Phony Communists Urge: Toughen Up!

Is the U.S, Really aToothless Tiger?

Sgptember 6, 1979—Revolutionary Worker—Page 9

Some so-called communists thesedays seem to have been carefully studying and copying Ronald Reagan's"revolutionary" international line.Listen, for example, to this rathertypical quote from the pages of TheCall, newspaper of the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist: "Appeasementamong U.S. ruling circles has and isallowing the Soviets to gain clearmilitary advantages during negotiations. It is, thus, encouraging Soviet aggression and bringing the world closerto war." This is hardly a communistcondemnation of the war preparationsof both imperialist superpowers; it is anearly naked appeal for the U.S. rulingclass to stop "giving in" and start arming to the teeth—or perhaps we shouldsay "to the eyeballs"—since they havealready armed to the teeth.

Behavior like this is nothing new. Ithas long been condemned by real communists all the way back to the Russianrevolutionary Lenin as "social-chauvinism. "This means "socialism inwords, chauvinism in deeds"—that is,communists miserably tailing behindtheir own ruling class in its war propaganda against "the foreign enemy."The effect is to grease the skids forworker to fight worker in a war to seewhich bloodsucker will come out ontop. Today, this act is being played outin an endless and boring series of articles in The Call which pretend to contain a "Marxist" analysis of SALT II.And after wading through all theCPML's official-sounding missilecounts and graphs straight out of Timemagazine, their message is inescapable:the U.S. rulers, poor fellows, are quiteincapable of defending their world empire and are hell-bent on "appeasing"the Soviets by allowing them to get themilitary edge.Just who are these "appeasers"

anyway? Are we honestly to believe thatCarter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, andall who favor SALT II are soft on theSoviets, unable to look out for theirown imperialist class interests? Apparently so. On the other hand, thereare the James Schlesingers and HenryJacksons who are valiantly opposingthe SALT treaty because it is "givingaway" too much to the Soviet Union.And it is clearly the latter who are

I

A recent Call subscription ad (put in proper perspective).

preferred by the CPML, since they havetaken to glorifying them in the pages ofThe Call for their opposition to SALTII.

These "hardliners," we are informedin a recent issue (July 23), "make amore realistic assessment of Sovietmilitary strength. They have alsotargeted the appeasement policies whichhave marked the SALT negotiations..." We are even told that the U.S.rulers' phony SALT "debate" can "beused to the people's advantage becauseit spotlights appeasement, the mostdangerous trend among the U.S. rulers..."! Come on, CPML—get serious!"While condemning all imperialist

war preparations," the CPML drones,"it is especially important to oppose theappeasers." To this we can only answer—huh? This doubletalk roughly translates to: "While condemning all im

perialist war preparations, it is especially important to support even more blatant calls for war preparations by theU.S. imperialists"! The mind strains tocomprehend such a totally illogical andcontradictory statement, especiallywhen it dribbles from the mouths ofthose who proclaim themselves to be"communists." What, pray tell, isbehind this silly appeasement line andthis unashamed support for the basicpolicy of the U.S. ruling class, which isnothing but massive military build-upagainst the Soviets?

U.S. Appeasers?

It is certainly not that the U.S. rulersare in fact soft on the Soviets. Intoday's world this is utter nonsense.The two superpowers are smack upagainst each other, battling for hegemony in every corner of the globe. Far

from pursuing a policy of placating or"giving ground" to the Soviets, thestance of the U.S. rulers in the '70s has

been increasingly marked by heightenedcontention with their social-imperialistrivals, although the facade of "detente" is still of some value to both the

U.S. and the USSR in preserving the illusion that they are "lovers of peace."Take Angola, for example—the

CPML claims the-U.S. "appeased" theSoviets there. Evidently, we are tobelieve the UNITA mercenaries andSouth African troops financed by theU.S. were using toy pistols and rubberbullets when they fought the Soviet-backed MPLA to see which superpowerwould dominate the area after

