Hitherto, philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic and Philosophic Science Review
(Weekly.   Subscriptions £10/3 months;  £30/p.a.) (P&P Bulletin Publication, PO Box 50,  London SV17 9NL)(GP0 Regd.)
No 894 Tuesday March 11 1997                                                                                                                             10p                                                                                                                       

New Trot stunts denouncing SLP 'violence' are a well worked-out artificial provocation, of a kind with bourgeois 'democracy' swindles used permanently to malign socialism and confuse workers. It is the anti-communism of the fake-'left' like the CPGB which really threatens the labour movement with physical destruction, - nationally, and internationally as in China and Cuba. Socialist Labour will leap ahead once provocative disruptions against healthy SLP elements are routed completely.

The most powerful weapons against socialism are the distortions and clever tricks of bourgeois ideology.

These alone keep the workers movement forever divided and confused, unable to unite behind the firm and clear-thinking socialist leadership which will be necessary to complete the abolition of capitalism.

The endless frauds around 'democracy' are the favourite ploy.

Under capitalism, periodic elections, dominated by bourgeois-financed powerful propaganda machinery, pretend to be 'government by the people'.

Against socialism, a few dissident voices who do not like what the majority wants, are blown up out of all proportion to imply 'socialist tyranny' or 'leadership tyranny'.

In these cynical deceptions about 'democracy', the ultra-left of petty-bourgeois individualism plays its part just as viciously as the right wing.

The CPGB Trots are currently posturing their middle-class 'democratic' souls for all they are worth to help bourgeois ideology do its job against Socialist Labour.

At the same time, these armchair 'revolutionaries' have been adding their vomit to the rightwing bile pouring out against the Chinese workers state in the wake of Deng's death.

All they end up with is deep rotten confusion on everything, utterly poisonous to the working class.

Socialist Labour is again being sniped at down the 'Scargill dictatorship' path. Expelled CPGB entryist parasites are once more pretending they are being 'victimised' by the 'arbitrary autocracy' of Scargill & Co.

An additional slander now being thrown in also alleges that this 'bureaucratic tyranny' has begun to be accompanied by systematic 'violence'.

In an editorial headlined "Thumping people", the Weekly Worker, bible of the Trotskyite saboteurs, claims that:

"The witch hunt in the SLP calls forth its own shabby cadre, - misfits whose modus operandi is threats, abuse, and intimidation.

Clearly, as the cull in the organisation gathers pace, these elements feel increasingly confident about throwing their weight around.

The worry should surely be for the SLPers themselves, particularly those on the left. We have reported that the practice of autocratic diktat is growing in the party. Combine this with a Tony Goss let loose to discipline the ranks in his own inimitable fashion, and a not particularly edifying picture is conjured up."

Those in fact on the left of the SLP have an entirely different memory of the labour movement from this utterly obscene and false picture which these CPGB Trots are deliberately trying to deceive workers with against Socialist Labour.

And this is that the Trot sects, of all 57 varieties, have always, ever since this anti-communist petty-bourgeois ultra-leftism began, been the first to resort to fisticuffs when the argument against their paranoid individualism and their self-righteous subjectivism begins to go too well.

Workers from the EPSR tradition could fill several books with the record of violent threats to them, and actual physical ejections, by Trot sects incensed at having their own meetings harassed by Leninists in the way that the Trots always enjoy harassing other people’s meetings. 

Such threatening aggression has not been unknown at Stalinist tradition meetings either. Is it really the case that not a single member of the CPGB, especially with their complacent cocky record, has ever been caught up in a confident majority at a labour-movement meeting which has bayed "Sit down" or "Throw them out" at some irritating sabotage or other?

But in any case, so what?

What lunatic hypocritical nonsense are these CPGB Trots trying to put across now?

It is the most ludicrous and fatuous humbug to first of all pretend that angry scuffles are totally alien to British labour movement meetings (or those of any other country); they are completely routine, if a bit sad or even unpleasant.

Secondly, it is the most grotesque attempted deception for these Trots to try to claim special credit for their own side of the dispute against the SLP on the grounds that their case is argued in a 'principled' manner whereas the SLP case is 'imposed with violence'.

No such thing. If anything, and if things were worth measuring that way, the unprincipled aggressiveness is all on the side of the CPGB Trots.

They have deliberately falsified their way into the SLP knowingly, pretending to accept its leadership and abide by its constitution when they knew from the start that they had no intention of doing any such thing.

Their 'democratic' bleating against the perfectly normal constitutional requirements of Socialist Labour and the absolutely routine executive decisions of its leadership, are just a giant fraud.

This whole racket against the SLP's supposed 'violent arbitrary tyranny' is just a big smelly stunt, typical of 'left' anti-communist provocateurs throughout the history of the labour movement.

And these monstrous provocations are the only serious threatened violence in this whole business.

These CPGB liars, putting perjured signatures to a stated willingness to "abide by the SLP Constitution" to gain entry to Socialist Labour for disruptive purposes, are however, guilty of far worse threatened violence than even this treacherous entryist racket implies (falsifying their membership application forms), - worse even than their loathsome confidence-trick theft practised on the working class to raise their Weekly Worker fund (permanently in deficit) by a crooked 'Collection for the Unemployed Workers Charter' which goes straight into their own pockets so they can continue publishing their fake-'left' provocateur rag.

And this is their endless glib call for so-called 'political revolutions' against the workers states which can only have one outcome, as history has now demonstrated, - bloody counter-revolution.

