The whole struggle of the last 35 years in Indochina was repeated in a shortened form in the few weeks before the liberation of Saigon.
A week before Saigon feil it was obviously fast coming under the control of the NLF. The ARVN (tha South Vietnamese Anny) were mutinous, Large sumbers of them were changing sides. Those left be bind were either the fanatics boasting about fighting to the and or those who were just too demoralised to fight at all.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government delayed its final assual: for a number of reasons. Firstly to give the puppet regime the choice of surrendering. Secondly, to allow the United States time to com plete its evacuation of its personnel and harperson, thereby not giving ther any pretext for a last-minute military intervention Thirdly, to re-form the units around Saigon and more importantly, organise the forces of the PRG inside the city itself.
bureaucrats of the USSR slowed their true colours by urging a "negotiated settlement on the grounds that a military assault might imperil their detente with the US.
I UTTER CONFUSION II to manoeuvre a Face-saver. The Saigon ruling clique was in uller confusion. No one showed this confusion more than Marshal Ky. Only last February be was berating Thieu for allowing the town of Pauoc Bink to be Liberated, In Match he appeared in a self-styled 'Goverment in hiding urging a ceuse-lire. Last weckend he was joining the penerals in a call for a "fight to the finish', denouncing the evacuees for cowardice and desertion.
cargo hold of a US aircret canner steuming to safety of the clique were urging the form port of Vung Tau.
Even at this stage the treacherous In the final days imperialism tried surrender.
On 30 April he was found in the Other more "realistic" members and perhaps maintain an indepeacent Saigon-which would of course need to keep its army! Meanwhile the aged and ailing President Huone was denounced hy the PRO their wal and exposed by the urban opposition which had flared up as a result of the crisis of the regime and the flight of the Americans.
The indecision was finally resolved when the NLF fired a few rockels into Saigon and cut the roads to the Mekong Delta and the M PUPPET SHOW III Duong Van "Big" Minh was hurriedly sworn in as president. But it guickly became clear that the puppet show was largriy an Irrelevance. The demands of the PRG put forward on 28 April showed the confidence of the NIF and illustrated that the balance of forces was completely on the side of the liberation forces. They de manded that the new regime should have no links with the Thieu administration or with imper alism. Furthermore they Insisted that it must guarantee the immediate with drawal of all US intervention and totally dissolve the urmy and apparatus of the puppet state.
This was quite simply a demand for unconditional surrender. Despite the pacifist retonic of Huong's succosor, "Big Minh, mone of these things happened.
On 29 April the US had completed its evacuation. Small offen sives and local insurrections had dis armed the ARVN poss in the suc urbs and handed over power to the revolutionary committees. The regime was paralysed but did not have the authority to negotiate a I CHEERING CROWDS WI The next day, meating hardly any resistance, the NIF entered Saigon to be grected by encering crowds. By 11 a.m. the PRG Ong was flying over the Presidential Palace.
The US Seventh Fleet meanwhil lay off the Vietnamese coast and Tumed. The most powerful military force in the world, unable to get authorisation for intervention Horanes of Congress's deen fear of a one role to play. It provided a taxi service to the crowd of bandits, CIA agents, capitalists, pimps and racker eers who had bought and brited But of Saigon The PRG have taken power in South Vietnam under the best possible conditions that could be achieved given the history of counter-revolutionary destruccon In Vietoam. From the way Saigon was liberated it seems that neither the LSA nor the Moscow and Peking buncancracies have been able to limpose any conditions on the PROs Victory I WORKERS STATE I Of course total victory has not yet been achieved. The building of a workers state will not be easy. Many hard political struggles lie ahead. This includes a struggle against the burcaucratic conceptions of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the PRG-both of which display a deep distrust of organs of popular democrucy. Nor will imperialism willingly renounce South East Aria. Finaily there is the leavy toll of imperialist destruction and the ideological divisions that im perialise cicated to be overconce At this slage it is not yet clear hov power will be exercised. If the sante pattern is followed as in other lib erated areas, the Military Committes will give way to an organisation of the PRG which wil include te presentatives of the leit wing of the urban opposition, trade unionists. and rural and religious minorities. This will be structured trom vulage to national level Whether or not any capitalist forces will be included remains to he seen. Certainly this is a possible variant in the PRO programme a varient which the Fourth Inter national condemns.
