domestic affairs, disregard of normal diplomatic practices, slandering of their leadership and trying to force their countries into a kind of a ‘satellite ring’.

Harsh words these, but Rai’s comment is prophetic. It anticipates the tendency that became a dominant one in the decades to come. The chapter uses the term ‘absolute monarchy’ for the methods employed by the Chinese regime to arm-twist and influence fellow socialist countries. During this period, Fidel Castro’s significance as a world leader and a visionary was established. This chapter tells the readers what few of the later generation of socialists know: that after the American embargo on Cuba, China itself imposed heavy economic pressure on the beleaguered tiny socialist. This entailed ‘cutting down Chinese export of rice, cloth, machinery, etc.’ and refusing to buy Cuban sugar as agreed upon by a trade pact, thereby putting Cuba under a ‘double blockade’. The Chinese economic measure was condemned by Fidel as ‘economic aggression against Cuba’. The issue raised in this chapter has a bearing on the processes of socialist change across the world, as much today as when the point was made by Rai in the 1960s. The ninth chapter is muted in tone, as indicated by its title ‘Cuba: Pressures to Conform’. On the one hand, it defends Cuba for being with the USSR pragmatically and, on the other, it notes that revisionism was being forced upon Cuba by the Soviet Bloc. The chapter argues that, rather than accepting the policies and stances of Soviet Russia, Cuba’s future stability and progress rested primarily on building alliances with other Latin American countries. In this period of shifts in US policy towards Cuba, Cuba’s policies were framed by its growing economic dependence on the Soviet Union and the needs of the Soviet–US

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détente politics. The question is whether the gain was of imperialism or the socialist bloc in general and Cuba in particular. With a failure to build a Cuban road to socialism, the Cuban leadership had limited options vis-à-vis dependence on the Soviet Union. The next two chapters in this part are focused on Chile. These are extensive in scope and offer important insights into the unfolding political drama in that country. Rai’s range is impressive as he delves deep into the contradictions operating in Chilean society, chiefly in its political domain. The 10th chapter is titled ‘Peaceful Transition to Socialism: The Prospect in Chile’ and was written before Allende was deposed in a coup by Pinochet. It, therefore, revolves around the arguments about a peaceful transition to socialism that Allende espoused. In this chapter, Rai argues clearly and insistently that transition is a simplistic word denoting something undramatic and uneventful. Separating the lines of argument adopted by Soviet Russia, China and their adversaries in the form of Right-wing leadership in Latin American countries and the USA, Rai suggests that a transition to socialism is difficult to achieve. He notes the moves and tricks of the bourgeois sections and corporations in the Western Hemisphere to locate the interplay of vested interests in Latin America and warns that this means the revolutionary leaders have to attend to the need for radical political struggles. Rai is sceptical of the theory of peaceful transition to socialism in his analysis. However, a large section of the Left, including Allende, considered peaceful transition ideologically viable. Therein lay the problem. Rai is prescient: If Allende moves towards a more radical stance (which seems unlikely) there will be a definite shift to the violent path, including the danger of intervention by the military. If he moves further on the road to compromise with the bourgeoisie (which is more likely) then it will have been proved once again that socialism cannot be won peacefully.

Yet the established Left found political power within reach and worth working for. That included supposed radicals in Latin America. The irony is not lost. Rai argues that socialist politics demanded that Allende’s government should introduce redistributive measures as soon as it gets a chance to do so. To do otherwise would be to give

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precious time to the antagonistic forces for regrouping and reverting to anti-people bourgeois policies. The 11th chapter on Chile, ‘Response to Chilean Coup’, starts by noting that what was apprehended previously was proved true soon enough. The US-supported coup, writes Rai, was anticipated in the revisionist stand taken by the Allende government and its supporters. While the reaction to the fall of the Chilean government through a military coup was one of horror and declarations of solidarity, it also reflected the hypocrisy of many of established socialist groups and states. Rai names Soviet Russia, China and the Left and liberal sections of many countries. Such declarations did not, however, mean much; the unity of Salvador Allende’s supporters was, to use Rai’s words, ‘fragile’ and as such soon ‘broke down’. In fact, this is the crux of the chapter. The seriousness of the issue remained beyond the comprehension of most of the parties involved. Mistakes were made in delaying socializing key industries; reactionary forces were allowed to seize the initiative and turn the tables on the revolutionaries. Allende should have understood, Rai argues, that his adversaries had bought time so that Chilean masses were kept away from the political process. If Allende took courage in both his hands and had introduced socialist measures to take over capital as well as divested power from old state structures, a coup would not be possible. ‘But one may ask Fidel Castro and others’, Rai writes, directing his wrath at Allende’s friends: What did you expect from US imperialism? What did you expect from the Pentagon and the CIA? Was it the first time that US imperialism had intervened to subvert a democratically elected government in Latin America? How did the Pentagon maintain ‘magnificent relations’ with the Chilean armed forces when a ‘Marxist’ government was in power and a ‘Marxist’ President was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces?

Indeed, the lesson cannot be missed. The last chapter in this part is titled ‘Uruguay: Rule by Military Proxy’. The military coup in Uruguay, identical to the one in Chile, took place in the same year (1973). The political suppression in that country was indeed more brutal since it took lessons from the way in

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which socialist forces in Chile were attacked. The details given here tell the story of the vacuity of political argument and understanding that, for Rai, accompanies the practices of the communist states of the time across the world. Power is wielded by the military against democrats, constitutionalists and those standing in support of institutions. Here, the focus is on the role of the working class that went on strike and forced the regime to change its oppressive policies. The strike should have continued till success was achieved to restore the rule of law; it was based on mass popular support. There were chances to build upon this movement. Yet the mistake was sadly repeated of calling off the strike. It caused the dissipation of the struggle and offered the opportunity to the military to recover afresh their lost influence. Rai again evokes Fidel Castro to castigate communist leaders for adhering to dead conventions and repeating mistakes rather than learning lessons from revolutionary history. We read the ringing words of Castro quoted by Rai: If anyone asked me who the most important allies of imperialism are, I would not answer that they are the professional armies, not even the Yankee marines. I would not say that they are the oligarchies or the reactionary classes. I would say ‘they are the pseudo revolutionaries’.

Rai bemoans the fact that while imperialism spreads its tentacles all over the world to protect property interests, communists and socialists, who are supposed to shape an alternative world, fail to do so.

CHAPTER 7

Cuba’s Way*,**

Preparations are in full swing all over Latin America for the Continental Congress of Solidarity with Cuba starting at Montevideo on June 18. The Congress has acquired new significance since the U.S. launched its current aggression against the Dominican Republic. The Congress has won wide support among the people of Latin America. Many leaders and organisations have agreed to take part in its work. They include General Heriberto Jara. The Government of National Liberation and the Revolutionary Federation of Mexican Workers, Maria Arbens of the Patriotic Union of Guatemala; the Venezuelan General Jose Gabaldon; the movement of Peruvian Peace Champions; Deputy of the Colombian National Congress Ramiro Andrade and others.

Dominican Question The US action in the Dominica has provoked indignation throughout Latin America, and the Johnson regime is facing strong protests. The foreign minister of Venezuela Ignacio Iribarren Borges has declined to * On 18 June, representatives of Latin American countries meet at Montevideo to express solidarity with Cuba. The learned author of this article points out the significance of the Cuban Revolution for Latin America. ** Lajpat Rai, ‘Cuba’s Way’, Mainstream 3 (1965): 20–21.

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go to Washington for the OAS Foreign Ministers Meeting. Venezuela wants the US troops to withdraw from the Dominican Republic as a precondition of any OAS decision on the Dominican questions. The foreign ministers of Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Salvador and certain other Latin American countries are also reported to have refused to participate in the Washington meeting. The main interest of the Montevideo Congress as conceived originally was the demand for the restoration of normal relations between Cuba and the United States and other countries that had broken commercial and diplomatic relations with Cuba under US pressure, but now the intervention in the Dominican Republic is expected to figure prominently in its deliberations. Other items on the proposed agenda will be defence of the rights of people for self-determination and against external intervention; support for the principle of peaceful coexistence in the hemisphere and solidarity with people’s fighting for national liberation. Cuba today is the fulcrum around which the political policies of the US as well as the Latin American countries revolve. The hypnotic power of the American might, coupled with the permanent threat of armed intervention by the US to a certain degree, inhibited national liberation movements in Latin America. The Cuban Revolution has exploded the myth of American invincibility and opened a window of hope for the people of the hemisphere. It has proved not only that national liberation was possible in the Western hemisphere but that it is also possible, in this changed world, to effect far-reaching changes in the social and economic life of the people under the very walls of the citadel of world capitalism. That is why anti-imperialist forces in Latin America are keen on strengthening Cuba. Latin America, as a whole, like Asia and Africa, is an underdeveloped region, plagued by some of the problems common to all underdeveloped areas. Despite great potential resources and a comparatively small but fast-growing population, Latin American people are poor with an average per capita income of $105, illiteracy rate of 60 per cent and average life expectancy of 49 years. Its wealth and resources are monopolized by a very small section of the world oligarchy and foreign companies. According to Professor A. J. Toynbee, 10 per cent

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of Latin Americans own 90 per cent of the total arable land and 70 per cent of the modern industry is either owned or controlled by foreign companies mainly registered in the US. Moreover, 70 per cent children of school-going age do not go to school and public medical facilities are available to not more than two per cent of the people. The solution which the Cuban Revolution offered for this malaise of Latin America was the breaking up of the latifundia (huge estates running into thousands of hectares) and the distribution of land among landless peasants, squatters and poor farmers and the nationalisation of foreign companies. This was a major operation performed for the economy of a Latin American country with spectacular results. It is this operation which won the Cuban Revolution the greatest respect and admiration of the Latin American people as well as the hatred and opposition of the landed oligarchs and the American circles in Washington. On the positive side, the revolution cleansed the degenerate Cuban society given to graft, corruption, prostitution (there were 15,000 of them in Havana alone in 1959) and gambling, provided education for all and, the wonder of wonders, succeeded in setting up an honest government led by a devoted band of young revolutionaries. The Cuban Revolution has also introduced a new ideology into this Western part of the globe—the ideology of socialism or, in the words of Fidel Castro, of Marxism–Leninism. The ideology of free enterprise and evolutionary growth of Latin American societies has been tried for the last hundred years and has failed to produce results. Its working has led to concentration of wealth in a few hands and mass misery on the other. There is no other part of the world in which the contrast between extreme luxury on one side and abysmal poverty on the other is as great as in Latin America. Thus, the Cuban Revolution has chartered a new path that has opened a new road and has presented an alternative way of development, both social and economic, for the benefit of Latin America. And last, the Cuban Revolution has challenged the hegemony of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Latin America was an exclusive preserve of the United States. No European power was permitted in.

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The ‘Colossus of the North’ stood sentinel over it and the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ proclaimed his hegemony to the whole world. With the Cuban Revolution, Latin America has forged its first link with the socialist world beyond the seas, which is willing and capable of helping the Latin Republics through economic aid, development of advantageous commerce and cultural exchanges and, in times of need, to stand by them in defence of their sovereignty. But it is not only the Latin American people who learn from the Cuban example and take inspiration from it. The Cuban Revolution inspires all the struggling peoples in the developing countries of Asia and Africa in their fight for national liberation and the development of their economies. The example of little Cuba standing up to a great and mighty power fills the hearts of the people with confidence and pride. Hence, people all over the world are raising their voice in defence of the Cuban Revolution. The Montevideo Congress has, therefore, invited representatives from Asian and African countries as well. And it is evident that many Asian and African countries will send delegations to Montevideo to express their solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and the Latin American people. This is all the more important in the face of the present US intervention in the Dominican Republic. Cuban Revolution in a way has given a sharper edge to US policies of aggression and intervention in Latin America. The US ruling circles now do not want to take any ‘risk’ lest another ‘Cuba’ springs up in Latin America, hence their policy of rushing in at the slightest pretext. It is, therefore, important for the forthcoming Congress at Montevideo to unite the people of Latin America in the defence of the Cuban Revolution which has become a symbol of emancipation for Latin America.

CHAPTER 8

Castro Unmasks Peking*

Jose Marti, the apostle of Cuban independence compared the fight of the Cuban people against the ‘Colossus of the North’ with the fight between David and Goliath. The same could now be said of the fight that Fidel Castro is giving to the Chinese Goliath which has appeared on the Cuban scene as the ‘Colossus of the East’. The political–ideological struggle going on in the socialist world has acquired a new character since the entry of Fidel Castro into the arena. For one thing, it has separated the ideological from the political part. Ideologically, Fidel Castro may be closer to China than the Soviet Union as can be shown by a number of political positions he has taken and pronouncements he has made during the past seven years. But ideological or philosophical agreement or disagreement do not directly affect the lives of peoples, the relations between states, trade and economic pacts and the normal diplomatic and political contacts between countries. What directly affects the people is political and economic blackmail of their countries, interference by a stronger country in their domestic affairs, disregard of normal diplomatic practices, slandering of their leadership and trying to force their countries into a kind of a ‘satellite ring’. It is from this latter angle that Fidel Castro has chosen to attack the Chinese leadership in his typically outspoken and uncompromising * Lajpat Rai, ‘Castro Unmasks Peking’, Mainstream 4, no. 36 (1966): 15–17.

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manner—a manner which is above board, and which invokes the admiration of all those people who stand by the rights of smaller and weaker nations to defend their own independence and sovereignty.

Threats and Insults In a powerful speech delivered in the Campus of the Havana University on March 13, 1966, Fidel Castro made what has been described by the Cuban Communist Party daily Gramma, the ‘great exposure of the Chinese leadership and the US imperialism’. Fidel Castro began by saying that the Chinese note in reply to his government’s protest against the activities of the Chinese Embassy in Havana, contained nothing but ‘threats and insults’: Instead of a reply we received a brief statement saying that it (the Chinese government) reserves the right to reply…. But in thundering tones, menacing like a veritable Jupiter it has limited itself to writing a brief stream of insults, abuses and calumnies….

Castro then goes on to charge the Chinese with the ‘shameful act of giving instructions to their hucksters throughout the world to set off a chain of lies and slanders about the Cuban Revolution trying to demonstrate that we are very dangerous revisionists’. He was referring to a series of anti-Cuba articles written by some Pro-China Belgian communists and the Ceylonese Left communist leaders reproduced in the Chinese press.

Gentlemen Theoreticians Only a few years ago, the Chinese leadership was citing the example of the Cuban Revolution before the whole of Latin America and the world calling it a ‘beacon of light in the dark backyard of American imperialism’. Infuriated by this perfidy of the Chinese leaders and the ‘shameful collaboration’ of the pro-Chinese hucksters, Fidel Castro told his audience: They (the Chinese) have built up a system of political satellites. And proof of the harm that this satellite system does and can do

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in the world is the fact that some agents of the Chinese leadership, have incurred the stupidity, the historical error, of writing at China’s command infamous articles against Cuban Revolution as did a small group of Belgian scoundrels, gentlemen theoreticians on revolutionary warfare. But when European mercenaries recently began to join Tshombe’s ranks to fight Congolese patriots, not one of these scoundrels, theoreticians of revolutionary warfare, volunteered to fight at the side of the Congolese patriots…. And the same can be said of a group of Ceylonese patriots and factionalists and some few others. The China News Agency has devoted itself to copying each and every one of those infamous writings against the Cuban Revolution in which the arguments are exactly the same as those of the AP, those of the UPI and in addition, those of the worst Trotskyite elements…. It is shameful as well as regrettable to see how the China News Agency is today scarcely distinguishable from the UPI and the AP.

Castro went on to explain that the Chinese leadership’s calculation was that menaced by the US imperialist and faced with internal difficulties, the Cuban leadership will succumb to their methods of blackmail and threats. He accused the Chinese leadership of exerting three types of pressures on Cuba—political, economic and ‘the pressure of outside slanders by pro-China hucksters’. He said that the Cuban people would not yield to either one of these. He told his youthful audience: ‘To try to take advantage of our difficult situation, of the blockade against us, in order to harm us, to put economic pressure on us is one of the greatest felonies that any clique of revolutionary leaders has ever committed.’

Goebbels Style He openly accused the Chinese of adopting ‘fascist methods of worst type’ against the Cuban people; methods of ‘slander, of brute force and of undignified and senseless accusation against the Cuban Revolution’. Addressing his cheering but shocked youthful crowd, Castro said, ‘China has used these paid slanderers to accuse Cuba, to launch an imperialist-style, a Goebbels-style campaign against Cuba. Because

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if we are going to discuss this seriously, then the truth will have to be unmasked.’ Once again, a great revolutionary leader has called a spade. Castro recognizes the past great achievements of the Chinese leadership. But says that history is witness to the fact of many great people who having done good things in their lives later committed great blunders: In the past few days we have seen with sorrow things that degenerated men are capable of doing. And they are in part consequences of confusing Marxism-Leninism with fascism, with absolutism; they are consequences of having introduced the style of absolute monarchy into contemporary socialist revolutions.

Elaborating this, Castro says: Absolute monarchies, with all their great disadvantages, at least possessed the advantage of having an heir to power. To accept the system and the methods of absolute monarchies in a socialist regime is the worst of absurdities, because there a struggle arises among those who aspire to be absolute monarchs. And what is the use of a Party where everything revolves around one man? What is the use of a Party if one man is deified to such a degree that even the names of Marx, Engels and Lenin are no longer mentioned….

Mao Deification According to Castro, this deification of Mao, which symbolizes the deification of Chinese leadership, has done tremendous harm to the world socialist movement. He warns the Cuban people against this tendency. One of the first laws of the Cuban revolution prohibited naming any street, any town, any city, any factory, any farm after a living leader. It prohibited the erection of statues of the living leaders and prohibited something more, photograph of officials in government officers and embassies…. And I invite the Chinese leaders to pass a similar law in their country if they are able…

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Pouring scorn over the we-are-always-right attitude of the Chinese leadership, Castro goes on to remark that its attitude is opposed to the dialectical process, that is, progress through the struggle of the opposition: Let them (the Chinese leadership) avoid the ridiculous belief that they are infallible…our first duty is to understand that we are fallible, that we can be mistaken at times even frequently. Far from being able to say we know everything, we can say that we are ignorant of almost everything, that we must study, we must mediate, we must think, reason and increase our capacity to understand… such a position will be shocking for the leadership of China and that is why they are what they are…

Aberration of Mind Castro, then, goes on to expose what he calls the ‘greatest aberration of mind of the Chinese leadership’—the Great Power Complex of China. He takes the example of the role of China in the recently held Tricontinental Conference, wherein the Chinese leadership sought to take all the credit for the success of the Conference. This is how Castro explained his point to the Havana University audience: While the Conference (Tricontinental) was in progress, almost nothing was published about it in China. When the Conference ended, they began writing and transmitting through the China News Agency numerous articles proclaiming the great victory of China in Tricontinental Conference taking all the credit for themselves and representing the result of the Conference in this false and lying way as a victory for China. But all those who participated in the Conference knew that it was a victory for the revolutionary movements of the world and of all nations…

Proclaiming the right of all nations, big and small, to absolute equality, Castro said: ‘So long as frontiers exist in the world the most absolute equality must prevail above the power of any country or the size of any country.’

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Double Blockade In the end, Fidel Castro exposes the Chinese efforts to compel Cuba to join the group of Chinese satellites by imposing on this small country, already blockaded by the U.S. imperialism, economic sanctions by cutting down Chinese export of rice, cloth, machinery, etc., and by refusing to buy Cuban sugar as agreed upon by a trade pact, thereby putting Cuba under a ‘double blockade’, Castro calls this ‘economic aggression against Cuba on the part of China’. In his own inimitable words, Castro told his listeners: …But in their (Chinese leaders’) attempts to slander the Revolution they will be admitting before the world that the trade reduction, the reduction of exports to Cuba equivalent to more than 40 million pesos, the reduction of rice exports to almost half the amount of the previous year was done for reasons of intrinsically political nature…

According to Castro, the trade agreement by the Chinese was a punishment, a blackmail in order to ‘teach a lesson to Cuba’ for its political daring and independence. The Chinese leaders with the greatest Phariseeism in the world ask: ‘Why has Fidel Castro said this at this time? Why did he not discuss with us?’…. They were hoping that when they squeezed us economically, we would be forced to negotiate and to tolerate…

Fidel Castro, however, assured his people that Cuba would never bend before the Chinese leaders, will never ‘negotiate’ with nor ‘tolerate’ economic aggression or political blackmailing of the Chinese rulers. He has also expressed the hope that someday the Chinese people rectify the mistakes that their present leaders have been making with regard to Cuba. I would have recommended this speech of Fidel Castro to our Prime Minister, the Minister for External Affairs and the officials of the Ministry of External Affairs to know more about the activities of the Chinese rulers elsewhere and use it to expose them before the Indian people. But unfortunately, I cannot do that as the latter part of

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Castro’s speech deals with what US imperialism is doing to Cuba and contains Fidel Castro’s fearless denunciation of it. And United States is a country, which our prime minister advises us to understand and appreciate. It is also a country which, our present government says, gives us food and credits and also arms whenever it thinks fit. I shall, however, recommend this speech of Fidel Castro to the supporters and defenders of the Chinese leadership in India, particularly the leadership of the Marxist Communist Party, who may draw a few lessons from the experience of Cuba as explained by its revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. But perhaps in the estimate of some of these friends, Castro has also gone ‘revisionist’ despite his lukewarm position with regard to ‘peaceful coexistence’.

CHAPTER 9

Cuba Pressures to Conform*

I Cuba’s isolation in Latin America is breaking fast. In 1964, all members of the Organization of American States (OAS), except Mexico, had broken off relations, trade as well as diplomatic, with Cuba at Washington’s insistence. Canada was another exception, though it was not a member of OAS. Now a reverse process seems to have started. Argentina and Fern have renewed diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba in defiance of the sanctions voted at the OAS meeting in Punta del Este in 1964. The Caribbean states of Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have established diplomatic relations with Havana without any indication of displeasure from the US Administration. On August 22, 1974, Panama re-established relations and, according to reports in the American Press, Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela are preparing to follow suit in the near future. In his July 26 speech at Matanzas, Fidel Castro said, ‘The isolation of Cuba is withering away and the economic blockade of our country cannot last much longer…. In * Lajpat Rai, ‘Cuba: Pressures to Conform’, Economic & Political Weekly 10, no. 1–2 (January 1975): 16–18.

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view of the present conditions of international detente, it is increasingly obvious to all the world that it is an unfair, ridiculous, criminal and untenable measure.’ These developments are without doubt indicative of a shift in the US policy towards Cuba—a shift necessitated both by the failure of the policy to isolate and strangle the Cuban Revolution and the exigencies of the US Soviet detente, on the one hand, and by a change in the Cuban stance on revolutionary movements in Latin America or, to put it in American terms, Cuba’s acceptance of a policy of ‘non-interference in other countries of the hemisphere’ on the other. In August 1974, ten days after Castro’s July 26 speech, two prominent Americans, close to the Nixon Administration, visited Cuba, met Fidel Castro and, on coming back, gave their assessment of the ‘futile US attempts to isolate and quarantine Cuba’. P. M. Holt, director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, characterized the State Department’s policy towards Cuba as ‘a failure’ and said that the Cubans ‘are on the verge of making their system work—that is to say, of constructing a socialist showcase in the Western hemisphere’ (New York Times, August 8, 1974). He argued that the initiative for improving relations must come from the United States and that Washington should begin by ending its restrictions on US citizens visiting Cuba. The other prominent American who visited Cuba in August was Frank Mankiewicz, director of Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, who returned with the message that the Cuban leadership were prepared to offer some unspecified ‘concessions’ in return for diplomatic recognition. These unofficial reports were soon confirmed at President Ford’s first press conference in which he did not rule out a possible change in US policy towards Cuba but simply said that ‘before we made any change, we would certainly consult with other members of the OAS’ (New York Times, August 29, 1974). Nobody took this rider seriously as the US stooges of the Organisation of the American States, having taken the hint from their overlords in Washington, had already started talking about a ‘change in the policy towards Cuba’. Commenting on

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President Ford’s statement, Jack Anderson wrote in his nationally syndicated column: A rapprochement with Castro is now expected to be President Ford’s first major foreign policy move… Sources close to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger say he had wanted to normalise relations with Cuba ever since he began practising the detente policy. It made no sense to him to seek friendship with Russia and China on the opposite side of the globe and remain hostile to Cuba only 90 miles from our shores.

According to Jack Anderson, a ‘diplomatic plot’ has been prepared by Kissinger together with his close friend, Mexican Foreign Minister Emilio Rabasa, according to which a ‘commission of enquiry’ consisting of five OAS countries will be constituted to study the issue. This commission will ‘find’ that the Castro regime was no longer actively promoting revolutionary movements in Latin America and would propose ending the sanctions. On September 6, 1974, Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Ecuador formally proposed to the OAS executive that it call an early meeting of the foreign ministers of member states to consider lifting the sanctions against Cuba. A New York Times survey (September 7, 1974) found that ‘15 of the 23 members of the OAS were willing to end the Cuban sanctions’. According to this survey, ‘Haiti, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic were wavering’, while only four governments (Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia) were firmly opposing the lifting of the sanctions. The process of Cuban–American rapprochement actually began during Nixon’s regime when, in February 1973, the two countries signed their first agreement on plane hijacking. This was the first formal US agreement with Havana since the Eisenhower administration broke off diplomatic ties in January 1961. Earlier last year, US officials had looked the other way when subsidiaries of American corporations in Argentina and Canada, taking advantage of the loopholes in the Trading with the Enemy Act, signed multimillion dollar contracts with the Cubans for the sale of trucks, cars, locomotives and some other items in direct violation of the OAS trade embargo (New York Times, February 7, 1974). In April, at the meeting of OAS

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foreign ministers in Georgia, it was decided to ‘explore the possibility of inviting Cuba to the next meeting of the OAS in Buenos Aires in March 1975’ (New York Times, April 13, 1974). It has also become clear by now that the majority of US business favours resumption of trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba. According to the Washington Post (April 26), 70 per cent of 400 American firms polled privately in April by the National Association of Manufacturers declared they were opposed to continuing the ban on trade with Cuba. Similarly, according to the New York Times, a government survey is said to show that 72 per cent of American newspapers support ‘a change in policy towards Cuba’. Thus, by quietly starting the move towards resumption of relations with Cuba, Nixon was simply recognising reality—the reality of the growing disintegration of the OAS blockade of the first socialist state of the Western hemisphere. Moreover, having opened diplomatic relations with Peking and Moscow, how could he continue to justify the ostracism of Havana? Nixon could not, however, go beyond a point in his overtures to Havana as he was also answerable to the most reactionary circles in the United States who differentiated between the Russians and the Chinese on the one side and the Cubans on the other. According to these ultra-Rightist political groups, trade with the Soviet Russia and China—countries which do not promote revolutions outside of their borders—is in the national interest of the United States, whereas Cuba is committed to the promotion of revolutions in Latin America and hence a manifest menace to stability in the region. Also, Washington’s delay in making up with Castro has the added advantage of enabling some Latin American regimes to appear ‘independent’ of US imperialism by taking ‘popular initiatives’ that do not conflict with the objectives of the State Department. For instance, the Mexican President, Luis Echeverria, recently concluded a tour of some Latin American capitals where he advocated the creation of a ‘regional trade and business bloc’ and made loud noises about the necessity to ‘normalize’ relations with Cuba, thereby showing that he was a ‘hemispheric statesman’ acting independently of the State Department in bringing Cuba back into the fold. The reality was, however, revealed by the Mexico City correspondent of the New York Times who wrote: ‘Mexico

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is playing the role of the mediator between Washington and Havana; both desire to normalise, relations in the first instance with a view to seeing them grow into something more substantial and lasting….’ (New York Times, September 29).

