No discussion about the role of the left in relation to Vietnam can begin without putting the struggle of the Vietnamese people in the context of world revolution. I would argue that all the basic mistakes of the left in this country on Vietnam flow directly from its failure to do just that.
Vietnam has to be a priority for the left not just because of the suffering of the Vietnamese people but because of the decisive nature of the Vietnam struggle.
American imperialism has taken on the role of world policeman for reaction. It has striven to hold back the advance of the world-wide struggle for national liberation and social advance. Whilst not being able to decisively change the relationship of forces it has, nevertheless, had some success in that endeavour. The numerous coups in Africa, the overthrow of Sukarno and the slaughter of the Indonesian communists, the murder of Lumumba and the imposition of a stooge government in the Congo, the stamping out of any move towards social progress in Latin America after the Cuban revolution, etc., etc., all show the dangers of this American strategy. Unless decisively rebuffed it could have a serious retarding affect on the progress of world revolution.
Needless to say, apart from Cuba and to a certain extent, North Korea, none of the workers states has tried to meet this challenge with a counter-strategy.
However, the whole strategy of the Americans has come unstuck because of the magnificent struggle of the Vietnamese people. All the American "successes" are meaningless unless they manage to inflict defeat on the Vietnamese. On the other hand, if the Vietnamese win the whole system of alliances the Americans have built up will fall like a pack of cards. The world-wide revolutionary process will receive a tremendous impulse.
Socialists in Britain have a vital stake in this process. Contrary to what the "socialism in one advanced country" theorists of various hues (from the social democrats to the ultra lefts) may think, the future of British socialism is tied up with the world struggle. It is inconceivable that any big advance in Britain can take place if the world trend is against revolution.
Thus support for the Vietnamese people (and all others struggling against imperialism) is of tremendous importance to British socialists. Just now the Vietnam war is THE decisive struggle and bigger demonstrations on the question of Vietnam than any other issue in countries like Britain, where no great internal struggles are taking place. That is why masses of young people in Britain and other countries are becoming socialists directly under the impact of the Vietnamese struggle against American imperialism. It is in this light that one has to view the trends and tendencies in the anti-Vietnam war movement in this country.
For nearly three years now, there has been a campaign in Britain based upon the principled stand of solidarity with the Vietnamese people. In the first months only a tiny group of people, with material aid from the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, carried out propaganda for the ideas of the solidarity position. They were accused of being "warmongers" and "splitters" by the more sectarian of the supporters of traditional anti-war organisations, the BCPV, CND, etc., which stood firmly on the negotiations position. In fact, the British Council for Peace in Vietnam said in its founding documents we do not seek to apportion blame for the Vietnam war. No-one on the left would dare make such a statement these days!
Behind these peace movements stood the Communist Party, which fought against the idea of solidarity as part of its "peaceful co-existence" policy. The highlight of the CP's endeavours to stop the progress of the VSC was the attack made on that movement in COMMENT just a few weeks before the March 17th demonstration. Our predecessor THE WEEK answered this attack very effectively. But even more effective was the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of CP and YCL members took part in that demonstration, ignoring the warning that it was all a Fourth International plot. Very suddenly the Communist Party changed its line and the YCL has been very active in the preparations for October 27th. This change of line fills us with great joy and we look forward to seeing members of the Communist Party breaking with other aspects of their stalinist past.
The solidarity argument won the day because of its moral superiority and because it appealed to the young people. Whilst there are still organisations which put the negotiations position it is universally recognised that the VSC has won the leadership of the Vietnam protest movement and that only demonstrations called on the solidarity line stand a chance of mobilising large numbers of people.
This is a very big change in the political climate and has all kinds of consequences. It should be clearly understood that this struggle was won in a sharp struggle of ideas; not only against the "soggy" negotiations position but against all kinds of sectarian arguments as well.
The first big struggle against "left" critics of the principled solidarity position took place in the preparations for the founding conference of VSC and culminated in the walk-out of the defeated maoist minority. The struggle was obscured by the maoists who tried to insist that the famous "four and five points" be written into the constitution of the VSC. They refused to accept that the VSC could show its solidarity with the Vietnamese people without committing itself entirely to the diplomacy of the Vietnamese leaders.
In a less direct way, this position amounted to a refurbished edition of the negotiations line. All the more because the four and five points were put forward in a particular situation. Once that situation changed, had the maoists won out the VSC would have had to change its position.
There is another aspect to the struggle with the maoists at the founding conference and in subsequent years which was covered over by this more basic struggle. It is an aspect which characterised all the disputes: namely that the maoists subordinated the interests of the Vietnamese revolution to their own sectarian interests. For them, the most important thing has always been to "expose" the revisionists, the trotskyists and other "hidden agents of imperialism". If this means busting up a united struggle for solidarity with the Vietnamese people, it is just too bad from their point of view.
This attitude was most clearly expressed by the Socialist Labour League during its brief but stormy honeymoon with the VSC. Here the issue was quite plain: was the united front character of the VSC to be subordinated to the need to "expose stalinism", or was the need to build the broadest possible movement on a solidarity position to be predominant? If one took the former view, one would use the VSC platform to attack the Communist Party over its policy on the docks. If one takes the latter view, one should confine one's criticisms of organisations to their position on Vietnam, when speaking from the VSC platform.
