NO socialist can dispute that the latest events in Indochina are horrific on all counts.
They line of Stalinist atrocities: the verbal campaign against Tito trade and Yugoslavia in the Forties and Fifties, the suppression of the East Berlin rising in 1953, and the invasions in Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968.
But on none OCCaSIOnS on the sidelines and scream: A plague on all your houses. They and demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops countries in question.
Nigel Harris's article in last week's Socialist Worker refuses to take sides.
Kampuchean-Vietnamese conflict with the Chinese invasion.
concludes following paragraphs:
*The ungovernable urge to "teach lessons knife murder can be perpetrated with impunity. It logic of an imperialist system that encompasses alike both the so-called "People's Democra cies" and so-called "democra cies".
*The smaller powers, each run by its own clique of comparable gangsters, are used prize respective Godfathers..
Widows weep again tonight as they did last night and will for many more nights.
"The slaughter of their men, sons and nothing: just the blood tribute to the gods of the system, make the world safe for the nen and powerrul.
This makes no attempt to analyse what has happened in Vietnam.
China. The masses are seen as powerless slaves in the grip o Britain can wash our hands with a few phrases of liberal rhetoric.
Let us suppose that Dubcek and his supporters in Czechoslovakia had organise an armed resistance to whether are the latest in a long invasion of Vietnam?
True, widows Hanoi.
of these did socialists stand had nothing Kampuchea. opposed the invasions Vietnamese the both the It equates the Isolated the capitalist _ to flash the is a gamble that but necessity.
flows from the Mary government A would have imperialist blockade.
tight by their economic similar problems. aTe daughters, is for nationalist Kampuchea decided to the Soviet invasion. I doubt Socialist Worker would have been neutral. So why abstain on the Chinese Nigel, there will be scale. Shanghai and We must place the responsibility for that firmly in Peking, for it is rubbish to assert that the invasion is solely concerned with Kampuchea China's occupation of the working Paracel islands in January 1974 lo do between During and after the war the leaders tried to maintain friendly relations with Soviet Union and China. The latter rebuffed the Vietnamese on every occasion against after the fall of Saigon.
politically by the Chinese and economically by powers Vietnamese had little option but to move closer to the Soviet Union. It was for them, as for Cuba, not a matter of choice, Even the purest revolution- Saigon.
would be confronted with this logic and not just in the "third revolution in Portugal resulted 0 938 an and India. Would not the revolutionary government have been forced to an arrangement Comecon? The Iranian revolu- equally tion, if successful, will face witnessing the ultimate logic of socialism in one country: an unbridled degeneration in Europe. socialist revolutions. The only victors will be the imperialists, for if the present war continues it will considerably weaken the non-capitalist states on a global These states are a far cry from socialism but they are nevertheless in transition from capitalism. Whether their progress to socialism will be completed will depend on the masses in these countries. But it is still obvious that there is a real tension these Socialist Worker has tacitly acknowledged these facts. In Angola it supported the Cuban intervention and the MPLA South Africa and The slogan 'Neither East nor West, but International Socialism' was not raised when the South African armies threatened Luanda - nor when the Soviet Union sent in massive military aid to the Vietnamese two years before the fall of Nigel's views on China are well known. There was no fist coup. There is merely nationalist coup. no real difference between China The fact that in one country few, if any, people starve to death is a trivial coincidence.
The political conclusions are bizarre; either the revolution is led by revolutionaries whom Nigel agrees with or else it's not worth the trouble and the masses might as well wait for 'us' to do the necessary The result of this blinkered view of the world is to dismiss the Sino-Vietnamese conflict as a war between big and small Not good enough, Nigel "Our cocialism will he infinitel more democratic than what exists i Britain today, with full rights for all political parties and currents tha in the eyes of the millions of workers throughout the world. We are opposed to THE suffering of the on them Now And if the Russians don NIGEL HARRIS
----- pull-quotes -----
nor Peking?
tragedy for Vietnam