II How have the Cubans reacted to these friendly blandishments of some of the Latin American states? In his July 26 speech, Castro characterized the countries that have opened or maintained relations with Cuba as countries ‘that refuse to obey imperialism’. He said, ‘Today the governments of this hemisphere are divided into a minority of lackeys that still blindly follow the dictates of imperialism and a majority of governments that are no longer willing to follow those dictates…that are willing to follow an independent foreign policy….’ This simple division of the Latin American states into goats and sheep by Castro is naive, to say the least. Cuba has always desired to maintain good relations with all governments. This is correct; but it has not been supplemented by the necessary political differentiation from ‘nationalist’ capitalist regimes. In fact, the Cubans have sought to embellish some of them, such as Allende’s regime in Chile, Alvarado’s military establishment in Peru and now Torrijos’ government in Panama. All of them, according to Castro, represented a ‘revolutionary process’ that would end in the social transformation of these countries. Panama’s decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, for example, elicited the following comment in Granma, the official organ of the Cuban CP: Our people support the process of revolutionary transformations which were initiated in Panama in 1968. We watch with interest the efforts made by the Government of General Omar Torrijos to break the old socio-economic structures, his defence of natural resources, the break with the Yankee international concerns such as ITT and the banana companies, the organised participation of the masses in the destiny of the country, and the break that is being carried out in the field of education and public health.1

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This is hardly different from the fulsome praise Brezhnev showered on the government of Indira Gandhi at his public speech on 17 January 1975 in the Red Fort grounds in Delhi, telling the world that Indira Gandhi had not only brought electric light and education to millions of homes in the villages but was also making heroic efforts to replace the old socio-economic structures with a new socialist one. Following the footsteps of the Russians, Castro, too, seems to display a political attitude towards the bourgeois regimes in Latin America in accordance with Cuba’s diplomatic and commercial needs. And it is this attitude which has been invoked by officials of the OAS member states as proof that the Cubans have given up encouraging revolutions elsewhere in Latin America. And it is this assurance, and not the fiction of the desire, to ‘follow an independent foreign policy, that is responsible for their neighbourly attitude towards Cuba’. The main source of Havana’s stance, however, is Moscow’s ‘peaceful coexistence’ policy and detente with Washington. Cubans, the long-time denouncers of these policies, bowed to the Kremlin in this because of their isolation and their desperate need for economic and military aid from the Soviet Union. Washington’s trade and political blockade of Cuba, declared in February 1962, and its total ban on the entry of Cuban products into the United States (March 1962) were enormous blows to the Cuban Revolution. These forced a drastic reorientation of Cuba’s trade and provoked massive dislocations in its economy, already distorted and crippled by decades of imperialist exploitation. In view of the grave shortages that quickly developed, Havana had no choice but to appeal to the Soviet leadership. Only massive Soviet aid enabled the Cuban economy to continue functioning from day to day. Today, Cuba is heavily reliant on aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist states. Soviet economic assistance alone amounts to a million dollars a day. According to Rene Dumont, a close friend of Fidel Castro, Soviet and Communist bloc aid to Cuba amounted to $570 million in 1961–62 or $40 per head. In comparison, US aid to the rest of Latin America amounted to $2 per head. This aid has increased rather than decreased since 1961–62, and so has the island’s dependence on the Russians. Russia today plays about as great a part

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in Cuban politics as the US did in the past: it is Cuba’s main market and has its main product—sugar; it supplies Cuba with weapons of all kinds and all military technology; it takes most of Cuba’s secondary products, fruits, cigars and, most important of all, it is its only supplier of both wheat and oil. In 1968–69, Fidel Castro said in a speech that every 45 hours, a Soviet tanker docked in Havana. Now, with increased requirements, the frequency should be higher. The fact of the matter is that, for the moment, Cuba under socialism can no more do without Russia as a market and as supplier of essential fuel than it could do without the United States under capitalism. This dependence on the Soviet bloc countries was further increased when the Cuban leaders accepted the Russian advice on the question of industrialisation. They received the same advice from the Soviet Union that Argentina and Brazil had received from the United States; that, for economic reasons, agricultural countries should not try to become industrialised but rather should reap the benefits of high-quality manufactures from industrial nations. In Cuba’s case, the Russians also found justification in the small size of the country’s internal market and the fact that it had no chance of exporting its manufactures to any of its neighbours. Hence, sugar was to remain the king in Cuba and its sale largely dependent on the communist bloc market. This economic dependence on Moscow brings with it powerful pressures to conform to the Kremlin line. Castro has publicly admitted that he knows only too well ‘the bitterness of having to depend to a considerable degree on things which come from outside and how that can become a weapon and at least create the temptation to use it’.2 In addition, the Cubans have been affected by the failure of the ‘guerrilla strategy’ to make revolution in other parts of Latin America. The death of Che Guevara and the failure of his guerrilla force in Bolivia led them to cut down active support of guerrilla movements. For a time, they showed willingness to see if Allende’s popular-frontism offered a more effective road, though both Castro and Che had denounced the peaceful parliamentary path as tantamount to treason with the revolutionary movement on the continent. The political and ideological about-turn came in 1968 when Castro

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publicly supported Russian military intervention in Czechoslovakia. Today, the Cuban press echoes the Russian policies all along the line, including praise for such governments as the military regime in Peru, the Peronista outfit in Argentina and Torrijos’ regime in Panama. During Leonid Brezhnev’s visit to Cuba early last year, Castro indicated his support to the major elements in the Kremlin’s policy of detente. This completed the Russian political–ideological victory over the Cuban leaders. In 1967, at the OLAS conference, Fidel Castro had condemned all talk of detente with US imperialism. He had almost equated the word ‘detente’ with ‘treacherous compromise’ and had declared that Cuba will not sacrifice its revolutionary principles for the sake of economic and diplomatic gains, as was being done by some socialist countries. And this country has never hesitated in the least to put our political principles above economic interests, for if this were not so we would have found a million reasons to reconcile ourselves with imperialism a long time ago, more so in these times when it has become quite fashionable to do so.

This is not to say that the Cubans have been beaten into conformity for all times. The present Soviet–Cuban honeymoon is not the first one. The first one began with Nikita Khrushchev’s boast in July 1960 about the Russian missiles falling on the American cities in the event of an American invasion of the island and ended with the missile crisis when Fidel and Che realized that the security of the Cuban Revolution lay not with the reformist Russians but with the development of the Latin American Revolution. This even initiated what has been called the period of ‘heresy’ and non-conformism in Cuban communism, during which Castro exploded many a medieval myth inside the world communist movement and earned the epithet of ‘that viper in our bosom’ from the Russians. This period lasted till the middle of 1967 when the Cuban leaders were found making gigantic effort to leave the well-trodden paths of traditional communism. This was also a period during which Latin America lived under the sign of Fidel and Che, and the inspiring imperative of the Second Declaration of Havana: ‘The duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution.’

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Basically honest and personally incorruptible, the Cuban leaders are yet capable of breaking their bonds with Russian revisionism. It is true that the ties binding Cuba to the Latin American revolutionary movements, essential for the island’s future, have been weakened by Castro’s return to the bosom of the USSR. Yet their return to the fold is not based on any naive illusions about Russian revisionism, but on the unavoidable consequences of their failure—perhaps temporary—to build a Cuban road to socialism.

Notes 1. Granma (1974). 2. Fidel Castro’s 13 March 1968 speech.

CHAPTER 10

Peaceful Transition to Socialism The Prospect in Chile*

I The victory of the Left Popular Front in Chile indicated a deep social crisis and radicalisation of the masses. Such a regime is almost always a precursor to revolution or counter-revolution. What is missing in Chile is a mass revolutionary socialist party capable of leading the masses into revolutionary action and resolving the crisis in their favour. The revolutionary Left consisting of the Left-wing of the socialist party, the Revolutionary Communist Party (pro-Peking) and the largest of the three, the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) taken together constitutes a small force yet. With the assumption of office by Salvador Allende, the electoral path has reached its final culmination and, looking at the Allende government’s two-year record, a dead end. If Allende moves towards a more radical stance (which seems unlikely), there will be a definite shift to the violent path, including the danger of intervention by the military. If he moves further on the road to compromise with the bourgeoisie (which is * Lajpat Rai, ‘Peaceful Transition to Socialism: The Prospect in Chile’, Economic & Political Weekly 7, no. 46–47 (1972): 2293–2300.

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more likely), then it will have been proved once again that socialism cannot be won peacefully. To mark time on one spot, to be contented with the first goal it happens to reach, is never possible in a revolution. And he who tries to apply the homemade wisdom derived from parliamentary battles between frogs and mice to the field of revolutionary tactics only shows thereby that the very psychology and laws of existence of revolution are alien to him and that all historical experience is to him a book sealed with seven seals. (Rosa Luxemburg1)

From its very first day of existence, the Government of Popular Unity (Unidad Popular—UP) has faced the united opposition of the Chilean right and American corporate circles. But Allende’s troubles do not end with this. They include such problems as a rapid decline in foreign reserves, skyrocketing prices, growing influence of the military in the government and lately, mounting criticism from the revolutionary Left. Allende’s contention is that these difficulties are the inevitable price that the country has to pay for taking the anti-imperialist and socialist road of economic and social development. He dismisses the criticism from the Left as the product of ultra-radical impatience, particularly of the younger sections of the Left. No doubt, the victory of Allende and the installation of the Government of Popular Unity was an unwelcome development for Washington, yet the fear Allende is credited with instilling in American corporate circles, especially after their recent experience with the ‘revolutionary’ military junta of Peru, seems to be highly exaggerated. A clash with certain American corporations does not by itself provide much of a clue to the social character of the regime. Mexico under President Cardenas (also dubbed by US circles as ‘Marxist’ and ‘communist’) nationalised extensive American oil holdings in the 1930s, Bolivia took over US tin mines in the 1950s, yet both today remain integrated parts of the US empire below the Rio Grande. Praise from Moscow Moscow and the Moscow-directed communist parties have been most laudatory in praising Allende and his UP government. They argue that Allende’s victory as the candidate of the united front of

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socialist and ‘progressive’ bourgeois parties was a vindication of the perspective of the ‘peaceful, parliamentary road to socialism’. This perspective received a setback with the defeat of the ‘Frente Amplio’, the Broad Front in Uruguayan the November 1971 elections. This Front was modelled after the Chilean Unidad Popular and included in its ranks both the socialist and bourgeois parties. Also, Russia and the Russian-directed communists conveniently forgot the fate of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) of Guyana during 1961–64. This experiment in the ‘peaceful road to socialism’ ended in a debacle for the PPP and left Guyana as underdeveloped and dependent on imperialism as before. Hailing the Allende government in extravagant terms, the American Communist Party’s theoretical journal, Political Affairs, editorially stated: ‘This was no ordinary electoral victory, no mere victory of socialist over Other candidates. Rather…it represents a transfer of power from the old ruling groups to the workers, to the peasantry and to the progressive sections of the city and the country’.2 Thus, for the Moscow-leaning American communists, the installation of UP government already meant the toppling of capitalism in Chile and the coming into being of a worker’s state. But Political Affairs in the same editorial also took up a different position rejecting the proposition that Allende had already carried out socialist measures or that he would do so in the near future. The editorial criticises the revolutionary Left of Chile, particularly the MIR ‘who see the revolutionary process in Latin America only as socialist, and deny the existence of an anti-imperialist stage’.3 Thus, the position of the American communists is, to say the least, highly ambiguous. The ‘worker’s state’ has come into being in Chile, without taking any socialist measures; nor should such measures, in their opinion, be taken in the initial period. And such an ‘anti-imperialist’ stage requires an alliance between the working-class parties and the ‘progressive’ sections of the national bourgeoisie on the basis of the preservation of capitalist property relations. Castro’s visit to Chile in November 1971 led to further confusion so far as the class composition of Allende’s coalition was concerned. In his numerous speeches, Castro avoided comment on local issues but, on several occasions, indicated his general agreement with the course being followed by the UP government. In his dialogue with the students of the University of Conception on November 18, he declared: ‘I would say, sincerely, that a revolutionary process is taking

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place in Chile. A revolutionary process is not yet a revolution…. A process is a way; a process is a stage in its beginning.’4 He explained the Chilean ‘revolutionary process’ in another speech at the State Technological University in Santiago. In an answer to the question, ‘What facts characterise the Chilean revolutionary process?’, he replied: This revolutionary process took advantage of specific conditions, the concrete possibilities of Chile within the framework of legal and institutional circumstances, even within the bourgeois capitalist state and its institutions. It united forces and opened a gap and opened it through peaceful means. We believe that the duty of revolutionaries under these conditions is to struggle for that opening, for that door they have opened. And they must defend it through legal means, defend it with all means necessary.5

Thus, Castro implied that Allende’s election though not an actual seizure of power was a revolutionary process aiming at the elimination of capitalism which might lead to a confrontation for which ‘legal’ and all ‘necessary means’ will have to be employed. Castro was no doubt right in pointing out that it was not a seizure of power and also that, in the event of confrontation, all the means necessary, presumably including armed struggle, would have to be employed. But was he right when he said in all ‘sincerity’ that what was going on under Allende’s leadership was a ‘revolutionary process’? Looking at the record of close to two years of Allende’s government, it seems that the UP government is acting as a brake on the mass movement of workers and peasants. It is acting as a pacifier of the militant masses and is seeking, like the military regime in Peru, political collaboration with the forces of the status quo on the basis of a new mode of imperialist exploitation. The UP government is a class-collaborationist coalition in which not only such bourgeois parties and groupings as the Radical Party (which was once the largest bourgeois party in the country and has an unsavoury past), the United Action Movement (MAPU—a petty bourgeois splinter from the Christian democrats), the Social Democratic Party and the Independent Popular Action Group (both petty bourgeois groups), but also reformist communist (pro-Moscow) and socialist parties, seek to dampen the militant

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revolutionary urges of the aroused masses of Chile. And Castro’s clean chit to Allende’s government cannot alter the realities of the situation, cannot alter the government’s social composition, nor its potentialities and limitations. It was Castro who had pointed out in his Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) speech that the revolutionary process in Latin America was to be based ‘fundamentally’ on armed guerrilla struggles. And as to the legal and peaceful means, this is what Castro told the concluding session of the OLAS: If we wish to express our way of thinking, that is of our party and our people, let no one harbour any illusions about seizing power by peaceful means in any country of this continent Let no one harbour any such illusions. Anyone who tries to sell such an idea to the masses will be deceiving them completely.6

Developing on the same theme further, Castro told the OLAS delegates: ‘There are those who believe that a peaceful transition is possible in some countries of this continent; we cannot understand what kind of peaceful transition they refer to unless it is a peaceful transition in agreement with imperialism.’7 In the same speech, Castro touched upon the situation in Chile and the hopes that the impending elections there were arousing in some ‘naive’ people. Castro declared: Those who believe that they are going to win against the imperialists in elections are just naive, and those who believe that the day will come when they will take over through elections are even more naive…. That socialism can come to power without a struggle, that it can come to power peacefully through elections is a lie.8

Now, Castro believes that the ‘revolutionary process’ has begun in Chile with the election of President Allende based on a united front of reformist communist and socialist parties along with discredited bourgeois parties and petty bourgeois groupings! But let us examine the policies, results and achievements of the Allende government during its period in office and then arrive at conclusions, however tentative, about the government of Popular Unity and the perspectives that it opens for the revolutionary movement in Latin America.

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II The Allende government has no doubt implemented an impressive series of reforms. In its first eleven months, it expropriated 1,305 big landholdings, totalling some 5.7 million acres. This compares favourably with the achievement of President Frei’s Christian Democratic government which expropriated only 8.7 million acres during its tenure of six years—1965–70. It has nationalised some 65 per cent of the banks through the expedient of the government buying a controlling interest on the open stock market. It has nationalised US copper mines with a view to stopping ‘decapitalization of the economy’ and has agreed to give reasonable compensation. In the first six months of its tenure, it nationalised coal, iron and nitrate mines as well. According to James Petras: The announcement of the expropriation of US-owned copper mines did not initially result in a direct confrontation with the US government. The style or form of expropriation has, at least temporarily, disarmed US opponent. The arguments for nationalisation are couched in developmental and pragmatic language, not in ideological terms. The Chilean government represents the issue as one of integrating the mining sector into national industrial development, not in terms of world-wide struggle against imperialism.9

In the case of nationalisation of Chilean enterprises, only a very small number have been touched. The major steel company, Compania de Acero del Pacifico, has been nationalised and the government has formed mixed enterprises with a number of machine and metal-working firms. In the electrical, chemical and rubber industries, the government has formed mixed enterprises with foreign capital. According to Petras, most of the top leaders of the UP concede that only a very small number of monopoly industrial enterprises have been nationalised and already complain about the fall in productivity in the nationalised units, particularly in the mines. From this, some over-enthusiastic Allende supporters (especially the Moscow-leaning communist paper El Siglo Commentario, June 7, 1971) assert the similarity between these reforms and the measures adopted by the Cuban Revolution in its initial stages. What they forget to mention is that the Castro

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government came to power after smashing, through armed struggle, the old governmental apparatus of Batista’s regime. This smashing of the old capitalist state puts the Cuban reforms in an entirely different framework from those that exist at present in Chile. While not denying the progressive nature of the UP’s reforms, one can confidently say that none of the measures inaugurated by it, singly or together, constitute what has been described as the ‘revolutionary process’ leading towards a worker’s state. At best, they are attempts in the hands of a ‘progressive’ capitalist regime to modernize the economy and reduce social tensions through material concessions to the working-class and the peasantry. In another sense, the UP represents the continuation and deepening of the liberal reform programme of its predecessor, the Christian Democratic Frei regime, which was to become the favourite of the Russian leaders who gave it liberal economic aid and grants, a fact publicly resented by Fidel Castro. In fact, the present Allende regime in Chile, Frei’s regime before the elections and Valeseo’s regime in Peru are all responses to a fast broadening and deepening radicalisation taking place among the people of Latin America. They are intelligent attempts at modernizing the economy and meeting half-way the most pressing demands of the workers and peasants. Under Frei, the attempts at reforms were strictly limited. Allende’s reforms rouse the ire of Wall Street, but so do the reforms of Alfredo Velasco, the leader of the military junta in Peru, as did in the past, the reforms inaugurated by President Cardenas of Mexico. One cannot but agree with the English Marxist historian E. J. Hobsbawm’s assessment who after a visit to Chile wrote: ‘So far what it (Allende’s UP government) had done is not qualitatively very different from what several other Latin American governments have done, are doing, or could well make up their minds to do.’10 Allende might well proclaim that he is a Marxist, a revolutionary; others might give him a certificate stating that he is a revolutionary champion of socialism. In fact, he is a reformist, a well-intentioned reformist, with all the class limitations that inhibit his understanding and his actions. The world has seen many neocolonial regimes that for a short or long time took their distance from imperialism—Indonesia, Ghana—without ever completing the break. Despite their proclaimed

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socialist intentions and limited acts in the direction of anti-imperialism, they remained capitalist states (though they made declarations about their non-capitalist path) and at some point reverted back to domination by imperialism. The reason for imperialist opposition to such states, and to Allende in particular, is not so much because of the loss due to expropriation or because of the fear of an impending rout of capitalism and installation of a socialist worker’s state, but because of the expectations aroused in the masses by these reformist leaders’ radical rhetoric. In Peru, imperialism accepted the ‘thoroughgoing nationalisations’ and yet found a new mode of exploitation by realigning its relations, on a new basis with the Peruvian ‘revolutionaries’. The programme of President Cardenas’ government in Mexico in the 1930s was almost as radical (nationalising, land reform, etc.) as that of the Peruvian and Chilean governments of the present day. US oil was nationalized, land reforms were enacted and the ancient ejidos revitalised, socialist slogans were bandied about and the militancy of the people was roused. And yet Mexico quietly fell back on the old relationship through the agency of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional—the Party of Revolutionary Institution. Two aspects of Allende’s policy at home have received greatest oration and publicity from a section of the Left. They are the ‘nationalisations’ and the wage increases for the industrial workers. The government has imposed a 50 per cent increase in the minimum wage and a 30 per cent increase for most other organised workers. This was hailed as the socialist act of a government led by a socialist. These wage increases are in fact a chimera, a kind of a lollipop given to console the workers led by reformist trade union leaders. Modern capitalism is not a static, but a dynamic system, and creates enough mobility even in the underdeveloped world. By giving in to demands for better wages and better working conditions (which demands the capitalist recoup through higher prices, added efficiency, etc.), the capitalist can and often does reinforce the reformist aspect of the labour movement, thus corrupting the proletarian consciousness of the workers. In Chile, Allende claimed that inflation for 1971 was 20 per cent down from the 38 per cent under the previous administration. Other

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sources put out the current figure at close to 30 per cent. Either way, two-thirds or more of the wage increases for most workers have already been wiped out by price rises. The entire propaganda of the government about raising the living standards of the Chilean workers is bound to come to naught. With the best of intentions, the Allende government cannot pay for serious improvements in the standard of living of the masses. This is because of the inability of the capitalist system in an underdeveloped country to revolutionize production. Regarding the nationalisations, it must be said at the outset that piecemeal nationalization abstracted from the general dynamic of the unfolding social process does not fundamentally alter the status of dependency as long as the political and economic pillars of the bourgeois state remain intact. All capitalist countries have employed some degree of nationalisation to provide services (railways, posts and telegraphs) or to maintain branches of industry that had become unprofitable but remained necessary for the functioning of the economy, such as coal in Britain. In the developing countries, this has taken a more widespread form because of the inability of private capital to provide the transport and processing infrastructure needed for the efficient operation of imperialist concerns. The state thus assumes the duties of accumulating capital for the benefit of local and foreign corporations. The subordinate character of the nationalised corporations is determined by their dependence on the world market (manipulated by the imperialists), the existence of a dominant private sector, dependence on imperialist aid, absence of a state monopoly of foreign trade and the penetration of the economy by direct imperialist investment to one degree or the other. Despite the expropriations in Chile, the imperialist property, or at least the important sectors of it, remain untouched and no decisive inroads have been made into domestic capitalist property. The government had announced its intention in June 1971 to nationalise some 250 indigenous concerns but, up till now, only 42 domestic enterprises have been expropriated. Neither has a timetable been proposed to take over the remaining enterprises. Instead, the government has begun to harp on the harmony of interests between the ‘socialist’ regime and private enterprise. The 30,000 smaller capitalist enterprises have been

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told that they will not be touched. Neither is there a state monopoly of foreign trade, an elementary protectionist measure to wrest the Chilean economy out of the clutches of the capitalist manipulated world market. As in the case of the nationalization of the IPC in Peru, far too much has been made of the nationalization of the US-owned copper mines in Chile. But making a spectacular gesture does not constitute a break with imperialist influence in the economy. In the case of Chile, the process of nationalization of copper was started by the pro-American government of President Frei several years ago when it forced the Anaconda and Kennecott copper companies to sell 51 per cent interest in their mines to the Chilean government. It is, therefore, significant to note that Allende’s bill in parliament for outright nationalization of these two companies was passed unanimously, securing even the votes of the far Right-wing National Party of Jorge Alessandri, Allende’s principal US-supported opponent in the September 1970 elections. There are some other noteworthy features of the nationalisation of US-owned copper mines. The book value of the US companies’ share of the copper mines amounted to $550 million. The Chilean government agreed to pay this but after deducting the ‘excess profits’ taken out of the country in the past, which amounted to $774 million. Thus, the government wiped out any compensation for the American concerns. But soon after, Allende agreed to assume the debts of the companies which came to $200 million, i.e., more than the assessed value of the properties. Besides, the $550 million book value could have been paid off over a long period of time at low interest rates, while the companies’ debts are largely loans at high interest. Thus, while Allende gathers the glory of nationalising US imperialist firms ‘without compensation’, the Chilean people are saddled with a huge debt to US creditors. And this was done when Chile’s total foreign obligations came to more than $3 billion in principal and interest—half of the country’s GNP and when the country’s dollar reserves had plunged from $335 million in November 1970 to $100 million in December 1971. The nationalisation of copper does not end direct US investment in the Chilean economy. So far, oil and pharmaceuticals have not

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been touched, nor have such firms as General Electric, General Tyre, Gillette and RCA. There was an outcry among the Chilean far-Left when while negotiating with International Telephone and Telegraph Company (US-owned) Allende proposed joint ownership with the Chilean government. This expedient has been widely used in many developing countries to mask imperialist penetration. Apart from the course of nationalisation, Allende’s main campaign in the economic field has been appeals to workers in the nationalised and private industry to increase productivity. This means discipline in the factory and speed-up on the production line. But as the MIR pamphlet on Economic Reforms titled ‘Para Quien Mas Productividad?’ (For Whom Increased Productivity?) said: It is one thing for a worker’s state to mobilise the working-class to sacrifice for the benefit of the society as a whole. It is quite a different matter for a ‘caretaker’ government to goad the workers to produce more when the state and economy is still in the hands of the bourgeoisie.11

Allende’s appeals have led to a steep fall in the number of strikes, especially in the nationalised sectors. But for how long his repeated promises of an improvement in the living standards of the masses are going to sustain the confidence of the workers in his government. His ‘socialist’ demagogy has raised high hopes and expectations. But as is well known, improvement in the living standards of the mass of the people in an underdeveloped country can be secured only through the institution of a genuine planned economy in all areas of productive life, which presumes full control, at the minimum, over investment priorities. The Chilean bourgeoisie has gone on an ‘investment strike’. Local entrepreneurs are refusing to invest their profits in new ventures with the express intention of creating difficulties for the government, bringing up an economic crisis leading to the fall of the government. They are waiting in the wings for the time when the workers get demoralized and disillusioned by the failure of the Allende government’s promises to materialize. This they expect will lead to a shift to the right in the congressional elections of 1973, leaving Allende to complete his term as a powerless figurehead without any real options.

