MAOISM - A BALANCE SHEET

MAOISM

A BALANCE SHEET, By Robert Black 

MAO’S SLAVISH defence of Stalin played into the hands of the Soviet bureaucracy. The Soviet working class, youth and intellectuals hated Stalin as a symbol of repression and mass murder. 

The more Mao praised him, the easier it became for the Kremlin to drive a wedge between the Soviet people and the Chinese Revolution. 

Unable to find a road to the Soviet and East European working class, and menaced more than ever by growing American involvement in SE Asia, the Chinese leaders began to develop the so-called theory of "intermediate zones." 

Mao gave an outline of this theory in a talk with five rightwing members of the Japanese Socialist Party on August 11, 1964: 

"Japan and China must act in unity, co-operate with each other ... As a result of the war Japan came under the domination of American imperialism. American imperialism also  dominates in S Korea, the Philippines, Thailand etc."

  "The United States is reaching out to the western Pacific and SE Asia. It is reaching too far. The United States dominates over Europe, Canada and entire Latin America..."

"All peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are opposed to imperialism. Imperialism is also opposed by Europe, Canada and other countries. Imperialists too are coming out against imperialists. Is not de Gaulle an example of this?" (Emphasis added.) 

By placing oppressed colonial peoples on the same political level as America’s imperialist rivals, Mao shows how remote he is from Leninism. 

The ideas he developed in this interview can be traced back to Stalin’s "big-power" diplomacy, which tried to play off one group of imperialist states against another (i.e., the 1934-1939 ‘Popular Front’ alliance with the ‘democratic’ imperialists—France, Britain and the US - followed by the Stalin-Hitler pact. 

Turning his back on the working class of the United States, Mao looked to imperialist forces in Japan and W Europe to counter the pressure of American imperialism on China. 

"There are now two intermediate zones in the world. Asia, Africa and Latin America make up the first, and Europe, N America and Oceania the second. Japanese monopoly capital belong to the second zone. Even this monopoly capital is discon- tented with the United States, while some of its representatives openly oppose it..."

"...I do not think that the monopoly capital of Japan will allow the United States to sit on its neck forever. Nothing could be better than for Japan to become completely independ- ent and establish contact with the forces in Asia striving for national independence..." 

The working class as an independent revolutionary force capable of defeating imperialism entirely vanished from Mao’s thinking. 

Instead, he came forward as the supporter of Japanese imperialism, which he cynically presents as a potential ally of national liberation forces in Asia. 

Here indeed is the germ of the policy that we see unfolding today, as Mao moves on from alliance with France and Japan towards the prime goal of his foreign policy since he came to power in 1949 - a long-term settlement with American imperialism. 

Mao had never ruled out the possibility of such an agreement. In its first major statement of differences with the Soviet leaders (‘A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the Inter- national Communist Movement’, March 30, 1963) the Chinese Party said: 

Deal 

"The possibility of banning nuclear weapons does indeed exist. However, if the imperialists are forced to accept an agreement to ban nuclear weapons, it decidedly will not be because of their 'love for humanity', but because of the pressure of people of all countries and for the sake of their own vital interests." 

In other words, peace and disarmament serve the interésts of both the imperialists working class—a line identical to that of Moscow’s. 

The disagreements arose over the degree of "pressure" needed to force a deal with the imperialists. 

The same opportunist policies shaped Mao’s approach [the] national liberation movement, especially in Asia. 

Ignoring the bitter lessons of the Chinese revolution, Mao put forward Stalin’s programme of the "bloc of four classes," in which the national capitalist class became the anchor of an antiimperialist "broad alliance."

Slaves 

         The Chinese CP policy statement of March 30, 1963, stated that in the semi-colonial world:

"Extremely broad sections of the population refuse to be slaves of imperialism. They include not only the workers, peasants, intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie, but also the patriotic national bourgeoisie and even certain kings, princes and aristocrats, who are patriotic." 

On the basis of this Stalinist theory, Mao backed "patriotic bourgeois" leaders like President Sukarno of Indonesia, much as Stalin supported Chiang Kai-shek in China.

Following Peking’s lead, the 3 million-strong Indonesian Party subordinated itself to Sukarno, even though real power lay with his right-wing military leaders. 

