1. The bureaucratized workers states do not constitute a "Stalinist bloc." The development of each of them is specific and should be grasped in its own uniqueness.[1]
Therefore, conflicts among them should not be approached simply as conflicts among similarly bureaucratized workers states, and we do not necessarily take an abstentionist and neutralist position toward these conflicts.
2. The Cambodian workers state under the Pol Pot regime was an extreme expression of the practice of socialism in one country, totally rejecting any cooperation with Vietnam as a major workers state in Indochina. It thus pushed its bureaucratic ultraleftism almost to the point of genocide.
The Pol Pot leadership not only rejected close cooperation among the three workers states with Vietnam as its center—which was and is fundamental for the toiling masses of the three countries—but also provoked the "border war" between Vietnam and Cambodia, which was a big blow to the three Indochinese workers states and their masses.
3. The bureaucratic leadership of the Chinese workers state, which made a reactionary bloc with imperialism, was opposed to the development of close cooperation among the three Indochinese workers states with Vietnam as its center.
This is especially so because the strengthening of the Indochinese revolution constitutes a real threat to imperialism and the neocolonialist regimes in Southeast Asia, and will bring a crisis to the reactionary international bloc between the Chinese bureaucracy and imperialism.
And the conflict between Vietnam and Cambodia became an integral part of the international conflict between Vietnam and the Chinese bureaucracy. In this framework, the Pol Pot regime was an instrument of the reactionary international policy of the Chinese bureaucracy.
4. The Pol Pot regime had to be overthrown in the interest of cooperation among the three workers states and their masses, and in the interest of the Cambodian masses themselves. In Cambodia, the Pol Pot line was creating dangerous room for the local reactionary forces and the counterrevolutionary intervention of imperialism.
In fact, the very quick fall of the Pol Pot regime shows that the regime lacked any active support from the Cambodian masses.
5. The FUNSK was formed by the oppositionists in the liberation forces to the Pol Pot regime; it is neither simply an agent nor creation of the Vietnamese state.
While it is supported by Vietnam, the FUNSK does not have a mass base. This weakness of the FUNSK comes mainly from the difficulties which the Cambodian masses have experienced and which they are now living under.
6. Due to the international economic blockade by international imperialism, the military provocations and threats from the Chinese bureaucracy, and serious economic difficulties, Vietnam couldn't afford to spend a long time waiting until the opposition current in Cambodia organized the masses step by step. In this context, the direct military intervention by Vietnam was a forced decision and an act of self-defense.
The Vietnamese intervention liberated the masses from the repressive regime of Pol Pot and avoided the collapse of the workers state itself under the Pol Pot regime.
Vietnam continues to defend Cambodia from the remaining Pol Pot forces, which are supported by the Chinese bureaucracy, imperialism, and counterrevolutionary forces. Laos has become an integral part of the confrontation between the Indochinese revolution and the bloc formed by the Chinese bureaucracy and imperialism.
7. The Vietnamese workers state—constituted as a result of the most devastating war for national and social liberation ever seen in the world—is, to be sure, a bureaucratically deformed workers state. Its reliance upon the Soviet Union, however questionable, was the condition it accepted as the cost of this, and does not make Vietnam an agency of the USSR.
The Vietnamese revolution and the Indochinese revolution as a whole are at a crossroads. The great difficulties which the three workers states face put a great pressure on the VCP and its policy. This is shown by its increasing international dependence on the USSR and the Soviet bureaucracy, its "peaceful coexistence" policy toward the neocolonialist regimes in Southeast Asia, and the possibility of deepening bureaucratization in Vietnam. The VCP stands basically on the ideology of socialism in one country and is strongly nationalist.
The struggle continues in Cambodia under extremely difficult conditions, and the Vietnamese workers state is subjected to reactionary pressures from the Chinese bureaucracy, imperialism, and the local neocolonialist regimes.
In this situation, it is an imperative necessity for the international working-class movement to defend with all possible means the three Indochinese workers states and their toiling masses against the reactionary bloc of the Chinese bureaucracy, imperialism, and the local neocolonialists. This is imperative for fighting against the danger of deepening of the bureaucratization in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The only definite proletarian perspective for the three workers states lies in the development of international class struggles in Southeast Asia, the Far East, and the world as a whole, and in the struggle for a democratically organized Indochinese Socialist Federation of the workers-peasants Soviet Republics based on the right of national self-determination, the guarantee of full democratic rights for the various national minorities, and democratically organized joint economic planning.
The Fourth International will launch, as a main task at present, an international campaign to defend and support the Indochinese revolution and for the international recognition of the new Cambodian government.
Notes
1. There are workers states under the counterrevolutionary Thermidorian bureaucracies and those which are not.