Fascist imperialist intervention will gladly go along with any non-existent 'political revolution' against existing workers states which this fake-'left' wing of bourgeois individualist ideology can get going, - especially against Castro in Cuba whom US imperialism would love to topple more than anything.

And where do these CPGB Trots direct their infantile 'political revolution' chatter? Mostly against Castro in Cuba, - thus playing right into the hands of US imperialism's non-stop provocations against the Cuban workers state.

Now this is all just childish armchair-'revolutionary' posturing by these isolated Trotskyite middle-class sects who will never ever build or lead mass workers movements which will end up having any decisive influence on world politics.

But for irresponsible mountebanks who like to make such a hypocritical fuss about some doorway scuffles at an angrily-argued workers meeting, the very violent implications of their call to topple Fidel Castro are most revealing.

If Castro is toppled, the workers of Cuba will have, in the counter-revolutionary chaos that would ensue, much more to worry about than a few mistimed or threatened punches around a disrupted meeting hall.

The working class of Cuba will be facing total military blitzkrieg and bloody annihilation if imperialism's anti-communist propaganda once gets the chance to mount provocative interventions around such an epoch-shattering development as the toppling of Castro, the overwhelmingly acknowledged and supported leader of the Cuban socialist revolution.

This counter-revolutionary Trotskyite nonsense of 'Down with Castro' is just idiocy as far as practical political programme is concerned; even worse ignorance as far as Marxist-Leninist science is concerned where no such historical category as the 'political revolution' under the dictatorship of the proletariat has ever been remotely hinted at; and is in fact just pure threatened violence as far as reality is concerned, such a demand being nothing but a stooge for US imperialist intervention in Cuba.

And it is obviously no accident that these bogus 'revolutionary' Trots come up with the one fake 'socialist' slogan that the Cuban counter-revolutionary mafia in Miami could only dream about, 'Down with Castro'. "If only CIA could get such explosive nonsense on the move inside Cuba itself." Counter-revolutionary, or what? Leading to an unimaginable bloodbath and violence, or what? So much for the CPGB entryist political thugs who spread such vile distortions and posture so deceitfully, trying to slander the SLP with 'violence against the labour movement'. 

Is not the Cuban socialist revolution led by Castro, in the front line against US imperialist domination, an even more integral part of the international labour movement? But no CPGB or other Trot hesitancy about unleashing violence in that direction, the only possible way to overthrow Castro, the overwhelmingly popular leader of the revolution.

No accident at all because the very same issue of the Weekly Worker unleashes a torrent of abuse, - playing right into US imperialism's counter-revolutionary hands, - against the Chinese workers state.

Mixed in with their obvious middle-class hatred of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China (the only alternative, as anywhere on earth, being the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as Marxist science has conclusively explained and demonstrated for more than 100 years), - is just a tinge of petty-bourgeois Western racism against the 'Yellow Peril' for not being civilised European 'socialists' (what, like these CPGB parasites on the capitalist system?):

'The party/state elite in China, is certainly enriching itself, even if it is in a most inglorious manner. The web of nepotism and corruption envelops all of China and chokes the very political air itself. 

The introduction and acceleration of capitalist social relations has seen elements of the bureaucracy, particularly their 'sons and daughters', struggle to transform themselves into a bourgeois ruling class, as opposed to a bureaucratic caste - a phenomenon common to all the ex-'socialist' states in Eastern Europe. There is now a blurring of distinctions between 'free enterprise' and state control. The army has especially benefited from this economic meltdown, with at least 20,000 army companies now in operation.

In other words, in China we are seeing the creation of a proto-bourgeoisie, whose power over political resources is matched by its power over economic ones - often gained through the direct appropriation of state assets.

The fate of Chinese 'official communism' is, without doubt, a grim and depressing one. Under the banner of the 'Four Basic Principles' which Deng always claimed allegiance to - "the socialist road; the people's democratic dictatorship; the leadership of the party; and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought" - the peasants and workers of China are being opened up to pitiless capitalistic exploitation and political oppression.

Unlike Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the communist cadre in China did not have the shoulders of previous generations of revolutionaries, and of many decades of intense theoretical debate, to stand upon. It was born in a monolithic and bureaucratic centralist mould, without the air of European philosophy and socialism to breathe on.

This lack of "native Marxist ancestry" led the CPC to be dependent on the Soviet bureaucracy and the Stalinised Comintern.

The Long March, however heroic, reinforced the increasingly de-proletarianised world outlook of Mao and his comrades, who now aimed at surrounding the cities. It is open to a debate whether the Long March and the flight to the countryside at this time was a correct tactic, but when it became a programmatic strategy it is not an exaggeration to say that Mao and Deng became in effect petty bourgeois revolutionaries rather than proletarian ones.

The CPC turned its back on the working class, dismissed out of hand the prospect of any revolutionary revival in the countryside and banked on the 'agrarian revolution', in a Utopian Narodnik schema alien to Marxism/communism.

Obscenely, the horrors of the Cultural Revolution became the model of 'communism' for the genocidal forces of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea. A truly democratic China, one which was casting off the stultifying and parasitical clutches of the Communist Party of China and its brand of 'market Leninism' would symbolise an awesome threat and challenge to international capitalism and imperialism.

These last two observations are truly foul counter-revolutionary confusion-mongering.

What is a 'truly democratic' China supposed to be? As Lenin spent several volumes explaining, democracy is either for the working class and against the bourgeoisie under the dictatorship of the proletariat, or it is for the capitalists and against the workers under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Modern society, as long understood by Marxist science, allows of no other possibilities.

