Freedom 29/6/National Liberation or Class War?

6

National Liberation or Class War?

LET US SEE if the NLF (of Viet­nam) is a re­volu­tion­ary organ­isa­tion.

  It is evid­ent that the sole fact that the NLF sup­ports the armed strug­gle against United States im­peri­al­ism does not prove that its views and ac­tions are re­volu­tion­ary (just as the Gaul­lists, in 1940, parti­cip­ated in the armed strug­gle against German im­peri­al­ism).

THE NLF PRO­GRAMME

  Let us ex­am­ine the pro­gramme of the NLF, in par­tic­u­lar the fam­ous five points of its Central Com­mit­tee.

  The first point ac­cuses US im­peri­al­ism of having sab­ot­aged the Geneva Agree­ment. We al­ready have here the embryo of a false ana­lysis, since this im­plies that they need not have been sab­ot­aged, that is, that an agree­ment be­tween na­tions can be valid.

  The second point states that their aim is to cre­ate an in­de­pend­ent, demo­cratic, peace­ful and neutral state. This is not an aim which anarch­ists can sup­port.

  In points 1, 3, 4 and 5 they al­ways re­fer to the no­tion of ‘people’ and not of ‘classes’, which makes one think that it is not the world bour­geoisie that have made and broken the Geneva Agree­ment, but only US im­peri­al­ism, and that the Viet­nam­ese form a whole in them­selves, that is, that there are no domin­ant classes in Viet­nam, nor any aspir­ing to be such.

NLF OBJECTIVES

  Also let us look at the de­clar­a­tion of N’Guyen Hno Tho, of the NLF in L’Human­ité (28.8.66):

  ‘Our ob­ject­ive is to set up in South Viet­nam a united na­tional demo­cratic gov­ern­ment re-unit­ing the re­pre­sent­at­ives of all so­cial classes, of all be­liefs, and of patri­otic not­abil­it­ies and polit­ical parties. …’ (Even the French Com­mun­ist Party does not go that far on the road to re­form­ism.)

  For a re­volu­tion­ary to sup­port the NLF and its polit­ical posi­tions, in these con­di­tions, is to make the same mis­take as to sup­port the Gaul­list pro­gramme dur­ing the Re­sist­ance, the Pop­ular Front in 1936, and the CNT col­labor­a­tion­ists with the Re­pub­lic­ans in Spain.

  This is to fall into the trap of unit­ing against our privi­leged enem­ies in par­tic­u­lar, which is only one aspect of the gen­eral re­pres­sion, and it is to sup­port the theory of re­volu­tion by pal­li­at­ives.

  We will elabor­ate on this when we make a criti­cism of Front­ism. But before this we must re­fute another argu­ment. One often hears it said that the NLF is in fact sup­ported by a re­volu­tion­ary organ­isa­tion (the ex-<span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Indo-Chinese CP">Indo-Chinese CP) it­self sup­ported by the work­ers’ state of Hanoi, and that the al­li­ance is only tac­tical, be­cause after the vic­tory the bour­geois ele­ments will be jet­tisoned in order to con­struct the so­cial­ist order.

  Apart from the fact that we al­ways have the same at­ti­tude to a Com­mun­ist Party or a workers’ state, we must criti­cise more deeply the posi­tion of the Indo-Chinese Com­mun­ist Party and the Demo­cratic Re­pub­lic of Viet­nam, in order to under­stand what Marx­ist-Lenin­ism is, that is, the strat­egy of com­prom­ise built into a pro­gramme, re­volu­tion by steps, that is, an ideal­ist vi­sion of his­tory, a sort of mes­si­an­ism.

PERMANENT INSURRECTION

  Since 1930 (see Solid­ar­ pamph­let and Voix Ouvrier) the peas­ants (95% of the pop­u­la­tion) have been in a state of per­man­ent in­sur­rec­tion against feudal ex­ploit­a­tion. On the whole they sup­port the Viet­cong which they see as a force cap­able of break­ing the so­cial struc­ture. The first in­sur­rec­tions were sup­ported by the ICP; how­ever, after the 7th Con­gress of the Com­intern (1935) which ad­voc­ated the tac­tic of the Pop­u­lar Front (al­li­ance with the so-called pro­gres­sive bour­geoisie), the ICP took a step back­wards: it aban­doned the slo­gan ‘Down with French im­peri­al­ism’ and the strug­gle for in­de­pend­ence.

  The ICP faith­fully fol­lowed Stalin’s di­rect­ives after the <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Russo-German rap­proche­ment">Pact Russo-German rap­proche­ment of 1939, de­fend­ing German fas­cism against French ag­gres­sion. Since 1940 the Amer­icans have been in­ter­ested in Indo-China. At Yalta (1945) Roose­velt pro­posed to re­place French oc­cu­pa­tion by an inter­na­tional (in ef­fect US) oc­cu­pa­tion. Stalin agreed.

In March, 1945, the Japan­ese launched an of­fens­ive against the French gar­ri­sons. The USA re­fused to help; the French forces were decim­ated, the Japan­ese pro­claimed <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Indo-China in­de­pend­ent">Indo-China in­de­pend­ent, but con­tinued their oc­cu­pa­tion. The ICP pre­pared for the oc­cu­pa­tion of the coun­try by the al­lies. Amer­icans and Brit­ish oc­cu­pied the south of the coun­try, Ho Chi Minh took Hanoi; he sup­ported the USA. France in its turn de­clared Indo-China in­de­pend­ent and under­took to pull out its troops in five years. The ICP fol­lowed di­rect­ives of the USSR; a strict ap­pli­ca­tion of the Yalta Agree­ment; Indo-China was made part of the West. There was no ques­tion of so­cial re­volu­tion or of in­de­pend­ence.