The Immediate Situation Ireland’s Crisis Cambodia - Class Analysis The Demonstration Paul Hoch on the Press The Arts Council Pilkington Strike May Day/Black Panthers Established 1817 Vol 14 No 34 25th May 1970 Price 2/- The East is Red Photo: Sally Fraser. The Black Dwarf 25th May 1970 Page 2 The Immediate Situation. The US invasion of Cambodia has opened a new Wallacite platform, and he has called off the ing. Kosygin’s equivocating and vacuous utter­ stage in struggle throughout the world. In Indo- desegregation of schools. On May 2 a conservative ances contrast with the militant and clear posi­ China it has spread the war across the Peninsula, Nixon Republican, Bentsen, defeated a liberal Re­ tions taken up by the Chinese. posing new opportunities and new dangers for the publican Yarborough, in the Texas primary. This It is not only the colonial and capitalists worlds revolution. It has revitalised the flagging revolu­ Texas victory was on a pro-war platform. that have been transformed by the 1960s. The tionary forces within the US itself, and it has split But the unity of Nixon’s foreign and domestic Sino-Soviet dispute, and the rise of a critical the US ruling class. Cambodia, combined with the policies was even more clearly shown by his Post­ opposition in Eastern Europe, have weakened Middle East, has sharpened an existing economic master General, Blount, who declared at the end Soviet control over the eastern camp. The Soviet crisis and plunged the stock markets of the west of April: “Our history shows all too clearly in Union itself is in an economic crisis which has into the biggest fall since 1929. which direction the middle class moves when it is caused conflicts within the leadership, and its for­ The political importance of these developments frightened, angry or threatened. It goes to the eign policy is marked by defensive and repressive can be grasped by seeing them in terms of the his­ right, not to the left. The more frightened it be­ tendencies that have only smothered, not solved, tory from which they emerge. After 1945 the world comes, the angrier it gets, the more extreme its the problems it faces. While it pours arms into an was gripped by cold war: a solid Russian-led East action. And America has the largest middle class Egypt that cannot use them, and while it equivo­ faced a solid US-led West. Contradictions between in the world”. When Nixon announced his cates on Indo-China, it is still pursuing the defen­ countries or classes on either side were stifled. In Cambodian invasion, he specifically linked sive aims of the 1950s. In Vienna it is engaged in the third world, countries either followed one or “anarchy at home and abroad”. The next day, as a rapprochement with the US through the the other camp, or slithered into an enfeebled and he lurched, drunk, from a Pentagon briefing, he Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Across the anodyne neutrality. ranted on about “campus bums”. border in Prague its tanks are proping up a pro- Throughout the 1960s this static world-order But Nixon’s attempt to class war col­ Soviet clique. disintegrated, and the Cambodian events mark a lapsed when four students were shot in Ohio. Al­ The Cambodian events have therefore marked a new, third phase in this process. Each of the though only a week before the Vietnam turning point in all three areas of the world. In the phases has been marked by a change in the Indo- Moratorium Committee had closed its offices with colonial lands of Asia they have marked a strate­ Chinese war. In 1965 the US sent troops into Viet­ collapsing finances and organisation, and although gic extension of the revolutionary movement. In nam and started bombing the north, opening a many revolutionary leaders have been shot or the “socialist” camp, they mark a big swing of more intense phase of military struggle in Indo- imprisoned, a revived mass resistance swept power to China and further reveal the static per­ China, and a new, intensified phase of political across the American continent. Moreover the spectives of the Soviet leadership. In the capitalist struggle in the capitalist world. The Tet offensive tumbling of Wall Street showed that one vital sec­ world they have accelerated a pre-existing poli­ of early 1968 marked a second phase, of military tion of the US ruling class had no confidence in tical and economic crisis. retreat by imperialism and of mass political ac­ Nixon’s policies. The opposition had revived; the All these events will affect the situation in Bri­ tion in the USA and in Europe, especially in ruling class was split. tain. The Wilson clique is moving towards an elec­ France. The invasion of Cambodia, two years In steady decline since December 1968, Wall tion, which