The Stalinists were also still strong in the student movement and academia, where their reactionary, petty-bourgeois “anti-imperialism”, and “anti-capitalism”, represented by the “anti-monopoly alliance”, chimed with the ideas of petty-bourgeois Liberals, concerned with the interests of the small producer, hostility to “unequal exchange” and so on. They were able to form a rotten bloc against the New Left that grew to challenge them, during the 1960's, but which, itself, was infected, in this milieu, by the ideas of petty-bourgeois moralism, and nationalism, ending up tailing it, in search of the odd new student recruit.
Time and again, they recited Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, and hostility to Popular Fronts, and alliances with vicars, but, as CND, and the anti-Vietnam War movements brought tens of thousands of that milieu on to the streets, the more they ignored the theory, and immersed themselves into these petty-bourgeois, cross-class movements, and, in the process, reduced themselves to mere cheerleaders for petty-bourgeois nationalism and pacifism. The same was true when it came to opposing the rise of fascist parties, like the NF, in their own countries, via rotten blocs such as the Anti-Nazi League.
“The imperialist yoke is supposed to serve as a justification for the policy of the “bloc of four classes”. The yoke of imperialism leads allegedly to the fact that “all” (!) the classes of China look upon the Canton government as the “national government of the whole of China in the same way” (!). (Speech of comrade Kalinin, Izvestia, March 6) This is essentially the position of the right Guomindang man, Dai Tshi Tao, who pretends that the laws of the class struggle do not exist for China – because of imperialist pressure.” (p 20)
The same line is put forward, today, by the USC, in support of its obeisance at the feet of the reactionary government of Zelensky, in Kyiv, despite the fact that, behind it, stands the overwhelming global might of NATO imperialism. But, that is simply the reductio ad absurdum of the whole ideology of “idiot anti-imperialism”, pursued by the petty-bourgeois "Left", in the post-war period. It lined up behind all kinds of reactionary, anti-working-class forces, in country after country, knowing full well what kind of regime they would install if successful, simply on the basis of pursuing the limited, bourgeois-democratic goal of national independence, and “anti-imperialism”, oblivious to the class struggle, within the given country, and, usually, in total contradiction to it.
It was much easier to emphasise opposition to US imperialism, and the visible expression of it, in the Viet Cong, if you were in a throng of thousands of students, in Grosvenor Square, than if you were a Vietnamese worker, or poor peasant, oppressed by that same Viet Cong. It was easy to march along chanting the name of Ho Chi Minh, as though that was something to be proud of, when his name should have sickened you to the stomach, as his forces were busy murdering thousands of Vietnamese Trotskyists, much as the forces of Chiang Kai Shek had murdered thousands of Chinese Communists in Shanghai, in 1927. Is it any wonder that this disgraceful Left cover given to these vile reactionaries, and petty-bourgeois nationalists, during that time, and even acquiescence in their description as being Marxists, has besmirched the idea of communism for more than a generation?
But, a student march that, also, focussed attention on the anti-working class nature of the Viet Cong, and Stalinist regime in Hanoi, and sought to build support for the truly revolutionary forces, in Vietnam, would have attracted only a small fraction of the numbers, and been openly attacked by the Stalinists and their fellow travellers, as the Trotskyists were in 1925-7, for doing precisely that, in relation to China.
The same was true, in relation to the national liberation struggle in Algeria, and again, in 1979, in relation to the Iranian Revolution. It was easy to look at thousands on the streets of Tehran, without questioning the class dynamics of what was happening, and to connect that to thousands on the streets, in western capitals, that blindly called for the downfall of the Shah, without consideration of what would replace his regime.
The same was true, after 1969, with support for the petty-bourgeois, nationalist struggle of the Provisional IRA. But, notably, at a time when large, left groups, like the SWP and Militant, were contesting the CP for members, amongst workers, as industrial militancy surged, it was not long before these groups dropped their previous cheerleading activities for PIRA, for fear of losing industrial workers, whose approach to other workers being shot and blown up, in Britain, was not at all as sanguine as that of petty-bourgeois students and intellectuals.
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