HE DEATH of azil's president elect sacredo Neves, eek ago last Sunday, acided with the most centrated wave rikes the country has To hundred and ninethousand metal porkers in the instrial regions around Paulo had been on for days side workers on Rio underground.
were demanding wage increases of per cent ve all, a reduction the working week to hours Mihout loss of pay.
The strikers were due by a further etal workers in Sao Paulo city, as well as by a series of other sectors. Those already on strike included 84,000 car workers Volksward, Ford, Mercedes, other companies resulting in loss production 22,500 vehicles (worth some $200 million).
The early days of the strike had gone well. For the first time in six years a strike on this scale had not been ruled illegal by labour courts. Even more upsetting large multinational employers around the rederation of Sao Paulo Businessmen (FIESP), was the fact that dozens small medium businesses reached direct agreements with the unions with including • 1. wage rises and a reduction in the working week. The FIESP had always argued that such & reduction hours would be too onerous for the smaller firms.
Neves awaited death brought a broad national commotion.
Millions followed his coffin in a show of public sentiment rivalling the huge demonstrations for direct elections exactly one year La campaign which Neves himself had first backed then subtly derailed.
After the direct election campaign Neves moyed on to stitch together a " Democratic which managed to represent almost every fraction of the Brazilian ruling class around a plan for a transition military rule would avoid real change. operation Neves counted the of the various reformist stalinist in the popular movement. The irony is that Neves death has left the presidency in the hands of the extreme right wing of that very broad created.
successor, This when populism year old ship.
Both commotion of the were of official The prompti! declared sacked.
Together these events bear bitter witness to limits of the 'democratisa LUI sweeping Latin America. But they also to the tremendous weight which carry the continent and to the extremely delicate balance deciding whal sort that might be, and for whose benefit.
Of course the left of the workers movement, and especially the Workers poi neout that in really tit- Party (PT) were would change under Neves, and to prepare for opposition to the Republic'. But their problem is that they have not yet been able themselves at the head of these democratic aspira tions and combine then with the kind of social demands stressed by thess
THREE TIMES since the end of the Second World War, the ruling class of the United States has thrown itself against the workers and peasants of Asia.
In 1945 its plan for intervention in China was only thwarted by the millions of soldiers who refused to serve as cannon fodder in yet war. In 1950 the United States hurled its might against the people of Korea and left three million dead in its wake. Finally in Vietnam the American ruling unleashed its most savagery so far.
One hundred and forty thousand million dollars of American war effort was poured into one small country. Twelve million tons of explosives were used by the Americans and their puppets. After more than 40,000 American dead, four million Indochinese casualties, tell refugees, the United States was still unable to break the workers and peasants of Vietnam. Now its puppets are crashing to defeat.
The victories in Vietnam, the victories in all Indochina, are not merely a triumph of the magnifipeople of these countries. The Indochinese victories are the greatest living example since the Russian Revolution of the world character of the working class revolution. Literally tens hundreds of millions throughout the have directly or indirectly in the victory of the struggle in Although the Indochinese people have bourne the crushing weight of imperialism's assault, and the overwhelming share of the glory is theirs, they too know that their triumph is only possible because mass action throughout the world.
Those who have participated in the struggle range from the hundreds of thousands who marched against the war within the United States itself, through Che Guevara who gave his life in the attempt to open a second front in support of the Indochinese struggle, to the martyr Nicolai Didyk who burnt himself to death in protest against the refusal of the Soviet bureaucracy port brigades to Vietnam. It is one of the proudest episodes in the entire history of the Fourth International that in many countries its sections have been able to play all important role development of the world-wide Vietnam solidarity movement.
development American struggle with another of last week, No-one was ever sighted fearful revolution.
million The crushing greatest blow against the military Dominican the crushing dochina.
participated Vietnam.
Arab East. state created anywhere in in this sense alone. pressure power in the stale.
to send supeven have envisaged.
TEN YEARS ago, 30 April 1975 the red blue and gold flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government was raised over Saigon Chi Minh City. It marked the end of 35 years of heroic struggle in the face of tremendous odds, by the workers and peasants of Vietnam. It was a But if it was the world-wide of the solidarity Indochina which helped create the conditions, even tries in a small way, for the triumphs first understand that this solidarity was never just a moral gesture.
more shortthose sidered the tasks of solidarity with Vietnam as secondary in comparison to the intervention in the working class struggles of their own country. Not one single event of the last decade, least of all one single trade union struggle, could have compensated in the slightest for the defeat of the Vietnamese defeat of US military might in Vietnam is the Never delivered American ruling class's ability to undertake direct counter-revolutionary activity everywhere in the world. A repeat of the landing of the marines in the Lebanon in 1958, a repeat of the 1965 invasion of the Republic, rendered far less likely following debacle in InAiready the fear of another Vietnam is a factor holding back the American ruling class from its insane schemes for military occupation of the oil states of the The next workers' the world will owe an incalculable debt to the Vietnamese revolution The war in Indochina struck the American monster in its very economic and social vitals. For seven years through direct armed intervention, and for twenty years through indirect sabotage and subterfuge, the greatest economic world sought to crush the people of one small And finally it was the colossus which broke. Its economy could not stand the strain of the war as inflation and expenditure soared. Its ghettos exploded as its own the black workers refused to bear the effects of a war in which their only real interest was to support the other side. Millions of its finest youth rebelled in disgust against mechanised butchery on a scale Hitler or Mussolini could never - now Ho Finally, Vietnam was the fuse which first relighted a wide consciousness in the imperialist counof the need for socialist revolution. Millions of clearly understood bankruptcy of the capitalist system through its barbarity Vietnam. Throughout the millions of workers, peasants and students saw their own eyes that the imperialist monster could be defeated.