But the positility of a significan! coalition government, something that looked likely given the Vietnamese Chmmunist Party's past political positions, now looks much less probable. Whatever 1ue exac details. tbere can be no doubt that the orientation of the PRO a finny fixed on the goal of re-unification o the country and the creation of a
need is a little help.
of other Asian despots about their own future.
Lee in Singapore and Tun Abdul Razak in Malaysia have both begun to make overtures to China.
President Marcos of the Philippines has said that the US-Philippines axis must bo reviewed. Even the extreme right wing regime in Thailand has demanded the closing of US bases.
Of course none of these regimes con break with imperialism, but their publicly voiced disquiet and puny threats are a symptom of their deep decline • OVERFLOWED • ong overlio wed its national bo anes. The culensive against the Upsurge of student rad French in the 1950s forged close links between the Viernamese and the Laotians. In its turn the US was forced to include first Laos and then Cambodia in ils counter-revolutionaty war.
This drawing of Cambodia into the war brought an entirely new dimension to the Indochineso revolution. The Vietnamese spring offensive of 1972 was prepared by the succeases of fie Pathet Lao in Lace in 1970-71 and the rapid devolopment of the National United Front of the Cambodians (FUNK). The Paris Accords on Vietnam and the defeat suffered by the US in 1973 provided a framework for the Accords on Laos and the ending of the US bombing of Cambolia • IMPACT IN LAOS • The fact that the US was unable to respond to the Cambodian dry season offensive this year gave the green light to the PRG to step up its own activities. Then the collapse of The ARVN in the Central Highlands The Singapore Prime Minister was summing up the crisis of of Saigon The victories scored in Cambodia and Vietnam have cut deeply into the ability of the imperialists to manoeuvre in Laos, and it is in Laos that the most direct repercussions of the liberation of Phnom Penh and Saigon can be seen.
After the signing of the Paris Peace Acpords, the Fourth International took the position that the coalition government in Laos was a dangerous step which could imperil the revolution. Nevertheless we also calisation in Indonesia against Tanaka visit was viciously repressad in the main cities of Vientiane and Luang Prubang, and the splits produced in the right-wing camp all tited the balance of forces in favour of the revolutionary process.
The Accords elevated to the centre of the stage the political strugele in Laos, but we said then that its pace would be considerably affected by the dynamic of the struggle in Cambodia and Vietnam. That prediction has now been confirmed in action. In respo nse to events clsewhere in Indo cluna, movements of urban workers, students, peasants and soldiers have recency caierged in at least two former right-wing strongholds.
In Vientiane there have been demonstrations and simull-scale strikes in solidarity with struggles in the provinces These developments are signiticant because they are completely new and have all gained the support of the Pathet Lao. On 23 April an armed conf Tantation took place between Pathet Lao and US-trained troops the side of the Pathet Lao.
On 15 April the National bourgeoisic.
there is a coming together of the workers, peasants, ethnic and Confined to the countries which comprised the old Indochinese empire of French imperialism. In the Indochinese victory.
new radicalisation that is being played by the stu youth that are breaking out of a and are beginning to take up the social grievances of the peasants and urban worken.
mote important given the past ty, while in Indoncia they even supported the 1965 Suharto coup in Malaysia has there been any previous history of student resistance to a repressive regime.
The tour of Asia by the Japense Prime Minister, Tanaka, In radicalisation. The protests of the Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian students were however not just against the oppressive presence of Japanese imperialism. In Thailand, the CIA offices were sucked and US bases occupied, In Indonesia a general strike erupted agunst the repressive labour laws. In Malaysia the demonstrations turned against the university auth regine itself.
tects the new balance of forces.
