Once more it is reported that a ceasefire agreement is imminent in Vietnam. So we must stress again the vital role that the international movement in defense of the Vietnamese revolution is called upon to play, regardless of the results of the current negotiations. Every analysis of the presentsituation, all information available, points to the conclusion that the Vietnamese revolution will not come to a halt, no matter what the outcome of the ceasefire negotiations. There will be no truce in the struggle of the masses of Vietnamese workers and poor peasants for their national and social liberation.
The savage attacks perpetrated by the American air force in late December 1972 on the Hanoi and Haiphong regions, the unprecedented bombings of the liberated areas of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, which are still continuing as of this writing, confirm the determination of the American imperialists to utilize all the means of terror at their disposal to prevent the collapse of the puppet regimes installed in Saigon, Pnompenh, and Vientiane. Considerable amounts of arms and ammunition are still being sent to these puppets. Thousands of Thieu's U.S. "advisers" remain in South Vietnam. And even if the American troops are really withdrawn, powerful imperialist air and naval forces wil! remain on _ the alert in Thailand and off the Vietnamese coasts.
Moreover, maintaining the dictatorial Thieu regime in Saigon in the face of the combativity of the Vietnamese masses means that the revolutionary struggle will continue after the cease-fire agreement is signed, even if the general military confrontation between the two class camps halts for a time.
The hard-fought negotiations that took place between October 1972 and 112
January 1973 were centered precisely on marking out the ground for these future revolutionary struggles in South Vietnam, with each camp seeking to gain the best possible position for waging its fight. This is why the negotiations dealt with questions such as the real nature of the demilitarized zone, the size and role of the international control commission, and similar issues. Any concessions that imperialism may have extracted from the Vietnamese fighters in this regard, as the result of inadequate international support for the Vietnamese revolution in the face of large-scale aggression by U.S. imperialism, in no way undermine the capacity of the revolution to maintain its momentum in South Vietnam.
The puppet Thieu understands this very well. He is hastily setting up a system of semifascist repression, threatening to fire on every crowd of demonstrators, to murder every Communist, and to prevent any return of refugees to liberated villages. At the same time he is holding out the threat of slaughtering the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in his hands,
The popular masses, for their part, are getting ready to take advantage of any military truce to resume their struggle to free the political prisoners, win democratic liberties, defend their material interests in the cities and countryside, bring about the disintegration of the army and regime of the puppet Thieu, and create and reinforce mass-based organs of power. In these conditions, the signing of a cease-fire agreement will not mean a halt to the revolution in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, or to the counterrevolutionary intervention by imperialism. These two processes will continue in temporarily modified forms, with the possibility of a new direct military intervention by U.S. imperialism remaining suspended like the sword of Damocles over the heads of the workers and poor peasants of Indochina.
In these conditions also, the masses of Indochina, confronted with the violence and the maneuvers of imperialism and the native exploiters, willhave a still greater need for the active support of the international working class after the signing of the cease-fire agreement, just as they needed this help during the recent weeks of terror bombing by the U.S. Air Force.
The counterrevolutionary role of the bureaucrats of Moscow and Peking, who did not raise a finger to respond to Nixon's bombing of North Vietnam and who continue to refuse to supply the North Vietnamese workers' state with the more modern kinds of defensive weapons made available to bourgeois governments such as those in Egypt, Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh, cannot be condemned strongly enough. By arranging Nixon's visits to Moscow and Peking in 1972, these bureaucrats helped him to weaken the American antiwar movement in the crucial months of the past year. During the cease-fire negotiations they brought the maximum pressure on Hanoi to get the Vietnamese fighters to make concessions to imperialism. They put the crowning touch on this betrayal of the elementary interests of the workers of Vietnam and the entire world by remaining totally passive when Nixon unleashed against Hanoi and Haiphong the largest-scale and most barbarous acts of aggression that humanity has seen since the end of the second world war. The whole counterrevolutionary logic of their "peaceful coexistence" strategy has thus been starkly revealed.
But, for their part, the working masses of the world, after being deceived by the secret diplomatic maneuvers of Washington, Moscow, and Peking, were awakened by the shock and indignation aroused by Nixon's barbaric bombings. They have responded on an ever larger scale since December 1972. Leading up to the actions of January 20, 1973, the international demonstrations against the imperialist war of aggression have constantly broadened. In many countries, these Intercontinental Press demonstrations reached new heights. What is more, in Australia, Italy, and Denmark, sectors of the organized workers' movement started, or issued appeals for starting, direct industrial action against the war, thereby pointing out the path for the most effective response to the imperialist barbarism. It is the duty of the international working class to continue to extend this movement of solidarity, no matter what the outcome of the negotiations and the cease-fire agreement, until the complete and final victory of the Vietnamese revolution. There can be no halt, truce, or "cease-fire" in our solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution — this is the fundamental truth that we must constantly reiterate to the working masses of the five continents as this turn is taking place in Indochina.
The Fourth International issues a solemn appeal to all activists, to all anti-imperialist and _ anticapitalist organizations throughout the world. For more than two decades the Indochinese masses have fought with a heroism unparalleled and an energy and endurance unique in the history of this century for the cause of their emancipation and for socialism. They have fought for us all. The least that we can do in return for the great service they have done for the world revolution is to continue unceasingly our actions in solidarity with their revolution, which is also unrelenting. The Fourth International calls on all working-class organizations to make defending the Vietnamese revolution against the terror of Washington and Thieu, whose blows continue and may escalate further, into the cause of millions and millions of workers in all countries.
It calls on all Communists, on all socialists, not to let themselves be duped by the diplomatic maneuvers of imperialism and by the cover that the bureaucratic betrayers in Moscow and Peking are continuing to provide for these maneuvers.
Our duty is clear. We must maintain, broaden, extend, and unify nationally and internationally the movement of active and militant solidarity with the heroic fighters and the peoples of Indochina until the final and complete victory of the Indochinese revolution.