For all time the international revolutionary movement AFTER 1945 it was the advance of the revolution in the colonial countries which prevented real political stabilisation capitalist world system and maintained the tempo of the cass struggle when the working class in the imperialist countries was passing through 20 years of relative passivity. It was also this revolution which helped to exhaust imperialism economically politically and to create the basis for a new revival of revolutionary consciousness in the population of the imperialist countries. war in Vietnam was precisely the outcome of the decision of the United States to smash the colonial revolution. Instead it United States which humiliated. The Americans lost their first war in history and the U.S. and international capitalist was stretched to limit. This in turn helped lay the basis for a new rise in revolution throughout the world.
The outstanding analysis of stunning military defeat for the US, and a huge victory for the workers and oppressed of the entire world. It was a turning point in world history. Below, we mark the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon with extracts from the left press of the time which best sum up the impact of that victory.
glory in the triumphs of the Indochinese workers and peasants. •It is now that we may grasp to the full the magnificent words of Che people Guevara: "What the been shown by this people! What stoicism and valour in this peoin ple! And what a lesson for the the future their struggle holds! How close and how bright would the with future appear if two, three, many Vietnams flowered on the face of the earth! It is the hour of the furnaces, look to see the glow.' A new rise in world revolution this development still remains the 1969 Political Resolution of the the Ninth of the Fourth International. In order to understand fully the significance of the events taken place in therefore reproduce extracts from the chief section of that resolution dealing with the Vietnam war.
revolution, unquestionably marked time the colonial revolution suffered series of spectacular reverses. The rise The to power of military dictatorships and the momentary movements in Brazil and Argentina (the two principal countries of Latin was America); the was Lumumba regime in the Congo. the Nkrumah regime in Ghana and the Ben Bella regime in Algeria; the victory of the Indonesian counterrevolution in October 1965; and the military the defeat of the United Arab Republic and Syria in the six-day war of June 1967 constitute the main milestones in each of the epicentres of the colonial revolution.
victory shifted tion solution dominated semicolonial Since grandeur stage to revouuular, An and you have only to overt United States.
The of the ing the region which have just strategic Vietnam we would After the victory of the Cuban the colonial revolution colonial and In fact, starting early in the sixties decline of the mass have to overthrow OI the tion loses.
sion. Socialist Action 3 May 1985 The colonial revolution had reach ed the point where it could go no fu: ther unless it made the transition into a socialist revolution - and for tha the subjective factor was lacking. Or the one had, American imperialism drawing its own conclusions from the of the Cuban revolution and more openly repressing by military force all revolu tionary movements which in its view threatened even incipiently to touch off the process of permanent revolu Caught between the masses seek ing a clear revolutionary socialist imperialism strove to crush such tendencies in embryo, the Sukarnos, the Nkrumahs the Nassers, and the Nehrus, who had scene in countries for fifteen years, reached the end of their era the formation OI even of the revolutionarv vanguards Fidelista type, lagged behind this pro. cess, the initiative passed for a whole American imperialism with its CIA-financed. plots, its counterinterventions. and ll ever-widening wars of aggression.
acceleration economis growth in the United States coincided with this stage of more direct and counterrevolutionary and created the means by which the imperialists could finance these pro. lects tor tive or six vears - whict 'military missions' "counterinsurgencv' in Latin Americ to the war in Vietnam, including th upkeep and expansion of dozens o air-naval bases throughout the world cost tens of billions of dollars without opening up an assault on th living standards of the workers in tr The might expansion, ana a rogance of Yankee imperialism seer: ed to reach new heights after failure in the fifties.
Vietnam war also was th culmination and, as it were, ine cic of this imperialist counteroffensive The Vietnam war, became the turnin point in the situation. As a result o the indomitable resistance of the Vie:
the colonial revolt Manese lasses. tion was able to regroup its forces an stage a comeback in several importar.
In escalating its aggression agains the Vietnamese revolution, America imperialism aimed not only at block revolution's advance in of obvious economic importance (Thailand Malaysia, Indonesia); it sought no onlv to create a 'deterrent' against victorious revolution in Asia, represent catastrophe global scope for the international im perialist system. It wanted also to in timidate the exploited masses in a semicolonial countries if not the entire world It wanted to put them on notice by a terrifying example that if they took the revolutionary road they would face the most powerfu military machine in the world and pa! a terrible price in blood and destruc for an attempt liberat themselves from the yoke of capital Thus the outcome of the confronta tion in Vietnam assumed crucial im portance. Today, the militant revolu tionary enthusiasm of the Vietnames.
unparalleled history, has blocked the imperialist and kept them from achieving the principal objectives of their aggres
Socialist Action 3 May 1985
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The hour of the furnaces