STATES POSITION On 19 August the North Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper, Nan Dhan, carried an editorial which should be noted by all those in solidarity with the Vietnamese national liberation struggle. The article denounced in the clearest possible terms the class collaboration policies of peaceful co-existence being pursued at present by the Soviet and Chinese leaderships. OPPORTUNIST CURRENTS The editorial denounced "disastrous opportunist currents of all shades outside Vietnam" who were assisting the American war effort. The US administration was relying on a stable relationship with the other big powers to provide a "shield to give the US imperialists complete freedom of action in checking by means of violence the national liberation movement". The writer then pinpoints the opportunism of the Moscow and Peking bureaucrats: *If out of the narrow interests of one's nation one tries to help the most reactionary forces avert the most dangerous blows, just like throwing a life belt to a dangerous pirate, that is a cruel reconciliation beneficial to the enemy and not beneficial to the revolution." This is a reference to the betrayal of the Vietnamese spring offensive by the Russian and Chinese leaders. When the puppet forces were on the run from Quang Tri the bureaucrats allowed Nixon the right to bomb the North as never before.
Such policies on the part of Brezhnev and Mao are justified in the name of narrow national interests - the development of Russian/Chinese society is the greatest guarantee and benefit for the developmentof the world socialist movement - or in the name of a hypocritical defence of world peace: to challenge the American blockade of Haiphong, they say, would have meant jeopardising world peace! What peace? The only thing that a firm defence of the North Vietnamese workers' state would have threatened would have been the American war. The logic of the position put forward by both China and Russia is that by engaging in revolutionary struggle the Vietnamese workers and peasants are jeopardising world peace!
MUST PERSIST IN REVOLUTION The Nhan Dan editorial then goes on to explain precisely what is required: a complete break from the "Machiavellian policy of big power reconciliation with the US imperialists". The principle of compromise must be denounced: "We Communists must persist in revolution and should not compromise."
It ended by outlining the only genuinely international perspective for any socialist "The evolution of each country is an integral part of the world revolution and the revolutions of all countries have the effect of impelling and assisting one another.
The victory of a revolution in a country is not the end but only the beginning of the long travel towards the triumph of socialism on a world scale."
Recent Viernam demonstration by Japanese section of the Fourth Internationat A few weeks ago, the newspapers here allowed us to spot the tip of a very important iceberg that is floating into the seemingly stagnant waters of West German politics. They reported a police raid on the Stuttgart flat of a Scotsman named lan Macleod; he offered no resistance and was shot dead. A police claim that Macleod was connected with the 'Red Army Fraction' (also called the Baader-Meinhof group) has since been shown to be false.
Such killings were legalised in Germany this year. The police have to show simply that they were hunting criminals at the time and the new law has been given retrospective force to clear the state of another unprovoked killing: that of Petra Schelm in Hamburg in 1971.
PRETEXT These events have been explained here as a response to the actions of the Baader-Meinhof group (an urban guerrilla force).* BaaderMeinhof did pose an ideological threat to the state by denying its right to a monopoly of violence. Failure to crush such a challenge weakens the credibility of the repressive forces. But more careful study of recent trends in West Germany shows that Baader-Meinhof was at most a pretext for measures against much more profound threats to the established order.
Even the campaign against Baader-Meinhof demonstrates this. More than anything it was a rehearsal for campaigns against a different type of enemy: under a blaze of publicity a cumbersome system of road blocks was set up, combined with mass searchings of motorists. Such activity - useless against urban guerrillas — is a valuable exercise in testing military resources and reactions on the part of the mass of the people.
REPRESSIVE APPARATUS Under cover of the Baader-Meinhof affair, there has been an unprecedented transformation of the repressive apparatus of the West German state. The police have grown by 15,000 within a year and have been given machine guns and hand grenades. The Central Criminal Department has increased its detective force by 20 per cent. Its powers vis a vis Lander (regional) police departments have been strengthened as has the *co-ordinating role of the Ministry of the Interior. Phone tapping, previously sanctioned only in a "State of Emergency", is now legitimate against any "serious forms of delinquency". But the most important change in the repressive machinery is the transformation of the so-called frontier- guard' into an internal security force, explicitly for use against rioters' and strikers - so much for the Baader-Meinhof explanation. Their numbers have been increased from 23,000 to 30,000 and they are supplied with the best weaponry of the army without the army's disability of being based on conseripts. This frontier,guard' has also been given wide powers for house searching more sweeping than those of the police. There are virtually no limitations on its use of arms: a supreme court judge declared that shooting would be legitimate even against unarmed demonstrators.