Seven major air bases-from which the B-52s flew to blitz Laos, Cambodia and Victnam-10 US naval pors and 58,000 US servicemen. In Laos 20,000 Thai mercenarica served with the US special forces.
It was the defeat of the US in Indochina which stimulated the radicalisation of the Thai students This rapidly merged with the radicalisation of the workers and peasants to form 9 mass movement wuch although confused in its aims led in late 1973 to the overthrow of the ruling military junta of Kittikaof a Constituent Assembly. Now the unstable regime of Prasit Kancha-Wawat is forced to demand that the US quits Thailand for fear of a new mas resurgence. What is more, the US has to agree. red weekly, 8 may 1975 Thai students crouch behind bus as bullets fly during 1973 demonstrations wi Assembly was dissolved. This had been agreed in principle nine months before, but had been delayed and blocked by the manoeuvres of the of the USA!
• RADICALISATION • Right across SouthEast Asia struggles of youth, students, urban racial minorities with the struggle of the communist guerillas. Nor is the process of permanent revolution Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and even Burma the guerilla strug gies have guined fresh impetus from Ut enormous significance is the stimulated in the urban centres. In these areas a vanguard role has been lents and the ments in the cities siple antsmpenalist frame work These developments are all the batoty of the stadents. in Thailand they were long holed for their passiviin which hundreds of thousands of conmunists were slaughtered. Only La resurgence.
• DEMONSTRATIONS • 1974 becaris a focus of the students' ter all over Asia. orities and through them acainst the In the region Thailand best reThere were 60 US buses in Thailand, chorn and the subsequent formation intervention in South East Asia.
The Philippines have been so dom inated by the US imperialists that it has been seriously suggested that they should be made another state In the Philippines anti-colonial guerilla resistance has a history going back for more than a century;
and US involvement has an equally long history. Many of the tactics used in Vietnam-such as forced urbanisation, Tree-fire zones, and strategic hamlets-were pioneered by the Americans in the Philippines After a period of relative stubility there emerged both an urban resistance and scattered guerilla activity directed against the Marcos dictatorship. In 1972 Marcos was forced to declare Martial LaR. A few years later, he is desperately trying to 'liberalise' his regime.
Although little news leaks out of the Philippines, reports of political trials show that the regime is beginning to be challenged by mass move • DOMINOES TOTTER • In the northem and southern Islands teports of a secret war slip past the dictatorship. These show that entire islands have been bom bed and napalmed. The purrillas of the Mindanao Liberation Frontbased on a Moslem minority Have iberated several islands in the south. in the more northerly islands Maoist orientated guerillas, after suffering an initial setback when Marcos signed a trade agreement with China, have also experienced The defeats of imperialism and the new radicalisation plus the incrcasing morale of the workers and peasants is making the dominoes tut The Japanese cannot escape this proces. Japanese capital has sug seeded in penetruting and distorting the economies of most of the countries of South East Asia. But this economic penetration la dependent on US military back-ap. The US defeat in Indochina throws big doubts on the viability of the Japanese investments-and this at a time when there is a new upsurge of struggle in Japan itself.
in the workers' states, however, the response to the victory of the Indochinese revolution has been muted to say the least. Concerned above all with the future of its detente with the USA, the USSR bureaucracy has consistently tried to hold back the revolution in an attompt to forestall any threat to peaceful co-existence. The Liberation of Saigon was not even mentioned in the Polit bureau speech from the May Day rostrum in Moscow. Only olle banner in solidarity with the Indochincse revolution appeared on the May Day parade.
• NOT CHINA'S FAULT• In Poking the response of the bureaucrats has differed slightly. They have welcomed the victory. claiming that it frees the US to play a "more constructive role" in Asia. The Chinese have made it clear that if the dominoes fall it is not their fault!
The Chinese do not believe that revolution is for export: speculation in the capitalist press that a new confrontation is on the agenda in Korea is idle gossip. Of course new demands for the re-unification of the country will be raised in the South and will find an echo in the North. But for the bureaucracies in China and North Korea a new war would be too risky, despite the ravings of Kim Il Sung.
