First Published: People’s Tribune, Vol. 6. No. 6, June 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As the Watergate drama continues to unfold, we find Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski running to the Supreme Court to find out “Whether the President is amenable to judicial process.”
Jaworski turned to the Supreme Court after Nixon refused to release tapes needed by Jaworski, when U.S. District Court Judges Sirica and Gesell demanded their release. But, Jaworski proved his ”allegiance” to Nixon by warning the Watergate Grand Jury that they could not prosecute the President for his obvious crimes. Thus, Nixon has been named an “unindicted co-conspirator” – free from criminal prosecution.
As the scuffle for the tapes rages on, we find bourgeois politicians, liberals and conservatives of every hue, trying to get as much political millage out of the “impeachment movement” as possible. More noticeably we find those politicians seeking election soon, playing on the broad based hatred for Nixon and rising fascism, mouthing pious appeals for Nixon to resign and restore “honor” to the presidency. The Democrats generally favor impeachment, a process which would give them a podium to demonstrate their “liberalness” and gather votes. The Republicans generally favor resignation, which would free them from having to commit themselves as being pro or anti-Nixon in an impeachment vote.
We also find labor-traitors like George Meany saying, “The issue now is not presidential policy, but presidential credibility.”
But as these bourgeois politicians escalate their squawking about resignation and impeachment of Nixon, we see that Nixon’s fascist programs stand virtually unopposed. Twenty-three state legislatures and the U.S. Senate have voted to re-enact the death penalty. This spells increased terror for the toilers in the USNA, especially for the people in the Negro Nation (of the 66 people on death row, 31 are in the Raleigh, N.C. penitentiary, 26 of that 31 are Negro, and one in Indian). The “stop and frisk”, “no knock”, and “anti-riot” acts still sanction police terror.
The Watergate struggle does not represent a struggle to “restore democracy” as these deceitful, lying bourgeois stooges would have us believe. What then does the Watergate struggle represent?
We must view the Watergate struggle as being part of a worldwide movement within the imperialist camp. Comrade Lenin teaches that imperialism is the epoch of finance capital, and of monopolies which strive for domination, for spheres of influence. The USNA imperialists are as united as the fingers on a fist in that their interests lie in the frenzied struggle to retain and expand their colonial possessions.
Currently, however, we are witnessing a struggle over which tactics are best for cutting the throats of the lesser imperialist powers in the scramble for imperialist expansion at the expense of the colonies.
The policy of detente between the USNA and the USSR has allowed the expansion of USNA finance capital into the Soviet Union, as Soviet social-imperialism continues its expansion (for example, the Soviet Union has a $100 million investment in the Debele Bauxite mines in Guinea and has recently made new agreements to supply Libya with arms and military supervisors).
We view this detente situation as nothing more than a “truce” period between wars.
“Peaceful alliances”, says Lenin on imperialist alliances, “prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, giving rise to alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle out of one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics.” (Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. FLPP, 1970, p. 144.)
While talking “peace” the Soviet Union and the USNA imperialists are getting armed to the teeth. The Soviet Union has a new missile with a 4,200 mile range which can be launched from their Delta submarines. Not to be outdone, the USNA Imperialists are perfecting submarine launched missiles with a 6,800 mile range for 1980.
The imperialists, caught in the clutches of an overproduction crisis, must have wars of aggression and annexation to “burn up” commodities and allow the expansion of industry.
The imperialists also need war to hold on to their colonies which are ablaze with the liberation struggles of the colonial peoples.
The fall of one European government after another is a manifestation of the hegemony of USNA imperialism over the capitalist world and of the world-wide preparation for fascism within the whole of the imperialist camp.
The recent developments in Portugal are a part of the struggle of the imperialists to cling to their colonial possessions. After watching the Portuguese troops get humiliated at every turn by the mighty hand of the liberation forces in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau, and seeing the discontent with this losing war effort at home (in Portugal), the imperialists decided to replace the barbarous colonial regime with the “new liberal regime” of General Antonio de Spinola.
