Vietnam

There has been some debate recently on the WSM Discussion Forum concerning the Viet Cong and the lack of online Socialist material relating to them. Below are some relevant extracts taken from contemporary issues of The Western Socialist.

A young Socialist sees the blood pouring and thinks we should do something.

What should we do about Vietnam? We should place on record our abhorrence at the terrible slaughter. We have done this.

What else should we do?

Should we organize street parades with placards reading "Save Vietnam," "Stop the Carnage," "No More War?" Should we petition parliament, write horrified letters to the press, warn of returning brinkmanship? Should we clamor at the gates of embassies, rage against the Russian government, storm against the US government?

We would say Yes, we should do these things - if they will do any good. But we have seen a lot of Vietnams in our day, big ones and little ones, terrible and destructive ones, all accompanied or preceded by protests such as these.

Who can forget the two world wars and the numerous lesser ones: Korea, Algeria, the Congo, Cyprus, Suez, Hungary - to mention only a few of recent years. They all brought enraged multitudes into the streets. Did the protests prevent a war, stop a war, or keep a shot from being fired? We are not aware that this happened.

But we have witnessed the spectacle of protest movements melt away disheartened by the empty results of struggle and sacrifice. And we have seen protest movements become divided as to the identity of the warmaker to be condemned and even to declare that a war must be fought to subdue an aggressor - as many thousands did during the days of Hitler.

These activities are not helpful to the cause of peace. Governments are not impressed by them, but find them often useful in furthering their own brands of pressure polities.

The cause of peace can be served by first finding the cause of war, then attacking the cause. Blood will pour until this thought reaches the millions. Active membership in the Socialist Party is the one means of speeding the coming of permanent peace.

Statement by General Executive Committee, SPC
(The Western Socialist, No. 5 - 1967)

...the war in South Vietnam ostensibly began as a revolution of workers and peasants against the ruling class regime. It is believed by radicals, generally, that America intervened in order to prevent this internal, pro-Communist-type, revolution from succeeding and for no really important other reason.

This explanation is not good enough for the World Socialist Movement. We see the Vietnamese War as but the battleground of a much greater conflict, the struggle between America and China and the U.S.S.R. for domination of the markets and trade routes of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. As C. L. Sulzberger puts it in his column (N. Y. Times, 4/27/68):

"Many Americans seem to think today that their country can be half a superpower or, put another way, that it can be a superpower in Europe while withdrawing from Asia where it finds itself over-committed. But this argumentation fails to explain how our European allies, who depend upon U. S. will to use its strength as much as on that strength itself, may be persuaded to rely up on our resolution in the West if we make it plain we don't intend to display it in the East."

Mr. Sulzberger, naturally, puts it all on a sort of moral plane, not actually fingering the real reason for America's interest in remaining a "superpower." Nevertheless, the name of the game is profits and the American Friends Committee would do well to grasp this fact "All sides" can only correctly refer to all rival capitalist interests. And noble as the Friend's activities are, we of the World Socialist Movement feel something more is needed than "a great outpouring of generosity to match the greatness of the need" in aiding the work of the Quakers.

We think that what is needed, above all, is a general awakening by the workers of the world to the urgent need for the immediate abolition of capitalism - the basic cause of wars in our times - and the immediate institution of socialism. It is that goal for which we are organized.

(The Western Socialist, No. 3 - 1969)

...There is, unfortunately, a common belief that socialists oppose the American involvement but champion the cause of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Government. True, there are those who describe themselves as socialists who do take such a position. They are extremely vocal and they attain considerable success in identifying such an attitude with socialism. After all, don't the North Vietnamese describe themselves as a socialist country? Does not the very term Viet Cong mean Viet Communist - even though it was the American Government that first tagged the National Liberation Front with that label? Yes, the sole enemy of Indochina (and around the world), we are told by the various groups of self-styled revolutionists, is American imperialism. Knock out imperialism, they argue, and the problems that shake the world will be solved.

It is not through any wish to defend American imperialism that the World Socialist Party begs to differ. The problem is not US imperialism but, rather, the division of the world into conflicting classes and, as a consequence, into rival capitalist, and state-capitalist, nations. It has become commonplace among the pseudo revolutionists to speak of "third world" nations, of "socialist" or "communist" nations. The historic socialist term class struggle has become, for these newfangled socialists a national struggle and they side and urge working people everywhere to side with one group of exploiters against another - chiefly against the U. S. exploiters. It is all very near-sighted and we see no percentage in knocking out U. S. imperialism for the benefit of Soviet Russian state capitalist imperialism; no more than we see any advantage to the working class of small nations - whatever their designation - in a policy of demanding the right of their own national capitalist class to exploit them peaceably and without interference by big imperialist powers.

But all of this becomes academic in face of the new threat that faces the world with the latest tactic of that section of American capitalism that backs Mr. Nixon. The time may be shorter than we think but does it make sense to support those other defenders of capitalism who oppose Mr. Nixon? We say no because it is the nature of the system, regardless of who runs it, to generate wars. Remember the Pentagon Papers - Remember the liberal, radical supporters of WWII, the Korean War. Think it over.

(The Western Socialist, No. 3 - 1972)