it will try to hustle its way through be­ after the revolutionary upsurge of May 1968, sig­ Street has been depressed by many factors: the fore the economy breaks down once again. Un­ nals the start of a third phase in this development. world-wide high in interest rates has sucked employment is at its highest since the war. Wilson The rise of colonial revolution, in the previously money out of the stock markets; there is universal has slavishly supported the US in Indo-China. But excluded “third” world, has melted the frozen poli­ pessimism about the future of the US economy; he knows that the recession in the US will hit the tics of the cold war. It has shown countries under the politics of Nixon at home and abroad inspire UK, and this external pressure will combine with imperialist control the way to throw off this con­ little confidence in financial circles. The stock the internal evolution of the UK economy. OECD trol. It has provoked severe economic and poli­ market fall both reflects and then encourages the predicts that the UK will have one of the lowest tical crises within the ruling classes of the capita­ fall in real output. growth rates in Europe during the 1970s and the in­ list world: France was split by Algeria, and the This economic crisis in the US has spread dustrial bourgeoisie will soon put up prices to des­ US by Vietnam. It has led to a spectacular rise in across the capitalist world. While Europe and troy the real effects of the recent wage increases. revolutionary politics within the advanced capita­ Japan may be gaining ground on the US, they are The warnings by Lord Shawcross, about the need list countries themselves. Freed from the need to still under its economic sway. The fall in Wall for another devaluation within eighteen months, choose between Stalin and the west, workers and street has been matched by a fall across the mar­ show that one section of the ruling class is already intellectuals have seen the possibility of making kets of London, Tokyo and Sydney. The fall in US on the alert. their own history. They have learnt the lesson of output will provoke a contraction in world trade. The UK is also faced with its own specific colo­ the Vietnamese—that mass action, led by Marxist No capitalist country can escape the influence of nial problem, the Vietnam of the late nineteenth parties, can defeat imperialism. They have used the dominant imperialist power. century—Ireland. While the expansion of Euro­ the contradictions opened up by colonial revolu­ Significant in this respect is this fate of IOS, the pean capitalism transformed the Irish Republic in tion (hostility to conscription, foreign exchange largest popular investment fund in the world. Its the 1950s, the political resurgence of the 1960s gal­ crises) to organise against capitalist society. collapse reflects a counter-offensive by European vanised the north. The two have combined to re­ This rise of revolutionary politics has gone to­ (especially German and British) capital against a suscitate a fight that has been dormant since the gether with a growing economic instability particularly vicious American competitor. On an­ counter-revolutionary settlement of 1921. throughout the capitalist world. America’s junior other level it has signalled a general and accele­ These events demonstrate the unity of the world cold war allies (the Common Market) and the old rated loss of confidence in market stocks and crisis, provoked by the disintegration of the post­ Axis powers (Japan, Germany) have risen to chal­ added to the crisis emanating from Wall Street. war order. Capitalism unified the world, but it did lenge her economic supremacy. Since 1958 the US This economic and political crisis in the US and so in an uneven way, and it is through this Mar­ has had a balance of payments deficit, which has its allies has been sharpened by, and has coin­ xist concept of the combined and uneven develop­ been sharply increased by the expenses of the Viet­ cided with, the Cambodian invasion. In Asia itself, ment of the world that the paradox of the present nam war. She used, however, to have a surplus on the invasion has transformed the co-ordinates of multiple yet united crisis can be grasped. visible trade. This has now gone, and a wave of revolutionary struggle. In Indo-China it has The upsurge of May 1968 was a political move­ defensive protectionism has started to sweep the spread the anti-imperialist struggle to Laos and ment contained by repression and token conces­ States. “The cause of the current battle is fairly Cambodia and opened up new problems, and new sions. The sharp international currency crisis of clear: it stems from mounting American frustra­ openings, for the revolution in Vietnam.