So what is a 'truly democratic China' which is going to 'challenge' the most ruthless and efficient imperialist exploitation systems? Capitalist? Socialist? This appallingly irresponsible slovenly dilettantism cannot even say anything coherent on such a basic point.

How could a socialist China, or a socialist anything, redistributing wealth like mad in order to begin equalising social conditions for all, both domestically and with its international trading partners, - possibly 'challenge' the super-exploitation productivity based on permanent mass unemployment (as the scourge for keeping the proletariat working at starvation-level wages on a worldwide 'free market' basis),- the very cornerstone of the high living standards in the favoured few Western powers.?

And if they mean a 'democratic' capitalist China could challenge the West, then what would be the point of that? The whole thing is a meaningless muddle, dashed together solely to provide these philistine Trotskyites with some more 'plausible' anti-communist biliousness.

Their contemptuous and racist dismissal of any achievements at all by the mightiest socialist revolution of all, probably, - in volume terms, and in terms of a historic example of what downtrodden Third World masses can achieve under Communist leadership, - so distorts the actual reality of 20th century world history that one is astonished at such biased viciousness and at such blind stupidity which simply refuses to acknowledge what is seen and admitted by everybody, friend and foe alike of the Chinese socialist revolution, - namely that it has irrevocably altered the whole of world history by seeing the great mass of downtrodden humanity finally rise up, throw out the imperialists, and now force world imperialism to shift uneasily and respectfully while the Chinese socialist revolution decides what to do next.

Even such bitter enemies of Marxism-Leninism and of socialism as The Economist have had to pay due tribute to the colossal influence and significance of the Chinese Revolution in this comment on Deng (who kept it going, revisionist as he was):

The Economist described him as "one of the greatest political leaders of the 20th century, a man who set under way the biggest improvement in the living standards and personal freedoms of the largest number of people in all of human history" (February 22).

Such is the magnificent power and sweep of the Chinese socialist revolution, - the greatest advance in the most human lives in all history, - in the words of one of its bitterest opponents, the voice of the British imperialist bourgeoisie, speaking through the Economist.

Lenin had an interesting perspective on this phenomenon by the end of his life, declaring in his last work Better Fewer, But Better (Mar 1923):

Can we save ourselves from the impending conflict with these imperialist countries? May we hope that the internal antagonisms and conflicts between the thriving imperialist countries of the West and the thriving imperialist countries of the East will give us a second respite as they did the first time, when the campaign of the West-European counter-revolution in support of the Russian counter-revolution broke down owing to the antagonisms in the camp of the counter-revolutionaries of the West and the East, in the camp of the Eastern and Western exploiters, in the camp of Japan and the U.S.A.?

I think the reply to this question should be that the issue depends upon too many factors, and that the outcome of the struggle as a whole can be forecast only because in the long run capitalism itself is educating and training the vast majority of the population of the globe for the struggle.

In the last analysis,  the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the past few years it is this majority that has been drawn into the struggle for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be.  In this sense, the complete victory of socialism is fully and absolutely assured.

The CPGB's European orientation for 'real socialism' and a 'real advance against imperialism' is pure racist, pure philistine ignorance, and a century out of date. The Eastern Third World billions hold the key to the final triumph of the world socialist revolution, not the workers in the thoroughly imperialist-corrupted West in spite of the CPGB's ill-disguised racist chauvinism which is so obviously enamoured of its own self-importance, and so obviously dismissive of Third World anti-imperialist revolutions which do not have "the air of European philosophy and socialism to breathe on".

Deng's death brought an avalanche of abuse down on Sir Edward Heath's head for his maverick insistence that British imperialism should get what business deals it can out of the Chinese workers state and not keep making such an artificial fuss about the CIA's propaganda blockbuster against the Beijing regime, the so-called 'Tiananmen massacre'. The CPGB, of course, joined in the anti-Heath abuse along with the most rabid anti-communist rightwing of bourgeois ideology.

Reactionary Guardian correspondents in particular kept up their traditional vilification of the legitimate security interests of the Chinese workers state in routing the 1989 bogus 'democracy' movement which was allowed to posture for weeks, camped out on Beijing's main square, toting US imperialism's most obscene and phony emblem, the Statue of Liberty.

Arrogantly pulling Heath up for some alleged indifference to the victims of that 1989 class conflict in China (which Heath denied was indifference, but rather a mis-elocution which his TV and press critics had deliberately misinterpreted), the Guardian (and others) ranted on once more about "that terrible Tiananmen massacre".

There was, in reality, no one killed at all on Tiananmen Square, and no massacre, either there or anywhere else, - as the EPSR's Leninist science established at the time from capitalist press sources and admissions.

It was after more than two months of worldwide hysterical CIA propaganda about the 'massacre', systematically denounced and exposed for the lie it was by EPSR Leninism, that the rightwing Spectator magazine, impeccably anti-communist and socialism-hating, published the following:

By the early morning of 4 June, Tiananmen was encircled by the army, which set up the traditional theatre of cymbals and drums. A call to arms rang out over the government-controlled loudspeakers, as monotonous and sinister as a drum roll. 'Tiananmen is the centre of a counter-revolutionary sedition. The army has the authority to use every means necessary to clear the square.' Meanwhile a small armoured invasion force formed up before the Gate of Heavenly Peace as thousands more fully armed troops poured into the south entrance of the Great Hall from the south and, on the opposite side of the square, onto the steps of the Museum of the History of China and the Revolution. 'Now is the time to crush the counter-revolutionary rebellion.'