Under the rule of this Nazi-trained “liberal” – Spinola (who sits on the board of the imperialist grouping that controls the national steel works in Portugal) – the colonies policed by Portugal are being offered a sham ”self-determination” so that the imperialists may escalate the robbery of the colonies “unhampered” by national liberation struggle.
General Francisco da Costa Gomes, vice president of the junta, declared that unless Frelimo (the Mozambique Liberation Front) lays down its arms and becomes a “non-violent political party”, the Portuguese government ”would have no choice but to continue and if necessary intensify” the fight to crush them. The Mozambique freedom fighters’ initial reply to this intimidation was their blowing up., two freight trains, a luxury express bus, and shooting down a military transport plane during Gomes’ visit to Mozambique.
We have also witnessed a change of government in West Germany. After having served to uplift Germany in the eyes of Europe, engaging West Germany in trade with Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union, and establishing relations with Israel, Willy Brandt, the Social Democrat who fit so well in the scheme of detente, has stepped down from his office of chancellor. Taking his place is the conservative former finance minister of West Germany, Helmut Schmidt.
In the Soviet Union, over the last few years, we have watched as the Party and the Army have been purged of most of the remaining communists, while military leader Marshall Grechko has been appointed to the Political Bureau of the Soviet Union.
In France, the right-winger, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the finance minister of France for 11 of the past 15 years, won the presidential election. He defeated Francois Mitterand, the joint candidate of the French Communist Party and French Socialist Party. It is obvious from the fact that 49% of the French people voted for Mitterand, that there is strong mass opposition to French imperialism. Even though the watered down and reformist program of Mitterand did not offer a real socialist alternative to imperialism, the French masses’ demonstrated vividly to the French ruling class the need to consolidate the “home” front before embarking on new imperialist schemes.
Even though the rise of new governments in W. Europe has brought many “pro-USNA” spokesmen to the forefront (in W. Germany and France) the independent desires of the European capitalist powers are far from dead. Indeed, the awesome success of the USNA in controlling Europe through the monopoly of oil was a serious setback in their plans. This fact, coupled with the recent build up of military strength of the Soviet Union pointing towards a European battlefield has left the weaker European powers dependent on USNA military strength (in the form of NATO). As we have stated before, the battle for world markets, for colonial possessions is shaping up as a battle in Europe, leaving the European powers torn between their own’ need for independent imperialist expansion and military and fuel dependence on the USNA. Thus, leaders such as d’Estaing and Schmidt have been forced to take a “pro-USNA” position.
In France, Portugal, the USNA and throughout the world, modern revisionism has been extremely effective in’ crippling and paralysing the working class movement and facilitating the rise of fascism. The revisionist Communist Party of Portugal issued a directive on May 5, opposing the strikes and the seizure of factories by the workers of Portugal during-the “present period”. They worship the “National Salvation Junta” and refuse to demand the independence and right of secession of the Portuguese colonies.
The revisionist CPUSA’s Gus Hall, in his May Day speech, which contained nothing resembling Marxism, attacked the bourgeois politicans’ opposition to Nixon saying, “They do not want to impeach Watergate. They want to impeach detente.” The May 22, 1974 issue of the Daily World, the scandal sheet of the CPUSA, bears the headline, “USSR Delegates Speak: Let’s Agree to Make Detente Permanent”.
Here we see that the CPUSA projects the, deceitful illusion that detente is not just a “truce” for imperialist expansion, consolidation, rearming and preparing ”or continued wars of aggression. Instead of showing the living connection between detente and imperialist war, they present detente as a lifeless abstraction, a cure-all that reconciles class antagonisms and that denies the revolutionary rupture of imperialism.
In our unions, political and community organizations, we must show that the fate of Nixon and his carbon copy, Ford, are not the issue. We must use the Watergate struggle as a rostrum to alert the class to the rise of fascism, and to unmask and refute the revisionist agents of the bourgeoisie – the CPUSA – who seek to confuse and disorient the workers and deliver them into the jaws of fascism. We must use this struggle to show the need for a united working class to stem the tide of fascism we see approaching.
We must fulfill our internationalist duty – the building of an independent, multi-national communist party in the USNA to lead in the smashing of our “own” bourgeoisie.