to agree to the Americans handing over their military bases to the puppet regime and to accept a ceasefire before a political settlement. This evades the central question of the destruction of the apparatus of the imperialist-created state, ie., the army of the Thieu regime. This could well be a tactical concession as the North Vietnamese press has itself warned many times against the view that bourgeois elections can solve the question. of which class rules the country. However what is dangerous in this concession is the fact that it politically disarms the revolutionary forces. That is why Lenin and the other Bolsheviks even when they were forced to make compromises and offer concessions never concealed the nature of these let alone tried to present them as victories. Brest-Litovsk was a case in point. As long as the militants involved in the struggle and the masses are told the truth and it is made clear that the struggle is not over we have nothing to fear. If this is not done it is Thieu and the imperTalists who will take advantage by carrying out a pogrom of all oppositionists and political prisoners in the cities. There is evidence that this has already begun and there is every indication that it is going to increase in scale and magnitude. From this to the resumption of a full-scale civil war is only a short step. Thieu certainly has no lusions about co-existing with NLF and knows perfectly well that any peaceful political process will result in more areas being taken over by the guerrillas. As a result he will unleash a wave of repression to prevent these processes from unfolding. Diem did the same thing in 1954-55 and got away with it for five years, killing thousands of communists in the process. The reason he succeeded in murdering so many militants was because while Hanoi was scrupulous in sticking to its part of the Geneva Agreements the imperialists and their partners openly and blatantly flouted them. The result is that the war still continues. It does not need pointing out that a repeat performance at the present stage could result in a major reversal.
STRUGGLE FAR FROM OVER Of course the key point to be grasped by the solidarity movement is that the struggle is far from over and that any negotiated settlement will provide at best a temporary breathing space. Till the puppet army is destroyed there will be no peace in Vietnam. What this means is that the solidarity movement must retain its independence from the settlement and also be extremely vigilant in the coming period. The role of Peking and Moscow, the non-existence of a mass revolutionary international means that the whole burden of providing solidarity falls on the forces of the extreme left.
However whatever our reservations on some of the points of the settlement we must understand that the Vietnamese cannot be denied the right to negotiate especially if by doing so they can save their land and themselves from further devastation. We must also understand that the only existing revolutionary leadership inside Vietnam is the NLF. If groups on the extreme left actually believe that after leading the most heroic and determined struggle in the history of capitalism, the NLF will now simply disarm its cadres and "sell-out", they must understand the full logic of that statement. It means a severe defeat for the Indochinese revolution from which it would take decades to recover. It also means a grave setback to the colonial revolution and the world revolution as a whole.
In the absence of any real evidence it would be extremely impressionistic to jump to conclusions of this sort. While we must continue to analyse seriously all future developments, our essential task remains one of providing solidarity to the embattled militants in Indochina, isolated from the rest of the world by the tactics of Nixon and the betrayals of Moscow and Peking. The projected Indochina Solidarity Conference which is being supported by the IMG is therefore even more important than ever before, not only to discuss and analyse the present situation, but to project actions in solidarity with the Indochinese people.
SOLIDARITY TILL THE FINAL VICTORY! FOR THE IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF ALL IMPERIALIST TROOPS FROM INDOCHINA!
ALL POWER TO THE PRG!
FOR A UNITED SOCIALIST VIETNAM!