It now seems clear that the military had orders to use minimum force once inside Tiananmen itself, but no one would have guessed it at the time. Deng Xiaoping had taken a page from the military classic of Sun Tze. Light a thousand camp fires to strike fear into the night.

At four a.m. the boulevard lights were cut off, sending a ripple of fear through the scattered crowds. But the panic subsided when the student loudspeaker broke the silence in a voice as authoritative and steady as if it were announcing a railway schedule: 'All citizens and students remain calm,' said 'command centre' summoning those few in the tents near the goddess of democracy to gather around the monument to Mao's 'People's Heroes', a squat obelisk on a two-tiered plinth. 'We will now sing the "Internationale" to heighten our spirit of resistance.'

I was about 25 yards to the east of the monument, watching this scene with Robin Munro of Asia Watch, the New York-based human rights organisation. Behind us were 3,000 soldiers squatting on the steps of the History Museum and some several hundreds more behind the mausoleum to our left. Close by was a young Chinese woman wearing a white sun-bonnet and holding hands with her boyfriend. 'Aren't you frightened?' I asked her. 'Oh, we're frightened to death,' she said in bright classroom tones. She was a school teacher. 'They'll start shooting at any moment.' But I could not detect the slightest trace of fear about her. And when I asked why they didn't go, she replied for the several hundreds of others caught in the charmed circle of the obelisk. 'Oh, we can't leave until it's over.'

At that moment a Frenchman walked over from the monument and came up to us. 'You must come and see it,' he said. 'They've taken their oaths and are writing their last wills. It's absolutely serene.' We followed him up stairs packed densely with student and worker 'Dare to Die' brigades. It was dark on the upper tier except for distant floodlights from above the Forbidden City, which cast a harsh light onto the obelisk. These were intended to sharpen the feeling of fear and isolation. But they only increased the courage that seemed to radiate from the monument like a peculiar sort of grace. Some of the students chatted quietly while others, incredibly, were sound asleep. Most simply sat there looking exhausted or bored, as though waiting for a bus.

One girl with gold-rimmed glasses and plastic shoes smiled cheerfully and asked, "What do you think of our struggle?' I was at a complete loss. Another student gave me his tee-shirt to autograph. 'We must show the world', continued command centre, 'that we are prepared to pay the highest possible price for what we believe in.' Had they resolved to die, or were they indeed so supremely confident that none of the old comrades they had humiliated so utterly would dare to give the order to fire on them?

I have no answer, but standing on the plinth gave me some sense of the power of non-violent politics in a society like China ruled by fear and humiliation. The students ridicule 'struggle' and 'revolution'. They regard Mao as a simple native too thick to understand civil society. They eschew charisma and have no 'programmatic links to the masses'.

As we left the obelisk, a man in blue denim overalls came out of the dark, swinging a Molotov cocktail as casually as a tea thermos. He urged us to go immediately 'because everyone here will soon be killed'. 'But if it is so dangerous,' Robin asked, 'why don't you leave?' 'Because,' came the matter-of-fact reply,  'I have nothing to live for except to take revenge on these pigs.'

But just then the situation became fluid and ugly. At 4.15 the fairy lights inside the Great Hall of the People suddenly came on as thousands upon thousands of troops poured from the cavernous doorways through the violent floodlights onto the street. The menacing clatter excited the crowds, who immediately set fire to heaps of sodden bedding marinated in petrol. A long file of elite paratroopers locking and loading their rifles jogged in close formation along the edge of the square. Our friend gathered up stones.  But we just stared absently at this scene.

And it was at this moment, 4.25 a.m., that the 'four hunger strikers' on the monument chose to bring reason to bear in order to break the primitive spell of the night.

'Students, workers and all citizens, I am Hou Dejian,' announced the Taiwanese rock star who was leading the hunger strike of four Chinese intellectuals. 'We have won a great victory, but I must tell you that without the approval of the student leaders I have negotiated a retreat with the soldiers.' The news was stunning, and it was later learned that Hou had made overtures to the military at 3.15 a.m. and secured agreement for an orderly evacuation from the south-east corner. But the student leaders and the leaders of the independent labour unions were divided over whether to accept the agreement. Now the hunger strikers addressed the square directly. 

'They have deadly orders from above to clear the square by dawn and they will do it at all costs,' said the Peking University lecturer, Zhou Tou. 'We must save our blood, we must evacuate immediately.' But appealing to self-preservation only hardened resolve. 'Stand fast!' came the roar from the plinth. 'No evacuation!' The speeches grew more impatient as the soldiers moved in from the west. The leadership was split along the lines dividing the movement at every turn. On the one hand was the appeal to blood symbolism — the hunger strikes, the threats of self-immolation, the sacrifice to 'save China' — which stir all Chinese. But on the other was the simple rationality of liberal ideas. Democracy supposedly provided solutions to practical problems. And so the slogan, 'Die for Democracy', seemed absurd. Nevertheless. 'Stand fast!" came the roar a second time. 'No evacuation!'

It was not the moment to sort out the confusion,  but it was the only moment there was. Either the ideas which brought the students into the crisis would strengthen them in the middle of it or they would be lost. And it was the literary critic Liu Xiaopo — later arrested as the 'black hand of the counter-revolution' — who forged the link between the ideas and the moment to master the situation.

'Now students, the principle on which we take our stand is peace and nonviolence. We hope to exchange the highest degree of democracy for the minimum cost of blood.' He paused, and I could not tell at the moment which was more surreal, the lurid violence of the Nuremberg-like setting or the delineation of first principles in its midst.