When Sukarno tried to oust them by a coup based on an alliance of left-wing generals and a section of the CP leadership, the right wing struck with unbelievable savagery. 

Around 1 million communists were slaughtered in the space of a few months while Sukarno and Mao looked on, powerless to intervene. 

Pogrom 

The "bloc of four classes" had turned into an execution bloc for the Indonesian working class. They paid with their blood for Mao’s adherence to Stalinism. 

And like Stalin, Mao is prepared to overlook this unprecedented pogrom in his anxiety to win more allies in the imperialist camp. 

Negotiations are currently under way between China and Indonesia to restore diplomatic relations severed in 1967, when the Suharto regime began to attack Chinese nationals living in Indonesia.

Mao’s challenge to Moscow began with a dazzling display of leftist fireworks, but it has now spluttered out in a miserable and quite open capitulation to imperialism throughout Asia. 

For all along, Mao never understood the real nature of bureaucracy within a workers’ state. He was therefore unable to fight it effectively either in the Soviet Union - or China.

BOTH MAO TSE-TUNG’S campaigns against bureaucracy ended in ignominious defeat - the "Hundred Flowers" experiment of 1956 and the "Cultural Revolution" of 1966-1968. 

There is no doubt that unlike Stalin, Mao despised rank and privileges within the Chinese Party and state machinery. He correctly saw them as conduits for alien class pressures on the revolutionary movement. 

In a country as backward and poverty-ridden as China, even the most modest material comforts can have a corrupting influence on those who enjoy them.

As in the Soviet Union, a section of the Party leadership reacted against the privations of the pre-revolutionary years and the struggle for power, and began to settle down to a routine, bureaucratic existence as ruling party and state functionaries. 

Insofar as Mao leaned on the working class and youth to counter this conservative layer, he represented a left tendency in the Chinese Party leadership. 

It is this fact of Mao’s political make-up that has enabled revisionists to present him as some sort of left alternative to Stalinism. 

In fact Mao has always had a highly ambivalent attitude to bureaucracy. Like Khrushchev, he waited for Stalin to die before suggesting that "mistakes" had been made in the last years of the Kremlin dictator’s life. 

But unlike Khrushchev, Mao could not claim’ that his silence was imposed on him by sheer terror. 

Criticism 

In the wake of Khrushchev’s 1956 "secret speech" about Stalin’s crimes, Mao launched his "Hundred Flowers" campaign, in which workers, peasants, students and intellectuals were encouraged to say what they really thought about the Chinese Communist Party and government. 

Criticism - both left and right - rained down on Mao’s head. Capitalist and landlord elements called for the restoration of free trade, workers for the right to strike, and intellectuals for the right to interpret Marxism in their own way. 

After six weeks Mao called a halt, declaring most of the flowers to be "poisonous weeds." 

The bureaucratic lid was clamped firmly down on China, smothering - but not overcoming - all the contradictions that had been allowed to emerge during Mao’s brief campaign against bureaucracy. 

Rather than call on the working class to fight the pro-capitalist elements, Mao swung back to the Party bureaucracy and the army. 

Then came Mao’s violent reaction against the Hungarian workers’ revolution of 1956, which sought to replace the Stalinist bureaucracy by democratically-elected workers’ councils. 

Here it was not a case of pressure on the bureaucracy guided from above (as in the Cultural Revolution), but its physical destruction by the independent action of the working class. 

Mao recoiled in horror from such a prospect, and called on the Kremlin leaders to show no mercy towards the Hungarian workers, whom Peking slandered as "fascists" and "counterrevolutionaries." 

Mao crossed the Rubicon when he backed Khrushchev’s counter-revolution in Hungary. His subsequent calls for Soviet and East European workers to overthrow their bureaucratic rulers naturally fell on deaf ears, especially when linked to a nostalgic yearning for the happy years of Stalin. 

The gulf between Mao and the workers of the Soviet bloc widened even more when Peking began to claim that capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union, and that it was fast turning into what Mao called "social imperialism."

By saying that everything had been lost under Khrushchev, Mao was in fact rejecting any defence of the Soviet Union. 

It was bracketed with America as an imperialist power, which (unlike Japanese, British or French imperialism) had to be fought by workers everywhere. 