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Oscar Lange correctly pointed out: An economic system based on private enterprise and private property in means of production can work only as long as the security of private property…is maintained. The very existence of a government bent on introducing socialism is a constant threat to this security. Therefore the capitalist economy cannot function under a socialist government unless the government is socialist in name only.12

Prophetic words indeed. In the sphere of foreign policy, Allende has hewed to the same course of conciliation with the native and foreign reaction. He has established diplomatic relations with Cuba, China, North Korea and a number of other socialist countries. But many reactionary bourgeoisie governments have done the same. This step was supported in the Congress by the Christian Democrats. But all through these two years, Allende has refrained from public criticism of dictatorial regimes in Latin America. In his message to the Congress on May 21, 1971, he declared: ‘Our fundamental aim is to strengthen all the links which will increase our continued friendship with the Argentine Republic, eliminating the obstacles which stand in the way of realising its objective.’13 He did not say a word about the atrocities perpetrated by the Argentine generals on the trade union and revolutionary leaders. Nor has he so far mounted even a propaganda campaign against the brutal war of aggression in Vietnam.

III It would now be worthwhile to examine briefly the theoretical postulates of Allende on which he bases his political programme of transition from capitalism to socialism in Chile, in a postscript to Regis Debray’s book The Chilean Revolution—Conversation with Allende, the Socialist–Marxist leader writes: The electoral triumph of the popular forces of my country has transformed into historical reality what up till now has been only stated as a theoretical possibility by classic Marxist thinkers. On

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the crowning day in September 1970, Chile showed the world that the popular forces, when acting in a true spirit of struggle, admit no barriers and that under the right conditions, the people using the legal and institutional arms created by the bourgeoisie, can seize the reins of government by electoral means to undertake the construction of socialism.14

Firstly, who are those ‘classic Marxists thinkers’ Allende is referring to who spoke of the theoretical possibility of toppling the bourgeoisie state through elections and of the proletariat taking over for its own ends the existing bourgeoisie state with its apparatus intact? The classical Marxist thinkers on the contrary have emphasized three important criteria for a popular revolution; participation of the people in the revolutionary process to the end; arming of the people as they join the struggle and the complete smash-up of the machinery of the state. Marx and Engels saw this when they analysed the failure of Paris commune and Lenin stressed it in his ‘State and Revolution’. He wrote: ‘One thing was essentially proved by the commune, viz, that the working-class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.’15 And again: ‘Working-class must break up, smash the readymade state machinery and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.’16 In the same work, Lenin quoted Marx’s letter to Kugelmann in which Marx wrote: If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it and this is the precondition for every real people’s revolution.17

So much for Allende’s invoking of the ‘classic Marxist thinkers’. But perhaps he has the new breed of Russian, ‘classical thinkers’ in mind who have pinned up the three-tier theory of peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition and peaceful transition to socialism. Allende in his innocence or stupidity studiously ignores the highly developed military and state bureaucracy in present-day Chile, where

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the standing armed forces number more than 60,000 and whose officer class is more or less wholly trained in the United States. And this is not to mention the Carabineros or the national police, the old civil service bureaucracy whom Allende is pledged not to touch, the courts, the bourgeoisie majority in parliament, the continued private ownership of major industries and the capitalist control of the mass media like newspapers, radio, TV, etc. These bastions of bourgeoisie rule remain unmolested. Furthermore, it is forgotten that the US imperialists are prepared in the last resort to intervene militarily against any mass revolutionary process that threatens to pass beyond the capitalist reform orbit, as they did in Santo Domingo. The real touchstone of the performance of the UP government in Chile is whether or not it has politically and organisationally prepared the masses (as was done in Cuba) for the inevitable confrontation. It must never be forgotten that for capitalists what matters most is the preservation of the system itself. Within the system, all sorts of concessions can be made, if necessary, and the hope can always be entertained that later on when conditions change the concessions can be withdrawn. The one thing that has to be fought is the change of the system itself. Allende has won some concessions for the people but, within the system, he has not taken, nor does it appear that he has any intention of taking, any measures that might be construed as a challenge to the system itself. Opportunist Policy In regard to the army, particularly its corps of officers, the defenders of bourgeoisie privileges, Allende has refrained from public criticism of them. He has increased their pay and urged the workers to consider them as ‘defenders of democracy’ and ‘upholders of democratic institutions’, rather than create their own armed organisations. His attitude towards the army and police has been the most crassly opportunistic aspect of Allende’s policy. These are the armed bodies of men on which, in the last resort, all ruling classes depend for their survival. During a genuine revolutionary process (not like the one taking place in Chile), large sections of the ranks or the army can be won over to the masses, but this is rarely true of the police and has never been the case with regard to the

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officer corps of either body. But Allende put his faith in these instruments of suppression of the people when he proclaimed: I have absolute faith in the loyalty of the armed forces. Our forces are professional forces at the service of the state, of the people.18

In his message to the congress, Allende’s naivety crossed all limits. He said, The Chilean armed forces and the Carabineros, faithful to their duty and their tradition of non-intervention in the political process, would support a social organisation which corresponds to the will of the people as expressed in the established constitution.19

The defenders of the Constitution indeed! In the same message, Allende gave an inkling of how he would deal with the threat of violence directed against his government and his ‘Chilean road to socialism’. The determined attitude of the Government and the revolutionary energy of the people, the democratic responses of the armed forces and the Carabineros will see that Chile advances along the road to emancipation.

This is indeed an example of ‘classical Marxist’ thinking, Chilean style. If the exploiting classes decide to seriously dispute Allende’s tenure, the army and the Carabineros would be counted on to act, but most certainly not on the side of ‘emancipation’. Workers’ Efforts Thwarted In contrast to the public trust he has placed in the military and the police—raised, trained and organised by the bourgeoisie—Allende has taken a different attitude towards workers’ efforts to prepare for self-defence. He accepted office on terms dictated by his political opponents, the Christian democrats. To win the votes of the Christian democrats in the context in the Congress that confirmed his election as the president, Allende agreed to a series of constitutional amendments, severely restricting the powers of the presidency. These include

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a prohibition of all ‘private’ armed groups. His political mentors, the Moscow-leaning communists, went a step further in ‘proving’ the political wisdom of such a step. Luis Corvalan, the Secretary of the Chilean CP, went on record to state that it would be dangerous to arm the masses as that would be equivalent to showing distrust in the army.20 In their ‘Peaceful Transition to Socialism’ in Monthly Review, Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff expose this canard about the ‘democratic responses’ of the Chilean army with a wealth of data and argument. According to them, Chile has a professional army of 46,000 members and a police force (Carabineros) of 24,000. On this basis, Chile ranks second to Cuba among Latin American countries in terms of military personnel as a percentage of total population. This is when, unlike Cuba, Chile has not been seriously threatened by foreign invasion for many years. Chile ranks second only to Brazil in terms of military grants and delivery of surplus stocks from the United States. In per capita terms, Chile ranked first as a recipient of US military aid ($15.88) and Peru second ($11.17) with Argentina accounting for only $3.83. Chile has also appeared as one of the principal beneficiaries of US programmes of military training. Between 1960 and 1965, 2,064 Chilean soldiers were trained in the United States and 549 outside the United States. In conclusion, Sweezy and Magdoff make the following comment: Summing up we can say that Chilean military has on several occasions intervened decisively in the political life of the country…. In the most favourable case (from the bourgeoisie point of view) the mere existence of the military would act as a sufficient brake on the Left, but if worse should come to worst, it would always be possible for the military to intervene openly as it has done on previous occasions in Chilean history. There can thus be little doubt about the reality of threat of intervention by Chilean armed forces. So little doubt indeed, that the most relevant question may well be not whether it is likely to occur but rather why it hasn’t already occurred.21

Probably, Fidel Castro had this in mind when he told the Chilean students during his recent visit: The reactionaries and oligarchs here [in Chile] are much better prepared than they were in Cuba. They are much better organised and better armed to resist changes. Washington today feels

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confident enough in the strength of Chilean reaction and their confidence is based on the weakness of the very revolutionary process, on the weakness of the ideological battle, on the weakness of the mass struggle.22

As regards the old bureaucracy entrenched in the Chilean government machinery, Allende pledged to the Christian democrats (in exchange for their vote that brought him to the presidency) not to remove any of their appointees from the civil service apparatus. This means that one section of the government, supposedly under the UP government, is in reality in the hands of the reactionary bureaucrats determined to sabotage even the limited reforms that have been legislated. Masses Not Mobilized It is this naive faith in the army and dependence on the old, corrupt bureaucracy that colours the UP government’s attitude towards the question of mobilising the masses and preparing them politically for the coming struggle for power. Thus far, we have touched upon the economics and legislative aspect of Allende’s programme and practice. These do not fundamentally challenge capitalist property relations. But does Allende have a non-parliamentary side to his programme of action for the ‘construction of a socialist society in Chile’? Are he and the coalition of the UP parties mobilising the masses and preparing them politically for the coming struggle for power? The UP leaders attack the so-called Chilean ‘extreme Left’, particularly the MIR, for their ‘ultra-radical’ stance in order to justify their course of ‘no confrontation’ and even of class collaboration. The MIR has rightly accused the UP leaders of ‘dissipating the combativity of the masses in purely electoral schemes’.23 It has accused Allende of ‘blocking the road of mobilising and arming the working-class and the oppressed in defence of their interest’.24 The line of the UP leadership has been to discourage independent mobilisation of the masses at every turn so as not to antagonise ‘public opinion’. The idea of mobilising the masses is to bring them to the mass meetings (a la CPM in Calcutta) and listen to ‘pronunciamientos revolucionarios’ of Allende and UP leaders. The local committees of the UP formed during the election period, instead of being developed as organs of workers’ and

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peasants’ power have been discouraged from taking any independent initiative and they are in the process of decay and dissolution. The attitude of the Allende government is typical of a reformist government so far as independent actions of the people are concerned. The best example of this is the case of the Mapuche people of the South. The Mapuche peasant committees for land, organized on local initiative, occupied over 300 landed estates and started partitioning them. Rather than encouraging independent peasant mobilisation and using it to raise the consciousness of the oppressed Mapuche people, the Allende government sent in the hated Carabineros to forcibly evict the peasant squatters. Allende accused the MIR for this ‘illegal’ action and in a message to the Congress stated: The occupation of land by squatters, the indiscriminate occupation of agricultural terrains are unnecessary and harmful. Belief in the government is warranted by what we have done and by other attitudes, For this reason, the plans made by the government and the time fixed for their execution must be respected.25

How much belief may be put in the government’s promises can be seen from the fact that since Allende’s message to the Congress a moratorium has been declared on official land expropriation for a year on the excuse that it is necessary to restore production on the lands already taken over in due process of law after paying compensation to the latifundists. The government has also indulged in open violence against the aroused peasants. One peasant leader, Senor Moises Huentelaf, was murdered by armed latifunclists in a clash in Chesque ranch near Valdivia on October 19, 1971. According to a write-up in El Rebelde, the pro-MIR paper, ‘The police and landlords fully co-operated with each other in order to violently suppress the peasants of Chesque ranch and in the clash their leader and our Gipanero Moises Huentelaf was killed.’26 Useful Camouflage Among the industrial proletariat, the performance of the UP is no better. According to James Petras, an American Leftist scholar, the factory committees organized under UP patronage exist only at a

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few places. The purpose of the committees that have been set up is not workers’ control over production and planning, but merely participation with the management in plant administration.27 Thus, the emphasis of the government is on legislative measures and not on political action through mass mobilisation. The masses are expected to participate in the political process, not as actors, but only as voters. It seems to be forgotten that the Chilean bourgeoisie with its foreign backers and its long-nurtured (by USA mainly) machine is still powerful and is not going to give up its power, wealth and privileges without a desperate struggle. It is also being overlooked that there can be no socialism in Chile until the bourgeoisie has been decisively crushed, and for this a militant mass mobilisation is the only guarantee, a step which the reformist leadership is too afraid to take. It would also be worthwhile to examine, albeit briefly, the nature and composition of the ‘progressive’ and ‘socialist’ coalition headed by Allende. As has been stated before, the UP is not a coalition of working-class parties. Apart from the reformist socialist and communist parties, it has within it the bourgeoisie radical party, the MPU, the PSD and the API, the last three being splinter groups of bourgeois parties of the traditional Right and centre in Chile. The bourgeois partners in the coalition did not and will not endorse any genuine socialist measures, committed as they are officially not to socialism but to a vague formula of a ‘transformation of the traditional structures of dependent capitalism in favour of characteristics and forms which the Chilean people wish to impose’, whatever this may mean. And as far as the reformist socialist and communist parties are concerned, they provide a useful Left cover to the rule of the bourgeoisie in Chile. Popular frontism or, for that matter, United Frontism, is nothing new in Chile. A popular front government was elected to office in 1938 with the Radical Party leader, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, as president. Allende himself served as the health minister in this government. The Moscow-leaning communists were also admitted, though without a seat in the cabinet. The character of this coalition can be judged from the fact that it was endorsed by the leader of Chilean Nazi party, Gonzales von Marees.28

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The Aguirre government was followed by a series of UP type governments with socialist or communist participation that moved further and further to the Right. In the 1942 elections, both the communist and the socialist parties supported the ‘more progressive’ and anticommunist candidate of the Radical Party, Senor Juan Antonio Rios. Soon after, Rios attacked the communists and invited the socialists to join the cabinet in order to help him out of the situation caused by the post-war strike wave. In 1946, the communist party joined a coalition government under another ‘progressive’, Gonzales Videla, of the Radical Party, which included the far Right-wing Liberal Party. This representative of the ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ promptly outlawed the communist party and threw hundreds of its leaders into prison. At the same time, he invited the Socialist Party leaders to join his cabinet. The socialists, in violation of the most elementary principles of class solidarity, accepted the offer. As was expected, these betrayals by the traditional working-class leaderships resulted in demoralisation and confusion among the people which led to a sharp electoral shift to the right in the 1952 elections. The net product of the classcollaborationist policies of the traditional Left was the disruption of the trade union and peasant movements as well as a decline in the strength of CP and SP. It took nearly 20 years for these reformist communist and socialist parties to build up enough strength to try the whole thing all over again. Erroneous Understanding The tragedy of the Chilean Left, as well as of the Left in Latin America, springs from its erroneous understanding of the economic and social processes under way in Latin America and its insupportable strategy based on a differentiation between the so-called monopoly bourgeoisie and the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie, an understanding so contemptuously ridiculed by Che Guevara. It is not for the first time that the reformist traditional Left of Chile has come to governmental power via united fronts. But it has ruled to maintain the bourgeoisie state and the capitalist system, only providing it a Leftist cover. The present UP is, of course, different in some respects to the previous ones, but it is essentially the same reformist, class collaborationist

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coalition blocking the road to revolution in Chile. The pro-Moscow CP has long tried to palm off this policy of class collaboration as the application of Lenin’s united front’s tactics. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Lenin’s idea of a united front consisted in bringing together in common action all of the working-class parties in opposition to the bourgeoisie and not a section of it. It was to be organised around specific issues and all the constituents were to maintain their organisational independence and the right to criticise other tendencies involved. It specifically rejected any coalition with bourgeois parties to administer state power. Stalin’s idea of the united front, however, was quite different. It was proclaimed at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International in 1935, along with the doctrine of collective security. The communist parties were instructed to proclaim their political support for any wing of the ruling class willing to do business with Stalin. In the mid-thirties, this led to the extolling of the virtues of French and British democracy by the CPs. After the Hitler–Stalin Pact, it meant the abandonment of struggle against fascism around the world. In the end, none of Stalin’s allies, ‘democratic’ or fascist, proved of any use in preventing war or, later, defending the Soviet Union which had to bear the main brunt of the war with Nazi Germany. After Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, United Frontism was revived once again. Since then, its main interest for the Russian leadership had been to secure amiable diplomatic and trading partners in the capitalist world. This has led to an unmitigated disaster for the working class. The CPI’s United Frontism with the Congress of the ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ is one case in point. The victory of the ‘Left’ Popular Front in the Chilean elections without doubt indicates a deep social crisis and radicalization of the masses. Such a regime is almost always a precursor to revolution or counter-revolution. The bourgeoisie is afraid that radicalised people, taking the demagogic promises of the United Front as good coin, might take things into their own hands and begin to implement socialist expropriations on their own, as the Mapuche peasants of the South did. It never, therefore, trusts its ‘proletarian allies’ and from the beginning of such a collaborationist regime prepares its reserves—whether it

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means a military coup, a fascist movement or simply a sabotage of the United Front regime. The lessons of the overthrow of the ‘progressive’ Goulart regime in Brazil by a military coup seem to have been forgotten. The election of the UP government in Chile has been marked by the opening of such a crisis in Chile and it is the duty of the genuine Leftist forces to meet the crisis if it is not to end in a terrible defeat for the Chilean masses, like in Brazil. The situation in Chile is, therefore, full of question marks. What is missing is a mass revolutionary socialist party capable of leading the masses into revolutionary action and resolving the crisis in their favour. The revolutionary Left consisting of the Left-wing of the socialist party, the Revolutionary Communist Party (pro-Peking) and the largest of the three MIR taken together constitutes a small force yet. With the assumption of office by Allende, the electoral path has reached its final culmination, and looking at its two years’ record, a dead end. If Allende moves towards a more radical stance (which seems unlikely), there will be a definite shift to the violent path including the danger of intervention by the military. If he moves further on the road to compromise with the bourgeoisie (which is more likely), then it will have been proved once again that socialism cannot be won peacefully.

Notes   1. Luxemburg, R. The Russian Revolution, 1961. https://www.marxists.org/ archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch01.htm   2. Political Affairs, ‘The People’s Victory’, Editorial (December 1970).  3. Ibid.  4. Granma, ‘Weekly Edition’, English (November 28, 1971).   5. Ibid. (December 12, 1971).   6. Fidel Castro, ‘Speech at Closing Session of OLAS’ (August 10, 1967). Fidel Castro, Compamento 5, De Margo, Havana, 114.   7. Ibid., 118.   8. Ibid., 119.   9. James Petras, ‘Transition to Socialism in Chile: Perspectives and Problems’, Monthly Review (October 1971), 58–59. 10. E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Can Allende Make It?’, New York Review of Books (New York, NY: 1971). 11. Quoted by Manuel Rodriguez, EI Rehelde (Mexico: Vanguardia Proletaria, 1971).

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12. Quoted by Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, ‘Review of the Month’, Monthly Review ( January 1971). 13. FA Siglo (June 21, 1971). 14. Regis Debray, The Chilean Revolution—Conversations with Allende (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1971), 164–165. 15. K. Marx emoted by Lenin, ‘State and Revolution’, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Verso, 1967), 294–295. 16. Lenin, ‘State and Revolution’, Collected Works, Vol. 25 (Moscow: Verso, 1964), 415–416. 17. Ibid., 418–419. 18. El Siglo (September 13, 1971). 19. Ibid. (March 27, 1971). 20. Quoted by P. Artega, Posiciones Communhta en el Processo Revolucionario (Casper, WY: CP Publications, 1971). 21. Sweezy and Magdoff, ‘Review of the Month’. 22. Granma, ‘Weekly Edition’, English (December 19, 1971). 23. Statement printed in El Rehelde (March 2, 1971). 24. Ibid. 25. Message to the Congress, El Siglo (March 27, 1971). 26. El Rehelde (November 1–15, 1971). 27. James Petras, ‘Chile’, Monthly Review (October 1971). 28. Ernist Halperin, Nationalism and Communism in Chile (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965), 35–39.

CHAPTER 11

Responses to Chilean Coup*

There has been a worldwide reaction to the military coup in Chile. From Indira Gandhi to Fidel Castro, from traditional communists to the new Leftists, from heads of state to the man in the street, the reaction has been sharp and unmistakable. There has been a plethora of press statements, angry speeches, routine articles and some orderly street demonstrations, condemning the coup, the Chilean military junta, the American imperialists, the ITT and the ‘Chilean right reaction spearheaded by the fascist organisation, Patria y Libertad’. There has indeed been a remarkable unity in condemnation of the coup among the various tendencies of the left centre and the Left. But when it comes to the question of the lessons of the Chilean coup, this fragile unity breaks down and the different categories fall apart. The various groups draw different lessons or evade the question, depending upon their ideological upbringing, their political training, the centre of inspiration they draw their strength (or weakness) from or the class or classes they represent or serve. From the bourgeoiscentrist leaders of the Third-World countries, there has been a pseudo-reaction to the Chilean tragedy—pep talk about the ‘rape of * Lajpat Rai, ‘Responses to Chilean Coup’, Economic & Political Weekly 8, no. 49 (1973), 2169–2171.

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democracy’ warning about US intervention through the dreaded CIA and the multinational corporations followed by craven invitations to these very financial giants to come and invest in their countries.

I The traditional communists have reacted to the event in their timehonoured way—their reactions being the last word in evasion and equivocation. The entire Soviet press and the Soviet-oriented press in India and elsewhere are full of such reactions. Writing in the Moscow weekly, New Times, V. Teitelboim, a member of the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party draws the following lesson from the Chilean experience: The Chilean experience shows that the unity of the left is not only indispensable but that it must be closer and broader. It proves that our strategy is correct (sic), although it calls imperatively for certain changes in tactics. Above all it reminds us of the need to watch the enemy more closely.1

As self-righteous as ever, all that the Moscow-leaning communists can learn from the Chilean experience is that their strategy was correct and what was lacking in Chile was a closer and broader left unity and the ‘need to watch the enemy more closely’. By closer and broader Left unity, the communists mean the imperative necessity of uniting with all the parties of the national bourgeoisie including the dominant wing of the Christian democrats led by Eduardo Frei. This exercise in ambiguity and evasion fills the space in the New Times till it reaches its acme while answering the unavoidable question: Can there be a peaceful road to socialism? It states: Before answering the question, it is important to define what is meant by the ‘peaceful road’. We hold that there is no absolutely peaceful way to socialism, for some sort of coercion is inevitable in the revolution process. But we put the question differently. We say that everything should be done to prevent revolutionary coercion from assuming the form of civil war and this clearly sets a limit to such coercion.2

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Thus, the Chilean communists are for a peaceful way, but not for an absolutely [peaceful] way. They are for limited revolutionary coercion but not for a civil war into which this coercion might degenerate. As to how the Chilean communists propose to fight against US subversion in the light of the experience of the recent coup, here is another gem of revolutionary wisdom from V. Teitelboim: ‘And so, while standing formally for international detente and peace we are striving to limit the possibility of imperialist interference in the internal affairs of other nation’.3 Even in this dark hour when the Chilean people have been made to taste the first fruits of international detente, this communist-worthy does not forget the global interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. He pledges the word of his party to ‘mobilize the people’ in order to limit the possibility of imperialist interference in the affairs of other nations but not to eliminate this possibility lest it might injure the interests of ‘international detente and peace’. Yet another example of communist equivocation and refusal to learn from the Chilean coup is an article in the same journal written by J. Cobo in defence of the Unidad Popular government’s attitude to the Chilean military and President Allende’s handling of the military brass. Cobo writes: The social prestige of the Chilean military rose tangibly in the years of Popular Unity administration. Representatives of the armed forces were guests of honour ‘at all major ceremonies and receptions. They were sent abroad both at the head of military missions and certain delegations…. Substantial changes also took place in the material position of the officers and men. Since January 1, 1971, the armed forces had ceased to experience the material hardship they suffered in the past. Their pay was increased by an average of 40 per cent…’ President Allende, therefore, had every reason to speak of the army’s devotion to its duty under the constitution and this was corroborated by the army command.4

Allende, says Cobo, did all this to ‘win over the army’ and ‘to secure its support for pushing further the revolutionary legislation’. But the ungrateful army brass had its own plans and it struck against its own

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benefactor. What a specimen of ‘Marxist’ analysis! The Communist analyst, however, does not mention that Allende not only inducted the military chiefs into his government but also provided the senior officers with lucrative and influential positions in the civil administration. Not only this but he also quietly removed or shifted over to less important posts Leftists officers and civilians who had failed to win the approval of the military chiefs. Indeed the ‘Marxist’ coalition’s concern for the ‘non-political’ and ‘neutral’ armed forces went so far as to permitting the continuation of the system of close collaboration between them and the Pentagon. Chilean army officers continued to be trained in Panama while US military aid continued to flow despite all the rhetoric about ‘US penetration, subversion and sabotage of the economy’. In October 1972, Latin America saw the unique spectacle of joint Chilean–US naval manoeuvres off the coast of Chile, and a ‘Marxist’ president sending a message of congratulations on the successful outcome of the joint manoeuvres. According to J. Cobo, this policy of collaboration with the United States was supposed to ‘neutralise the diehards in Washington and in the Chilean armed forces’. And yet, at another place, the Communistworthy states, ‘The coup took place because the officers, who lived as an exclusive caste, were influenced by contacts with the Pentagon with which the Chilean “armed forces were bound by a number of agreements.”’5 It is really difficult to understand the logic of this breed of Communists. The coup took place because the Chilean military officers were influenced by contacts with Pentagon. But who permitted these contacts to be maintained and further strengthened through training courses in Panama and joint naval manoeuvres? What efforts were made to block these contacts by the Unidad Popular government in which the Communist Party had a decisive say? Writing in the Left-wing American monthly, Ramparts, Betty Petras and James Petras who had spent several weeks in Chile just before the September coup, make the following comments: Purges in the ranks of the armed forces and the forcible resignation of the loyalist officers prepared the ground for the coup, and Allende accepted it all in the name of compromise, security and

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reconciliation… Allende managed in the end to include all the notorious anti-government military chiefs in his cabinet—in the hope of preventing the coup. He was attempting to conciliate the very people who were to put the gun to his head in a very few days.6

They also state that Many enlisted soldiers as well as ‘a section of officers drawn from the popular masses were against the coup…. Yet the government worked instead with the top brass, men of the right, without making any efforts to link the workers with the ordinary soldiers…. Indeed, during the early part of 1973, the generals were still divided between loyalist (40 per cent for Allende) and putschists (about 60 per cent) allied with the right. By the end of August, however, the putschists clearly gained the upper hand following the resignation of three loyalists (Prats, Pickering and Sepulveda) thus further homogenising the leadership of the Army General Staff in preparation for the coup….7

Another Latin American writer, Jose Yglesia, a personal friend of Allende, has written about the Chilean President’s ‘pitiable efforts’ to win over the Chilean military: He really believed that everyone could be woo[ed] over. This was a deeply felt policy with him, not a political manoeuvre as it was with the Communists. An unhappy Socialist told me: ‘Allende never appears at a meeting without some general with him…. At the Gabriela Mistral Building I heard, while waiting for a friend, applause from a second-floor meeting room. I stepped in to have a look and there was Allende addressing a conference of mothers…. In his entourage sat a general, at polite attention as Allende talked about socialism and women’s rights. The general set his cap on his knees and kept his hands on either side of it while everyone else ‘applauded the President’.8

That general was no other than Pinochet, the head of the fascist military junta which overthrew the Unidad Popular government and whose men killed the trusting old Salvador Allende in cold blood in the Presidential Palace.

