First Published: El Amanecer Rojo, No. 4, August 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The series of events named the ’Watergate Affair’ is an indication of the bourgeoisie’s attack on the people’s movement against the Indochina war, and on the democratic rights of the national minorities. The bourgeoisie ordered its state apparatus to launch a coordinated offensive on the people’s movement because of the threat it represented to the imperialists’ ability to wage aggressive counter-revolutionary wars against the heroic struggles of the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian peoples.
Bourgeois-democratic liberties (freedom of speech, freedom of the press, of assembly, of religion, etc.) are preserved by the bourgeoisie only as long as they are useful to the bourgeoisie. Democratic rights (of the proletariat mainly but also of the petty-bourgeoisie) are set aside whenever the bourgeoisie feels challenged by another class, usually the proletariat. Democratic movements frequently challenge the policies of the bourgeoisie – thus they too must be met by force, irregardless of legal niceties.
The events known as the ’Watergate Affair’ are an instance of the violation of the democratic rights of the people by the state apparatus of the ruling class. This happened because the mass democratic movements of that time (late l960’s, early 1970:s) impeded the bourgeoisie’s ability to act in its interest both in Indochina and on the home front.
The bourgeoisie, at a point of time when it is seriously challenged (or sees the potential for such a challenge) needs criminal activities to maintain its power. “Fascism in power is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital” (George Dimitroff).
The USNA is not fascist at this stage, but there is a definite move on the part of certain ruling-class circles towards fascism. This fact is demonstrated concretely by the ’Watergate Affair’.
Fascism is the result of the class-struggle working out in such a way that the situation is ripe for proletarian revolution, but the revolution is not ready to seize power. The bourgeoisie of the USNA lives in a perpetual state of fear of the people, as is evidenced by John Dean’s testimony. The anti-war movement, though it lacked revolutionary leadership, frightened the bourgeoisie. They concocted an elaborate plan to destroy the movement. This attack was also mounted on the democratic movements of the Negro, Puerto Rican and Mexican national minority peoples.
The incident that gave the ’Watergate Affair’ its name was the invasion of the Headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Washington, D.C. Watergate Building on June 17, 1972. The state apparatus focused a part of its attack on what was left of the Democratic Party because the people’s movement had largely fallen under its hegemony, due to the tactics of betrayal and class collaboration practised by the revisionist CPUSA. The people’s movement, under the control of a bourgeois party, was a pushover for the Nixon thugs. But the attack on the Democratic Party was only the tip of the iceberg. The people’s movement as a whole was subjected to murder, illegal arrest, break-ins, bugging, physical beating, agents-provocateurs, etc.
These fascist attacks on the democratic and anti-war movement should not be shrugged-off with cheap cynicism by communists and consistent democrats. That is an opportunist road that can lead to the ultra-left idiocy of wishing for fascism to force the people into action. The demands for the resignation of the government and for new elections must be raised wherever possible because only by doing so can communists lead the proletariat in the political arena.
The CPUSA’s betrayal of the proletariat is the major factor leading to the bourgeoisie being left to investigate itself through the agency of the Ervin Committee. The bourgeoisie will not prosecute or condemn itself. Only the proletariat, with revolutionary communist leadership, can do that. A revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Party could have furnished a stable backbone to the people’s movement, leading the movement away from the bourgeoisie and toward the proletariat. The CPUSA did precisely the opposite.
But above all else, a Communist Party of the New type is needed to defeat fascist tendencies by proletarian revolution. Fascism would mean concretely the application of bourgeois (counterrevolutionary) terror to the proletariat and to all progressive forces: censorship of the press, banning of organizations, imprisonment, violent attacks. The organization of the class can equip it to meet counterrevolutionary terror with revolutionary terror.