Mao’s last and most determined fight against bureaucracy was of course his "Cultural Revolution."

Again leaning on the masses - principally students and youth - he summoned them in their millions to "bombar the Party headquarters" and drive those "taking the capitalist road" from their Party positions. 

Liu Shao-chi, who stood very close to Mao in the early years of power, had apparently gathered around him a group of consérvative party officials, trade union leaders and factory managers who were calling for an end to the dispute with the Soviet Union and a more moderate foreign policy generally.

They saw this as the only way to end China’s economic backwardness, the price for Soviet and imperialist economic aid being support for the status quo internationally, and the cultivation of a technical and managerial bureaucratic élite inside China. 

For two years the struggle ebbed and flowed between Mao and his Red Guards and the bureaucracy, with the army playing the role of arbiter when conflicts erupted into violent pitchéd battles, as at Wuhan. 

Red Guards began to link up with workers and developed their own anti-bureaucratic programme independently of Mao’s directives. 

According to numerous accounts reaching the West, some groups even called for the removal of Mao himself. They were dealt with ruthlessly by the army, acting under Mao’s orders. 

The youthful revolt was also playing havoc with the economy, as Red Guards. swarmed into factories to engage workers in passionate arguments about the goals of the Cultural Revolution. 

Gently at first, then with increasing severity, Mao began to apply the brakes. And as he swung the helm over to the right, towards bureaucrats patiently awaiting reinstatement in their old jobs, the working class in France, Italy and Britain took the offensive against imperialism.

In his fight against bureaucracy, Mao used weapons forged by Stalinism. He tried to combat bureaucracy as a purely national product, and not as the reflection of imperialist pressures on a workers’ state dominated by a. backward peasant population emerging from centuries of economic, cultural and political oppression. 

A bitter opponent of Trotskyism, he turned savagely on its Chinese supporters after 1949. Scores were killed despite their unconditional support’ for the gains of the revolution. Of all his betrayals, this was Mao’s greatest, because he murdered precisely those communists theoretically equipped to combat the growth of bureaucracy within a workers’ state. 

The solution of China’s basic problems still lies along the road of international revolution, which means the overthrow of imperialism in its citadels of political power and economic wealth.

CHINA's present support for President Yahya Khan is the climax of an opportunist, Stalinist policy dating back to the Sino-Indian border dispute of 1962. 

When it became clear that the Indian government was staging border incidents with the full backing of imperialism and the connivance of the Soviet bureaucracy, Mao had two alternatives. 

Either turn to the masses of the Indian sub-continent and encourage a revolutionary defence of China through a struggle against the Indian and Pakistani regimes, or indulge in back-stage diplomatic manoeuvring. 

Mao revealed his fundamental agreement with Stalin’s theory of "socialism in one country" by opting decisively for the second course. 

When Peking began its turn towards the Ayub Khan regime, Pakistan was a cornerstone of two anti-communist imperialist alliances - the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). 

Pakistan’s slavish dependence on US imperialism was reflected in Ayub Khan’s support for the American war against Vietnam. 

Nevertheless, in February 1964, Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai visited Pakistan, publicly declaring his support for Kashmiri independence, while remaining silent about the equally just struggle of the East Bengalis for self-determination.

Hatred 

Mao's support for national-liberation struggles was entirely subordinated to his big-power foreign policy. 

Ayub Khan was pretending to back the Kashmiri independence movement to embarrass India, while E Bengal’s struggle for nationhood could only triumph in bitter conflict with the Khan regime. 

So who was and who was not an oppressed nation varied according to Mao’s current diplomatic allies. 

Pakistan’s rulers were grateful for Peking's backing. It enabled Khan to present his regime as anti-imperialist, and caused enormous political confusion among left-wing groups that looked to China for leadership. 

It also worried the Americans, who increased their military support for Khan to counter the new Chinese influence in Pakistan.

To reassure his imperialist patrons, Khan declared Pakistan's continued support for the Vietnam war at a May 1965 SEATO conference in London, his Foreign Minister, Bhutto, signing a statement accusing Ho Chi Minh of invading S Vietnam.