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II A significant reaction to the Chilean coup has come from Fidel Castro. In his speech on September 28, 1973, which is not bereft of ambiguities and equivocations, Castro draws the right lesson from the military coup, namely that ‘there is no “alternative other than revolutionary armed struggle.”’ After paying his tribute to Allende, Castro goes on to analyse the events leading up to the ‘fascist coup’ of September 1973. This ‘analysis’, however, does not contain a single word of criticism of the Popular Unity government or of the traditional communists—the votaries of peaceful transition—or of the Socialist Party which headed the coalition. It rather seeks to justify the Allende government’s actions, motives and plans, and contains strong words of condemnation for ‘American imperialism’ and the ‘Chilean Armed Forces’. About the Chilean military, Castro makes the following observations: The Armed Forces completely exposed themselves. The nature of their ‘apolitical-ism’ and their ‘institutionalism’ became clear. Their positions were maintained as long as the interests of the ruling classes were not threatened. But when their interests were threatened they dropped their alleged ‘apoliticalism’ and ‘institutionalism’ and lined up with the reactionaries and exploiters against the people.9

But this is exactly what government-led ‘Marxists’ should have expected and anticipated. And who were the people who put the stamp of apoliticalism or institutionalism on the Chilean army? Who were those who ‘raised the social prestige’ of the Chilean military and who spoke of the ‘Army’s devotion to its duty under the constitution?’ Castro’s analysis does not contain a single word of criticism of those who sowed dangerous illusions about the role of the military, who appointed fascist generals to positions of governmental power, who fooled the masses by repeatedly ‘asserting that the “might of the Chilean Armed Forces was behind the people”, who proclaimed that Chile could build socialism by taking the peaceful parliamentary road within the framework of its bourgeois constitution and institutions’. Instead, Castro uttered the following banality: ‘The fascist coup has sealed the fate of the Chilean Armed Forces…. A deep and insurmountable gap

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divides the best of Chilean people from the Chilean Armed Forces. That gap is made by the sea of blood of workers, farmers, students….’10 But the ‘deep and insurmountable’ gap had always divided the people of Chile from the American trained and equipped army of a bourgeois state structure; the coup only demonstrated that gap in a cruel way to those political charlatans who talked of the Armed Forces’ ‘neutrality’ and ‘sense of duty’ or those who wanted to ‘win over’ the military through political manoeuvres.

But despite this verbiage, Castro did not refrain from drawing the correct lesson from the Chilean coup when he stated: ‘We were right in our premonition in giving the President that rifle…. And if every worker and every farmer had a rifle like that in his hands, there would not have been any fascist croup…’11 At another point in his speech, Castro affirmed: ‘The Chilean example teaches us the lesson that it is impossible to make the revolution with the people alone: arms are also necessary…. The Chilean revolutionists know that there is no alternative other than revolutionary armed struggle.’12 Castro, however, did not make clear as to who these ‘Chilean revolutionists’ were. Judging from their reactions to the coup, surely the revolutionists are not his friends, the Moscow-lining Communists, who are still speaking of ‘la via pacifica’ or ‘la via constitutional’ ‘and will continue to do so so long as there is no change in the Soviet leaders’ line of peaceful transition. Here, it is significant to note that Castro had no word of criticism for these detractors from the armed struggle strategy for Latin America, nor was he as sharp and clear as he used to be before 1968. Speaking at the Cultural Congress in Havana in January 1968, Castro said: If we wish to express our way of thinking, that of our party and of our people, let no one harbour any illusion that seizing power by peaceful means in any country in Latin America is possible. Anyone who tries to sell such an idea to the masses will be deceiving them completely.13

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And yet when Chile’s Socialists and Communists sold this very idea to the Chilean people, Castro kept discreetly quiet, even going to the extent of describing the situation in Chile under Allende’s administration as a ‘great revolutionary process’. But despite these lacunae in his September 28 speech, Castro’s return to his former political positions adopted at the OLAS Conference and his public rejection of the ‘peaceful way’ will be welcomed by revolutionaries all over Latin America.

III Yet another significant response to the Chilean coup has come from the leadership of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), the so-called extreme Left of Chile. An ‘Appeal to the Chilean People’ by the General Secretary of MIR, Miguel Enriquez, has been smuggled out of Chile and published in several papers. According to MIR, ‘a battle has been lost, not the war.’ Fascism has imposed itself in Chile with the support of US imperialism and its sub-imperialism in Brazil. A regime which draws its inspiration from Nazi Germany rules Chile today. The Appeal clearly states: It was neither socialism, nor the proletarian revolution, nor the workers which failed in Chile. In Chile what collapsed so tragically was a reformist project based on the illusion that one can achieve socialism by counting the possibility of the ruling class working within the framework laid down by the bourgeoisie.14

MIR had warned before the coup too against putting too much faith in the ‘reformist project’. In a document published in 1972 under the title ‘The Masses Rise above the Weaknesses and Errors of the Left’, it had pointed out that with the election of Allende, ‘a government supported by powerful workers’ parties had managed to control a part—a fraction—of the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie; the executive branch’. The document also warned that the working class could not maintain the existing balance of power with the bourgeoisie, nor could it wait until the latter went on the offensive in order to recover the fraction of power it had lost. The working classes must increase

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their own strength through an active and militant mobilisation of the masses. They must keep hitting away at the bourgeoisie, weakening its bases of economic power and destroying its state apparatus. In other words, the elevation of popular unity to governmental status historically obliges the working class and their political parties to plan on a conquest of revolutionary power by workers and peasants within a short space of time.15

It called upon the Popular Unity coalition not to put faith entirely in ‘reforms and measures through bureaucratic and administrative channels’ but to seek strength in the mobilization and active participation of the masses. Warning the government against ‘yielding to the bourgeoisie pressures’ or ‘showing respect to bourgeoisie legality’ or ‘curbing the militancy of the masses’, the MIR document said: ‘Such concessions to pressures from the right have not appeased the bourgeoisie. They will only encourage the ruling classes to be even more aggressive in their offensive to recover the fragment of power they have lost.’16 MIR stated that the class struggle in Chile was exceeding the limits of legalistic and bureaucratic policy which was reflected in the seizures of lands by the peasants and of factories by the workers. It criticised the Popular Unity government for its ‘defensive policy and the legalistic and bureaucratic constraints it was imposing on the people’. The MIR document also warned the government against ‘hobnobbing with the military’ and ‘pandering to its demands’ which were only a ‘cover to corner the Popular Unity government’ and make it yield before the bourgeoisie pressures. The document ended with the following prophetic statement: What the Unidad Popular has failed to do in its one and half years in government is precisely to mobilise the masses and deal blows to the institutions and the apparatus of the state, a failure that could be fatal, since the dynamic of the class struggle means only two outcomes of the Chilean political process: fascism or socialism.17

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Since socialism could not be built via the peaceful constitutional road, since people were hoodwinked into accepting that a new era could be ushered in within the existing bourgeois framework without a bitter class struggle, since the leadership of the Unidad Popular continued to display its pitiable faith in the ‘neutrality’ and ‘institutionalism’ of the US-trained and equipped Chilean army, what the people got was naked fascism instead of the premised socialism. In this sense, the communist–socialist leadership led the people of Chile backwards instead of forwards. Groaning under the jackboots of the fascist military junta and suffering persecution and executions on a mass scale, the people of Chile find little consolation in the fact that some leaders and heads of state have issued statements or made speeches condemning the Chilean coup-makers and the US imperialists. Such a typical statement was that made by Fidel Castro in his September 28 speech: Imperialism tried to corrupt the Chilean people. The monopolies tried to corrupt the workers—Imperialism was always plotting against the Popular Unity government. The CIA was active throughout the years of the Popular Unity regime… While preventing Chile from obtaining any loan in the economic field the Pentagon maintained magnificent relations with the Chilean armed forces…

But one may ask Fidel Castro and others: What did you expect from US imperialism? What did you expect from the Pentagon and the CIA? Was it the first time that US imperialism had intervened to subvert a democratically elected government in Latin America? How did the Pentagon maintain ‘magnificent relations’ with the Chilean armed forces when a ‘Marxist’ government was in power and a ‘Marxist’ president was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Paraphrasing Che Guevara, one might end up by saying: The crimes of US imperialism are enormous and cover the whole world. We already know all that. But the guilt also applies to those who with their mistaken revisionist policies led the people of Chile into a trap laid by their enemies, thereby putting the clock back for that vibrant and emerging people.

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Notes   1. V. Teitelboim, ‘Reflections on the Chilean Developments’, New Times, no. 42 (1973).  2. Ibid.  3. Ibid.   4. J. Cobo, ‘The Coup in Chile’, New Times (1973).  5. Ibid.   6. Betty Petras and James Petras, Ramparts (1973).  7. Ibid.   8. Jose Yglesia, Ramparts (1973).   9. Fidel Castro, September 28, 1973 speech, Havana, Granma, Weekly Edition (October 4,1973). 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid 12. Ibid. 13. Fidel Castro at the concluding session of OLAS, Havana (August 1967), Granma, Weekly Edition (September 2, 1967). 14. Miguel Enriquez, ‘Appeal from MIR’, Frontier (November 17, 1973). 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid.

CHAPTER 12

Uruguay Rule by Military Proxy*

The September 1973 fascist military coup d’état in Chile seems to have overshadowed two other coups which took place in the same year in Uruguay and Bolivia. While the National Stadium in Santiago where thousands of political prisoners are being held and tortured has become known all over the world, El Clindro Stadium in Montevideo where Uruguayan patriots and Leftists are being tortured has remained relatively unknown. El Clindro acquired this sinister reputation after the coup d’état of June 27, 1973, when Juan Maria Bordaberry established a dictatorial regime supported by the Uruguayan oligarchy, US corporate interests and the reactionary military. On this day, President Bordaberry in order to save his faltering regime riven by dissensions, plagued by 60 per cent per annum inflation, harassed by the Tupamaros and threatened by a countrywide general strike of industrial workers, dissolved the Congress and called in the military to take over the reins. The focal point of the struggle between the military and the Congress was the former’s demand that the Congress lift the immunity of the Leftist Senator, Enrique Erro, whom it accused of subversion and alleged links with the Tupamaros—a Fidelista urban guerrilla organization operating in the country since 1905. * Lajpat Rai, ‘Uruguay: Rule by Military Proxy’, Economic & Political Weekly 9, no. 18 (1974): 717–719.

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The decree signed by Bordaberry dissolving the Congress gave the Senate’s refusal to lift Erro’s immunity as a reason. In his radio TV speech on June 28, the president justified army intervention, condemned Marxism as ‘a manifestation of sedition’, challenged the Tupamaros ‘traitors’ and the student agitators ‘who took the law in their own hands’. He also spoke of the ‘sinister shadow of international communism’ and called upon the people to ‘resist anarchy and criminal conspiracy against the country’. On the same day, Bordaberry moved to consolidate his control by introducing total press censorship, prohibition of public gatherings and manifestations, suspension of constitutional guarantees and a declaration of a state of siege in the country. On June 30, through a special decree, he banned the Communist Party and the Communist-led United Trade Union Convention or Convencion Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT). Later in the same day, he dissolved all the 19 elected municipal councils and issued a threat to all the parties of the Frente Amplio or the Broad Front (consisting of communist, socialist, Christian democrat and some centrist bourgeoisie parties and groups) which had unsuccessfully opposed Bordaberry in the presidential election. The first reaction to the decrees abolishing constitutional government and civil rights was swift. The two cabinet members resigned in protest. The powerful CNT called a general strike for the following day and ordered the occupation of the factories. The strike according to the Reuters despatch from Montevideo dated June 29 ‘paralysed the nation’s major industries, such as the tyre and textile factories that provide Uruguay’s main industrial exports’. Several factories were taken over by strikers, and students at Montevideo University boycotted classes.

Breaking the Strike On the same day, Bordaberry ordered the army and the police to break the strike by force. This led to large-scale arrests, baton charges and shootings in the streets of the capital; the first batches of prisoners began to arrive at EI Clindro. An undetermined number of political leaders fled to Argentina while many took refuge in some Latin

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American embassies, now being guarded day and night by government troops to intercept fleeing refugees. By mid-July, EI Clindro began to get crowded. Among those arrested by the military regime were General Liber Seregni, the former presidential candidate of the Frente Amplio, Homar Murdoch, the President of the National Party (a conservative party till then a fierce opponent of the Frente), the wellknown writer Juan Carlos Onetti and the communist leaders Rodney Arismondy and Jaime Perez, on charges of having contacts with the Tupamaros. Other arrested leaders of the opposition included Jose P. Cardozo, the president of the Socialist Party, General Victor Licandro and sixteen members of the dissolved Congress, all belonging to the Frente Amplio. These arrests led to an agreement between the Frente and the National Party which until then had been bitter enemies. The two parties were later joined by an important group of dissidents from Bordaberry’s own Colorado Party. This broader front of political opposition issued on July 30 what was called its ‘six bases for resolving the present situation’. They were, according to La Razon: 1. Re-establishment of constitutional freedoms and guarantees 2. Re-establishment of the right of political parties and union organisation 3. Restoration of the purchasing power of wages 4. Agreement on a minimum programme for economic and social change 5. Dismissal of Bordaberry and setting up of a provisional government which could include the Colorados and Blancos (the two traditional conservative parties of Uruguay which had been ruling the country alternately through an agreement) as well 6. The immediate holding of a popular referendum in the country Thus, while the Frente Amplio became ‘Frente mas Amplio’ and the opposition to the dictatorship increased in intensity, the CNT led by the Communists (who despite an official ban on their party functioned from underground unmolested) suddenly withdrew the general strike which had by the end of July embraced wide sectors of the industrial

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working class and the militant sectors of the peasantry. The ending of the strike, which had become the focal point of opposition to the coup, was a victory for Bordaberry. While the unions had been demanding the release of all political prisoners and the restoration of democratic liberties, the government insisted that it had agreed to no conditions during its secret talks with the leaders of the banned trade union federation. Minister of Interior, Colonel N. Bolentini declared at a press conference that the banning of the CNT was ‘irrevocable’. According to a despatch from the New York Times representative in Montevideo (August 7, 1973): Colonel Bolentini announced a new labour policy meant to make the trade unions non-political. This implied the liquidation of the CNT and the formation of a new labour organisation, independent and outside the control of political parties which will not be permitted to intervene in political questions that distort the true sense of trade union association.

According to a UPI despatch published in the New York Times (August 8), ‘In spite of the illegal status of the CNT, the government representatives continued (during the strike) to hold talks with its leaders who had secretly agreed to withdraw the Strike in exchange for the release of the imprisoned union leaders and activists.’ According to La Opinion (August 9), ‘the CNT called off the strike and acknowledged that it had not achieved the desired victory. The battle must continue but it is necessary to change the form of struggle.’ This sudden withdrawal of the strike led to widespread disillusionment, frustration and rage among the workers and students who had been braving the fascist repression of the dictatorship which got intensified after the calling off of the strike. With the end of the general strike, Bordaberry quickly moved to consolidate his control. He met with the country’s mayors to work out details for the so-called ‘neighbourhood councils’ to replace the nineteen elected municipal councils that he had abolished along with the Congress. This was what he described as the ‘beginning of the restoration of democracy in Uruguay after the military takeover’. He also named members of the Council of State, which was to replace

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the Congress. He proclaimed his intention to usher into Uruguay ‘a non-political, non-party democracy’ which would be ‘protected by the military in the initial stages’. Thus, the disorienting reformist strategy of the Communist Party—the leading member of the Frente Amplio— failed even to achieve the limited aim of getting the release of opposition leaders and the removal of Bordaberry from office. The military even went back on its promise to withdraw the case against General Seregni who is now being tried for sedition.

Communist Appeal to Army There was another noteworthy feature in the situation. Throughout the general strike, the approach taken by the opposition led by the Communist Party was one of appealing to allegedly ‘dissident’ sectors of the armed forces to join the opposition and help overthrow the Bordaberry regime. This strategy was reflected in the special appeal addressed to the ‘patriotic majority’ of the armed forces by the CNT and the Frente Amplio stating that the general strike, which was later brutally crushed by the troops, was not directed against the armed forces. The appeal said: ‘We respect the army and its patriotic traditions. We shall not turn out as the enemy of the armed forces which have always respected the constitutional laws violated by the dictatorship’. Rodney Arismondy who now sits in El Clindro prison guarded by the military spoke about the army as the defender of the ‘letter and spirit of the Constitution throughout our history with only a lew lapses’. According to La Opinion (September 1), the communist leaders always distinguished between the ‘reactionary and the progressive wings of the military establishment’ and tried ‘unsuccessfully to pit one section of the officer class against the other’. All this, however, did not stop the army’s crackdown on the leaders and the militants of the CNT and Frente Amplio, nor did it stay the hands of the army and the police from shooting down the demonstrators in the streets of Montevideo and other Uruguayan towns. The ‘progressive sections’ of the army did not emerge nor did the ‘patriotic sectors’ of the armed forces assert themselves on behalf of the people. Soon it became obvious that Uruguay was following the Brazilian pattern, though some CNT leaders in the initial stage referred to the ‘Peruvian model taking

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shape in Uruguay’. The military had the firm support of the United States and of the Brazilian generals who welcomed the coup for obvious reasons. The vice-president of the ruling party in Brazil, the Alliance for National Renewal, Cantidio Sampaio, said in Parliament: Uruguay is moving into the Brazilian schema. As long as the army did not go out in the streets to fight terrorism, as long as certain liberties upon which Tupamaros thrived were not suppressed, and as long as the Uruguayan press itself was not restricted by the government and the ‘habeas corpus’ remained untouchable subversion dominated the country…with the military in command now order has been restored once again…

Philippe Labreveux of Le Monde (October 31), commenting on the developments in Uruguay, wrote, ‘The Montevideo government did not work as fast as that of Santiago, but in the end it reached the same result making tabula rasa of all the country’s institutions.’ On October 31, the Bordaberry dictatorship closed and occupied the University of Montevideo. The Rector, nine of the ten Deans and about five hundred student activists were arrested and detained in El Clindro. Reports of beatings, tortures and ‘disappearance’ of opposition leaders and militants continue to circulate in the Latin American press. The US Embassy in Montevideo hums with activity and economic and military aid has started coming in. The CIA is active and is cooperating with the local intelligence agencies in tracking down the opposition leaders. The much-lauded welfare state, the ‘democratic bastion’ of Latin America, is under unmitigated dictatorial rule headed by civilian president.

Experience Teaches Nothing One, however, keeps wondering at the utter stupidity of the traditional communists of Latin America who seem to have lost even the faculty of learning from bitter and costly experience. Learning nothing from their experience with the Uruguayan military, they sowed illusions about the ‘institutionalism’ and the ‘democratic responses’ of the Chilean armed forces. Even the Chilean tragedy could teach them nothing.

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Their ‘broad fronts’ under the ‘progressive’ national bourgeoisie, their theories of peaceful transition to socialism via the parliamentary road and their myth of the so-called ‘patriotic majorities’ in the traditional armies of the bourgeoisie states have disoriented the national liberation movements in Latin America and elsewhere in the Third World. Recently speaking at a public reception for Hortensia Allende, the widow of Salvador Allende of Chile in New Delhi, N. K. Krishnan, the CPI leader said in all seriousness what we are doing in India today is the same that Allende tried to do in Chile, that is, building socialism by peaceful means, and the same fascist forces that murdered democracy and the President in Chile are out to stop us from proceeding on our predetermined course.

Krishnan was thus equating the socialist government of Chile with the one that rules in Delhi and also President Allende with Indira Gandhi. Fidel Castro once called the traditional communists ‘political charlatans’. But even charlatan behaviour should have some limits. This communist worthy did not realize that he was insulting the memory of President Allende and causing embarrassment to Indira Gandhi who has always taken pride in calling herself a pragmatist. Bordaberry came to power on a populist programme after defeating the candidate of the Frente Amplio. The reforms he promised to the people included a programme of Garibi Hatao or Lucha Contra la Pobreza (struggle against poverty). He also promised to halt inflation, increase wages, strengthen the social security system for the workers and the inevitable land reforms. But in less than two years, he had to call in the army to maintain his faltering regime in power—a regime which could not solve or even make a beginning towards solving a single problem of the people. The manner in which the situation is shaping in this country (if odious comparisons can be made), Indira Gandhi is more likely to act as a Bordaberry of Uruguay than as an Allende of Chile. But the traditional communists, clinging to their outmoded heroes like a drowning man to a twig, cannot learn even from the disastrous experiences with

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their figment of imagination—the ‘progressive’ national bourgeoisie. Fidel Castro could not be more correct when he declared some time ago in reference to the traditional communists: If anyone should ask me who the most important allies of imperialism are, I would not answer that they are the professional armies, not even the Yankee marines. I would not say that they are of oligarchies or the reactionary classes. I would say they are the pseudo-revolutionaries.

Part IV

Indochina and the USA: Solidarities and Betrayals This part is devoted to Rai’s analysis of the Vietnamese anti-imperialist struggle from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, the socialist solidarities that supported it and the betrayals that undermined it. This was a time when the people of Indochina—Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—were locked in a life-and-death struggle against the mighty American war machine. As the title of the 13th chapter ‘Vietnam and the Socialist World’ suggests, the focus is on the role played during this struggle in the region by the two socialist countries: the Soviet Union and China. It is shocking, asserts Rai, that at such a crucial juncture for Vietnam, America’s Republican President Richard Nixon received an unprecedented and warm welcome from both socialist countries on his visits there. Whereas the world’s socialist forces should have sided with Vietnam, they did the exact opposite. Even as Vietnam was being bombed, important deals were being struck with the USA by China and the Soviet Union. The reason, opines Rai, was that China and Russia had political differences with each other

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and these were exploited by the wily USA. He is surprised more by the Chinese, with Chou En Lai welcoming Nixon and Mao meeting him, than by Soviet Union’s Brezhnev doing the same—perhaps as he had already consigned the Soviet Union to the revisionist camp of socialist politics. The Vietnamese were close to the Communist Party of China and looked to them for guidance. Indeed, the two socialist leaders, the USSR and China, also put pressure on Fidel Castro as a result of which he, too, fell in line with them. Rai quotes extensively from Left–liberal American journalists of the period to drive home the point that the political game played by the two socialist countries was extremely opportunistic and unprincipled. Third-World countries watched with dismay as the world socialist leaders made friends with those who bombarded socialist Vietnam. That was a deathblow to socialist solidarity. This raises the question of socialism’s future against the background of conflict between the USSR and China. Rai’s 14th chapter is titled ‘Vietnam and the Third Communist Front’, in which he discusses the crumbling of the alliance among Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea as Soviet pressure on Cuba increases. This is particularly painful for Rai because, as he notes, the third front of Cubans, Koreans and Vietnamese had refused to commit themselves to either side; this was a non-aligned bloc supporting new visions of socialism and creating a relatively independent political space between the Soviet Union and China. Rai argues that this front had attempted to provide an entirely new perspective to counter an unjust and highly destructive imperialism. The chapter starts with a barb. Rai describes the new perspectives of the socialist leadership as ‘that Holy Trinity’—‘peaceful competition’, ‘peaceful transition’ and ‘peaceful coexistence’! The critique is based on the non-class notion of political change. It is clear that social revolutions occur on the principle of fundamental change and involve the upturning of relations between the haves and the have-nots. The word ‘peaceful’ negates the possibility of such a change. Rai takes pains to substantiate the point by going over the political phenomenon of changing the world from the end of the Second World War to the early 1970s. In this short period of 25 years, one observed, he argued, an increasing distance between the Soviet and Chinese leaderships. Even as fellow communist countries, they did not see eye to eye on

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many issues. That was one issue; another issue was that when it came to the potential as well as desirability of a revolution in capitalist societies, they adopted policies driven by their own national interests. There was a queering of the pitch when the people of Vietnam rose up against the USA and the latter sought to crush them militarily. Rai argues that it was a serious flaw in the Soviet Union’s and China’s nationalistic policies that led them to recommend a peaceful transition to socialism rather than revolution. Much of this chapter is devoted to the subtly changing scenario where world socialist powers looked the other way when the USA ruthlessly attacked Vietnam. This is noticed with pain by Cuban, North Korean and the Vietnamese leadership. The anguish is also shared by the Left parties and socialist groups in Third-World countries. For Rai, this was a serious situation since, for him, revolutions alone could give a decisive fight to imperialism. Conversely, the latter could gain tremendous strength from the divisions within and lack of political vision in the world socialist camp. The problem was compounded further when Cuba was arm-twisted into supporting the Soviet Union against the interests of the Vietnamese people. Rai argues that a mere theoretical approach to peaceful transition is not enough; peaceful alternatives to mass struggles will not meet the desired goal. Rather, what is needed, as Che Guevara asserted, are not one but many Vietnams. If that did not happen, the cause of revolutionary change will fail. In this richly detailed chapter, Rai gives a call to think afresh, to be unorthodox as well as innovative, independent and courageous in the face of the orthodoxy enforced by the two big socialist powers. For Rai, hope lay in the example of the heroic struggle in Vietnam, and the independent critical stance of the Third Communist Front of Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea. The 15th chapter in this part is more deeply rooted in the early 1970s. For this reason, the context of Vietnam is clearer. Titled ‘Vietnam: Whither the Paris Peace Accords!’, the chapter examines in detail the after-effects of the agreement that was reached in June 1973, backed by the USA and the Soviet Union. The Accord had its supporters since it raised hopes of securing peace in Vietnam. However, there were also concerns regarding the implementation of the Accord as some believed that the USA could not be trusted to carry out what it had agreed to. Those who doubted the intentions of

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the USA and its commitment to honour the provisions of the Accord included independent political analysts, journalists and a broader stream of intellectuals. In this chapter, Rai defends his position on the subject that was deemed pessimistic and sectarian. Two things in it are worthy of note. The first was that the USA was not proved to be genuine in its concern for peace, and the second was that the Soviet Union did not do anything to stop the USA from going back on the promises it made at the Peace Accord in Paris. In fact, the USSR became a party to the betrayal of Vietnam and gave legitimacy to changed policies of the imperialist superpower. In the analysis presented, we get a glimpse of the changed priorities of the Soviet regime that worked to the detriment of the cause of the beleaguered Vietnam. The aftermath of the episode was deadly and led to a large-scale destruction of Vietnamese lives and resources. To make the point, Rai has marshalled opinions of a number of independent commentators of the time bemoaning the callous betrayal of the Vietnamese revolution by the two largest socialist states. The chapter strongly argues that fissures in the world’s socialist camp cost the goal of revolutionary change dear. The last chapter in this part is titled ‘Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina’. Building on the insights from his earlier chapters in this part, the term ‘tactics’ in the title refers to the interconnected nature of the different steps Nixon took for blocking the interests of the socialist forces in Indochina. For example, US policymakers pursued a policy of isolating Cambodia from its supporters, whether they were the Soviet Union, China or Vietnam. Rai argues that in order to obstruct progressive forces in Cambodia, the USA deployed South Vietnamese mercenaries. Nixon was eager to create a situation of military stalemate in Cambodia first, before asking for negotiations; to do this, he sent Kissinger to meet Sihanouk and his friends in Beijing for secret talks to undermine the Cambodian leadership. Rai saw this as easily accomplished with Soviet Russia and China assuming a posture of neutrality; as a result, Nixon was able to promote American interests more aggressively across Indochina. How could such a strategy be countered? On this, Rai quotes Che Guevara’s words: ‘Imperialism is a world system and must be combated in a world confrontation.’ The sharpness of Rai’s insight cannot be missed. By world confrontation,

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Che did not mean a world war but, as he put it, ‘confronting imperialism at numerous points at the same period of time’. This is lacking in the perspective of the socialist leadership. Examined together, the four chapters use close empirical analysis to good effect, laying bare the cynical politics of the Cold War, the effects of the Sino-Soviet schism and new alliances between powerful countries that played out to the detriment of anti-imperialist struggles in Vietnam and Cambodia. The analyses offered in this part alert the students of international politics to reflect on the politics of the international socialist world and anti-imperialist struggles of the time through a new critical lens.