U.S.-backed Portuguese colonialism bitthe dust. Or look at Portugal, where thepro-Soviet Communist Party had a lotof influence in the government for awhile,'and threatened to take still more.Did the U.S. stand aside? Hardly. Instead the Portuguese CP was knockedway back by some heavy moves by theU.S. together with its European allies.And what about Chile, where the

CIA helped the military junta ofPinochet to drown in blood the Allende

government in which the pro-Soviet CPhad a dominant influence? More re

cently, what are we to think of the thinly concealed U.S. sponsorship of theChinese invasion of Vietnam only twoweeks after Carter met with TengHsiao-ping? Wasn't this military thrustto match the Soviet-backed Vietnameseinvasion and occupation of Kampuchea(Cambodia) welcomed (and almost certainly approved in advance) by the U.S.rulers?

And what of SALT II itself, theCPML's big "appeasement" boogy-man? Since SALT was signed, the U.S.has been flexing its muscles .like anOlympic weightlifter. The first fruit ofthe SALT "disarmament" agreementwas the announcement by Carter thatthe U.S. would deploy the MX mobileintercontinental missile. Next came thelaunching of the first heavily MIRV'edTrident submarine. And now the latest

"timid" step—the rather blatant U.S.proposal to plant hundreds of newnuclear missiles in Western Europe (notcovered by SALT) aimed directly forthe first time at the Soviet Union. This,of course, is an unmistakable signal onthe part of the U.S. imperialists thatthey do not intend to give the Soviets aninch in Europe!Only a fool or an idiot (or, synony

mously, the CPML) would considerthese and countless other aggressivemoves as "appeasement" on the part ofthe U.S. imperialists! For the peoples ofthe world who are being victimized by

Continued on page 10

Carter; "It's a Free Country55

Revolutionaries Busted

at Tampa Town Meeting

01

Tampa, Florida. On August 30,; President Carter came to Tampa to

hold a "town meeting on energy" at alocal high school gymnasium. In hisusual style he called on people to "uniteto meet the threat." It was clear that thethreat he was talking about was theSoviet Union and that preparationsmust be made for war—a war whichwill require vast reserves of energy tofuel the U.S. imperialists' militarymachine.

"We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing," Carter said.He repeated his proposal to set up anEnergy Mobilization Board, "muchlike the War Production Board inWWII,'.^' which would give the government the power to ration gas and energyin a "time of crisis" (read war), as wellas floating Energy Bonds similar to theold war bonds. The bottom line ofCarter's speech was his statement that"Our nation not only has the will, unity, strength, the commitment to protectfreedom, our people, and our principles, but also the military power thatif anybody should challenge us, theywould be committing suicide."However, this war rally did not go

unchallenged. During Carter's speech,a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a member of theRevolutionary Communist Youth

Brigade began shouting down Carter'swar jive and unfurled a banner reading:"U.S.-Soviets gear for war, that ain'twhat we're fighting for, Turn the gunsaround. Tear the system down!"Carter's rap came to a dead halt.Unable to ignore the commotion as therevolutionaries were dragged out bySecret Service agents. Carter managedto get out the truly amazing and ironicstatement, "It's a free country."

Realizing that the incident was receiving widespread local and national presscoverage Carter felt compelled to addto this remark a short time later. As thetwo people who held up the bannerwere being busted outside for disorderlyconduct and held on $1,000 bail in thisland of "free speech" Carter said, "Ithink it's very good even when peopleexpress themselves in that way. I'm notembarrassed by it.. .1 think it's a proper place in our country for people toraise a banner or ask the president a difficult question or to shout out acriticism. I don't have any problemwith that. It's a free country. I want tokeep it." How wonderful it is to be inthis great country—why if a disruptionlike this would have happened in theSoviet Union the troublemakers wouldhave gotten arrested for disorderly conduct and held on $1,000 bail. H

P9ge 10^R9¥olutionary WorkerSeptembar 6, 1979

ToothlessContinued from page 9

the belligerent nature of U.S. imperialism as it fiercely contends with theSoviet Union for world domination, theCPML*s portrayal of the U.S. rulers as"appeasers" may be ridiculous but byno means funny.

