Our Founding Convention should pass a reso- lution of political solidarity with the Provisional Re- volutionary Government of South Vietnam and adopt a program of organizing to implement it. This re- solution and program should be organized around NAM’s unqualified support for the f>RG’s Program as the basis for the end of the imperialist war cur- rently being waged by the United States government.

There are two potential reservations NAM mem- bers might have. The first such objection is the “par- -ade of horribles.” If NAM begins to take foreign po- licy stands, will not the door be opened to intermin- able disputes over questions such as border disputes between Yugoslavia and Albania, the bona fides of various Palestinian political formations, etc? Surely it would be foolish for NAM to expend its energies on such matters, instead of organizing among work- ing people. Without a doubt NAM should avoid the “parade of horribles.” But the way to do this is to rely upon the good sense and political consciousness of our mem- bership. The past decade should have taught us to avoid “paper discussions” of obscure points of ideo- logy, but Vietnam is not an obscure sectarian squabble. It is the leading political question in the United States – one that defines-the class interests and poli- tics of different groups. The second objection (put forth by Judith Sha- piro of IS, Vol. I, No. 4) is that such a resolution, “involving mindless identification wi~h the PRG and North Vietnam … (would be) disturbingly reminiscent of the last days of SOS.” To buttress this argument, Shapiro “hazard (s) a guess that most delegates (at Davenport) didn’t know what was in the Seven Point PRG Program.” Whether true or not, this objection points pre- cisely in the direction of the fullscale internal politi- cal debate (with its natural spill-over effect of inter- nal education) that a major policy resolution entails. Moreover, I believe that most NAM members are well-informed about Vietnam and have a fairly clear political position on the issue. In any event, the politics of NAM ought not to •represent the lowest common denominator of mem- bership knowledge: rather it should_express our best collective wisdom. This posture would mean that NAM should be raising the level of its inter~al political -life as high as possible, bringing everyone within its ranks to that full understanding. (The other path NAM could take involves the creation of an elite with ‘heavy’ politics on the one hand, and a passive mass of followers on the other). Now the positive reasons for this resolution are that it is a correct political position on the war. and that such a perspective is ESSENTIAL to NAM’s project of “placing socialism on the agenda” among American working people. Judith Shapiro and IS (as were PL before them) are simply wrong when they assert that the PRG and North Vietnam are “bureaucratic anti-working class regimes.” It certainly is true that the American rul- ing class assiduously cultivates this view among Amer- ican workers-so as to discredit socialist agitation. Since the outset of the Russian Revolution, this “big lie” technique has been at work. (It is also worth noting that a favorite method the ruling class uses to give credence to this notion is to employ erstwhile revolutionaries, paid renegades, etc. For instance Christopher Lasch has traced how the CIA manipulated former trotskyist and social democratic

radicals into serving as cold war agents. “The Congress for Cultural Freedom,” in Bernstein (ed.), TOWARDS A NEW PAST). If, as IS insists, all existing socialist regimes are so terrible then why should American workers believe that they can do better? IS’s position of revolutionary purity in- exorably leads away from a popular socialist movement.

But the basis for this resolution cannot be :simply that we are deeply committed to the Viet- namese. Nor is it enough to indicate that the war has made more of us into revolutionaries than any other single political event of our generation. The essential test must be: does this position . reveal, at least embryonically, to politically conscious working people that they stand for a new and differ- ent civilization to take the place of the present one? I believe that a socialist politics on the war in Vietnam does. It speaks to precisely the debate that Jeremy Rifkin and I opened (Vol. I, No. 2) about the _validity of a “red, white and blue left.” In my cri- tique of Rifkin I pointed out that one of the main weaknesses with the concept of mass struggle which he embraced was that it did not confront the prob- lem of national chauvinism among working people. I went on to argue that overcoming such a political culture (“false consciousness” if you will) is a nec- essary and integral part of the emergence of a self- consciously revolutionary working class movement. In the heart of the world’s greatest imperialist power, national chauvinism (which is closely linked to racism and tied to sexist views of the world) is • not simply an o_bscure deviation from Marxist ortho- doxy; it is a large part of the popular cultural basis for reaction. It must be eradicated from the culture of working people if we are to put socialism “on the political agenda” in real life. Therefore NAM must embody within its politi- cal self-definition the most clear-~ut possible opposi- tion to national chauvinism. It must do this (I) Be- •cause NAM has the affirmative responsibility to in- scribe on its banners deep respect for the worth of other cultures and a firm recognition· of every people’s right to political and cultural self-determination, and (2) because NAM is seeking to win the mass of work- ing people to a new conception of their history – one in which we all have the power to control our social destiny. The PRG provides an example (not a model) from which all oppressed people can draw inspiration. ihe ruling class necessarily seeks to crush the Vietnamese. If it succeeds, it will simultaneously de- liver a telling blow against the revolutionary forces in the United States. Conversely, if it fails, significant new prospects for socialist politics in the United States will be opened for us. The people of the US _must come to understand • that the victories and defeats in Vietnam are ours. That is the meaning of proletarian internationalism – that the fate of oppressed people everywhere is linked not only in our vision of human decency, but also in our strategic understanding of the class struggle. And if our New American Movement is not in- ternationalist at its core it is nothing and deserves to be nothing.