The Social-Democratic government of Hesse subsequently noticed that this alterUS ANMY *SUPPLY & MAINT ACTIVITY.
SAGAMI POLIZEI (POLIZED WI-7669 Standard equipment on a standard raid ation of the frontier-guard's role broke the constitution of the Federal Republic, so parliament hurriedly amended the constitution. The old emergency laws, passed in 1968, said the frontier-guard could be used internally "to fight against organised and armed uprisings". The new laws state it may be used "in cases of major importance in order to support the state police; such support may become necessary in demonstrations". CONCERTED DRIVE These dramatic legal and administrative changes have been combined with a concerted drive against the main centres of revolt in West German society. The most immediate target has been the revolutionary left. Since the start of 1972 more than 1,000 raids have been made on the homes of socialist militants. In one week 10 bookshops were attacked ov the pouce in a numoct or towns notably Frankfurt, Hamburg and Mannheim — the police have started trying to suppress the right to demonstrate through massive and brutal interventions.
There have also been attacks on trade union organisation. The laws on what is called the "constitution in the factory" have been strengthened to limit political activity. All initiatives must be taken by the union officials, and all their activity has to be public. The elections for the so-called factory coun cils (on which the management has a majority) are also now under more careful control, making the putting forward of an alternative slate very difficult.
The most spectacular of the new measures is the decree of 28 January this year: all those who refuse to explicitly defend the constitution of the Federal Republic are banned from employment as a state functionary. In Germany this includes teachers and university lecturers, as well as judges, civil servants, lawyers, etc. The purpose of this law is to root out all socialist and revolutionary elements at one stroke, and in the last 7 months some hundreds of teachers have been thrown out of their profession on the basis of it. At present lawyers are being investigated in order to eradicate any sympathetic defence of militants who fall victim to state repression.
IMMIGRANT WORKERS A crucial piece in the jigsaw puzzle of repression is the attempt to crush all political organisation of the immigrant workers. The bourgeoisie received its warning signal from the metal workers very tough strike in Baden Wurtemburg last Christmas: foreign 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
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Address: workers played a prominent part as one of the most militant sections of the strikers and the Italian Communist Party made significant progress in organising those workers. The Lande government is now declaring its intention to ban the CPI. In Frankfurt, Santiago Carrillo, General Secretary of the Spanish CP, spoke to a meeting of two thousand Spanish workers. The response of the police authorities was to expel Carrillo and another member of the Political Bureau from Germany within 48 hours. TENDENCY TOWARD 'STRONG STATE' During the 1950s and early 1960s the left wing of the Labour Party used to seize on the slightest whiff of repression in West Germany as a pretext for an 'anti-Nazi campaign. The CPGB, following the Moscow line of Bonn being the main enemy, used to follow suit. Today, when there is a genuine turn to the right on the part of German capital, both the Labour lefts and the CPGB are silent. For the initiator of this turn is none other than Willy Brandt's SPD, and Moscow is now busy consolidating its ties with German capital.
The real explanation for this turn by the German bourgeoisie was given by Ernest Mandel in a recorded speech to students in Frankfurt following his expulsion from Germany this spring. "The central meaning of this entire development is that they are attempting, through a continuous escalation of repressive laws and repressive physical measures, to delay or completely prevent the unfolding of the West European working class's fighting strength and its transformation from a force for immediate goals into a clear-sighted, anti-capitalist, fighting power. We are faced with a quite clear tendency toward a "strong state". This is a state that attempts to intimidate the workers' movement with laws and repressive measures against the unions and the working class. In this manner the bourgeoisie hopes to throw back the anticapitalist offensive that has been under way since May 1968 and to weaken the fighting strength of the workers" *Those who refuse to contemplate political action outside the framework of bourgeois legality have tried to comfort themselves by saying the Red Army Fraction are "lunatics'. An important pamphiet containing their writings destroys such stupid slanders. The pamphlet, called Armed Resistance in West Germany, is published by the Stoke Newington Eight Defence Committee and is available from Red INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP (British Section of the Fourth International)
I would like more information about the IMG.
Paul Smith looks at how and why Two hundred and sixty women in the Lucas papers and information that Charter could have provided. Any working class leadership worth its salt would be campaigning up and down the country to win members, readers and supporters.
Why has Charter failed? Again it is a polit-