= both RYM 1 and RYM II the blacks re a central significance analogous to colonial peoples. What they provide, at least what they provided last June, ething external to support, somea for whites to subordinate eves to. If as Weatherman argued, can make the revolution alone, 1 makes as much sense to support blacks as to attempt to build a mass Donary movement among whites d. If urban guerrilla warfare were order of the day for blacks, as etman asserted, then it would more sense. Blacks can make the tion alone, according to Weatheruse of their "centrainess to 'economically and "geo, as well as because of the el of unity among blacks. But the work force is not essential to the al of American corporate capital, therman insists. Because it is inantly unskilled and semile the black work force as presently tuted is less and less relevant. Even culture, blacks are being replaced chinery. Unemployment among is steadily rising. Indeed, the ig marginality of the black work is what has led many blacks to an e fear of genocide. A work force ntial to the survival" of any system & not fear genocide, whatever else it practice RYM undereut this attempt to suffer. Further, the level of unity ing blacks may or may not increase entrance of significant numbers of es into highly skilled and better paid raises the possibility of growing al disparity between ghetto and Se class" blacks.
aw profound Weatherman's rence to 1ts line on blacks was can asured by the events that occurred be weeks after the summer 1969 SDS ention. At the convention the posite view of blacks, expressed by nadine Dohrn and Mark Rudd went ething like this: blacks are the guard of the revolution, as they have a of radical forces in the United Bes throughout its history, There is and never has been a liberal black mement because in fact the black vement has always been led by eking class blacks. White workers and white middle class are racist and rupted by white skin privilege. retore, organising a mass movement socialism among whites is not only a ite of time, but objectively racist, ess it is organised around a programme combatting racism. The order of the for SDS, said Mark Rudd, is "two, M, many John Browns." upon the Panthers, but had given little more than verbal support in return. Their opportunity to pick up their end of the igation presented itself only four weeks later at the Panther Conference Jor a United Front Against Fascist in Oakland. There, the " "vanguard" declined to assume the role assigned to it by Weatherman: instead of calling for urban guerrilla warfare it called for a united front on the left in defence of the Black Panther Party, a sensible proposal from the Party's point of view, but one that undermined almost the of both RYM I and RYM II. As a result neither RYM group agreed to the task assigned by the Panthers For the Panthers, alliance with whites had been a major step in the direction of becoming a serious revolutionary movement. It was precisely because the Panthers never believed that they could fight and win a revolution on their own that they had repudiated cultural nationalism. Serious revolutionary politics meant building a coalition of revolutionary movements, securing allies of substance. The credibility of the Panthers in the black community depended in part on their ability to demonstrate that masses of whites were also committed to revolutionising American society. Both in theory and in build a diverse movement.
Weatherman by ussigning to the movement a position subordinate to the black "vanguard by limiting whit ictivity to support of black initiates reestablished, however fleetingly, the parasitism of ghetto organising on a more obvious basis. Trying at least to take advantage of that parasitism to mobilise defence against police repression, the Panthers called upon RYM and other white movement groups to engage in activity for community control of the police. Weatherman quickly reversed tself and made it clear that it would be parasitic only if the Panthers behaved according to RYM's original prescription. holds it power by ideological hegemony. Soon afterwards Bobby Seale and David Hilliard denounced RYM I. Kiss ass was over and kick ass was coming up.
Subordination to the Panthers, however supericial and temporary was an escape trom white America and therefore from revolution. In that sense it was a return to the patter of civil rightaism. The difference was that in the nirst instance when whites were excluded destroying the appearance of consensus from the black movement and forced to begin to look into their own communities, among their own people. for a movement and an understanding of war provided them with the means to do so. This time, however, RYM simply backed off when the Panthers pursued their own programme, leaving Weatherman no place to go but from bad to worse: if the blacks refused to play urhan guerrilla warfare, Weatherman would and it would kick the ass of anyone who stood in the way. First came plans for October 8 and the great "jail break" (abandoned in Chicago because of a shortage of troops), then came dress rehearsals in Detroit and Pittsburgh. Curiously, with the Panthers out of the picture, it was the rage of the Weatherman women their alterative to the Women's liberation movement that Weatherman harnessed in its guerrilla attacks on the high schools. These attacks achieved what RYM I desired:
hey forced people to take sides. But thi ime it was the rest of the movement a well as the general public who took sides against Westherman. What followed in Chicago was 200 beleaguered Weathermen and women running wild through the streets, demonstrating their fury but little else.
But although we shall probably hear ittle more of Weatherman, the ideas that have little more to offor, Both RYM II informed its actions and precipitated its downfall are still in the air. For all its poverty as a revolutionary force Neatherman was nevertheless the firs new left group within SDS to attempt to groups are forming and developing. But derive a long-term strategy of revolution from current movement perceptions of American capitalism. That attempt necessarily resulted in a strange conglomeration of insights the result of some eight years of haphazard action and thought-framed in a model of revolution borrowed from revolutionary nationalist struggles abroad and inappropriate to advanced corporate capitalism at the centre of the empire.