CHAPTER 13

Vietnam and the Socialist World*

Abstract: While American bombs were killing and maiming children, women and men, Nixon was being entertained in Peking and Moscow as an honoured guest. While the people of Vietnam were fighting a life and death struggle against the brutalities perpetrated by the US Administration, lavish banquets were spread before the arch perpetrator in Moscow and Peking. In Peking, while a band played ‘America the Beautiful’, Nixon and Chou roamed from table to table drinking toasts to friendship in the Chinese national drink, Maotai. In his formal toast, Nixon called upon the Chinese leaders to join him in a ‘long march together’. The extravaganza produced in Moscow yielded even greater results for Nixon than the Peking political operetta. In record time, nine agreements covering earth, air and space were signed between Nixon and the Soviet Communist Party chief. The Soviet mass media were pressed into service in an unprecedented way to carry the ‘message of peace’ from the man who had escalated the war in Indochina. History will never absolve these traders in the blood of the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. * Lajpat Rai, ‘Vietnam and the Socialist World’, Economic & Political Weekly 7, no. 30 (1972): 1431–1433.

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The Vietnam War has been the most crucial issue in world politics for more than a decade. It has involved all three of the main sectors into which the world is divided today: the colonial sector as represented by the insurgent people of South Vietnam, the socialist sector as represented by North Vietnam and the imperialist sector as represented by the wealthiest and most ruthless of all the industrialised powers, the United States. The assault launched by the United States has been a challenge to the entire socialist world. Apart from being a testing ground for the Pentagon’s horrific weapons of death, Vietnam has also been used by the United States as a testing ground to gauge the resolve and solidarity of the socialist world. How has the socialist world met this challenge? How has the socialist world reacted to the heroism and the agony of Vietnam? How have the two great socialist powers—claimants to hegemony of the world socialist movement—reacted to US savagery in Vietnam, to the continuous escalation of the bombing of North Vietnamese cities, villages, hospitals, schools, dams and dykes and to the mining of North Vietnamese ports? While American bombs were killing and maiming children, women and men, Nixon, the butcher of the Vietnamese people, was being entertained in Peking and Moscow as an honoured guest. While the people of Vietnam were fighting a life and death struggle against US brutality, lavish banquets were spread before the arch enemy of mankind in Moscow and Peking. ‘This magnificent banquet’, Nixon said in his toast on his last night in China, ‘marks the end of our stay in the Peoples Republic of China. We have been here a week. This was the week that changed the world’.1 The exaggeration was obviously for the benefit of US voters, who had already been subjected via television to a week of one superlative after another. From the standpoint of ordinary mortals all over the world, Nixon and Mao had agreed not to change the world, but to preserve the status quo. The joint communique that emerged from the ‘historic’ talks and was released on February 27, 1972, repeated the often-expressed positions

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of the two governments and could have been prepared separately in Washington and Peking without any consultations at all. The only concession that Nixon made to the Chinese, besides his acceptance of the five principles of peaceful coexistence, was a vaguely worded promise of eventual US withdrawal from Taiwan. The communique stated: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan straits maintain there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China… It affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all US forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as tension in the area diminishes.2

The ‘tension in the area’ on which ‘ultimate’ US withdrawal from Taiwan will depend is centred on Indochina. Nixon’s communique promising ‘non-aggression against other states’ has not changed his goal of a military victory in Indochina. This goal was succinctly summarised by T. D. Allman in the Far Eastern Economic Review: Three years ago the US republican party’s Presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, assured a war-weary American electorate that he had a secret plan to end the war. It now appears that President Nixon wants to end the war by winning it. The communists are left with the choice of continuing the struggle or capitulating.3

As proof of the above, Allman cited the following facts: With the Christmas raids against North Vietnam, Nixon further expanded the war. He has already invaded Cambodia and Laos, increased military aid to all three countries and scaled up the bombing of North Vietnam.’4

The weeks before Nixon’s departure for Peking saw a major escalation of the air war in Indochina to be followed after his return by another big step in escalation, the mining of Haiphong and other North Vietnamese ports. In fact, a debate had been going on for some time among American ruling circles about whether or not to take the step of mining North Vietnamese harbours. The last document in this debate was written in March 1968 by the so-called ‘Clifford Group’,

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consisting of officials who undertook a total review of Washington’s war strategy, following the major US setback in the Tet Offensive and recommended a turn in war policy towards ‘Vietnamisation’. Arguing against the mining of Haiphong Harbour, the document stated: Politically, moreover, closing the port of Haiphong continues to raise a serious question of Soviet reaction. US Ambassador to Moscow Thompson and Governor Harriman and others believe that Soviets would be compelled to react in some manner—at a minimum through the use of minesweepers and possibly through protective naval action of some sort.5

But this was in 1968. In 1972, on the eve of the Moscow summit, Nixon had no fears of any possible Soviet reaction. An understanding had already been reached and the likely Soviet reaction or non-reaction was already known to American ruling circles. The Soviet Union with the largest minesweeping fleet in the world (twice as big as that of the US) did not dare even to attempt to sweep away the American mines. As for assessing the Chinese, the generalities contained in the joint US–China communique are of less significance than the manner of Nixon’s reception. The diplomatically correct but restrained tone of the greeting accorded to the imperialist chieftain at Peking airport soon gave way to enthusiastic hospitality. Less than four hours after his arrival, Nixon was closeted with the great helmsman himself. It is practically unprecedented for a visiting head of state to be received by Mao on the first day of a visit. That evening, Chou En-Lai played host to Nixon at a gala banquet attended by some 1,000 guests. While a band played ‘America the Beautiful’, Nixon and Chou roamed from table to table drinking toasts to friendship in the Chinese national drink, Maotai. In his formal toast, Nixon called upon the Chinese leaders to join him in a ‘long march together’ and demonstrated his proficiency at quoting Mao’s thoughts by reading a long quotation from the great helmsman. In a February 22 editorial, the New York Times summarised the atmosphere: ‘One might have thought the Peking banquet a reunion of old friends rather than the first social meeting of the leaders of two nations that have been bitterly hostile for more than two decades.’

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On February 22, the Chinese Government atoned for the lack of fanfare at the airport by devoting the entire front page of Renmin Ribao, the official Communist Party newspaper, to Nixon’s visit, with photographs of Mao and Chou Enlai with Nixon and party. Similar attention was devoted to the visit in other Chinese papers and on television and radio. Stanley Karnow wrote from Peking: ‘Attention being paid to Nixon in the media is incomparably bigger than that accorded Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu who came here last June, even though relations between China and Rumania are close.’6 Karnow added that Nixon’s party was delighted when Mao’s wife Chiang Ching emerged alongside Chou Enlai to lead the Nixon group to a cultural performance…. The move to associate Chiang Ching with the President’s visit was interpreted as a strong endorsement by Mao of the current attempt to reach a Sino-American reconciliation.7

Chiang Ching, it might be added, was a ‘Leftist’ during the Cultural Revolution. ‘One of her public remarks during that period was: “Peaceful coexistence corrupts.”’ That winged phrase is not likely to be inscribed on Peking wall posters in the coming future. The Cuban press had an ironic comment on the Peking festivities. Granma, the official Cuban Communist Party newspaper, divided its front page into two parts. The first banner headline stated: ‘B-52 Planes Are Bombing Vietnam’. The other headline read: ‘Cordial Meeting Nixon–Mao. The Paper Tiger Makes a Honeyed Speech in Peking’. But significantly all irony disappeared from the Cuban newspapers later when reporting the Nixon festivities in Moscow. Instead, Fidel Castro eulogized the beauties of peaceful coexistence during his own visit to the Soviet Union, just after the great summit had taken place in which the Russian bureaucrats had outdone their Chinese rivals in fawning on Nixon. In the United States, the spectacle of Nixon being wined and dined in Peking was carried to millions of American homes by television. This had a telling effect on his election prospects. The Democrat candidates, most of whom were trying to capitalise on anti-war sentiment

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by posing as ‘doves’, found themselves forced into a position of having to endorse the trip which Nixon had baptised as a ‘journey of peace’. The Moscow repeat performance reinforced this happy tendency, confirming Nixon as the ‘1972 Apostle of Peace’, journeying over Asia and Europe in quest of ‘peace and goodwill between men’. It also helped to foster the illusion that Nixon was going to find a peace solution for Vietnam along with the two great allies of the Vietnamese people—the Chinese and the Russians. Thus, the warmonger was given respectability, which is going to be his greatest asset in the coming elections in November. The Mao government is well aware of the illusions about the Indochina War fostered by Nixon’s visit. This was revealed by an interview published in the New York Times, given to 15 American journalists and professors in Peking by Chou Enlai on January 31. Professor Richard Pfeffer II gave the following illuminating account of the interview in the New York Times of February 2, 1972: ‘While in public the Chinese press continued to hammer away at American imperialism and to openly denigrate President Nixon’s eight-point proposal, in private we had almost no serious discussion of the connection between the improvements in Sino-US relations and the Vietnamese War.’8 On the effect of Nixon’s visit to Peking and the Sino-US detente on the American elections, Pfeffer had the following comments to make: And when I pressed the point that Nixon’s visit to Peking had both hurt the anti-war movement in the United States and enhanced Nixon’s chances of election, I was firmly if diplomatically put in my place. Chou Enlai evasively indicated that whether the Nixon visit contributes to his re-election is a domestic US issue. ‘We are not concerned with it’ was his final statement on my question.9

The concern of the Chinese leaders seems to be not for the anti-war movement in the United States, not for the ending of the Vietnam War, not for the electoral victory of a president who has expanded the war to encompass all of Indochina, but for the petty diplomatic and political advantages that might accrue from the visit of an American president. The extravaganza produced in Moscow further improved

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the chances of Nixon’s success in the coming presidential elections. It yielded even greater results than the Peking political operetta. In record time, nine agreements covering earth, air and space were signed between Nixon and the Soviet Communist Party chieftain. The Russian mass media were pressed into service in an unprecedented way to carry the ‘message of peace’ from the man whose hands were gory with the blood of the people of Indochina. The great ‘peacemaker’, Nixon, saluted Tanya, the 12-year-old Russian girl who had left a diary of the Nazi siege of Leningrad in which she perished. Speaking like the Buddha, he hoped that the Moscow talks would now safeguard the little Tanyas and their brothers and sisters from the calamity of war. But what about the little Tanyas of Vietnam. Such doubts deflected neither Nixon nor his dear hosts from their unswerving pursuit of self-interest. In the Bolshoi Theatre, Nixon was cheered by the audience and a lone foreign woman who shouted ‘long live Vietnam’ was quickly hustled away by the police. With the example of the big brothers before them, the Polish ‘communists’ went a step further in their welcome to Nixon, beating all records of the welcomes staged in Peking and Moscow. George Sherman of the Washington Star reporting from Warsaw wrote: Mr Nixon entered his car and had the roof removed. He stood up and the crowd cheered. Mr Nixon plunged out of the car and into the crowd. A crush of humanity followed, but the spirit was friendly. The crowd yelled ‘long life to Nixon and he in turn yelled long live Polish–American friendship’ in Polish.10

This ‘long life’ to Nixon slogan was the greatest infamy that has come out of the socialist world for quite some time. It was the cry of an atomised, de-politicised and demoralised mass of 1,432, an unthinking herd of people led by a cynical and a soulless bureaucracy. The great irony of contemporary times is that the imperialist chieftain is welcome only in the so-called socialist world, while the people of the capitalist world (including that of his own country) denounce him as the butcher of Vietnam. To the resurgent people of the ‘Third World’ who are fed on the slogans of ‘anti-imperialism’, ‘international solidarity’, ‘the

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socialist family’ and the like by communist leaders, Nixon’s visit to Moscow and Peking and his fraternal reception there, while his bombers continued to pound the cities and villages of Vietnam, shall be an unforgettable lesson for the future. That imperialism has exploited the schism between the two biggest socialist countries to the hilt is now beyond any doubt. Nixon did not create the split in the socialist camp, but he clearly knows how to take advantage of it. The Soviet bureaucracy responded to the Mao–Nixon rapprochement primarily by trying to surpass Mao’s concessions. And as a reaction to the Brezhnev–Nixon detente, the Maoists will be willing to make further concessions in the future. Harry Schwartz of the New York Times indicated in his February 21 despatch that ruling circles in the United States could scarcely conceal their joy at the way Moscow and Peking allowed their disagreements to be exploited by US imperialism. The frankness with which Schwartz describes Nixon playing off one socialist state against the other is itself quite remarkable: The Kremlin has been wooing the President [Nixon] frantically, trying to get across the message that he doesn’t need to make a deal with Mao because he can do better in Moscow when he flies there in May. This transparent Moscow bidding for Mr Nixon’s favour substantially strengthens his hand in his talks this week with Chairman Mao and Premier Chou Enlai. Those two shrewd and practical leaders are fully aware of what the Kremlin is doing and they could hardly help feeling the pressure to provide the President with some tangible benefits that would encourage him to resist Moscow’s blandishments.11

Describing the position of President Nixon as that of a ‘lovely maiden’ courted by two fond lovers, Schwartz wrote: ‘The President is in the position of a lovely maiden courted by two ardent swains, each of whom is aware of the other, but each of whom is uncertain of what happens when the young lady is alone with his rival.’12 The Russian press described Nixon’s China visit as having ‘antiSoviet aims’ and coming to an understanding with the ‘sworn enemy’ of

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the people. Charlotte Salkowski, a Polish journalist, wrote in Pravda: ‘It is obvious that the announcement of the trip to Peking could not be interpreted in Hanoi as other than an attempt to reach a deal with the sworn enemy of the Asian people.’13 Salkowski condemned the preparations going on in Peking for the reception of Nixon while the US was escalating its bombing raids on North Vietnam. Such comments would have been more telling if the Russian leaders were not themselves preparing to receive Nixon with open arms in Moscow. How did the Vietnamese look upon this infamous spectacle? This is how I. F. Stone, the well-known American progressive journalist, describes it: To speak plainly, the chief running dogs of imperialism now seem to be Brezhnev and Chou Enlai. This is how it must look from Hanoi. Ignominious as Hitler’s appeasers were in the thirties, he was never dined as an honoured guest in Paris, London or Washington while he bombed Guernica and destroyed the Spanish Republic.14

In the Far Eastern Economic Review, Leo Goodstadt provided an apt comparison between the Nixon–Mao detente and an earlier summit meeting: The massive build-up of American naval and air power in the Gulf of Tonkin is President Nixon’s bargaining counter for the Peking summit…. Hanoi is in the same position as Peking was when President Eisenhower met Nikita Khrushchev at Camp David in 1959. Encircled by American bases, the Chinese then denounced the Kremlin for betraying the world revolutionary struggle in seeking to defuse the Soviet confrontation with the United States.15

Because of their dependence on the Soviet and Chinese leadership for weapons, the North Vietnamese and the Provisional Revolutionary Government are not likely to engage in public polemics over the question of ‘peaceful coexistence’. They have, however, expressed their determination that the war will not be settled by deals either in Peking or in Moscow.

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David Boulton, a British television director, who had visited North Vietnam, wrote a detailed interview in the New York Times given by Hoang Tung, editor of the North Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper, Nhan Dan: ‘While Nixon gets his 21-gun salute in Peking’, Tung told Boulton, ‘we will be giving him a different kind of salute in South Vietnam. There will be more than 21 guns. And they won’t be firing blanks. ‘This war is going to be settled here in Hanoi, nowhere else. Nothing that is said anywhere else can make the slightest difference. Nixon believes that there are fairies in the moon. He hopes to win by talking in Peking what he has failed to win by fighting on the battlefield. He has gone to the wrong place.’16

On February 24, a National Liberation Front radio broadcast, in an obvious reference to the Peking trip, attacked Nixon for trying to ‘capitalize on the internal disagreements of the socialist camp in order to further his interests’. Nixon, the broadcast said, was attempting to ‘split countries in the socialist camp and the world communist movement and perform the trick of peaceful evolution through economic cooperation and other manoeuvres’.17 But at what cost is this peaceful evolution between US imperialism and the two leading socialist states? I. V. Stone gives the most apt answer: But without the enormous resolution and courage of the Vietnamese what would Moscow and Peking have to offer Nixon? What would they have to sell? Peking bought its admission to the United Nations, bought its way out of containment, with the blood of the Vietnamese people. The same commodity in such plentiful supply has brought Nixon to Moscow. All those bright hopes of expanded US trade and credits, which Nixon emissaries have been dangling before the Kremlin since the Secretary of Commerce went there last year, rest on Nixon’s desire to buy some Soviet ‘restraint’ on Hanoi. If it were not for Hanoi, Moscow too would have little to sell.18

History will never absolve these traders in the blood of the Vietnamese people.

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Notes 1. Richard Nixon, ‘Banquet Speech’, People’s Daily (March 7, 1972). 2. Sino-US Joint Communique. 3. T. D. Allman, Far Eastern Economic Review (February 19, 1972). 4. Ibid. 5. Pentagon Papers, Book 11, 38. 6. Stanley Karnow, Washington Post (February 23, 1972). 7. Ibid. 8. Richard Pfeffer II, New York Times (February 2, 1972), 9. 9. Ibid. 10. George Sherman, quoted in Times of India (June 3, 1972). 11. Harry Schwartz, New York Times (February 21, 1972). 12. Ibid. 13. Charlotte Salkowski, Pravda (February 19, 1972), quoted in Christian Science Monitor. 14. I. F. Stone, ‘Why Nixon Won the Moscow Gamble’, Indian Left Review (May–June 1972). 15. Leo Goodstadt, Far Eastern Economic Review (February 19, 1972). 16. David Bouton, New York Times (February 20, 1972). 17. NLF Radio Broadcast (February 24, 1972), Vietnam (March 3, 1972). 18. Stone, ‘Why Nixon Won the Moscow Gamble’.

CHAPTER 14

Vietnam and the ‘Third Communist Front’*

Abstract: The North Vietnamese and the NLF, the North Koreans and the Cubans, had nursed the illusion, during the mid-sixties, that the grave situation in Vietnam would bring Russia and China together and make them coordinate their efforts to help the Vietnamese. At one point, Castro so riled the men in the Kremlin by his forthrightness on Vietnam and other issues, that he came to be known in Moscow as ‘that Caribbean viper in our bosom’. Not only did he relentlessly condemn Moscow’s cowardly policies but he also attacked the Chinese leaders in no uncertain terms, calling them ‘old senile idiots fit to be kept in an old folk’s home’. But as his country became more dependent on Russian economic bolstering, Castro became totally silent about Moscow’s dithering over Vietnam. The result is that now the Vietnamese are the sole frontline fighters against US imperialism, though the North Koreans continue to retain their suspicions about that Holy Trinity trotted out by Moscow and tacitly accepted by Peking—‘peaceful competition’, ‘peaceful transition and ‘peaceful coexistence’.

* Lajpat Rai, ‘Vietnam and the “Third Communist Front”’, Economic & Political Weekly 7, no. 39 (1972): 1975–1984.

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The unity of the ‘Third Communist Front’ has been disrupted, but the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people and the spectacle of the largest country in the world, the richest and the most formidably armed, bogged down in an endless war by a poor, non-industrialised but valiant people, continues to be of limitless inspiration to the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The 1960s saw the emergence of another alignment in the already polarized (between Russia and China) socialist camp which came to be known as the ‘Third Communist Front’. It consisted of Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea and had the allegiance of independent Left sections, especially of the young, which had emerged as a reaction to the Sino–Soviet schism in the mid-fifties. The basic features which characterised this front were that (a) it did not align itself with either of the great socialist powers in their relentless political ideological battles and (b) it had a distinct and differentiated line of its own on the question of the Vietnam War. The Cuban leadership arrived at a definitive policy towards the Vietnam War in 1967—the year they named as the ‘Year of Heroic Vietnam’,1 thus completely identifying themselves with the people of Vietnam and their heroic struggle against US imperialism. The missile crisis of 1962 had convinced the Cubans that the US was the only superpower in that part of the world. The continuous and systematic bombing of North Vietnam (an integral part of the socialist bloc) even at a time when the Soviet Prime Minister was in Hanoi,2 with the Soviet Union unable to do anything about the affront, had further convinced them Cuba could be the next on the list of American targets for military invasion. They also realised that placed as they were, the Vietnamese resistance movement was helping Cuba’s own survival and therefore they were morally bound to do their utmost for Vietnam. This feeling of solidarity was reflected by a very close alliance between Havana, the NLF and Hanoi. The North Koreans joined the alliance as well, because they too felt threatened by the US military build-up in South Korea and also because the US intervention in Vietnam had aggravated further the rift in the socialist camp, thereby decreasing its effective strength to checkmate imperialism. Lacking a

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common view as to the nature of the enemy as well as about the wider implications involved in the Vietnam War for the ‘Third World’, the USSR and China could not agree on a common war aim, nor could they trust each other enough to coordinate their actions. They came to Vietnam’s aid separately in piecemeal fashion and at the same time indulged in the most vicious recriminations, each accusing the other of sabotaging help to the Vietnamese and of working for the American aggressors. Russia’s accusation that arms and supplies sent to Vietnam across the land route over Chinese territory were not delivered is only one case in point. The Cubans, Koreans and the Vietnamese had nursed the illusion that at least the grave situation in Vietnam would bring the two giants together and make them coordinate their efforts to help the Vietnamese while maintaining their differences over the wider political and ideological Issues. Soon all such hopes and illusions had been laid to rest. Rather, it became more and more certain that they stood for two diametrically opposed concepts of revolution and socialist strategy. While most of the so-called People’s Democracies sided with one side or the other, the Cubans, Koreans and Vietnamese refused to commit themselves to either side. They were concerned only with keeping the imperialist wolf away from their doors. The Vietnamese, unable to survive without Soviet aid, had been longing to part company with Moscow (they differed from the Soviet Union on practically every ideological issue, including the question of peaceful coexistence) without being driven into excessive dependence on Peking. Since 1960, when battle was joined in South Vietnam, the NLF had to contend with Khrushchev’s reluctance to see the conflict spread. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, when the Americans ordered the bombardment of North Vietnam as a reprisal, Moscow’s reaction was noticeably soft. Until 1965, the Soviet Union ignored the South Vietnamese resistance movement and had strained relations with Hanoi. After the fall of Khrushchev, the new team in the Kremlin tried to improve the situation by sending Kosygin on a special mission to Hanoi. It was during this visit that the Americans bombarded Hanoi, passing on to further escalation. The Soviet leaders then promised to send defence equipment and, in fact, stepped up supplies considerably. The Vietnamese have since then refused to underwrite the Chinese

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allegation that the new team was worse than the old. In an interview he gave to the delegates of the Italian Communist Party,3 Le Duan said that Khrushchev had asked the North Vietnamese to stop the war, irrespective of their comrades’ plight in the South and that he had threatened them with economic reprisals if they refused. Kosygin had proved to be much more understanding. The North Koreans, who had received decisive help from the Chinese in the Korean War and had followed an outspokenly antirevisionist line for a whole decade, were not prepared to declare themselves Maoists. Rather, they considered Kim Il Sung to be a greater political figure than any produced by the socialist camp since the death of Lenin. The Cubans, Koreans and Vietnamese thus emerged as a force in the socialist world—an independent, ‘non-aligned’ group determined to traverse its own course in relentless opposition to American imperialism. Here was the ‘Third Communist Front’ composed of three small militant socialist countries whose courageous stand had begun to earn them the allegiance of a broad spectrum of the revolutionaries that was unwilling to follow blindly in the footsteps of either Peking or Moscow. However, this section of the Left could not organise an independent movement in support of Vietnam; it simply called on all genuine anti-imperialists to rally under the banner of Victory to Vietnam at all costs. Even this restricted programme, justified by circumstances, offended both the pro-Russians and the pro-Chinese. The pro-Russian groups preferred to call for ‘peace in Vietnam’ rather than ‘victory to Vietnam’ and suspected that the more militant groups were trying to resurrect the Cold War or involve them in a trial of strength with the United States. The pro-Chinese sections, although fully prepared to accept the idea of victory to Vietnam, believed that it was not possible to achieve victory under the patronage of the Russian revisionists, now mere accomplices of American imperialism and irredeemably lost to the cause of revolution. Thus, by expressing their common hostility to the ‘non-aligned’ Left, Moscow and Peking adopted attitudes which were not conducive to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against American aggression. Moreover, by weakening the socialist bloc, the Sino-Soviet conflict greatly encouraged American arrogance in Vietnam and thereby