'Now, students, the principle on which we must start with each one of us right here, right now. The minority must obey the majority, that is our highest principle! The citizens are about to riot,' he said, 'the soldiers to charge.  If we believe in non-violence we must find a way out of this impasse.' Slowly he turned the question of democracy from a test of courage in some fantasy world of moral absolutes into a practical problem in the immediate present. 'We must calm the citizens and evacuate them in an orderly and safe manner. The minority must obey the majority.'

When he finished, command centre announced a vote 'to resolve the matter democratically'. 'Those wishing to stay will shout "Stand fast!" Those wishing to leave, '"Live another day!'" It seemed a fair summary. And from where we stood the 'Stand fasts' were louder. Journalists elsewhere had the same impression. And so again we prepared for the final assault.

'It has been decided democratically,' said the deputy commander and the husband of the student leader Chai Lin. 'Each college will form up under banners and march to the south-east in orderly fashion. We will live another day.'

The student leaders had apparently interpreted the shouting differently. The Chinese maxim to cover this situation is 'suppressing the details to seize the moment'. But when at 4.55 a.m. the students began to file off slowly in a long column five abreast. Robin and I also 'suppressed the details'. We broke out in applause. Robin saw a dumpy middle-aged woman with a bowl haircut and one of the timeless Chinese faces with tears in her eyes. He ran up to her and said in Chinese, 'You've done the right thing, there is no shame in it. You have won a great victory!'

They looked like refugees. Many had no shoes and some were wrapped in blankets or dirty plastic sheets. But those who watched this ragged parade will long remember it. 'I shall remember those banners at dawn and the vision of their faces, so serious, so innocent, for the rest of my life' said Juan Restrepro of Television Espanola who stood nearby. And I shall remember how nonchalantly they turned their backs on the troops and walked away. The students had not won democracy for China. No one had illusions they would. But there is great beauty in retreats. They had seen through the weakness of the regime and walked away from Tiananmen by the same democratic principles that brought them there originally.

BLOOD sanctifies whether it is spilled over the altar or runs through the streets. 'So what does it matter,' asked the sinologist Ross Terrill, addressing the Foreign Co-respondents Club in Hong Kong, 'whether the massacre occurred in Tiananmen Square or just a few blocks away?'

Ordinarily this might be a delicate question to put to a roomful of journalists who make a living, after all, pursuing the truth in detail. But there is a magic to the word 'massacre' which captured the mood precisely. Something about it encourages journalists to reverse their routine, grasp the truth first and let the facts fall where they may. Thus the 'Tiananmen massacre' has become the latest truth on China. And when the truth is known, as Terrill implied, asking questions is simply bad taste.

But the fact is that there was no large-scale killing in Tiananmen Square itself. And the massacre lore which has sprung around Tiananmen is not only inaccurate but, worse, blots out the extraordinary drama that did unfold there. For three tense hours the students stared into the teeth of overwhelming deadly force and then got up and, well, walked away.?

What this left out was the record of the brutal counter-revolutionary pogrom which had been unleashed on the state authorities (police, army, and officials) by these petty-bourgeois anarchists and opportunists behind the Tiananmen camp-out, prior to their eviction from the square and the record of Chai Ling's determination for blood to be shed at all costs so as to establish 'democracy' martyrdom.

But it was the first frank admission by a reactionary bourgeois account that no massacre at all had taken place, and that no one was even killed on Tiananmen when it was finally cleared of its insurrection, - and it at last confirmed what EPSR Leninism had established two months earlier from the initial factual reports of the Western bourgeois press observers, and before the CIA international propaganda domination had been able to put a spin on things, - namely that there were no attacks by the authorities on anyone anywhere, just a murderous pogrom by reactionaries on the state authorities.

This one-sided bloodshed raged for 12 hours before the order was finally given to clear the square of its six-week occupation, - yet still in the entirely peaceful way described by the Spectator. Compare that admirable restraint by the Chinese workers state to these accounts of savage violence by petty-bourgeois individualists despising socialism, and hating the revolution's still overwhelming popularity among the Chinese masses:

But even on Saturday afternoon there were ominous signs...........Tiananmen Square was the usual spectacle of red flags blowing gaily, but behind the Great Hall of the People 1,000 troops were surrounded by a jeering crowd and the mood was ugly. Occasionally a student emerged holding aloft a captured helmet or showing off a bloody wound.

Littering the street towards Fuxingmen were half a dozen smashed-up army trucks or buses. Troops were trapped in one. Another was crammed full of gear and an AK-47 machine gun had been erected on top as an exhibition. The stream of cyclists drifting up and down were in high spirits, but there was an air of hysteria.

At around 2pm police loudspeakers had warned the crowd it was illegal to steal equipment from the People's Liberation Army.

Later, by the square, more troops were hemmed in a crowd by the Revolutionary History museum....They were surrounded by a crowd of 500 and several were almost beaten to death as they tried to escape. Unaware of this, diplomats brought their families out to watch the troops.

All of this had failed to give us an intimation of what was in store............we began to run back in fear as the crowd began to set fire to the buses.

A tyre on our jeep had been slashed, but we rumbled down the street dodging in and out of the road barriers until we arrived at the Minzu Hotel where an angry band of youths stormed our jeep, hurling stones and rocking us until we established our identity.

We dashed across to the hotel entrance, where a crowd was savagely beating a soldier. Another had found safety in the hotel and the crowd was trying to smash the doors. A police car was burning nearby.