The effect of the Indochinese re volution has not just been restricted to Asia. The recent successes in the old Portuguese colonies owe much to the inspiration of that revolution. And these events played in their turn a direct role in toppling the Tascist regime in Portugl In the USA the crisis in the administration is a direct result of the debacle in Indochina. This more than anyclung else broke the student and sections of the working class Trom their pressous passivity. That crisis has now been compoupded Dy the Uberation of Vietnam and Cambodia • QUESTION MARK• On 28 April Kissinger said: Onc Jesson we must learn from this axporionce is that we muat be very careful in future on the commitments ae make, but that we should honour scrupulously the commitments we do make The failure of the US imper ¡alists to 'honour their commitme nts to the corrupt cliques in Vietnam and Cambodia places an enormous question mark over their ability to intervone directly with success anywhere. There are voices being raised in the US Congress now saying that rather than risk another defeat the Us should not even attempt in terventions in Europe, let alone anywhere eise.
The repercussions of the victory of the Indochinese revolution will be felt throughout the world. The only way that the world working class will ever fully repay the heroic people of Indochina is by the final victory of the world
After 1945 it was the advance of the revolution in the colonial countries which prevented the real political stabilisation of the capitalist world system and maintained the tempo of the class 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 and politically and to create the basis for a new revival of precisely the outcome of the decision of the United States to smash the colonial revolution, Instead it was the The outstanding analysis of this development still remains the 1969 Political Resolution of the Ninth World just taken place in Vietnam we therefore reproduce extracts from the chief section of that resolution dealing For those who have come into revolutionary politics in the last five or six years it is difficult to understand autumn of 1969 in Italy, the struggles and coup in Chile, and now the working class upsurge in Portugal. Vietnam appears just as one struggle, although a great one no doubt, among many. No view could be more Vietnam is not just 'another' revolutionary struggle but a turning point in the history of the world revolutionary conciousness in the population of the imperialist countries.
United States which was humiliated. national capitalist economy was stretched to the limit. revolution throughout the world.
Congress of the Fourth International.
with the Vietnam war.
the significance of the Vietnam war.
red weekly, 8 may 1975 The war in Vietnam was The Americans lost their first war in history and the U.S. and interThis in turn helped lay the basis for a new rise in In order to understand fully the significance of the events which have Since 1968 there has been the May General Strike in France, the 'hot in the world and pay a terrible price in blood and destruc tion for an attempr to liberale themselves from the yoke of capital. Thus, the outcome of the confrontation in Viet nam assumed crucial importance Today, the militant revolutionary enthusiasm ofthe Vies namese masses, unparalleled in recenthistory, has blocked the Imperialist and kept them from achieving the prin cipal objectives of their aggression.
At the some time, a sector of the American bourgeoisie has recognized with dismay that even its colossal resources are not sufficient to simultaneously finance the nuclear arms race with the USSR the conventional war in Viet nam the worldwide consolidation of capitalism, and the minimal reforms necessary to put a damper on social tensions in the mother country itself. The economic price which Imperlalism has paid for continuing the war in Vietnam has been accelerated inflation, with a deepening crisis in the international monetary systern and an ac companying exacerbation of interimperlalist contradic tons, reduced "aid" to the colonial bourgeoisle, and a cutback in the "war on poverty" in the United States, which was intended to defuse the explosive nature of the Afro-American problem. Together with the encouragement the victorious resistance of the Vietnamese masses has given to the formation of a black and student vanguard In Uniled States on the subjective level, the oljective effects of the war in Vietnam made possible both an un precedented growth of the antiwar movement and broadening radicalization of the black masses, which in conjunc tion are creating the most explosive domestic crisis the United States has experienced since 1929-36.
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The fall of Saigon was a dramatic sign of the decline of Western dominance', according to Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore. With a pleading glance at the imperialists he added: "The battle of South East Asia is not yet lost, All l
the neo-colonial rulers of South East Asia, The inability of the USA to go to the aid of the South Vietnamese puppets or their Cambodian counterparts has raised grave doubts in the minds