What Was Appeasement?

"Wanna Borrow My Umbrella, Jimmy?" This headline appeared in theJune 25 issue of The Call next to a picture of Neville Chamberlain, the BritishPrime Minister who carried an umbrella

to Munich in 1938 where he informed

~ Hitler that the Allies would do nothingto stop the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. This Allied policy came to beknown as appeasement. The implication, of course, is that Carter and Co.are coming from a position of weakness, "appeasing" the Soviets just asthe supposedly weak-kneed Allies appeased Hitler.But this superficial historical analogy

completely misses the point. While appeasement was a definite policy pursuedby the Allies for a few years towardfascist Germany, it was not in the leasta policy of weakness as the CPML (andAmerican history books) suggest. Infact this attempt by the Western imperialists to lure Hitler into a war to theeast, toward the then-socialist SovietUnion, was a cold and calculated decision.

This strategy, the Allied bloc hoped,would dispose of the Soviet Union andthe revolutionary Bolsheviks, whichrepresented a more fundamental threatthan Hitler. This first socialist countryin history, while it would not attack theWestern capitalist countries, represented their future doom and posed theNeatest long-term danger to theirdreams of world expansion and plunder. At the same time, by diverting Germany into such a war, they hoped toweaken this up and coming imperialistrival for their own eventual attack. As

Mao Tsetung penetratingly summed up,it was a case of the U.S., British andFrench imperialists attempting to be ina position of "sitting on top of themountain and watching the tigersfight."Far from "giving in" to Hitler, ap

peasement was thus an imperialisticpolicy carried out for imperialisticreasons. It was the flip side of the imperialist coin of aggression, particularlyin this case an expression of the Allies'desire to annihilate socialism in theSoviet Union (and wear Germanydown) indirectly instead of throughtheir, own open attack, which woulddoubtless prove to be most costly.While keeping a wary eye on Germanyand stepping up their own war preparations, the Allied imperialists actuallypumped up the German economy, trying to push Hitlerian fascism to conducta "holy war against the Bolsheviks."Of course, appeasement mainly prov

ed to be a flop even though the Sovietseventually had to bear the brunt offighting Germany. When Hitler turnedagainst the West before attacking theSoviets, the Allies dropped appeasement like a hot potato. Perhaps theCPML and the Chinese revisionists,whom they follow, think they are the.first bourgeois forces to sum up thefailure of this policy. The U.S. imperialists summed it up quite adequately when they decided to declare war onGermany, and they are capable of applying this lesson today.But considering the fact that in the

early stages of World War II appeasement was a policy of aggressiondirected against the then-socialist SovietUnion, did this mean that the task ofcommunists was to "fight appeasement," to line up in support of the wardrives of their own imperialist rulingclasses? Not at all. As Mao said at thetime: "On whichever side, the Anglo-French or the German, the war that hasjust broken out is an.unjust, predatoryand imperialist war." While there was aplace for exposing appeasement,through agitation and propaganda,, asan attempt to instigate an attack on asocialist country, the main task of communists in the Allied countries was totake advantage of the sharpening crisisand the upheaval brought about by war

to work for the defeat of their own imperialist bourgeoisie with the aim ofoverthrowing them.

Defense of a Socialist Country?However, when Hitler attacked the

Soviet Union in June 1941, thecharacter of the war changed. It thenbecame necessary for communists totemporarily subordinate the struggle ofthe proletariat for revolution in theAllied countries in order to safeguardthe gains of the proletariat internationally. This meant uniting tacticallywith the Allied imperialists, utilizing thecontradictions among the warring imperialists to defeat Hitler and defendthe first country where the proletariatheld state power. It was also correct tooppose the tendencies of the Allies to"sit back" while Germany went afterthe Soviets.