The road was littered with broken glass and bricks. Just before, a detachment of riot police had been attacked, and the air was thick with tear gas and smoke.

From a window we could see shadowy figures flitting through the dark hurling stones, and after an hour the last trucks moved down. One man siphoned off petrol from our jeep and hurled a Molotov cocktail, setting himself on fire.

Others smashed open the cars, including ours. 

When the last truck had vanished towards the square, the crowd emerged clutching stones and sticks and moved off in pursuit.

Gradually the chants of "Tu Fei, Tu Fei" — the old nationalist cry of "Communist bandit" — grew louder and louder. People tore down the red pro-government banners draped down the sides of the hotel and burned them.

More and more wounded were being taken to hospital nearby. We went to the small People's Hospital and it looked like an abattoir. There were bodies on benches and beds or on blood-soaked mattresses on, the floor. Many had..... badly beaten soldiers and we saw one covered in blood who was clearly not going to live.

It was the same story at the nearby post office hospital.

At the central post office, a journalist from the state news agency had been beaten to death, a family had died in their homes by stray gunfire, another man in his bathroom, a girl by a tear gas shell as she looked out of her window; four police had been dragged out of their car and beaten to death.          

Students set on fire two armoured personnel carriers and soldiers who clambered out were beaten to death.

On the other side of the square, people were wreaking a terrible vengeance among the burning vehicles and rubble. An army officer had been burned and hanged. His naked corpse dangled in a charred bus.

At around 10.30 last night normal television programmes were interrupted to transmit pictures of the rioting, taken by the traffic monitors. They showed hundreds of citizens attacking and defeating heavily armed riot police and dragging and punching troops.

Bob Gannon, a 30-year-old freelance photographer sent to Beijing two weeks ago by the Guardian, was in the city on Saturday night when the soldiers and students clashed. This is what he saw.

Gannon and other journalists ran up the Avenue of Eternal Peace, along which more soldiers carrying riot shields were advancing towards Tiananmen Square. It was a little before midnight and the soldiers were met by students.

There were about 70 or 80 soldiers. Everyone was throwing bicycles, rocks, sticks — anything they could get their hands on — at the soldiers. After about 20 minutes of this, the soldiers fired teargas. There was hardly any wind and the gas hung in the air.

The soldiers retreated towards the Minzu Hotel pursued by students, now an angry mob.

In front of me there was a soldier,  screaming and crying — he was completely freaked out. They were all around him arms coming in at him holding rocks. They started to drop rocks on his head.

I and a student tried to push people back from him — it was an automatic response. He went to the ground and they just dropped rocks, huge rocks, on to the middle of his face. It was continuous and I got blood spattered all over me. He was virtually decapitated by the time he was dragged away.

Another soldier who was trying to crawl through a hedge towards the hotel was descended upon.

I ran into the hotel. On the foyer floor there was a group of soldiers laid out. I only saw one breathing. I took just one photograph and was jumped on by four or five men, thrust up against the wall, punched and had all my gear ripped off and film taken.

These unchallengeable accounts by the anti-communist Western press who were in Beijing in literally their thousands to whip up the biggest propaganda blitz against the Chinese workers state ever but who could not avoid reporting what they were seeing, - later on were an embarrassment to some on Fleet Street as they dutifully fell in line with His Masters Voice from the CIA, instructing every Western bourgeois regime to spread the 'Tiananmen massacre' nonsense.

Some with a 'conscience'(!) got round it by snarling "What does it matter if it was not actually on Tiananmen. There was still a massacre". Well, no, as it happens. Just 100 civilians dead over the whole of China over the seven-week confrontation, and slightly more than 100 soldiers, officials, and police.

Other hacks who knew the truth, stumbled even more: 

Government propaganda has argued consistently that no one was killed in the square during the crucial hour and a half when the students were evacuating. That may well be true. Most people died that night, either because they were in the way or by accident.

"That may well be true"! Imagine the reaction if Heath last week had actually denied there ever was any Tiananmen 'massacre' at all!

Such is the insane hysteria into which the anti-communist bourgeoisie has whipped itself, the CPGB well to the fore, - just as all the Trots, without exception, capitulated to the 'massacre' hysteria at the time.

The CPGB, pretending as usual to be 'defending' the Chinese workers state 'on principle', nevertheless managed to row in with the general hysteria with such phrases as "the horrific sight of the Peoples Liberation Army turning on the people has proved the bankruptcy of the leadership of the Communist Party of China"; and "the slaughter we have seen in Beijing could well be repeated in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev", etc.

No thought, there, of utterly denouncing the completely insane media hysteria throughout the 'free' world, effectively distorting the whole of history in the minds of everyone in the West for a brief while, all on account of quite a minor little class-war skirmish, easily and humanely won by the Chinese workers state. Just more fuel on the fires of anti-Chinese race hatred.

And how this hatred was piled up, just like the mysteriously disappearing mountains of dead bodies.

The 'free' press, the 'only guarantee of maintaining the truth', variously reported: 

According to one diplomat, units of the 27th Army which blasted their way across the square on Saturday night broke through lines of soldiers attached to other army groups, causing many casualties. Troops under separate orders, to evacuate thousands of students safely from the square were also mown down as dawn broke on Sunday. About 1,000 soldiers are said to have been killed.

"They had orders that nobody be spared, and children and young girls were slaughtered as mercilessly as the many wounded soldiers from other units," another diplomat said.

27th armoured units thundered in from the north, the diplomat quoted witnesses as saying that tanks and armoured troop carriers pulped bodies in the square, and then incinerated them with flame-throwers.