Of course, as is usual in such debates VSC's position was distorted. No-one was demanding that the SLL abandon its sacred duty of warning the mass of the British workers about the dangers of stalinism, pabloism, state capitalism, etc., in the columns of its own papers. Today, the SLL has gone much further in its criticisms of the VSC and has adopted a much more rigid theoretical [illegible] one can only help the revolution in Vietnam by building the revolutionary party (i.e., the Socialist Labour League) in Britain, according to them.
These arguments are comparatively easy to refute but they have re-appeared in much more subtle forms as the success of the VSC and Ad Hoc Committees it has initiated has grown. There is an easy explanation for this: very few groups or individuals on the marxist left can be so bare-faced as to refuse to take part in the demonstrations. (The SLL has had to work very hard for years to accomplish that degree of sectarianism!) However, many groups and individuals, whilst taking part in, and even working very hard for preparations for the demonstrations have not changed their basic theoretical positions.
It is very difficult for most groups and individuals to do this. Many of them are quite isolated in Britain and have to justify their separate existence in theoretical terms. They operate on the basis of "marxism (or trotskyism) in one country" [illegible] exchanging experiences and working out a world strategy in an organic process, unless they are confined to paying lip-service to internationalism in theoretical terms and latching on to struggles in other countries, the content of which they very often don't understand.
One of the arguments that has come to the fore recently has been of making VSC a multi-issue campaign. I don't intend to repeat the arguments in Ernie Tate's article (see October issue) but just to remark in passing that this again is a symptom of a general tendency to subordinate the interests of the Vietnamese revolution to the needs of groups in this country.
A much more subtle argument is that the best way to win working class support for the VSC is to "link the issues". It is claimed that workers in this country are opposed to the VSC because it does not campaign on wages, housing, etc., and that, therefore, it is necessary for the VSC to CONCENTRATE on making a connection between the Vietnam war and the economic issues of the British working class.
No-one will deny that in our general propaganda we should point out that the policies of the Wilson Government boil down to a total rejection of the socialist road, and that the fight against its support of American policy in Vietnam is part of a general fight against its capitalist policies.
This is not the question at all. The important point is: what is to be subordinate to what?
If we say to the British workers: join us in the fight against the Vietnam war because in this way you will be fighting against the Government's anti-working class policies without saying that they should be opposed to American aggression EVEN IF THIS HAD NO EFFECT ON THEIR WAGES AT ALL, we are making concessions. What is more, this type of thinking mis-judges British workers. They are not, as the bourgeois press pictures them, entirely self-interested. The militants, and these are the ones we should be aiming to win for the solidarity campaign, will respond to a purely socialist argument. It is a hallmark of reformism to argue that it is always necessary to argue in "bread-and-butter" terms before one can [illegible] the working class.
We should be very clear on this point: we appeal to British workers to join us in the solidarity movement because they have the duty to support their fellow workers. Once we stray from this basic approach the way is open for adaption of our solidarity position to a variety of reformist lines.
The linking argument, if it becomes the dominant one, will change our priorities. Bit by bit, we would find that the VSC would have to move from concerning itself primarily with Vietnam to taking up particular aspects of the struggle of the fight against the wage freeze. Ideas and programmes have a logic of their own. That is why ideological struggle is so important for marxists and why wrong ideas have to be fought against long before their harmful effects are apparent.
Apart from these points, it is easy to fall into quite serious political and theoretical mistakes by pursuing the linking argument. It is not true to say that the wage freeze arises from the Vietnam war and leave it at that. Of course, the American Government has agreed to support the pound in exchange for British support on Vietnam policy. Furthermore, the imposition of a wage freeze and incomes policy has been demanded by the international bankers as conditions for their huge loans. However, it must be said that the crisis of British capitalism would exist even if there were no Vietnam war. Quite possibly it would have a different form: maybe a deep recession. But it is absolutely clear that British capitalism would seek to impose the burden of this crisis on the backs of the British workers. The incomes policy is just a form of doing this, designed to facilitate the neo-capitalist rationalisation and modernisation of British capitalism.
It would be lying to the workers to tell them that if we succeed in ending British support for the Americans in Vietnam we will have struck a decisive blow against the incomes policy. France is opposed to American policy in Vietnam and yet is the classical land of the wage freeze and incomes policy.
Neither is it correct from a theoretical or practical point of view to say that "every blow against British capitalism through a strike or a rents demonstration is a blow in favour of the Vietnamese revolution." Life is much more complicated than that. Paradoxical as it may seem to those holding an extremely simplistic view of things, the granting of concessions by the ruling class, even after fierce class struggles, often leads to a strengthening of the system. Every partial struggle which does not succeed in making large numbers of revolutionaries will tend to strengthen capitalism in the absence of a revolutionary party.
The struggle for the solidarity position is a struggle for a revolutionary attitude. It makes revolutionaries. When a period of sharp struggle comes these revolutionaries will know what to do - the French experience shows this. Watering down the struggle for a revolutionary attitude by adaption to reformist moods will defeat this end.
We are confident that the tens of thousands of British youth now supporting the solidarity position in Britain will give good account of themselves in future class struggles in Britain.