In this situation, with the workingclass in power under attack, and onlyon this basis, was it necessary to fighta line of appeasement. One form thistook was calling for the opening of a"second front" in Europe to relieve themilitary pressure on the USSR, whichdid the bulk of the fighting.As defense of a socialist country is

the only correct justification imaginablefor raising the danger of appeasement,one would expect the CPML to raisethis question in the course of drummingout their "appeasement" cry. After all,they are fond of promoting the false illusion that China is still a socialist

country elsewhere in the pages of TheCall. But nowhere in their ponderousrecent volume of articles on "appeasement" and SALT II do these "Marx

ists" even bother to try. They don't say:"Make a temporary compromise to defend a socialist country." Far frommaking even the slightest pretense ofapplying Marxism-Leninism, of makinga class analysis of the world situationand trying to show the revolutionary interests of the working class, they arecontent to slavishly echo the JohnWayne, Green Beret-type war calls ofthe bourgeoisie.A year ago, however, CPML did

make a feeble attempt to raise this argument in a series of articles (beginning9-25-78 in The Call) in which they triedto do some "general education" on thehistory of appeasement. There it wasbriefly mentioned that "There are stillthose among the U.S. imperialists whocherish hopes that Brezhnev can beturned against socialist China," andthat U.S. stalling on normalization ofrelations with China was "another im

portant example of appeasement." (Ofcourse, since then China's unholy wedding to the U.S. has been consummatedby Teng's visit last January. Since thenany talk of the U.S. sicking the Sovietson China has completely disappearedfrom the "appeasement" articles in TheCall.)That China has been anything but

socialist since Mao's death is a subjectour Party has already dealt with in greatdetail and one which is too lengthy to berestated here. And that China hasbecome little more than a pawn of imperialism, particularly the U.S. at thistime, is painfully obvious for all to see.(One wonders just what the CPMLwould do if China decided to capitulateover to the Soviets!) But let's giveCPML the benefit of the doubt and justfor a minute grant them their argumentthat China is socialist. Unfortunately,their "appeasement" logic still falls flaton its face.

Even if China were socialist, andeven if the U.S. rulers were appeasingthe Soviets to encourage them to attackher, this would not mean that the taskof communists would be to shamelesslybow down before the U.S. imperialists*war preparations, to rally behind theirimperialist motives for going to war, orto rely on them to carry out the defenseof a socialist country.

Repeating History's Errors

In fact it is precisely these mistakes(made by many communists in the '40s)that the CPML avoids discussing likethe plague. They are conveniently leftout of the CPML's "history lessons"because they are the same errors theyare raising to a principle today withouteven the necessity of defending asocialist country. One serious errormade by communists in World War IIwas not teaching the workers that theonly basis on which to ally with one

INSURANCEMr

COURSE

(Above) a recent cartoon from the CPML newspaper—The Call. They showthe U.S. as a leaky boat—no match for the mighty power of the Soviet Union.And supposedly Jimmy Carter, the "appeaser," doesn't even notice. Thehundreds of billions the U.S. is spending on war preparations must all be going for Jimmy's fish bait.

group of imperialists against anotherwas the defense of a socialist countryunder attack. Instead they took the"easy road" of portraying the imperialist countries as being divided into"aggressors" and "non-aggressors,"just as the CPML now paints theSoviets and the U.S., respectively. Thistendency to see the Western powers asthe "good guys" instead of as the imperialist bandits they were, and to hingeeverything on aiming the "main blow"against fascism (just as CPML directsthe main blow against the USSR, the"up and coming Hitlerites"), led theCP's in many Western countries intoeasy accommodation with their ownbourgeoisies.When the war broke out, these par

ties were ill prepared to lead the strugglefor revolution at home; and when theUSSR was attacked, they were even lessprepared to lead the battle for thedefense of socialism under a proletarianline and to avoid the poison of nationalchauvinism so as to be in the best position to step up the struggle for revolution at home after Hitler was defeated.