Many bodies were ferried away by helicopter, according to the sources...

Up to 3,000 people were said to have been killed when Chinese soldiers and tanks attacked the square, occupied since 15 April by the protesters.

No one knows how many have been killed but one Chinese source claimed that a senior officer on the square has said 10,000 bodies had been collected and were being burnt or lifted out by helicopters which flew in and out all day.

The soldiers piled the corpses up and set fire to them. They did so in order to remove the evidence and witnesses. It is estimated that 2,000 were killed.

Exposing all this nonsense at the time, EPSR Leninism asked why, with more than 2,000 Western TV and newsmen in Beijing for no other purpose than to follow the fate of the Tiananmen occupation, there was never one single photograph, report, or TV footage produced showing one single protester's body being either burned, or airlifted away from this central vast city square which was the object of everyone's unceasing attention.

The clearout took place between 4 and 7 a.m. on the morning of June 4. There were no restrictions on the Western press whatsoever. Why did no one see a thing?

As EPSR challenged then: 

"At the time of this imaginary 'massacre', the Bulletin asked: How were so many bodies disposed of in the middle of this city which was swamped by literally hundreds if not thousands of Western propaganda manufacturers. The BBC alone had a staff of more than 30 out there. Duplicate this for the other major Western television propaganda agencies and it comes to nearly 300. Add another few hundred for commercial television and the other 150 countries in the 'free' world, and then treble or quadruple that sum for all of the capitalist press and news agency propagandists out there, and the total comes to at least two thousand so-called 'newsmen'. But not a single one saw any bodies being disposed of.

To burn one body successfully without trace between 5 and 7 a.m. on an open square without special equipment and without anyone being able to sneak a single picture of it or convincing eye-witness account in the middle of a massive city which up to that point the Western media was proudly proclaiming to be totally 'in the hands of the people', - and partially so still for many days after that, - would be miraculous. To dispose of 10,000 bodies that way puts the parting of the Red Sea and the feeding of the 5,000 with a tin of sardines in the amateur conjuring class.

Despite the presence of the entire-world's 'free' press for weeks before and after the incident and their intimate participation with the counter-revolutionary organisation, plus their all-night activity and film-making on that night with masses of photographs and film footage, - not one single frame or recording exists of this incredible event in the heart of Peking on Tienanmen Square, the centre of the world's attention, - the destruction by flame-thrower of thousands of dead bodies (an impossibility no matter how long they tried), and/or the removal next day of 10,000 mangled remains (leaving nothing behind) by helicopters "in and out all day". And they would needed to have been. With a generous ten bodies per helicopter, and a hard-to-achieve (from a loading and air traffic-control point of view) departure of a filled helicopter every four minutes, it would in fact have taken nearly three whole days (72 hours) to clear the square of the dead. Three thousand would have taken 24 hours to clear, a thousand at least eight hours going flat out from 7 a.m. on Sunday morning with a helicopter soaring up every four minutes. But not one single photograph exists of helicopters taking off from Tienanmen with bodies on board or anything else on board, - yet the entire worlds 'free' press was right there in the heart of Peking all the time, and all the time filming clandestinely there too as we have seen from their stream of pathetically distorted and stunted-up 'reports'. Nor one single photograph of the 'alternative' method of disposal either, - the burning of bodies with flamethrowers, - or even with a box of matches. Remarkable.

With hindsight, the problem of disposing of the 'massacred' thousands looks like even more fiendish oriental magic than ever before.

For consider the task facing British agriculture recently when just 4,700 pigs carcases (less than half the bodies that the Chinese workers state allegedly had to dispose of) had to be burned in reality.

An entire quarry had to be commandeered, and despite vast quantities of fuel used for the bonfire (more than 50 lorryloads), the job still took five days, and the smoke and, smell could be detected more than 15 miles away:

Government vets on a North Wales farm began destroying 4,700 pigs infected by Britain's worst outbreak of anthrax.

Government vets began shooting farmer Geoffrey Priestley's herd at midday yesterday. About 1,000 of the pigs at the North Wales farm were due to be killed by the end of the day and their carcasses burnt on a huge pyre built of 300 bales of hay, scores of railway sleepers and 50 tonnes of coal, all soaked in diesel. It was estimated that the process would take three or four days to complete.

So how could 10,000 human bodies have been burned in the middle of Peking in just a few hours surrounded by over two thousand Western newsmen hot on the trail of communist atrocities yet not one single picture or one single paragraph of eye-witness account has appeared anywhere about this miraculous burning??? The answer is simple. There was no 'massacre', and there was no mass of bodies to be disposed of at all.'

Not that such facts will stop the anti-communist hysteria, of course, once petty-bourgeois confusion-mongering has made up its mind to it.

Which returns the story full circle to the CPGB Trots and their deliberate 'violence' falsifications against Socialist Labour, in circumstances where many eye-witnesses swear that it was the expelled CPGB/Trot disrupters who started the scuffling anyway at London's Conway Hall, including punches at peace-making NEC members, and who, non-stop, threaten violence to the pro-SLP-constitution minority at Vauxhall branch meetings. In-your-face Trot provocative shouts of 'Fascist', 'Corrupt', or 'Thug', accompanied by actual blows, threats, or aggressive body language, all of which are now routine for these expelled entryists and their supporters, - all demonstrate where the real violence is coming from, - the 'entry' stunt itself.