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worked to the detriment of Cuba and North Korea—the two other forward trenches in the battlefield against imperialism. At the same time, these victims of US aggression had gained so much moral prestige that the official leaders of the two communist camps no longer dared to criticise them publicly, let alone exert economic or political pressure on them. Any socialist country that dared criticise Vietnam would have been discredited by the entire Left. It was precisely at this time that the Cuban and the Korean communist parties began to publicly formulate their policies towards the Vietnam War in particular and to certain crucial ideological political issues dividing the two socialist blocs in general—policies which flew in the face of those propounded by Moscow and Peking. In April 1967, the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL) with headquarters in Havana received a message from Che Guevara who had left Cuba in 1965 because, as he put it, ‘other nations of the world call for my modest efforts’. This message which bore all the hallmarks of Che Guevara’s inimitable style was published in all the major languages of the world by the OSPAAAL secretariat and distributed throughout the five continents by Fidelista organisations and Cuban embassies and consulates. The message, for the first time, presented a concise and clear exposition of Cuban policy towards the war in Vietnam; it was not published in Moscow or Peking, a fact noted with anger by Fidel Castro in one of his speeches. Instead, the Russians, with the help of some ever-obliging communist parties, launched a worldwide whispering campaign against the document dubbing it ‘adventurist’, ‘ultra-Leftist’, ‘sectarian’ and so on. In his message, Che reminded the people of the progressive world that their attitude towards the Vietnam War was that of the Roman plebs urging the gladiators to fight on: Vietnam, a nation embodying the aspirations and hopes of a completely forgotten world, is tragically alone. Ironically, the solidarity between the progressive world and the people of Vietnam resembles the solidarity between the plebs and the Roman gladiators, the former coaxing on the latter to continue fighting in the arena. It is

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not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but sharing his fate; one must accompany Vietnam to death or to victory.4

This was a bombshell indeed—this comparison of the people of the socialist world with the Roman plebeians urging on the gladiators to continue fighting, while they themselves were sitting in the wings watching the show. Che wanted them to share the fate of Vietnam and not rest content merely with supplying materials and verbal solidarity. In tones bold and clear, Che Guevara accused the ‘two greatest powers of the socialist world’: The crimes of US imperialism are enormous and cover the whole world—but this guilt also applies to those, who when the time came for a definition hesitated to make Vietnam an inviolable part of the socialist world and the guilt also applies to those who maintain a war of abuse and snares…started quite some time ago by the greatest powers of the socialist world.5

Lashing out at the Soviet fear complex of world war, Guevara stated that ‘since imperialists blackmail humanity by threatening it with war, the wise reaction is not to fear war’.6 According to Che, ‘imperialism was a world system and must be defeated in a world confrontation.’ And for this what was desired was to ‘create two, three…more Vietnams’. This to his mind was the only effective way of helping the Vietnamese. It was both illogical and immoral to allow them to fight the American colossus single-handedly. Also, creating more Vietnams was the only means of freeing Latin America from the Yankee stranglehold. Vietnamese in Latin America would help the Vietnamese as the Vietnam struggle was helping the Cuban Revolution by diverting the attention of US imperialism away from the blockaded island and giving it breathing space. The splendid victories of the Vietnamese people were a source of inspiration for the people of Latin America who were up in arms against US domination. As Che Guevara wrote: ‘People of the three continents should focus their attention on Vietnam and learn their lesson…. It is the road of Vietnam; it is this road that should be followed by the people; it is the road that will be followed by our Americas.’7

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While this message was never published in China, Russia or the other socialist countries of Europe, it was given wide publicity in Vietnam and North Korea. It thus became the veritable charter of the ‘Third Communist Front’, a charter the three countries immediately made their own and advanced with all the power at their command.8 While Che was in Bolivia trying to create another Vietnam in Latin America, Fidel Castro was beginning his public onslaughts on the Russian and Chinese leaderships, who had let down the people of Vietnam for their own narrow interests. Castro understood that the Cuban line of ‘create two, three…more Vietnams’ was in direct conflict with the Russian line of peaceful coexistence, peaceful transition and detente with US imperialism. The two lines were, in fact, the antithesis of each other, according to the Cubans. His first attack on the Russians was for giving aid to the ‘Latin American oligarchies’ who were busy crushing the guerrilla movements (Vietnams in embryo) in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil. In a hard-hitting speech on August 10, 1967, Castro said: ‘If internationalism exists, if solidarity is a word worthy of respect, the least we can expect of any state in the socialist camp is that it refrains from giving any financial and technical aid to these regimes.’9 Stating in another speech that ‘all was not rose-coloured in the socialist camp’ and that Russian financial and technical aid to Latin American dictators was being used against the people living under these regimes, Castro chided the Soviet leaders: What would the Vietnamese revolutionaries think if we were to send delegations to South Vietnam and deal with the Saigon puppet government? What would the Latin American revolutionaries think when they see Russian aid pouring into the treasuries of those who are busy oppressing them?10

Castro then went on to attack the concept of peaceful transition. ‘Let no one dream that he will achieve power peacefully,’ he declared. The Cuban revolutionary line was that of the armed guerrilla movements, the rest was nonsense; it was even treachery. ‘There are those who believe peaceful transition is possible…we cannot understand what

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kind of peaceful transition they refer to, unless it is peaceful transition in agreement with imperialism.’11 And again: ‘And those who believe that they are going to win against the imperialist henchmen in elections are just plain naive, and those who believe that they will take over power through elections are more than naive.’12 Attacking the Russians and the orthodox communist parties of Latin America who recommended peaceful methods, Castro said: ‘Socialism coming to power peacefully; it is fantastic, It is a lie, a big lie. Anyone who asserts that they will come to power peacefully are deceiving the masses.’13 Castro refused to recognize the Latin American orthodox communists as a revolutionary force. He called them ‘eagles without feathers’, ‘drawing room debaters’, ‘toothless old women’ and declared that Cuban revolutionaries will cooperate with other forces ‘who, while not calling themselves communists, act as communists’. The Cuban ideological heresy snowballed during the last years of the sixties. Castro began to destroy all the ‘venerable truths’ so dear to the conformist and regimented socialist camp. He railed at the ‘calcified Marxism’, ‘petrified Marxist thought’, ‘formulas that lead to nothing’. He ridiculed the ‘self-proclaimed vanguards’, ‘the Immaculate Conception of the Party’, ‘the Marxist Freemasonry’, ‘the Holy Inquisition’ and so on. We no longer accept any ‘self-evident truths’. A whole series of old cliches must be abolished. Marxist literature itself must be renamed, because repeating the same old cliches, phraseology and verbiage that have been repeated for 35 years wins over no one, convinces no one at all.14

Calling much of Marxist literature useless verbiage incapable of expressing the real situation, Castro told his Latin American audience: ‘These documents are divorced from real life…and then many people are told that this is Marxism…in what way is this different from a catechism, and in what way is it different from a litany, from a rosary.’15

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Attacking the orthodox Communist movement in general, Castro said: ‘The Communist movement today has developed a method, a style and in some respects even took on the character of religion.’ Refusing to be committed to such a movement, Castro announced: ‘There is a much wider movement on this continent than that of the communist parties of Latin America: we are committed to that wider movement.’16 He refused to accept even the concept of the ‘Vanguard Party’ as the leader of the revolution to the horror of orthodox Marxist–Leninists, including the Chinese. The armed guerrilla force,17 fighting in the mountains and not the ‘office-ridden’ leaders in the city were to be the leaders of the revolution. It was not ‘politics in command’, but the guerrillas in command. And what is a party? ‘A party is not a vanguard just because it declares itself as such. It is not revolutionary because it says so. It is not Marxist–Leninist just because it is registered as such. We shall judge people not from their words, but from their actions.’18 Castro concluded his ideas on the role of the party by declaring: ‘We shall make the revolution with party or without party.’ This was virtually a tandava that the Cuban Shiva was dancing in the world communist movement. Castro’s last heretical speech was the one he made in the Cultural Congress of Havana—an international gathering of progressive intellectuals. In this speech, Castro castigated the revisionists and the peace-mongers—‘Los revisionistasy Amados de Paz’. He eulogised the contribution of the revolutionary intellectuals in the world revolutionary movement as opposed to the ‘political parties and mass organizations’ who ‘pass’ pious resolutions and dole out official solidarity by the bucket. ‘What is this slogan of peace?’, he asked. ‘It is nothing but a slogan; something to be taken lightly. This slogan does not mobilise the masses. It lulls them to sleep’; praising the attitude of the Latin American clergy for their bold stand against the repression of the oligarchs, Castro declared to Vietnamese cheering crowd in the Chaplin Theatre in Havana: ‘It is an irony of our times that the priests have become revolutionaries and revolutionaries priests.’19 His most warm-hearted praise was reserved for the Vietnamese. ‘Vietnam is our banner. It is the banner of progressive humanity. This banner shall never be lowered.’20 He exhorted his audience to

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learn from the Vietnamese—‘the most exemplary revolutionaries of this epoch’. And the way to help the Vietnamese was to intensify the struggle against imperialism all over the world, particularly in the ‘Third World’ and to create more Vietnam. The North Korean communists viewed the various problems of the world communist movement, including the war in Vietnam much in the same light as the Cubans. In a detailed article written on the first anniversary of Che Guevara’s death for the Tricontinental magazine, Kim Il Sung developed his own and the Korean party’s ideas on some of the crucial issues facing the revolutionary movement. His positions were closely similar to those of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Like Che, Kim Il Sung believed that since ‘forces of capital were international’, the liberation struggle of the peoples too had to be an ‘international movement’. This according to him was the law of development of the world revolutionary movement and ‘the excellent tradition already formed in the course of the people’s liberation struggle’. Kim, without naming anyone, came down heavily on those who shunned revolutionary struggles on the pretext of saving world peace. ‘To turn away from revolution on the pretext of avoiding sacrifices or in the name of world peace is, in fact, tantamount to forcing the people into life-long slavery to capital.’21 Ridiculing the ‘peaceful transition’ thesis of the Russians, he wrote: ‘Human history does not know an instance of any ruling class submissively turning over its supremacy, or an instance of any reactionary class meekly waiving its power without resorting to counter-revolutionary violence.’22 He characterised American imperialism as the ‘most barbarous and most heinous imperialism of modern times’. And it was a cunning imperialism too. Its strategy was to destroy, by force of arms, the small and weak socialist countries and newly independent countries one by one while ‘shunning confrontation, even improving relations with the big socialist powers’. Obviously, Kim Il Sung was not happy with the détente that was emerging between imperialism and the ‘big socialist powers’ at the cost of small socialist countries like Korea, Vietnam

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and Cuba. In other words, the big socialist powers were betraying the cause of the small countries of the socialist camp for their own sectarian interests. In an obvious reference to what was going on in the East European countries (especially after Czechoslovakia), Kim wrote: Imperialism is also intensifying ideological and political offensive against, and subvert from within, those countries which are weak ideologically and not willing to take revolutionary positions, but instead spread illusions about imperialism among people clamouring for unprincipled coexistence with imperialism and desire to live in good terms with imperialism.23

It was thus an accusation of betrayal as well as a charge that some socialist countries had given up their revolutionary position for a desire to live on good terms with imperialism. In another article, again in the Cuban magazine, Tricontinental, Kim sailed into the champions of world peace and peaceful coexistence: The line of seeking unprincipled compromise with imperialism does not save peace; it only encourages its aggressive actions and increases, the clangers of war. Peace secured through slavish submission is not peace. Genuine peace will not come unless struggle is waged against imperialism, unless a slaves’ peace is rejected and the rule of oppressors overthrown.24

The Korean line obviously was that peace could be won only by destroying the imperialism monster and not through unprincipled compromises as the Russian and the East European communists were trying to do. It was the peace of the slaves which the Koreans resolutely rejected. But one had to fight against imperialism and not merely issue threatening statements and warnings against it as their neighbours, the Chinese, were doing. By August 12, 1967, when Kim wrote this article, the Chinese had already given the US imperialists 473 ‘serious warnings’ over the question of Taiwan and for acts of aggression. Obviously having a dig at the Chinese, Kim Il Sung wrote: ‘At the same time we cannot tolerate the practice of only shouting against imperialism (but in actual deed) being afraid of imperialism. The latter is the line of compromise in inverted form.’25

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Kim has often criticized Russia’s ‘modern revisionism’ and peaceful coexistence line, but he has also told China to stop deciding who is right and who is wrong according to pro-Chinese allegiances. ‘It is impossible’, wrote Kim Il Sung, ‘that one country becomes the centre of world revolution’. While bringing about an economic miracle at home, 1970, Kim has lashed out at the ‘worshippers of great powers’—Russia and China—calling them flunkies. ‘But some obstinate persons infected with flunkyism towards the great powers [USSR and China] continued to obstruct the implementation of our party’s correct line…. All the factionalism who appeared in our party were without exception dogmatic and worshippers of great powers.’26 Kim has accused modern revisionism which, according to him, is getting rampant in the international communist movement of ‘disseminating illusions about American imperialism and diverting the people from resolutely fighting against it’. He proclaimed an independent policy of ‘Juche’ which means ‘independence in politics, self-reliance in economy and self-defence in national defence’. With regard to the unity of the socialist camp, the Korean communists have proclaimed that this unity and solidarity are unthinkable without a relentless, uncompromising anti-imperialist struggle. On the question of Vietnam also, Kim Il Sung’s position is similar to that of Che and Fidel Castro. He regards the Vietnamese people’s resistance for national salvation as ‘the focal point of world’s antiimperialist struggle’. According to him, US aggression on Vietnam was a challenge for the entire socialist camp and the progressive people all over the globe. It was not a national but an international struggle against a powerful ‘imperialist monster’. And to fight it, people must intensify their struggles, make their revolutions and join efforts ‘to tear off left and right arms from US imperialism, tear off its right and left legs and behead it eventually everywhere it stretches out its crooked hands of aggression’.27 Anticipating pressures on the Vietnamese from the Big Brothers, Kim stated categorically: ‘No one has the right to force upon the Vietnamese people a solution of their internal matters against their will. The sacred duty of the

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peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America is to help them to repulse imperialist aggression.’28 On October 5, 1964, Kim Il Sung enthusiastically supported Fidel Castro’s call for sending volunteers to Vietnam. Such were the clear and definite positions of the Cuban and Korean communists on Vietnam and on questions of politics and ideology which demarcated them from those of the Russians and the Chinese, more particularly the Russians. The Vietnamese communists have always been forthright in staring their political–ideological standpoint unmindful of the positions of their two powerful neighbours—the Russians and the Chinese. Despite the fact that they have been engaged in a total war for over two decades, they have never shirked from boldly formulating their stand on issues being discussed and debated in the socialist world and in the international communist movement. They have frankly spoken on such fundamental questions as violence and its role in the contemporary revolutionary process, on peaceful coexistence and peaceful transition, nuclear weapons and world peace and on the unity of the socialist camp. An article published in Hoc Tap, the theoretical organ of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, discussed some of these knotty problems with lucidity, honesty and candidness. On the role of violence in history, the article chastised those who had ‘swallowed the poison of bourgeois pacifism’. It stated: Today modern revisionists and right opportunists in the communist movement keep wagging their tongues about ‘peace’…. They dare not mention the word violence. For them violence is taboo. The fact is that they have rejected the Marxist–Leninist theory on the role of violence in history.29

Totally rejecting the peaceful parliamentary road recommended by the Russians (modem revisionists), the article said: Revisionists in the past as in the present have made great efforts to sing the praises of the bourgeois parliamentary system. They have made a big fanfare about the entry into socialism through the ‘parliamentary road’. As a matter of fact, democratic rights under

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the bourgeois parliamentary system are, as Marx put it, nothing more than the right to decide once every three or six years who of the ruling classes should ‘represent’ the people in the parliament and oppress them.30

The article, after quoting Lenin’s ‘Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International’, declared that only a violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie state apparatus from top to bottom can ensure the real subordination of the whole class of exploiters. It further stated that so far there was ‘not a single precedent’ of peaceful transition to socialism in the world working-class history of revolutionary struggle. Attacking frontally the Russian leaders, revisionist positions on the question of nuclear weapons and peaceful struggles, the article scornfully commented: There are people who claim that as a result of the emergence of nuclear weapons, the working class must not seize power by violence, but by peaceful means…for all their destructive powers, nuclear weapons cannot change the law of development of human society. They can cause certain changes in military tactics, but never in the strategy and tactics of the working class.31

On the question of the war of liberation in which they are engaged, the Vietnamese communists, like the Cubans and the Koreans, emphasize the international character of the struggle. In an interview with John Gerassi in Hanoi, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong said: ‘Right now we happen to be in the frontlines of the struggle against imperialism. But it is a struggle of all exploited peoples everywhere and we consider ourselves just one part of that struggle. No one will really be totally free until we are.’32 Sticking to their internationalist position, the Vietnamese consider the war of aggression by the United States as a challenge to the socialist camp and to all peace-loving people in the world. Whether the countries of the socialist camp accept this challenge or not, the Vietnamese never fail to emphasise this fact. ‘The highly adventurous and crazy acts of escalation of Nixon administration are a brutal encroachment on the sovereignty and

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security of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and an insolent challenge to the socialist countries…’33 But the irony of the situation is that the ‘challenger’ of the socialist camp is today being treated as an honoured guest in the capitals of the same socialist world. The Vietnamese leaders view with concern the disunity in the socialist camp which according to them is being made use of by imperialism. Ho Chi Minh did not forget to mention this sad reality in his last testament. Vo Nguyen Giap in his ‘War of Liberation’, published in Vietnamese Studies, commented on this important issue: ‘The imperialists are seeking to exploit the differences in the socialist camp and the international communist movement. On the Vietnamese question, the US imperialists are also endeavouring to make full use of these differences.’34 The imperialist endeavours to make full use of these differences have borne rich fruit, despite the hopes to the contrary of Vietnamese leaders. Such were the independent, clear and razor-sharp positions of the ‘Third Communist Front’—an important segment of the world socialist camp and the international communist movement. The emergence of this ‘Front’ had instilled hopes in the minds of revolutionaries who were appalled by the opportunism and cynicism of the traditional leaders of the international communist movement. The leaders of this front became a source of inspiration, especially for the young, nonconformist revolutionaries untainted by the cynicism and corruption that prevailed in the bureaucratic straitjacket known as communist parties. It was hoped that, united over the question of the Vietnam War and other ideological issues, this front would grow, adding numbers and strength, till it would take over the leadership of the world communist movement. Such hopes were, however, not realized.

Collapse of the ‘Third Communist Front’ The Russians gave a long rope to Castro in his campaign of fulminations against their political and ideological positions. As has been pointed out before, the moral prestige of the Cuban leadership was

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too high for resorting to arm-twisting by any socialist power, however strong or influential in the world communist movement. But the Russians as well as the Chinese smarted under the hammer blows of Fidelista ‘heresy’ (in his speech on March 13, 1966, Castro called the Chinese leaders ‘old senile idiots fit to be kept in an old folk’s home’. He also accused them of ‘importing the cult of monarchy and fascism into the socialist movement’). In Moscow, he was known as ‘that Caribbean viper in our bosom’. The loyal, traditional communist parties ventured to attack Castro in mild and involved terms but, in reply, got more from him than they could give. The Venezuelan CP accused him of interfering in the internal affairs of the Venezuelan Party but, in return, had to pocket the charge that they were the ‘despicable agents of US imperialism and Venezuelan oligarchy headed by Leoni’. When some parties, notably the Argentinian and Brazilian parties, called him ‘immature petty bourgeois adventurer’, they had to hear the following: ‘Of course some of these “illustrious revolutionary thinkers” call us petty bourgeois adventurers without maturity. We are lucky that the revolution came before maturity! Because at the end, the mature ones, the overmature, have gotten so ripe that they are rotten.’ The time had come to put a brake on these attacks which were causing great damage to the Russian prestige all over the world, especially in the ‘Third-World’ countries. The ‘wild horse’ of the Latin American pampas had to be put in the halter and tamed. Soon the lasso was thrown. As we have seen, the Cuban heresy started in the early sixties in the face of US aggression in Vietnam and the Soviet failure to defend the frontiers of the socialist bloc. The Cubans had begun to feel more insecure. To relieve pressure on the hard-pressed and isolated Vietnamese, as well as to turn American attention to another area of struggle in Latin America, Che Guevara opened a second front in Bolivia in 1965. Che’s death and the fiasco of the Bolivian campaign was a great setback to the Castroist calculations of a continental revolution, ignited by a revolutionary ‘foco’. With the fall of the foco theory propounded by Regis Debray in the name of Fidel Castro, the Cubans came to the realization that their survival depended on the eradication of underdevelopment of home and not as they had thought in 1965 (Che’s departure for Bolivia) on the trial of strength in Latin America.

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This forced withdrawal in Latin America was a prelude to Castro’s reconciliation with the USSR. There was another equally important factor to be reckoned with. It was that the Cuban ‘heresy’ had no economic base to stand upon. A country living on a Russian dole of almost a million dollars a day; dependent utterly on Russian oil without which its economy could not stand by itself even for a week; a country 80 per cent of whose imports and 82 per cent of whose exports were from and to the Soviet bloc countries; a country which had broken all relations with China; a blockaded country so close to the imperialist citadel could hardly hope to challenge two superpowers and a great power (China) all at once. Swallowing all pride in a gulp, the Cuban leaders capitulated before the Soviet Union. The Cuban ‘heresy’ fell in the same way that it rose—the way of a meteor. Not that the Russians did not resort to arm-twisting. They did. Suddenly there was a breakdown in Russian oil deliveries after a hardhitting speech by Castro on January 2, 1968. Petrol rationing was introduced, and Castro hinted that Russians were applying pressure ‘to test the dignity of the revolution’. He did not say it in so many words but, a few days later, Granma made a point of explaining that the cut in supplies was not due to shortages in the Soviet Union (as claimed by the Russians) where oil production had reached the record level of 300 million tons in 1967. The obvious inference was that for purely political reasons, Russia had decided to cut off oil supplies, and that there would be a shortage not only of oil but also of grain and other produce. Because of all these factors, Cuba had to adjust itself to the exigencies of the situation, which demanded an end to criticism of the Soviet Union, the burial of the ideological differences and donning of conformist robes, as was expected of a good member of the socialist camp led by the great Soviet Union. The new process began with Cuba’s support for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 by the forces of the USSR and some other Warsaw Pact countries. The decision of the Cuban leadership hit the capitals of the world like a bolt from the blue. Only in January 1968, Castro was hitting at the ‘Calcified pseudo-Marxist Church’, ridiculing the orthodox communists who had turned into ‘priests’ and railing at the Soviet Union for aiding the Latin American oligarchies.35

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Therefore, Castro’s mood of reconciliation with the Soviet Union and his support to the armed intervention in a sister socialist country came at a time when Russia’s revolutionary credibility had hit a new low and when even some of the most loyal communist parties in Europe (French, Italian, Swedish) had felt bound to voice their protest at the latest ‘international action’ of the leader of the socialist camp. Castro maintained that the socialist bloc had been forced to violate international law, but in the name of ‘the law even more sacred to all true communists—the people’s struggle against imperialism’.36 He also told the Russians (this was the ‘heresy’s last flicker), what he called ‘a few basic truths that I have been keeping to myself’. He spoke of the ‘weakening and softening of the revolutionary spirit’ in Eastern Europe, the ‘indifference to, and ignorance of, the problems of the underdeveloped world’ and the ‘tendency to favour commercial practices reminiscent of advanced capitalist countries’. Castro in his speech hoped that Moscow had come to see the ‘vanity of all idyllic hopes to improve relations with the imperialist government of the United States’ and that the Soviet Union would cease to engage in ‘bourgeois economic reforms which had such disastrous effects on Czechoslovakia’. In the end, he appealed to the socialist camp leader to come to the aid of Vietnam, Cuba and Korea—the three countries most exposed to imperialist onslaughts. In his usual rhetorical style, he asked the Soviet leaders: We acknowledge the bitter necessity that called for sending these forces into Czechoslovakia; we do not condemn the socialist countries. But we ask ourselves: ‘Will the Warsaw Pact divisions be sent to Vietnam if the Yankee imperialists step up aggression?… Will they be sent to North Korea if the Yankee imperialists attack that country? Will they be sent to Cuba if the Yankee imperialists attack our country?37

The Russians, despite some of these ‘obvious truths’ that Castro told them, were overjoyed with the speech of the Cuban leader. Here was a great leader of the revolutionary ‘Third World’ supporting the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The grateful Russians declared Castro as the ‘great friend of the socialist countries’, one ‘who understood clearly the logic

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of the complex situation that prevailed in Europe’, and a ‘revolutionary fighter who knows what imperialism really is’ (the quotes are from an article in Pravda dated October 30, 1968, titled ‘Czechoslovakia and the Socialist World’). That ‘Caribbean viper in our bosom’ had now become a true friend. In fact, Castro’s reaction to the Czechoslovak events was dictated purely by political considerations affecting the safety of Cuba. He came to believe that Cuba would enjoy greater protection through continued membership in the Soviet bloc than by strict adherence to the principle of sovereignty for small countries. ‘We must learn to face political realities’, Castro declared, ‘and not give way to romantic and idealistic dreams’. The path now was straight and easy as the path of conformism always is. The Cubans, and also the Vietnamese and the Koreans, had maintained that both Russia and China were responsible for the schism in the communist camp and, therefore, had decided not to participate in the forthcoming World Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow, where China was going to be attacked and isolated. To please the Russians, and in direct contravention of the decision of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Castro sent Carlos Rodriguez, an old-time pro-Moscow communist, to this conference as an observer. This observer from Cuban Communist Party made an important speech in the conference (boycotted by the Koreans and the Vietnamese) which ended with the following words: We declare from this Tribune that in any decisive confrontation, whether it be the act of the Soviet Union to avert threats of dislocation or provocation to the socialist system, or an act of aggression by any one against the Soviet people, Cuba will stand unflinchingly by the USSR.38

This speech astounded even the representatives of the loyal communist parties of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Rodriguez declared the eternal loyalty of the Cuban leadership, saying that in future too any Soviet armed intervention in a socialist country to prevent ‘dislocation’ of socialism would be supported by its staunch ally, Cuba. This oath of loyalty had wider implications than mere declaration of friendship with the USSR. It meant complete falling in line.