A case in point was the rapiddegeneration of the CPUSA which,particularly under the leadership ofEarl Browder, steadily betrayed the interests of the working class in the nameof fighting fascism and winning thewar. Within three years, the CP wentfrom opposing the U.S. imperialists'arms sales and, war preparations tochauvinistic calls for "a big armamentsprogram for our country"—longbefore the USSR was even attacked.

When Hitler finally did attack theUSSR, many communists correctlyjoined the imperialist army to fight theNazis, but by this time it was under thenational banner and on the bourgeoisie's terms. After the U.S. entry into thewar, the CP sank to enthusiasticallychampioning the return of pieceworkand supporting no-strike pledges by theAFL, CIO and railroad brotherhoods.By 1944 the CP dissolved itself as a party in the name of "national unity."

First Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce

But today there is nothing resemblingthe situation of WW II. There is nosocialist country which if attackedcould change the character of the waron one side into a "war in defense ofthe future" as far as the working class isconcerned. World War III is shaping upas a strictly interimperialist affair, awar between rival robbers preparing togo for each other's throats, and communists should be putting forward theirdefeat. Even if the U.S. were appeasingthe Soviets in the SALT negotiations(which they most certainly are not), anygenuine revolutionary would be tempted to ask—so what? Lenin's statement

was never more true: "A revolutionaryclass cannot but wish for the defeat ofIts government in a reactionary war,cannot fail to see that its military

reverses facilitate its overthrow."But is there a spirit that emerges from

the CPML about working for the defeatof one's own government? Hardly. It'smore like a spirit of strengthening it.The odor emanating from the pages ofThe Call is unadulterated chauvinism, apure and simple attempt to revive Teddy Roosvelt's "big stick" with only themost transparent attempt to perfume itwith a "Marxist-Leninist" cover. Whatwe get is columns of quotes from"Scoop" Jackson, hysterical cries that"U.S. policies have, in fact, mandatedthat the Soviets be allowed to catch upwith - the U.S.," reams of reprintedbourgeois analysis to fill us with alarmthat "the ascending curve of Sovietmilitary capabilities intersects thedeclining curve of our own."And despite the CPML's standard

one-line disclaimer about how the people must oppose all war preparations, itis clear what message is being hammered home. It's the same old song anddance about how the Soviets are the"main danger", "the most aggressive," the "main source of war,"coupled with absurd formulationsabout how strengthening the U.S. imperialists' war machine will somehow"delay the outbreak of war"! This islittle more than a warmed-over version

of the U.S. rulers' line of "peacethrough strength"!

All this, of course, inevitably leads tospineless groveling at the feet of theU.S. ruling class. "Ruling classcriticism of SALT II," we are told inthe June 25 issue, "found its mostforceful expression in Sen. HenryJackson's charge on the very eve ofCarter's departure for ViennaJackson raised the spectre of appeasement openly Jackson's remarkswere made at a 'freedom awards' din

ner where he warned that 'seven yearsof detente are becoming a decade of appeasement'.. How forceful indeed!Too bad the CPML couldn't have at

tended the dinner to present this, bald-faced, flag-waving John Wayne re-runwith an award for "Slaunchest

American of the Year"!

All that remains to be asked is this:Does the CPML sound like a partywhich will lead the proletariat and themasses to, as Lenin said, "convert theimperialist war into a civil war," to takeadvantage of the war that is brewing tomake revolution in the U.S.? Or does itsound like the social-chauvinists ofLenin's time who deserted the ranks ofthe proletariat, voted for war budgetsand called on the masses to line up ascannonfodder under the imperialists'national banners and "defend thefatherland"?

When World War III breaks out, wecan rest assured that the CPML willrush out waving the red, white andblue, yelling at the top of their lungs:"Stars and Stripes Forever! And Don'tSpare the Ammunition!" ■