That would make sense too, of course, of a very sordid kind. For one of the most notorious tactics of all provocateurs and infiltrators is to get inside an organisation to be disrupted, and just start trouble, - any kind of trouble at all, even if its cause can be traced back to deliberate disruption, - on the grounds that any 'violence' allegations, however silly or flimsy, will be propaganda mud that will forever stick to that organisation. It is a subversion tactic that was widely used by the CIA against the international anti-imperialist movement, as detailed in Philip Agee's writings.

Fortunately for anti-communism, the Trot individualist self-righteous mentality has always been willing for disruptive martyrdom with or without CIA encouragement. Such subjective-idealism just loves scenes of 'principled' provocative defiance, like sabotaging meetings by refusing to accept expulsion from the SLP; or, in their imagination, infiltrating Cuba to start provocatively shouting 'Down with Castro'; or joining in the phony reactionary 'heroics' of the rotten anarchist elements and gilded youth at Tiananmen.

To build a healthy mass workers party, Socialist Labour would be well advised to step up constitutional disciplines against the poison of Trotskyite individualism, which will use any propaganda nonsense it can lay hands on to fire off false accusations against healthy SLP elements as a cover-up for its subversion. 

Build Leninism. RB

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles)

Energetic rejection of a U.S. plan to grant a multimillion-dollar aid package, once the Revolution is liquidated

THERE is not enough money in the world, nor will there ever be, to buy the sovereignty and independence of Cuba. This was our country's dear initial response to the U.S. Government's announcement that the United States and various international institutions would allocate between four and eight billion dollars upon the destruction of the revolutionary process.

"It is infuriating that someone could imagine that the freedom and dignity of a people could be bought," declared President Fidel Castro. At the same time, Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina reiterated that the country is not for sale; Cuba does not need any donations from the U.S. government and demands compensation for the vast amount of damages, calculated to be more than 600 billion dollars, caused by 35 years of a criminal blockade and dirty war.

The plan endorsed by President Bill Clinton threatens the Cuban nation and is nothing more than the instrumentation of the Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the blockade and has as its objective the recolonization of the country, dictating
what Cuba should be and who should govern, said Robaina.

In any event, before the Cuban government gives a complete response,  the plan will be subject to legislative and political study.

Cuba also rejects the return of the Guantánamo naval base, if that return is conditioned on the abandonment of its political system. Cuba does not want to be given the base, and even less wants to renegotiate a U.S. military permanence there. What Cuba does demand is that the U.S. leave the illegally occupied territory alone, emphasized Robaina.

In other business, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, Miguel Alfonso, totally rejected the U.S. report on the human rights situation in Cuba.

"It is a document based on Washington's perceptions. We must call attention to the fact that this synopsis lacks a chapter, the one corresponding to human rights violations in the United States," he said.

SPEECH BY FIDEL CASTRO

 What infuriates us most is their attempt to buy us out, (SHOUTS OF "NEVER!" AND "WE DON'T HAVE A PRICE!") they're trying to buy us out on the day that we give in. (SHOUTS OF "NO WAY! NEVER!") It's truly infuriating! As if this people was capable of betraying the blood shed from 1868 up until now. It is infuriating that someone could imagine that the freedom and dignity of a people could be bought; that someone could imagine that for all the gold in the world we would be capable of accepting being slaves once more.

We are waiting for the information and data on that Machiavellian policy and will duly respond to them. For now, in the meantime, we say to them: free men and women can die, but there is no force or money in the world capable of converting us into slaves. (CHORUS OF "IF ONE DAY MY FLAG IS SHREDDED INTO LITTLE PIECES, OUR DEAD RAISING THEIR ARMS WILL STILL KNOW HOW TO DEFEND IT!" AND "LONG LIVE THE CUBAN REVOLUTION"") 

That's why we are proud of the youth of today, and we feel an intimate satisfaction in knowing that there are sisters and brothers from other parts of the world here today; (SHOUTS) brothers and sisters like the health minister of South Africa, where 200 Cuban doctors are working, as always, in the most difficult, isolated places. This also reminds us of the blood shed selflessly by those who fell in Angola fighting against colonialism, fighting against racism, fighting against apartheid. That was also like a grain of sand that Cuba contributed to the heroic victory of that people the minister is representing here. (APPLAUSE) 

Or the representative of our Vietnamese brothers and sisters who gave the world that fabulous lesson, teaching us how imperialism could be defeated in spite of its immense power (APPLAUSE) that the empire wielded against them and their aspirations to independence, peace and freedom, in a war that cost millions of lives.

Today we are proudly telling and showing them what our people and our youth are. (CHORUS OF THE BASIC CLAY OF OUR WORK IS  YOUTH!")

The first response to those new and Machiavellian plans is the upcoming World Festival of Youth and Students, (APPLAUSE) which they believed had disappeared, as if just ideas could disappear, as if the noble aspirations of the peoples could cease to exist.

We feel proud of being able to offer this tribute today to Martí. His memory and his ideas will endure, associated with the noble and just ideas of our time, like branches from the one trunk in the history of Cuba and the world. We shall never let those ideas die, whatever happens, whatever the cost. (SHOUTS OF "SOCIALISM OR DEATH!," "PATRIA O MUERTE!" "VENCEREMOS!" AND "LONG LIVE OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF!")

We have been fighting for this country's independence and to preserve it from that voracious empire for a long time. It's as if our destiny was to be born on a little island, this people, like a lamb facing a mythical dragon.

With the most absolute conviction we can say to the dragon: you can never devour this lamb, in spite of your rockets, your airplanes, your so-called smart weapons, because this lamb is smarter than you, and this lamb's blood has and can only have poison for you! (APPLAUSE)  »