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The Cuba of 1969 was totally different from the Cuba of the preceding years. Not only were the old heretical ideas put on ice, they were discreetly but systematically replaced ‘by others from the Russian storehouse’. One such was the building of socialism in Cuba, which according to the new doctrine called for high investment, low consumption and maximum technical and scientific knowledge—a model of development bearing close resemblance to the Soviet doctrine at the time of Stalinist industrialisation and collectivisation, roundly criticised by Che Guevara in many of his writings. Addressing a graduation class of the School of Political Science of the University of Havana in September 1969, Minister Armando Hart said: We think that a serious study of the experience of the first proletarian state in history, the Soviet Union, is quite indispensable. We can even go further than that and assert that this experience is a decisive element in teaching us what we ourselves have to do.39

Vietnam was still there in the rhetoric of Fidel Castro. But the Guevarian imperative of ‘create two, three, more Vietnams’ was quietly put aside. While the guerrilla ‘focos’ disintegrated without Cuban help, orthodox communists, ‘revisionistas, flooded Havana where they were hardly ever seen before the Cuban–Russian honeymoon, OLAS and OSPAAAL, those two militant international organisations, became a pale and ineffective replica of their former selves’. The OLAS secretariat hardly ever met and OSPAAAL’s main function was reduced to the despatch of magazines and news sheets. On October 2, 1968, the Peruvian army officers led by General Alfredo Velasco staged a coup d’état (see my article, ‘New Pattern in Peru’, Economic & Political Weekly [1972]). The new team nationalized the US oil companies and launched agrarian reforms. The regime got Castro’s unqualified blessings. An army coup d’état led by officers trained in the United States too could now bring about revolutionary changes! That was the reason why the Russians were helping their oligarchies despite Cuban protestations. In 1970, Castro witnessed another event of great importance for Latin America. His old ‘Marxist’ friend Salvador Allende of Chile was elected the president of his country through peaceful elections. This was the first vision of peaceful transition to socialism that the

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Russian sages have been writing and speaking about for so long. This was the new frame of mind of the Cuban rebel and heretic. He had once declared: ‘They have turned the communist movement into a church, a religious sect or a Masonic lodge…we shall never join such a church.’40 Now Castro was entering the same church, the same Masonic lodge, and was eager to reach and pray at the holy altar, situated in the Kremlin. He had accepted the Trinity—peaceful competition, peaceful coexistence and peaceful transition—the counterparts of father, son and the holy ghost. On May 1, 1972, the faithful started on his pilgrimage of the Holy Socialist world, just after addressing a May Day rally in Havana where it was announced that the Cuban Premier was to visit Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, GDR, Czechoslovakia and some African countries. In his May Day speech, Castro declared: ‘And so there be no misunderstanding allow us to say that we have the utmost confidence in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.’41 Indeed there was now no misunderstanding a fact which delighted the hearts of the US imperialists the most. It was during his visit to the GDR that the news of the US blockade of North Vietnamese ports was splashed across the world. Castro’s reaction came in one of his speeches in the German Democratic Republic: ‘I appeal to the Soviet to do something about the US blockade of Vietnamese ports.’42 This was a piteous appeal from the Cuban lion whose roar had been smothered for good. In the Kremlin ceremony where he was awarded the highest order of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin, by the Russian party chief Leonid Brezhnev, Castro saluted ‘the efforts of the Soviet Union for preserving peace and preventing the deadly menace of thermonuclear war’.43 He agreed with his host that ‘the assertion of the principle of peaceful co-existence by no means signifies a weakening of the ideological struggle which will become ever sharper…’44 This was the last act of conversion—the acceptance of the principle of peaceful coexistence which according to the ‘former’ Castro could be achieved only ‘in agreement with imperialism’. And for Vietnam what was left with Castro to give was the same old ‘official and formal

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solidarity’ he had once so ridiculed. And Che’s imperative, ‘create two, three, more Vietnams’, was now finally laid to rest along with his facial mark and hands in a newly constructed special museum in Havana. With the Castro’s return to the orthodox fold, the ‘Third Communist Front’ lost its moorings. What was left of the ‘Front’, the blockaded and beleaguered Vietnam, unable to indulge in public polemic with either the Russians or the Chinese, and North Korea, sandwiched between the two socialist giants who were eager to have a detente with US imperialism to serve their narrow nationalist interests? The North Koreans had won the admiration of the entire progressive world by their economic miracle (see Joan Robinson’s article in Monthly Review, January–February 1965) and their implacable and fearless opposition to US imperialism. The capture of the American spy ship, Pueblo, by the North Koreans in 1969 and the firm manner in which they dealt with the captured American crew, despite repeated threats from Washington, is just one instance of Korea’s courageous stand vis-a-vis US imperialism. Among the revolutionaries, the sharpest and, at times, most effective ‘Che Guevarist’ is North Korea’s outstanding leader Kim Il Sung. In the 1960s, Kim led his country to phenomenal economic success and guided his party into a very militant internationalist, yet independent, stance. He consolidated his position in 1959, purged first the pro-Russian elements out of the party, then the pro-Chinese and thus laid the foundations of ‘Juche’ in ideology. By ‘Juche’ in ideology, Kim Il Sung means taking absolutely independent positions on questions of politics and ideology being currently debated in the international communist movement—positions based as he stresses, on Marxism– Leninism and not dictated by narrow nationalist or transitory interest. His ‘heresy’ unlike that of Castro’s has not been so loud; yet it has proved to be more firm. The Korean leaders have been watching with dismay the new trend of working for a detente and accommodation with US imperialism on the part of the senior members of the socialist camp. Along with the people of the world, they have learnt their own lessons from the recent visits of Nixon to Peking and Moscow. In fact, Kim Il Sung welcomed the news of Nixon’s visit to Peking as a ‘trip of the defeated’

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with Nixon arriving in Peking ‘waving a white flag’. And so it seemed at the beginning of Nixon’s visit to the Chinese capital. But the royal reception that Nixon received in the People’s Republic of China must have convinced the Koreans that their early assessment of the visit was wide of the mark. No wonder the Koreans kept silent over Nixon’s visit to Moscow to seal agreements of friendship and coexistence. But Korea has its own specific problems which cry for solution, the most outstanding being the question of reunification of the country. South Korea is a US-occupied part of the Korean peninsula and is ruled by what Kim Il Sung has been describing for over a decade as the ‘traitorous clique of Park Chung-hee’. It is a semi-fascist regime propped up by the American bayonets and like the then regime in South Vietnam cannot outlast American troop withdrawal for more than a few days. On the other hand, Kim Il Sung has promised his people reunification of the country which, as this writer noted during his visit to North Korea, is the question uppermost in the minds of the people in the North. The lesson the North Koreans seem to have learnt from the results of Nixon’s visit to Peking and Moscow is that each socialist country must fend for itself independently and that international solidarity, or even solidarity between the countries of the socialist camp, is nothing but a cliche. And as for the revolutionary concept of international proletarianism, it is long dead and buried. This has led to change in tactics on the part of the North Koreans. In the Washington Post, Selig Harrison has described an interview he had been given in Tokyo by Kim Byong Sik, a representative of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly and first vice-chairman of the Association of Korean Residents in Japan.45 Kim Byong Sik, Harrison noted, has been the ‘long recognised North Korean spokesman in Japan’. Kim Byong Sik told Harrison that the North Korean government was eager for ‘expanded relations and end of our confrontation with the United States’. Kim further told the American journalist: We recognise that some of the conservative circles in the US might worry about what would happen if US troops are withdrawn. We therefore, feel that a no-war agreement with South Korea should come first in order to give assurance to American opinion and we are confident that we can persuade the peace-loving people of the United States to accept our reasonable proposal for reunification.46

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During this time, the North Koreans conducted secret talks with the leaders of the administration in Seoul and on July 4, 1972 signed a joint statement with them on the ticklish question of the reunification of the two parts of the country. The three cardinal principles of this effort at reunification would be that (a) a reunification should be achieved independently, without reliance on outside force or interference; (b) the reunification should be achieved by peaceful means and (c) the national unity as one nation should be promoted above all, transcending the differences of ideology, ideas and social systems. Alongside signing this joint statement, the two countries have been conducting negotiations through their respective Red Cross establishments to solve the problem of uniting families broken up during the Korean war over two decades ago. These events raised great hopes in the beginning and were cited as yet another example of fruitful bilateralism on the Asian continent. The subsequent events have, however, shown the North Koreans the futility of running after the mirage of achieving reunification through negotiations with imperialist stooges. An article in Pyongyang Times reproduced from the Korean Party Central Committee’s organ, Rodong Sinmun, bemoans the callousness of the ‘South Korean authorities’ over the joint statement only one month after it was signed.47 According to this article, the Park Chung-hee administration is already engaged in repudiating the joint statement by saying that communists cannot be relied upon ‘as they have been accustomed to throwing away their promises like a pair of worn-out shoes’, that UN forces in the South are not outside forces and therefore the question of their withdrawal does not arise, that unification can be had only on the basis of ‘liberal democracy’ and not on the basis of ‘communist totalitarianism’, that there is no occasion for abrogating or even recasting of the notorious ‘Anti-Communist Law’ and the ‘National Security Law’ in South Korea and that the reunification can be had only by ‘prevailing over communism’. The article also informs its readers that since the signing of the joint statement, military exercises and manoeuvres have increased in South Korea and in one of these exercises, ‘they went so far as staging a farce for liberating the people of northern half under the socialist system’ after marking off (what they call) a ‘week of liberation movement’.

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The North Koreans seem to have learnt sooner than their counterparts in China and Russia that it is not possible to have either peaceful coexistence or peaceful reunification ‘except in agreement with imperialism’. Their current exercise with peaceful reunification and joint statements with imperialist stooges is going to be a short-lived affair. A leopard does not change its spots, neither do its offspring, legitimate or illegitimate. As has been correctly pointed out by Kim Il Sung, imperialism wants to avoid confrontation only with ‘big socialist powers’ and intends ‘to destroy by force of arms small and weak socialist countries’. A peaceful reunification of Korea through negotiations with imperialist stooges will be as great a miracle as a peaceful transition to socialism in Spain, Portugal or Brazil, or, in fact, any other country. The Koreans, however, have not given up their revolutionary principles. Unlike Fidel Castro, Kim Il Sung has not accepted the orthodoxy of the Russian Church, neither has he embraced the Trinity—peaceful competition, peaceful transition and peaceful coexistence. The unity of the ‘Third Communist Front’ has been disrupted (thanks mainly to Castro’s defection to the Russian side), but only at the top and not at the base of the movement. The heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people will further help in consolidating this movement at its base by isolating its splitters and detractors—the votaries of peace at all costs and coexistence with imperialism. The spectacle of the largest country in the world, the richest and the most formidably armed, bogged down in an endless war by a poor, non-industrialised but valiant people living on a territory one-twenty sixth the size of the US is a profound lesson to the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The massive tonnage of bombs dropped upon North Vietnam without effect (90,000 tons per month) and the overall ineffectiveness of the policy of imposition of might through terrorism is exposed even to the Americans themselves. Commenting on the war in Vietnam, the well-known journalist Walter Lippmann has written: The weak and the poor people of the earth have found a response to our wealth and our weapons…they can subsist when the rich would starve, fight with simple weapons against the great and sophisticated weapons, and they are hard to conquer because so

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many of them have a cause for which they are willing to die. The old military superiority of the western world does not find it easy to cope with the guerrilla…48

While the people look at Vietnam and draw their lessons, Vietnam has become a testing round, a touchstone for various sectors and tendencies inside the world revolutionary movement. These sectors and tendencies will now be judged by their attitude towards this great struggle. A revolutionary today will be defined by his position towards the Vietnam War, by his solidarity with the Vietnamese people—not the formal solidarity so plentifully doled by revisionists through their professional solidarity organisations, but the effective solidarity of resolutely fighting imperialism in one’s own country, at one’s own place. To engage imperialism on a global scale, to intensify the struggle against it and not to bring about a detente with it is today the solidarity and help needed by the Vietnamese people.

Notes 1. Cubans give a name to each year. Some others were Year of Agriculture, Year of Solidarity and Year of the Heroic Guerrilla. 2. Kosygin’s visit to Hanoi on February 7, 1965 when the Americans took a new step in escalation, ordering the regular bombing of North Vietnam. 3. V. Unita (May 18, 1965). Quoted by Mario Sanchez Desnoes in ‘Un Gran Gesta Vietnamita’ (New York, NY: Excelsior Publishers, 1965). 4. Message of Che Guevara, ‘Tricontinental Special Supplement in Spanish’, published in Havana (April 16, 1967), 8. 5. Ibid., 9. 6. Ibid., 10. 7. Ibid., 17. 8. It was published later in Algeria and in Guinea (Bissau) and also by the Eritrean National Liberation Front, the PFLP of Palestine and by guerrilla points in some Latin American countries. 9. Castro’s closing speech at the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (August 10,1967). 10. Castro’s speech at Havana University (March 13, 1967). 11. Castro’s speech at the OLAS (August 10, 1967). 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid.

224  Indian Debates on the International Left 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. See Regis Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution. 18. Castro’s speech (March 13, 1967). 19. Castro’s closing speech at the Cultural Congress, Havana ( January 12, 1968). 20. Ibid. 21. Kim Il Sung, ‘The Great Anti-Imperialist Cause of Asian, African and Latin American Peoples Is Invincible’. Tricontinental (October 8, 1968, Spanish Edition), 3. 22. Ibid., 4. 23. Ibid., 6. 24. Kim Il Sung. ‘Let Us Intensify the Anti-Imperialist, Anti-US Struggle’, Tricontinental (August 12, 1967, Spanish Edition), 3. 25. Ibid., 6. 26. Kim Il Sung, ‘Speech at 13th anniversary of Workers Party of Korea’, Selected Works, Vol. II. 27. Kim Il Sung, Tricontinental article on ‘First Anniversary of Che Guevara’s Death’. 28. Ibid. 29. Hoc Tap, ‘The Cause of Vietnam’ (September 1963), excerpt reproduced in Towards Revolution, Vol. I, by John Gerassi (New York, NY: 1970), 78–83. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Gerassi, Towards Revolution, 131. 33. Editorial, ‘South Vietnam in Struggle’ (May 22, 1972). 34. Vo Nguyen Giap, ‘War of Liberation’, Vietnamese Studies, no. 8 (1966). 35. Castro’s OLAS speech. 36. Fidel Castro, ‘Speech on Events in Czechoslovakia’ (October 25, 1968). 37. Ibid. 38. The Granma Weekly Summary in English (June 15, 1969). 39. See Che Guevara, ‘Meaning of Planning and Bank Credit and Socialism’. 40. Castro’s speech (March 13, 1967). 41. Granma Weekly Summary in English (May 7, 1972). 42. The Statesman (May 30, 1972). 43. Times of India, ‘AFP Report’ (June 29, 1972). Report sent from Moscow on June 28. 44. Ibid. 45. Selig Harrison in Washington Post (March 7, 1972). 46. Ibid. 47. The Pyongyang Times (August 5, 1972). 48. Walter Lippmann in Newsweek (August 1, 1966).

CHAPTER 15

Vietnam: Whither the Paris Peace Accords!*,**

I When, in April 1973, I published an article on the Paris Peace Agreement entitled ‘Unworkable Agreement’ in this journal (April 14, 1973), I was criticised for my ‘pessimism’ and ‘sectarianism’. In this article, I had made the following points: 1. The Agreement on Ending the war and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was a compromise document meant to accommodate all the signatories and both the Vietnamese and the Americans had been forced to make concessions on their long-standing demands on each other. 2. The Vietnamese revolutionaries were compelled to yield on certain crucial issues due to the inadequacy of Soviet and Chinese aid and the pressure of these countries for ‘peace’ resulted in the imposition on the Vietnamese accords that did not expel the Yankee aggressors nor liquidate the Saigon puppet government. * This is the only Economic & Political Weekly article which doesn’t have any endnotes or references. ** Lajpat Rai, ‘Vietnam: Whither the Paris Peace Accords!’, Economic & Political Weekly 9, no. 49 (1974): 2013–2016.

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3. The Agreement on the face of it was unworkable and did not represent such a victory for the popular forces in Vietnam as it was made out by the pro-Moscow section of the world Communist movement. The sense of elation at the signing of the Agreement was, therefore, misplaced. For pointing this out, I was dubbed as a sectarian who could not fully visualize the great victory achieved by the Vietnamese with the help of their socialist allies and who had the audacity to criticise the great socialist countries for pursuing a policy of detente with the US. As to the Peace Agreement, it was thought to be perfectly workable on the guarantee of the powerful socialist camp led by the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the anti-war movement in the USA and elsewhere in the capitalist world on the other. What is the reality of the situation in Vietnam after more than 20 months of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords? This reality has been described in the October 8 statement of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam circulated by the Embassy of DRVN in New Delhi. The statement begins with the following words: ‘More than 20 months have elapsed since the signing of the Paris Agreement on Vietnam, but real peace has not yet been restored in South Vietnam and the aspirations of the people for peace, independence, democracy, welfare and national concord have not been realised.’ The statement accuses the US government and the puppet Thieu administration on going back on ‘all their commitments’ and of pursuing ‘a policy of war by sabotaging in an extremely brutal manner the Paris Agreement and the Joint Communique of June 13, 1973’. Describing the situation of the people living under ‘the tyrannical, ruthless rule of Nguyen Van Thieu junta’ as ‘more critical than ever’, the statement says: ‘millions have been thrown into concentration camps, hundreds of thousands of political prisoners are still detained, taxes are heavy, prices exorbitant…poverty and famine are rampant…life is getting more and more impossible’. After describing the traitor Thieu as ‘equivalent of war, repression, terror, exploitation,

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corruption, death, poverty, hatred and division’, the statement calls for the ‘overthrow of the Thieu regime and the formation in Saigon of an administration committed to peace and national concord and willing to implement the Paris Agreement on Vietnam seriously’. The statement accuses the US of ‘consistently sabotaging’ the Paris Agreement ‘in a systematic and very serious manner, while the Nguyen Van Thieu junta bent on serving the interests of US imperialism in carrying on with the war, …thus multiplying its crimes against the people’. The demand for the ‘overthrow of the Thieu gang in Saigon’ thus takes the Vietnam revolutionaries back to their old position before the signing of the Paris Agreement when they insisted on the disbandment of the Thieu administration as a precondition for signing the Paris Agreement. They had, however, been prevailed upon to, or ‘blackmailed’ into, accepting Thieu in Saigon by the detente-loving leaders of the socialist camp. The October 8 statement of PRG is also an acknowledgement of the fact that the Paris Agreement is an unworkable agreement so long as US forces in disguise are in Vietnam and Thieu is in Saigon.

II There is no atrocity, no breach of faith that US imperialism has not committed in recent years in Vietnam. The atrocities are too numerous and too well known for us to list. As regards breach of faith, here are examples: Article 4 of January 23, 1973 ceasefire Accords stipulates: ‘The United States will not continue its military involvement or intervene in the internal affairs of South Vietnam.’ This is the fiction. The fact is stated by the New York Times of February 25, 1974: ‘Today one year after the signing of the ceasefire agreement, 4,940 US civilian “advisers” and technicians are employed in jobs directly related to Saigon dictatorship’s war effort’. Although US troops have been withdrawn from Vietnam, the vital role they played in keeping the dictator Thieu in power has been replaced to the extent possible by a massive infusion of US ‘advisers’

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and military aid. This was corroborated by David K. Shipler, a New York Times correspondent writing from Saigon: The United States, far from phasing out its military involvement in South Vietnam has descended from a peak of warfare to a high plateau of substantial support, despatching not only huge quantities of weapons and ammunition but also large numbers of American citizens who have become integral parts of South Vietnamese supply, transport and intelligence systems. (New York Times February 16, 1974)

Speaking about US aid to the Thieu regime, Shipler states: Although defence Department officials have refused to disclose just how much money they channel into the Saigon police apparatus, Senator Edward Kennedy estimates that as of last June Washington had spent more than 130 million on Thieu’s police and overflowing jails. However, this is only a drop in the bucket. Total US military aid to the Saigon regime this year [1974] is officially reported at $1,900 million and the true figure is pretty much higher.

According to Shipler, Thieu received about $3,000 million in military aid in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1973. Economic aid must be added to this. This will, says Shipler, amount to around $732 million in the fiscal year 1974. Such economic aid is a long-term project. On the basis of Thieu’s most optimistic projections, the World Bank has estimated that, by 1990, Saigon will still need at least $450 million a year in economic aid to stay afloat. Economic aid between 1974 and 1990, the Bank concluded, will have to be at least an annual average of $1,100 million. Faced with this unpleasant prospect, Washington is attempting to spread some of the burden to its imperialist partners. Japan, West Germany and France have already provided grants and loans to Thieu and negotiations are in progress for aid from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. Such is the extent of US involvement in Vietnam, which in effect makes a mockery of US withdrawal from the country, as well as of the entire Paris Accords which were signed with such solemnity in full view and approval of the whole world.

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On the other hand, in Laos, the revolutionists have been able to secure more gains since the Peace Accords of February 22, 1973. This agreement, very similar to the agreement at the Paris Peace Conference for Vietnam, provides for a ceasefire, an end to all foreign intervention, the formation of a government of national union and a national political consultative council and free and democratic general elections. The (Provisional) government of national union was formed in March which includes as many ministers from the Pathet Lao as from the Vientiane administration. However, this is not the first time that a reconciliation has occurred in Laos. In 1955–57 and in 1962–63, coalition governments were established that sought to follow a ‘neutralist policy’. But both times they were overthrown by Right-wing forces supported and encouraged by the American imperialists. The situation after February 1973 is, however, different. The Pathet Lao is stronger than ever and controls 80 per cent of the national territory and over 50 per cent of the population. But the main factor that has upset the relationship of forces is the new attitude of the Americans who are mainly interested in cutting off the supplies that were reaching the NLF and the guerrillas of the Cambodian liberation forces along the Ho Chi Minh trail that crosses Laos. The American imperialists have now come to realize that bombings were totally ineffective and that what could not be achieved through repression pure and simple may be achieved more effectively at the economic and reconstruction level. The presence of Pathet Lao detachments in Vientiane and at Luang Prabang will make coups by the reactionaries very difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand, their presence encourages the population of these cities and in general of the whole zone formerly controlled exclusively by the Souvanna Phouma government to voice their demands and to act politically—something that was inconceivable before the February 1973 Accords. The partial victory of the Laotian revolutionaries was thus concretised by the February Accords and the situation thus created can now be effectively utilised for deepening the class struggle throughout the country with the aim of winning complete victory for the popular forces. This situation unfortunately is not obtainable in South Vietnam, many essential provisions of the Agreement relating to whom have

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not been implemented, thanks to the perfidious behaviour of the US Administration and Nguyen Van Thieu. On the contrary, threats are being made of the resumption of hostilities in war-devastated Vietnam. Recently, Henry Kissinger emphasised that US economic and military aid to the Thieu regime was on the basis of Paris Agreement which recognised South Vietnamese’s right for self-determination. He reiterated that the US government recognised only Thieu’s government in South Vietnam and nobody else. Another, more serious, threat has come from the commander of US forces in the Pacific, General Gayler, who in an interview with US News and World Report (March 17, 1974) had warned that ‘the United States is preparing to return’ and that the ‘US troops are ready to continue fighting and resuming the bombardments and blockade against the DRVN’. President Gerald Ford is continuing to operate the Nixon doctrine and the US policy has not changed a bit under the new administration. The Paris Agreement has been accepted only in the breach rather than in its implementation by Washington and Saigon while the PRG has done all it could to implement the Agreement honestly and sincerely. The only hopeful indication in the otherwise gloomy situation in South Vietnam is the development of a popular movement for the removal of Nguyen Van Thieu from power in Saigon. This movement is the result of realisation that this despotic and anti-people regime pursuing cruel repression and tyrannical methods is deliberately continuing a policy of war and stands in the way of restoration of peace on the basis of implementation of the Paris Accords. The Thieu junta, however, finds protection behind the American military and economic shield and hopes to continue its illegitimate and barbarous rule for a long time to come. There are examples in the contemporary world of similar regimes lasting for a long time under the imperialist umbrella.

III As to my contention about the Soviet and Chinese role in pressurizing the Vietnamese to accept the Paris Accords, an article by Tad Szulc, published in the summer issue of Foreign Policy, throws a flood of light on the working of detente and its effect on the situation in

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Vietnam, Tad Szulc is a leading American journalist with a long experience of work in the field as a special correspondent of the New York Times. Szulc’s article reveals that Kissinger conducted secret negotiations concerning the course of war in Southeast Asia beginning as early as 1969. This was kept secret until January 1972. They were so secret that only the highest US, Moscow and Hanoi officials knew they were going on. Even President Nguyen Van Thieu was kept in the dark. According to Szulc, two major disagreements held Washington and Hanoi apart in their secret Paris talks. The first was Washington’s initial insistence on withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam in return for withdrawal of US troops. The second was Hanoi’s insistence that the Thieu regime must go. A turn in the situation came in May 1971, writes Szulc, ‘against the background of increasingly hostile public opinion at home…and in the context of Kissinger’s conviction that the key to a Vietnam settlement was a detente with both the Soviet Union and China’. At this point, Kissinger hinted that Washington would not insist on a North Vietnamese withdrawal from South Vietnam if in return Hanoi would reciprocate by dropping its insistence on the removal of the Thieu regime. Hanoi rejected this out of hand and the war continued. As Washington withdrew troops, it escalated bombing attacks. Domestic pressure against the war increased the anxiety in the White House to obtain a settlement. By January 1972, three facts concerning the war in Southeast Asia had become evident to the Nixon Administration. First, the United States could not crush the Vietnamese on the battlefield. Second, this was not only because the Vietnamese liberation forces outflanked the US military machine but also because of the anti-war movement at home which restricted the US options. The war had to be ‘wound down’ to appease the American public. Third, in order to achieve this end, Washington had to get the cooperation of Peking and Moscow, especially the latter. A diplomatic settlement leaving intact a pro-US military bastion in Saigon required pressures from its main sources of military and economic aid. Without this, the Vietnamese could not be moved from their stand that ‘Thieu must go’. On March 30, North Vietnam opened its massive offensive which,

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without the inhuman and indiscriminate American bombing, would have toppled the Thieu regime. Szulc writes: When the scope of the Communist offensive was finally realised, a touch of panic developed in the White House. The fall of Quangtri during April deepened the concern as well as the growing belief that the United States must intervene massively to save Saigon from collapse.

It was in this context, writes Szulc, that Nixon despatched Kissinger to the Soviet capital to explore the situation with Brezhnev and to enlist his support in persuading Hanoi to cease the offensive. The Kissinger mission to Moscow on April 20 was shrouded in total secrecy and it was a success. Brezhnev agreed to transmit Kissinger’s secret proposals to Hanoi and urge the Vietnamese to resume negotiations. But, in the meanwhile, the military situation in South Vietnam had deteriorated to such a point that Nixon and Kissinger began to plan retaliatory action against North Vietnam.

In the second week of May 1972, Nixon ordered the bombing of North Vietnamese cities and the mining of the port of Haiphong. Two weeks later, he was given a fraternal reception in Moscow as US bombs poured down on North Vietnamese cities killing thousands in cold blood. The pro-Moscow traditional Communist parties around the world further helped to derail the anti-war forces with the false promise that Nixon’s deals with Brezhnev would soon bring peace to Vietnam. According to Szulc: While Nixon was in Moscow, he listened to three-hour long speeches by top Kremlin leaders…. Even Kosygin Confined his protest to the danger of a Soviet ship being hit by American bombs…. None of the three Russians [Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny] suggested that the continuing war and the bombing in Vietnam was an obstacle to detente.

