TARIQ Ali was on the right lines when he described Kampuchea as 'neither fish nor fowl', meaning, of course, that it could not be characterised as either a workers' state or a capitalist state.
We have to accept the fact that the prolonged death agony of capitalism and the increasing world-wide role of the different variants of Stalinism — Moscow, Peking, Hanoi, Havana — have brought about mutations in state structures, not accounted for in the Marxist text-books.
This is true, not only of Kampuchea but of a number of other states such as Ethiopia, Somaliland, Angola, Afghanistan etc. Marxists should not be afraid to face up to this. As Ernest Mandel writes in his Trotsky: A Study In The Dynamic Of His Thought:
'In the contradictory course of history, mistakes often become sources of knowledge. Having run into a blind alley, revolutionary thought can suddenly discover a new avenue.'
The 'blind alley' some of us have run into is to take it for granted that every Stalinist-led coup must result in the birth of a workers' state, however degenerate, forgetting that Stalinism is essentially counter-revolutionary.
New avenues will only be opened up by the building of a Marxist international party, integrated into the working class, not afraid to subject new phenomena thrown up by the vagaries of history to critical analysis.
CHARLIE VAN GELDEREN, London NW10