An important insight, distorted though it was, lay in the concept of white skin privilege a concept that implicitly admitted that the ruling class by imposing its view of man as consumer. the movement has at every point The despair of Weatherman and of others mannged to transcend the limitations of who share Is views follows from accepting that definition of man.
Weatherman's view of the role of militancy was similarly distorted. As a tactic, militancy has served the movement well, first in dramatising opposition to the war and thereby behind which the corporations conceal the meaning of their policies, second in struggling for concrete demands whose realisation will advance the movement individuals, in specific and limited contexts, from passisity to action as in Stop The Draft Week. But such militancy is tactical, not strategie. Militancy can serve as a strategy only where state power is held primarily by lorce, rather than by ideological means. Then it can force people to choose between an already undertood oppression and revolution. Blevated to a strategy in the United States, militancy can only reinforce the left's worst image of itsel! as a band of isolated desperadoes.
Weatherman tried to do the impossible. Recognising the difference in the state of consciousness of Americans and Vietnamese, RYM I nevertheless sought to make America into Vietnam. Their odd theory of imperialism and of the "world struggle" (in which there is Do such thing as "adventurism"), is at best in attempt to render consistent a strategy and an understanding of the United States that are inconsistent on their face.
The scarlet hues of Weatherman sinking in the sest raise the question: what next? The groups wailing in the wings to assume the leadership of SDS especially its most active part, the Revolutionary Union, and the nternational Socialists now aspire ti eplace the falling leaders, while othe no group now on the scene can reunite the movement. Wetherman, with its rigirily ideological mystifications has brought to an end the anti-theoretical phase of the new left. A coda will follow in which it is likely that the RU will swing a steadily diminishing number of followers back into a more orthodox Maoism. In reaction to that, perhaps, the IS will have a turn -alfaeugh it seems unlikely that many people can still he found to follow an organisation that has spent so much of its time waiting for new new revolutions to condemn. The prospects for SDS we therefore dim. That is not necessarily a tragedy. since its organised sects. Until now it has done so intuitively, hut to rise above the level of its accomplishments to date will repuire a theory that does more than reflect current practice. What is required is a theory that can understand such practice in the context of our historical sifuation and by grasping toe possibilities inherent in that situation, move towards their realisation.
LAOS: Population/2 mill lion, Per capita income/ £26: U.S. Aid (1955 59)/ $190,281,000; Puppet government leader/Prince Souvanna Phouma: Name of Liberation Army/Pathet Lao. The coup in Cambodia which overthrew Prince Sihanouk and installed in his place a pro-imperialist government headed by General Lon Nol symbolises the present conjuncture in Indo-China. The American ruling class is witnessing the effects of the Vietnamese struggle in the rest of Indo China and is being confronted with the logic of the permanent revolution. The main reason for the take over in Cambodia was the escalation of the military offensive in Laos by the Pathet Lao and the knowledge that this would have drastic effects in Cambodia. A primary reason could well have been the seizure of the American munitions ship by two soldiers who declared their solidarity with the American SOS and the Asian people. However, it is the Pathet Lao offensive which threatens imperialism the most at the present moment.
Pathet Lao-Background Like the Viet Minh, the Laotian revolutionaries built their army (Lao Issara) during the second World War, and say troops foreign to the country by after the war ended they declared their independence. French imperialism (in collusion with the class-collaborationist French CP) refused to recognise this independence, and aided by the United States it succeeded in re establishing control in Laos. In March 1951 the Laotian and Vietnamese revolutionaries met in the jungles of Vietnam (the area has still not been specified) and an BURMA agreement was mached to continue the by the Laotians with the help of the Vietnamese inside Laos that was decisive withdraw from certain base areas and in defeating the French armies in IndoChina. It is also worth noting that the battle of Dienbienphu was fought mainly to prevent Viet Minh help from reaching the Laotians.
Geneva Betrayals-1954 The Geneva Agreements of 1954 are usually remembered in relation to Vietnam and the betrayal of the Vietnamese revolutionaries by the representatives of both Peking and Moscow. There seems to be little doubl that had the Viet Minh not capitulated to pressure from Moscow in 1954 and accepted the compromise settlement, we might have seen a liberated Saigon in 1955 and no Vietnam War today. However, what is usually forgotten is the fact that the Geneva Agreements covered Indo China as a whole and neither the Russians nor the Chinese exerted sufficient pressure to get the Pathet Lao recognised as conference participants. Instead the Conference accepted the view of the puppet regime which declared in much the same way as the Ky/Thieu regime does today that:
..the military operations in Laos are the work of Viet Minh troops, that is to race, tradition and ideology. We maintain that the so-called "free government' has been fabricated lock, stock and barrel by the foreign invaders.