Soviet President Podgorny was despatched to Hanoi ‘to convey to the North Vietnamese, as soon as possible, the views Kissinger and

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Nixon had expressed in Moscow’. It was after this, says Szulc, that Hanoi shifted its position on Thieu in October 1972. Now the North Vietnamese accepted plans for settlement, that, at least temporarily, left the Thieu regime in power in Saigon. It was the foothold Washington was wanting. However, according to Szulc, by December, the North Vietnamese began to have doubts about the settlement, as they saw the US rush $1 billion worth of military hardware to Thieu to beat the ceasefire deadline. They proposed changes in the text one of which was regarding the release of American POWs which they sought to make conditional on the release of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners held by Saigon. Then in mid-December came the savage record-breaking bombings of Hanoi which aroused repugnance all over the world, except in some socialist countries. Szulc believes that ‘the US administration realised that the bombings were not sustainable over an indefinite period, for international as well as domestic reasons. They were, therefore, a short-term proposition.’ He quotes one US official as saying: ‘we are bombing to inflict the greatest possible damage on North Vietnam, so that Thieu would be able to accept the Agreement’. Szulc significantly writes: Evidently, Hanoi felt, early in January, that it had taken all the punishment it could take and proposed the resumption of the negotiations. Ironically, as the United States discovered from the intercepted North Vietnamese tactical communications, Hanoi had only a two-day supply of SAM anti-aircraft missiles on hand when the bombing stopped.

The information in Szulc’s article confirms the correctness of those who hold the view that the so-called detente was a callous betrayal of the glorious Vietnamese revolution by the two largest socialist states, particularly the Soviet Union, who ironically stake claims to the hegemony of the socialist camp. The struggle in Vietnam has to continue—a grim long-drawn-out struggle of a heroic Asian people betrayed both by friends and foes, yet setting an example of revolutionary determination and a spirit of combat seen in Asia only during the Chinese revolutionary struggle against the same enemies: US imperialism and its local henchmen. Unfortunately, the worldwide

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struggle in support of the Vietnamese revolution as well as the antiwar movement in the United States and Europe have flagged, thanks to the erroneous idea spawned and circulated by the traditional CPs and liberal opinion in the USA and Europe that the Paris Agreement signified the victory for the Vietnamese struggle. In fact, the Paris Agreement was nothing but an ambush for the struggle of the South Vietnamese revolutionaries—an ambush prepared with the help of a section of the socialist camp.

CHAPTER 16

Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina*

In his fourth annual ‘State of the World’ report to Congress, Nixon spoke his mind as to how he wanted to work out the Vietnamese Peace Agreement and what policies he wanted to pursue in Asia in general and in Indochina in particular. Showing scant respect to the already sobered and tamed ‘giants’ of the socialist camp, he warned them that ‘US relations with the two communist states would receive a setback if they keep arming North Vietnam and do not press their ally to observe the ceasefire’. He threatened the North Vietnamese with a ‘revived confrontation’ with the United States if they continued to violate the terms of the Agreement. He told Congress that the US military strength in the area could not be diminished because ‘if our friends conclude they can no longer depend on us for protection, they may feel compelled to compromise with those who threaten them, including the forces of subversion and revolution in their midst’. Here was a warning to the Russians and the Chinese, a threat to the Vietnamese and an open declaration of intent to maintain and support counter-revolution in the area at all costs. As the American monthly Ramparts put it: * Lajpat Rai, ‘Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina’, Economic & Political Weekly 8, no. 21 (1973): 932–934.

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The Nixon Administration has not abandoned its goal of making South Vietnam a lesson and a warning to other countries in SouthEast Asia and possibly in Africa and South America. And that lesson is that the price for opposing an American supported regime is wanton destruction of that country.1

While the Russians and the Chinese, as was expected, did not react to Nixon’s insolent message to Congress, the North Vietnamese reaction came sharp and clear. In his May Day speech in Hanoi, Premier Pham Van Dong referring to Nixon’s threat contained in his ‘State of the World’ message said: ‘once again the Vietnamese people affirm that no brutal force, no perfidious scheme, no insolent threat can make us flinch and deviate from the path of struggle which is our path to Victory’.2 On the same day, a Nhan Dan editorial demanded that the Nixon Administration give up the use of threats, stop reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam, discharge its obligation of clearing the mines in the North Vietnamese ports, implement all articles of the Peace Agreement and put an end to its perfidious aggression against the people of Cambodia. In conclusion, the Nhan Dan editorial stressed that ‘the path of continued violation of the Paris Agreement will surely lead the US to disastrous consequences’. For Nixon, the sharp reaction of the Vietnamese as well as the non-reaction of the socialist ‘giants’ were expected. The American president is neither a fool nor a braggart, but a cool-headed and cunning manipulator. During all his major escalatory moves in the Vietnam War, he paused to watch the reaction of the Soviet Union and China, and when none came or was muted, he pressed further in the military field. By now, he knows both Brezhnev and Chou Enlai and their possible reactions to his warning that they stop arming North Vietnam in the interest of their friendship with the colossus of the Western world. He knows that Brezhnev, anxious to reach Washington for friendly parleys to obtain funds and technology, is not the likely person to point out to him how many armaments he (Nixon) had provided his puppet, Thieu of South Vietnam, between September and December 1972 and even afterwards. Nor would the naive and friendly Chou Enlai confront him with the New York Times report of October 29, 1972 which said:

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The Defence Department is accelerating shipments of jet fighters, tanks and artillery previously scheduled for delivery to Saigon… After these deliveries have reached their destination, the Saigon government would have one of the greatest military arsenals in the world and will have an air combat strength only less than that of the United States and the USSR.

As to the brave reaction of the North Vietnamese David to his threats of ‘revived confrontation’, Nixon knows that in this ‘American century’ a David wielding a sling cannot kill a Goliath who has B-52s and other deadly weapons in his arsenal. He, therefore, threatens the Indochinese peoples from a position of overwhelming military strength and confident that if he resumed bombing in Vietnam or elsewhere in Indochina, he will once again get away with his criminal acts. Learning from his Vietnamese experience, Nixon has evolved a strategy of ‘producing peace agreements through military escalation and carpet bombing’ in Indochina. When a puppet regime is completely isolated and is on the verge of collapse, the United States through air gendarmerie and carpet bombing creates a military stalemate and then asks the votaries of detente and peaceful coexistence to put pressure on the victim of aerial barbarism to start negotiations for a ceasefire and an eventual peace agreement, all in the name of containing the conflict and preserving world peace. The peace in Vietnam emerged through this strategy and Nixon now wants to repeat the same trick in Cambodia as well. As soon as the city of Phnom Penh was surrounded on all sides by the Cambodian forces of National Liberation, Nixon ordered his B-52 fleet to strike; he sent General Haig to Saigon and Bangkok for studying the possibility (which soon became reality) of again sending to Cambodia the mercenary divisions of South Vietnam; he built an ‘aerial bridge’ to keep the war supplies flowing to the Lon Nol clique. Simultaneously, with these dastardly measures, Nixon in his radio broadcast on May 4, expressed his hope for a ‘ceasefire in Cambodia’ and Henry Kissinger hoped that ‘there was a possibility that negotiations might begin in the near future to end the fighting in Cambodia’.3 Nixon wants history to repeat itself in Cambodia. But people, too, learn from their historical experiences, especially when they pertain to recent history.

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While the Vietnamese were pressurised to negotiate and sign the so-called ‘Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam’, the Cambodians do not intend (at least for the time being) to tread the same slippery path, as is evidenced by the interviews and speeches of Norodom Sihanouk before and after the signing of the Peace Agreement in Vietnam. In an interview with the Paris biweekly, Afrique Asia, on November 13, 1972 (published in English translation by Intercontinental Press, December 4, 1972), Sihanouk stated that the national liberation forces in Cambodia will never accept the authority of the probable VietnameseAmerican agreement on a ceasefire or peace. Our Vietnamese and Laotian brothers…want to conclude an agreement on a ceasefire and peace in the near future with their adversaries in Washington, Saigon and Vientiane. That is their right. But we have indicated to them in very clear terms that we will never accept an agreement with the United States and with the traitors in Phnom Penh.

Answering a question, ‘Do you think Nixon will respect any Vietnamese agreement after it is signed?’, Sihanouk said, ‘I firmly believed Nixon to be very Machiavellian, cynical, and intellectually dishonest. He is just like Hitler in the sense that agreements and threats will never be any more than scraps of paper for him.’ In the same interview, the Cambodian leader accused the Soviet Union of frantically manoeuvring to get the Cambodian communists to abandon Sihanouk and to rally to Lon Nol. But the Khmer Rouges who are members of the National United Front of Cambodia are too patriotic to play the game of the two superpowers, that is, the United States and the USSR, which are agreed on ruling and dividing up the world.

In March–April 1973, Norodom Sihanouk, accompanied by his wife, toured the liberated areas of Cambodia, conferred with his ministers and commanders, and spoke to the combatants who were preparing for a final assault on Phnom Penh. On his return, he visited Hanoi, Peking

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and Pyongyang where he made important speeches and declarations. In the North Korean capital, the Cambodian head of state reaffirmed that ‘Cambodia will not sit and negotiate with the US imperialists for signing a peace agreement to be followed by a ceasefire.’4 According to Sihanouk, ‘there is only one means for effectively helping the Khmer people win victory.’ But this does not consist of convening an ‘international conference’ in a certain place to bring us the ‘American style peace’. it consists of isolating the American imperialists by building a collective movement of all the non-imperialist states and government, all socialist countries and governments, all states and governments which love peace and legally recognise the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia.

After criticising those governments (including some socialist and non-aligned ones) who recognised the Lon Nol ‘Charlatanic Khmer Republic’, Sihanouk made a plea for the ‘political, diplomatic and moral isolation’ of the traitorous clique in Phnom Penh: By doing so, the states and governments will isolate to the maximum US imperialism and its Cambodian tools… The latter having no diplomatic relations with any ‘outside world’ except US imperialism and its satellite governments will land themselves in political and moral isolation and their fall will be inevitable.5

Anticipating pressures on his government from those who were hoping to effect a ceasefire in Cambodia to win the favours of Richard Nixon, Sihanouk made his position clear, declaring at a Pyongyang rally: We sincerely advise foreign governments which hope that the United National Front of Kampuchea and the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia will accept a ceasefire or make a political compromise with US imperialism and the so-called ‘republic’ in Phnom Penh to give up their dangerous illusions. These illusions are dangerous because they have since long ago made certain foreign governments, contrary to their long-term national interests, render unjust support to the dying Lon Nol regime.6

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The obvious reference was to the Soviet Union and some socialist and non-aligned countries (India included) who still accorded diplomatic recognition to the puppet regime in Cambodia, which recognition, according to Sihanouk, meant not only a betrayal of the people of Cambodia but also of ‘peace in Indochina and the rest of Asia’. One cannot, however, take the declarations of Prince Sihanouk at face value. He was making these categorical statements soon after his ‘inspiring tour’ of the Cambodian base areas where he was accorded a ‘heroic welcome’ by the liberation forces. Sihanouk is expected to withstand the Russian pressures who not only lend him no assistance but also help the Cambodian puppets to stay in Phnom Penh by recognizing their illegal government. But this cannot be said of the Chinese pressures, if and when they come. Last month’s offensive on Phnom Penh by the forces of the National United Front of Cambodia seems to have been stalled by heavy US bombing and the deployment of South Vietnamese mercenaries in Cambodia. Nixon is eager to create a situation of military stalemate in Cambodia first, before he asks for negotiations and sends Kissinger to meet Sihanouk and his friends in Peking for secret talks. That is the logic of his strategy for Indochina. Up to October 1972, the North Vietnamese, too, took strong and uncompromising positions, which they later had to abandon. These positions were contained in an unsigned article in the September 1972 issue of the Vietnam Courier, an English language daily published in Hanoi. In this article, the Vietnamese firmly opposed Nixon’s position that ‘political settlement must be dissociated from military settlement’ and that Thieu’s puppet regime be made a party to negotiations. The article affirmed: ‘So long as there is no political settlement, so long as Washington does not give up its will to force on the Vietnamese people a government at American’s beck and call, there will be no genuine peace.’ Commenting on Nixon’s aims in negotiating and signing a Peace Agreement with the Vietnamese, the article said: Let us take a closer look at things and see what will be the practical results of a peace agreement. First Mr Nixon will be able to present himself to the US electorate as having made peace, and what is no less important, the Saigon regime can appear as the legal government of the country, all attempts to overthrow it being now

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a violation of the agreements signed, which might set in motion a terrible mechanism of reprisals. Mr Nixon will have won on both scores: to get himself re-elected and to consolidate the power of his men in Saigon, not to mention the recovery of captured US military men.

Such a position, the article continued, shall never be permitted. Referring to Nixon’s manoeuvres of combining massive bombing and blockade of North Vietnam with diplomatic pressures and peace offerings, the article said: Without the massive military protection of the US the Saigon regime would have collapsed. Washington wants to obtain at the conference table what it cannot get by military means, as always by resorting to blackmail: ‘Accept the Thieu government, don’t lay a finger on it, or I shall destroy the country’.

And further: If he can get just a few months’ respite in order to get himself reelected and prop up that apparatus so badly shaken by the offensive of the patriotic forces, Mr Nixon will be in a favourable position to invoke all kinds of pretexts and do what his predecessors had done, that is, to send US military power each time that apparatus is against threatened.

But despite this correct understanding of the situation, the Vietnamese were forced to sign an agreement which made Nixon win on all the three scores: to get himself elected, to consolidate the military power of his puppets in Saigon and to get back all the captured US military personnel. With this experience in view, one cannot afford to be too sanguine with regard to the speeches and declarations of Norodom Sihanouk. The Cambodian David too has only a sling to fight with against the American Goliath armed to the teeth with the most modern and deadly weapons. And the experience shows that if American imperialism cannot score a victory over the forces of national liberation in Indochina, it is yet strong enough to stall the victory of the patriotic

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forces fighting singly without decisive aid from outside sources— sources which have largely been plugged by shows of strength and diplomatic manoeuvrings and offers of economic assistance and technology. If there is a single lesson of the heroic struggle of the Indochinese people, it is, in Che Guevara’s words, ‘Imperialism is a world system and must be combated in a world confrontation’. By world confrontation, Che did not mean a world war, but as he put it ‘confronting imperialism at numerous points at the same period of time’. But instead of confronting imperialism at various points, the leaders of the socialist camp now compete between themselves in a policy of peaceful coexistence, unprincipled detente and collaboration with imperialism and that too at a time when it is evermore desperate, cruel and barbaric. While the struggle for freedom in Indochina has been opposed and combated on one side by French, Japanese and US imperialists, on the other side, it has been thwarted by the reactionary and revisionist policies of the Russian and the Chinese leaderships. The Indochinese revolution would have been successful a long time ago if the two great socialist powers had come to its aid in a meaningful way. Instead, they used the struggles of the people of its region as pawns to foster and further their narrow nationalist and hegemonistic interests. This has brought them to a political and ideological blind alley in which they must fight each other while all the time seeking cooperation with imperialism, their common enemy. By withholding aid to the struggling people and urging acquiescence, they stand condemned before the people of Indochina and the world.

Notes 1. Ramparts (1973). 2. Lajpat Rai, Vietnam Information Bulletin 13, no. 25. 3. Times of India (May 5, 1973). 4. Pyongyang Times (April 21, 1973). 5. Pyongyang Times. 6. Ibid.

About the Author and Editors

Author Lajpat Rai taught Economics at Zakir Hussain College, University of Delhi. He was the author of Latin America: A Socio-economic Study (Institute of Afro-Asian and World Affairs). He wrote many articles in journals and magazines of the Left on issues of Left politics in India and the international communist movement. He was a peace activist, working to re-establish relations between India and China through his work with the Indo-China Friendship Society, of which he was president for several years.

Editors Shirin M. Rai is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies and the Director of the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Her current work has three strands: feminist international political economy; gender and political institutions; and politics and performance. She has written extensively on these issues. She was a member of the PSA Commission on Care (2016) and Director of the Leverhulme Trust Programme on Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament (2007–2011). Her latest book is Performing Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament (with Carole Spary, 2019). She is currently working on a book: Depletion: The Human Cost of Caring. Anand Prakash, PhD, taught English Literature in Hansraj College, University of Delhi. He has written extensively on literary theory and published poems both in English and Hindi. He supports the cause

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of writing committed to change. His published books include Marxist Literary Theory; Wuthering Heights: An Interpretation; Muktibodh in Our Time (co-authored) and Text and Performance: A Theoretical View (co-authored). His edited volumes include Approaches to Literary Theory: Marxism; Nineteenth Century Thought; Modern Indian Thought; Interventions and Republicanism in Shakespeare.

Index

Ali, T. Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power, 105 Allende, S., 139–140 troubles, 140 Anderson, J., 132 Arismondy, R. arrest by military regime, 175 communist appeal to army, 177 Asia Chinese communism, rise of, 109 communist movements, 72 cultural revolution, 85 nationalist communist alliance, 84 Non-Aligned Movement, 24 Bidwai, P., 23, 28 B. T. Ranadive (BTR) call for strikes, 19 Party Secretary, 22 Bolshevik Revolution, 66, 92 proletarian internationalism, 92 Bordaberry breaking strike, 174–177 consolidating control, 176 dictatorship closed, 178 Indira Gandhi, 179 total press censorship, 174 Boulton, D., 196 bourgeois, 56–57 intellectual, 56, 57 methods and forms of production, 57–58

Brazil, 90, 132, 136, 154, 222 Cantidio Sampaio’s statement in Parliament, 178 Goulart regime, 160 Uruguay following pattern, 177–178 Brezhnev doctrine, 79, 87 British imperialism, 104 Butor, M., 56 Castro, F. Allende’s election, 142 Chilean coup’s reaction, 167 Cultural Congress, 168–169 double blockade, 128–129 Mao deification, 126–127 OLAS conference, 137, 139 political-ideological struggle, 123 Unmasks Peking, 123–129 world revolution, 90 Chile Castro’s visit, 141–142 communists, 164 failure to mobilise masses, 155–156 opportunist policy, 152–153 peaceful transition to socialism, 139–160 praise from Moscow, 140–150 reaction from Castro, F., 167 responses to Chilean coup, 162–171 revolutionary process, 142–143 victory of Left Popular Front, 139 China Awami League conspiring, 106 conflict with Soviet Union, 79

246  Indian Debates on the International Left Down with the New Tsars, 81 Front of National Unity, 104 Malaysia, international politics, 104 material support to Pakistan, 106–107 Pakistan, Military Rule or People’s Power, 105 politics with Indonesia, 104 recognised by France, 103 revisionism replaced, 85–86 support for Colonel Boumedienne, 104 US policy towards, 103 US-Soviet relations, 103 Chinese Communist Party proletarian internationalism, 100 Chinese revolutionary wave, 1925-27, 95 Clifford Group, 189 Communist International (Comintern), 21 Communist Manifesto, 92–93 Communist Party of India (CPI), 8, 96 Bidwai’s critique, 28 Indian partition and Independence, 23 intellectual and political conformity, 27 Left movement, 21 NFIW, 31 Quit India Movement, objection, 22 Stein’s views, 27–28 support for Emergency in India, 28 Communist Party of India (Marxist) Formation of, 27 Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), 21 changing political pattern, 86 combined effect of de-Stalinization, 82 Leninism sans loyalty, 107 Convencion Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT) general strike, 174 illegal status, 176

Cuba aid from Soviet Union, 135–136 breaking up of latifundia, 121 Chinese economic measure, 114 Cuban Revolution, 120 cultural freedom, 85 Dominican question, 119–122 economic dependence on Moscow, 136–137 final resolution of Havana Congress, 55 Granma, 134, 191, 214 intellectuals to Neruda, 50 isolation in Latin America, 130 Jack Anderson’s statement, 132 Leonid Brezhnev’s visit, 137 letter to Pablo Neruda, 47–48 literary coexistence, 53 Montevideo Congress, main interest, 120 Neruda criticism, 49 New York Times report, 133 OLAS conference, 90, 110, 137, 143, 169, 217 OSPAAAL, 202 Panama’s decision, 134 rapprochement with America, 132–133 Tricontinental Conference, 26, 110, 127 Washington Post’s report, 133 Cuban Revolution, 26, 29 Allende supporters, 144 ideology of socialism, 121 impact in Latin America, 109 nationalist struggles in Vietnam, 26 socialist camp, 90 US policies, 122 Vietnam struggle, 203 Washington’s trade and political blockade, 135 Czechoslovakia, 79 Cuba’s support for invasion, 214 Soviet invasion, 80 Soviet-American collusion, 81

Index  247

Dominica, US action, 119–120 East European communist states capitalism, overthrow, 77–78 Czechoslovakia and Poland, 79 Danube Scheme, 99 de-Stalinization, effect, 82 four brands of communism, 78–79 polycentrism 77–88 Sino-Soviet schism, 79 En-lai, C., Zhou Enlai, 106 Moscow and Peking, view on split, 80 First International, 93 First World War, 93 Formosa straits, 102–103 France election, 69–70 recognised China, 103 Free Trade Party, 93 Front of National Unity, 104 German Revolution of 1923, 95 Goodstadt, L. Far Eastern Economic Review, 195 Government of Popular Unity (Unidad Popular-UP), 140 praise from Moscow, 140–150 victory of Allende, 140 Guevara, C., 90, 98 criticism about lack of internationalism, 66 death, 136 first death anniversary, 207 Foco Theory, 26 imperialism, 184 Indochinese people, heroic struggle, 242 people of three continents, 203 speech at Economic Seminar in Algiers, 98 Hanemann, R., 82–83

Iber, P. note on arrival of Cold War, 26 India capitalism growth, 44 Left intellectual, 51 Indochina and USA solidarities and betrayals, 181–185 Indonesia, 104 Indo-US Foundation, 52 Janatha Vimukhti Peramuna, 106 Khrushchev, N., 137 Castro’s denunciation, 100 class collaboration, 105 fall, 200 meeting with Hanoi, 195 peaceful coexistence policy, 27 US visit, 102 Kuomintang, 96 Latin America Bolivar and Higgins, 110 Continental Congress of Solidarity, 119 Cuba, 119–122 Dominican question, 119–122 internationalism, 110 Montevideo Congress, main interest, 120, 122 OLAS conference, 110 pressures to conform, Cuba, 130–138 responses to Chilean coup, 162–171 rise and fall of left, 113–117, 119–185 underdeveloped region, 120–121 Latin American movements see also Latin America Lenin after death, 91, 94 Bolshevik Party, 74 idea of united front, 159 international proletarianism, 96–97

248  Indian Debates on the International Left nationalism, 92 Preliminary Theses on the NationalColonial Question, 21 quoted Marx’s letter to Kugelmann, 152 Third International, 94 Luxemburg, R., 140 Malaysia twist in policy by China, 104 Mao, C. Soviet Union and China, conflict, 79–80 Marti, J., 123 Marx, K., 109 Gotha Programme, 93 international proletarianism, 96–97 Lenin quoted letter to Kugelmann, 151 Medical Assessment and Planning Unit (MAPU), 142 Montevideo Congress, 122 Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), 139, 169 National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), 31 National Stadium in Santiago, 173 Neruda, P., 47 Cuban intellectuals, 48 Cuban letter, 47, 48 welcome to United States, 47 Nixon, R. American interests’ promotion, 184 butcher of Vietnamese people, 188 Chou Enlai welcoming, 182 Cuba visit by administrators, 131 Cuban-American rapprochement, 132 departure for Peking, 189 George Sherman views, 193 Indochina War, 192 military stalemate, 184 Moscow summit eve, 190

overtures to Havana, 133 Peking and Moscow, visits, 91 Renmin Ribao, 191 Russians and the Chinese, 108 tactics in Indochina, 235–242 Non-Aligned Movement, 24 North Koreans, 201 communists, 207 Organization of American States (OAS) isolation in Latin America, 130 Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS), 143 conference, 90–91 Organization of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), 202 Pakistan Chinese policy, 105 Maulana Bhashani visit to Peking, 105 support from China, 106 Tariq Ali, 105 Paris Peace Agreement, 225‑226 People’s Progressive Party (PPP), 141 Peru Tricontinental Conference, 49–50 Polish Communist Party Central Committee, 86 Proletarian Internationalism and Socialist Camp, 89–117 Cuban exuberance, 91 Guevara, C, 90 Nixon’s visits, 91 Tricontinental magazine, 90 Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG), 226 Rai, Lajpat anti-imperialist struggle, 81–82, 181 Cuban Revolution, views, 29 first visit to Soviet Union, 23

Index  249

issues while leaving party, 28–29 learning from political past, 18–19 Left activists based literature, 16 left CPI, 20 life after Independence, 1947, 15–16 member of CPI and underground time, 8 non-communist socialist movements, observation, 64 priorities of USA, 41 prison, 19–20 Soviet Union’s and China’s nationalistic policies, 183 student leader, 15 World Peace Council, 26 Rakowska-Harmstone, T., 82, 88

Stalin, J. control of international Communist Movement, 22 idea of united front, 159 primacy of politics, 83 undemocratic character, 74–75 Stalinist policy, 97

Sampaio, C., 178 Sartre, J. P., 49 Second International betrayal of proletarian internationalism, 93 Sen, M., 39 commitments of Left intellectual, 44–46 foreign trips, 45 Seventh Congress of the Comintern, 22 Sik, O. planning from below, 83–84 Sino-Soviet conflict, 87–88, 201–202 Sino-Soviet schism, 79, 100 de-Stalinization, 82 Mao’s statement about conflict, 79–80 Moscow and Peking split, Chou En-Lai’s view, 80 Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty, 81 Soviet Union conflict with China, 79 détente with the USA, 102 Soviet-Cuban honeymoon, 137 Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty, 81

United States (US) bombing toppled Thieu regime, 232 Chinese Sixth comment, 101 Dominican question, 119–122 Formosa straits, 102 Neruda, P., 47–48 Peru’s fighting Partisans, 49–50 Uruguay, 173. See also Bordaberry Cantidio Sampaio in Parliament, 178 Colorados and Blancos, 175 following Brazil pattern, 177–178 rule by military proxy, 173–185

Third Communist Front, 199 collapse, 212–213 features, 199 imperialism, 203 North Koreans, 201 Third World, 54 communist parties, 72 imperialism, 54 intellectuals, 55

Vietnam and the American president, 236 anti-imperialist struggle, 181–182 Che’s view, 202 China, 81 communists, 210 concern of Chinese leaders, 192 Cuban leadership, 199 David Boulton, 196 Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina, 235‑242

250  Indian Debates on the International Left Nhan Dan, 107, 108 Paris peace accords, 225–234 revisionists, 210–211 socialist world, 187–196 Soviet Union’s and China’s nationalistic policies, 183 Third Communist Front, 198–223 Vietnamese Studies, 212 war, 188 warning to Chinese and Russian leaders, 107

Whither, Paris peace accords, 225–234 Year of Heroic Vietnam, 199 Vietnam War see also Vietnam Vietnamese Workers Party, 108, 109, 210 Washington Post, 133, 220 Workers Party, 99 World Peace Council (WPC), 25–27