Debate on Vietnam. 1

The nature of the Vietnamese Communist Party. George Johnson and Fred Feldman

Vietnam, Stalinism and the postwar socialist revolutions. Pierre Rousset

Vietnam, Stalinism and the postwar socialist revolutions. George Johnson and Fred Feldman

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Introduction

Bob Gould

In 1973-74 some members of the Fourth International discussed the nature of the Vietnamese revolution and Communist Party. It was a discussion between people who had been deeply involved in the movement against the imperialist assault on Vietnam and who were knowledgable of Vietnam and its history.

Debate on Vietnam. 3

On the nature of the Vietnamese Communist Party. George Johnson and Fred Feldman

Vietnam, Stalinism and the postwar socialist revolutions. Pierre Rousset

Vietnam, Stalinism and the postwar socialist revolutions. George Johnson and Fred Feldman

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Vietnam, Stalinism, and the postwar socialist revolutions

George Johnson and Fred Feldman

I. Rousset’s theory

The framework of the debate

In his reply to our critical appraisal of his book Le Parti Communiste Vietnamien, Comrade Pierre Rousset presents a broad theoretical defense of his position that the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is a non-Stalinist, “empirical revolutionary party”. In so doing he broadens the scope and subject of the debate considerably. He bases himself on a reading of the meaning of the revolutions that have toppled capitalism since the end of World War II and the character of the regimes that they have established (including Vietnam) that is quite different from ours; that is, the one hitherto held by the world Trotskyist movement

Debate on Vietnam. 2

The nature of the Vietnamese Communist Party. George Johnson and Fred Feldman

Vietnam, Stalinism and the postwar socialist revolutions. Pierre Rousset

Vietnam, Stalinism and the postwar socialist revolutions. George Johnson and Fred Feldman

The Vietnamese revolution and the role of the party

Pierre Rousset

Without the party, independently of the party, skipping over the party, through a substitute for the party, the proletarian revolution can never triumph. That is the principal lesson of the last decade …. We have paid too dearly for this conclusion as to the role and significance of the party for the proletarian revolution to renounce it so lightly or even to have it weakened.

Leon Trotsky, The Lessons of October

The fact that the struggle [in Vietnam] has been carried on for three decades without being decisively defeated should not be permitted to influence our evaluation of the program of the [Vietnamese] leadership …. The fact that the struggle has sustained itself for thirty years is a tribute to the persistence and iron will of the Vietnamese people.

George Johnson and Fred Feldman, “On the Nature of the Vietnamese Communist Party”, International Socialist Review, July-August 1973.

It is difficult to discuss a book that the readers of the International Socialist Review cannot read. Feldman and Johnson have reviewed the principal periods of development of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP)[1] in order to give their interpretation, which, in general, differs greatly from that advanced in the Livre Rouge (Le Parti Communiste Vietnamien, by Pierre Rousset [Paris, Maspero, 1973]). The temptation is strong to reply to them by summarising the theses of the book in question, and by following its outline. But that would risk further dispersing the debate, rather than concentrating on what is essential. For the essential issue is not the analysis of this or that period under indictment, but in fact the whole conception of the role of the VCP in the Vietnamese revolution, of its nature, and of its future.

Shades of red, 1920

Nancy Mills

The 30th October, 1920, in Sydney, was a clear, cool Spring day. In a small hall above Fay’s bookshop, at the corner of Pitt and Liverpool Streets, twenty-six people gathered together. They represented the two main socialist groups, and their purpose was to amalgamate to establish the Australian Communist party.

A Trojan horse within Social Democracy

David McKnight

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Introduction

Bob Gould

This is a chapter from Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War: The Conspiratorial Heritage, by David McKnight (Frank Cass, London, 2000).David McKnight teaches in the Humanities Faculty at the University of Technology, Sydney. He began his activity on the left as a high-school student, when he joined the youth group, Liberation, organised by the late Denis Freney, in the late 1960s. He later joined the Communist Party of Australia and was for some years a journalist on Tribune, along with Denis Freney.

Origins of the Communist Party of Australia

The emergence and consolidation of the Communist Party of Australia, 1920-1945

Extract from Chapter V of A Short History of the Australian Labour Movement, by E.W. Campbell (Current Books, Sydney, 1945)

A. The struggle for a unified Communist Party
B. The ALP adopts the socialisation objective
C. The campaign for affiliation to the ALP

A. The struggle for a unified Communist Party

The formation of the Community Party (October 30, 1920) was one of the decisive revolutionary acts of the Australian working class. It was the outcome of the experience gleaned in the struggles and growth of the labour movement from 1890 to 1920.

The British CP and the Labour Party left

The British Communist Party and the Labour Left 1925-1929

Brian Pearce

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Introduction

Bob Gould

Brian Pearce was a very important member of the British Communist Party historians’ group, along with Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, E.P. Thompson and many others. Most of this group broke with the Communist Party after the upheavals of 1956-57.

A stitch in time

Experiences in the rag trade

Betty Reilly

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Introduction

Bob Gould

My bookshop in King Street, Newtown, is about 200 yards from what was the piece of waste ground called the Bullring, where the circus used to play in Newtown and where working-class public meetings used to take place.

The CPA and the Comintern

The Communist Party of Australia and the Communist International (1927-1929)

Barbara Curthoys

History indeed looks different when you know the end of the story. Christopher Hill

It has been generally accepted that the events at the ninth annual conference of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1929, resulting in a change of leadership and the ousting of the “right-wing deviationists”, were a turning point in its history. The incidents which surrounded the 1929 conference, the characterisation of the leading players, the role of the Communist International (Comintern), and the estimation of its outcome have been variously interpreted but none doubt its significance. The period has been covered by a number of writers but the material recently made available by the Comintern Archives in Moscow may serve to illuminate the story further.¹

The CPA on Stalin

An open letter to the Communist Party of Australia and The Guardian

Bob Gould

In a July 16, 2003, column in The Guardian, with the unintentionally revealing subheading, More rewriting of history Rob Gowland has this to say:

Stalin is a towering figure of the 20th Century. It is precisely because of Stalin’s achievements and stature, valid criticisms notwithstanding, that he is still held in such high standing and that there are so many — and such unrelenting — attacks on him in the bourgeois media 50 years after his death.

What is happening in the Communist Party?

Gil Roper

From The Militant, Sydney, November 29, 1937 (Vol 4, No 14 — new series)

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Introduction

The partly forgotten world of Sydney Marxism from the 1930s to the 1950s

Bob Gould

Gil and Edna Roper were active in the left of the labour movement from the 1920s until the 1960s. As a brash young rebel in the 1950s, I got to know them both, and they were very kind to me.