As a result the voice of the Pathet Lao was not heard at the conference. Instead the Geneva Agreements specified that the Pathet Lao would have to relinquish their control of cortain areas:
"Thus, in return for a promise of nation wide elections in which the Pathet-Lao would take part like any other political party, the Pathet-Lao forces agreed to withdraw from their old resistance bases in the centre and the south and concentrate in the two northern provincesi.. This was a hard decision, but it was accepted." (Burchett, Mekong Upstream, p. 243).
However, there is one important fact struggle. It was some of the victories won. which must be grasped about the Pathet Lao: while they accepted the decision to while they even accepted the decision to participate in bourgeois elections, they never disbanded their army and maintained its independence. This then was the decisive factor which was to make any real consolidation of the mercenary-imperialist regime in Laos impossible U.S. Aggression in Laos For the last fifteen years the United States has been actively participating in controlling the anti Pathet Lao forces in Laos. At times quite blatantly as in the Eisenhower-Dulles period when they backed the extreme right-wing elements in the army and encouraged the latter to strike at both the "neutralist" Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao. At other times they have changed with the times, The liberal rhetoric of the Kennedy administration was extended also to its new frontiers in Asia and from now on the U.S. openly backed the "neutralists" against the Pathet Lao. After serious clashes in 1960-61 the Soviet Union once again collaborated with imperialism and forced the Pathet Lao to attend a new Geneva Conference in 1962. Here a neutralist government including the Pathet Lao was agreed on and the latter succumbed to Soviet pressure, but once again while they made concessions on the superstructural level they refused to disband their independent liberation army or to concede any of their base areas. It was clear that Souvanna Phourna was tied hand and foot to American palicy and the Pathet Lao were quite clearly not pleased with the continued supply of Soviet arms to Phoura. The Sino-Soviet rift brought various differences out into the open and under pressure from the Chinese, the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese, the Russians were finally forced to stop all aid to the pro-imperialist government. Since that time Souvanna Phouma declared his pro-American views to the public and the United States took control in name as well as in fact of all military operations in Laos. The notorious American equivalent of the S.S, the Special Forces, were sent to Laos as "advisers" and together with mercenaries from Thailand they began to re train the Laotian army. Unofficial estimates published in certain American magazines indicate that the United States has dropped as many bombs on liberated areas in Laos as they have on North Vietnam and even the State Department has now begun to admit that some of their planes were shot down by the Pathet Lao.
Despite the intervention of the United States in the civil war in Laos, it has become obvious that they have been unable to preserve the status quo: The recent offensive of the Pathet Lao was completely successful and reports published in Le Monde suggested that certain elements in the military leadership at the Pentagon were advocating "abandoning" Loos and concentrating on Thailand. The Pathet Le victory at Sam Thong Imost vital American supply base in Laos is only the beginning of an offensive which will soon embrace the whole of IndoChina.
Structure of Pathet Lao It should be understood that the appearance of organisations like the Pathet Lao often conceals the reality underneath. The same is true of the National Liberation Front in Southern Vietnam and the Patriotic Front in Thailand. The Laotian People's Party (Laotian equivalent of Communist Party forms the hard core of the Pathet Lao and directs its operations. Though it often uses theoretical weapons from the Stalinist arsenal in its propaganda, when it comes to concrete action it refuses to subordinate its aims to appease the comprador bourgeoisie. Mechanistic Marxists often use the programme of organisations like the Pathet Lao to dismiss them out of hand. There can be no doubt that these programmes are usually extremely liberal. For instance, Point 1 of the programme of the Pathet Lao declares without equivocation that its tasks are to: "Broadly unite all social strata, nationalities, religious communities, political parties, mass organisations, all patriotic forces and people who stand for peace and democracy, and approve of the struggle against the American imperialists to build a peaceful, independent, neutral, democratic, unified and prosperous Lao To respect the throne." (Political Programme of the Neo Lao Haksat, 1968).
Despite this extraordinary approsch in the epoch of decaying capitalism, the actions of the Pathet Lan and the social nature of the liberated areas contradict all this propaganda because they demonstrate that the struggle is part of the permanent revolutionary process. The Pathet Lao are not fighting for a government of the bourgeoisie. They are fighting against it and when they win they will remove Laos from the capitalist world market, smash the bourgeois state defeat the imperialist armies and establish a new regime of a socialist nature. This process is called social revolution and every social revolution Today strikes a blow at the heart of imperialism and exacerbates the contradictions inside the metropolitan countries. Revolutionaries in these countries must therefore give clear and unequivocal support to the social revolutionary forces in the colonial and semi colonial worid.
G. Camillo