Peking moved even closer to Ayub Khan during the Indo-Pakistan war of September 1965. Mao openly backed one pro-imperialist regime against another, purely on the basis of his own opportunist foreign policy. Workers and peasants in Pakistan were told by China to fight and die for a regime that oppressed, exploited and persecuted them, denying the masses even the right to vote. Soon the Chinese leaders were boosting the Ayub Khan regime as a staunch opponent of imperialism, despite the SEATO and CENTO membership it has maintained to this day.

Chang Chieh, vice-president of the China-Pakistan Friendship Association, commemorated Pakistan’s national day by declaring in March 1966: "After the independence of Pakistan, the Pakistani people under the leadership of President Ayub Khan have scored in, the last few years delightful achievements..."

Khan had more "delightful achievements" in store for Pakistan’s workers and peasants, when in November 1968 he turned his army and police loose against strikers and demonstrators fighting to overthrow the military regime.

But right up to the removal of Ayub Khan, the Mao leadership continued to portray him as a militant anti-imperialist. Speaking at Lahore in March 1966, Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi stated: 

"Under the leadership of President Mohammed Ayub Khan, the Pakistani people united as one and filled with a common hatred towards the enemy, triumphed over the enemy..."

Mao’s envoy was referring to the war against India. 

Giving Ayub Khan a "left" face went on at all levels. In October 1966, a Chinese trade union delegation arrived in Pakistan, where strikes were always met with vicious police and army repressions. 

This did not stop the delegation’s leader, Wang Chieh, praising the Khan regime for its economic achievements. 

He even went so far as to observe that Pakistani workers "were imbibed with a spirit of self-reliance and were determined to strengthen the economy of their [sic!] country.” 

Only a few months later, Khan was calling out his army to crush a militant strike of railway workers. One train was driven over strikers laying across the tracks.

Completely unmoved, Mao continued to heap praise on strike-breaker Ayub. He was anti-Indian, and that was all that mattered.

Ironically, the anti-Ayub revolt exploded while his successor, Yahya Khan, was in Peking.

Chinese bureaucrats drank toasts to Yahya Khan while his troops shot down unarmed workers and students in the streets of East Bengal and West Pakistan.

Mao must have been delighted when he heard that Yahya Khan was to replace the discredited and demoralized Ayub after his "retirement" in March 1969.

Yahya Khan, butcher of Bengal, had already proved his readiness to collaborate in Mao’s diplomatic horse-trading. It was, after all, the best possible insurance against a left-wing uprising in Pakistan. 

Yahya Khan was able to push back the revolutionary tide, but only for a time. By autumn 1970, with Pakistan’s first-ever general elections drawing near, all East Bengal was in political ferment. 

The time had clearly come for Yahya Khan to stake everything on Peking. A state visit to China was hurriedly arranged and Khan arrived in Peking to a hero's welcome on November 10. 

Hangman 

New China News Agency described Mao’s reception for the future hangman of Bengal:

"Several hundred thousand revolutionary people in the Chinese capital gathered at the airport and lined the streets to ive -a warm welcome to the istinguished guests from China’s friendly neighbour..." 

"Peking was alive with warm expressions of the unity and friendship between the people of China and Pakistan..." 

"Huge streamers that hung from tall buildings flanking the streets read: 'A warm welcome to you, President Yahya Khan.' 

Echoing Mao’s highly selective line on national liberation, the welcoming crowds chanted: 

"We resolutely support the Kashmiri people in their struggle for the right of national self- determination..." Naturally, nobody dared chant any slogans in support of Bengal self-determination. 

It would have been undiplomatic, to say the least. For Khan had come to Peking specifically to prepare his repressions against East Bengal. 

An official Chinese report on talks between Khan and Chou En-lai indicated how close the two regimes were: 

"The President and the Chinese Prime Minister reviewed the international situation. They noted with satisfaction that there are no problems between Pakistan and China and their friendship and co-operation are developing very satisfactorily and to their mutual benefit." 

"They also noted that Pakistan and China had a proximity of views on the many issues concerning the world today..."

The climax of Khan’s visit came when the Sandhurst-groomed military dictator was received by Chairman Mao. National China News Agency described the scene in suitably reverent tones: 

"Our great leader Chairman Mao greeted President Yahya Khan- and other distinguished Pakistan guests at the entrance to the hall, and warmly shook hands with them..."

"The distinguished Pakistan guests clapped their hands warmly to greet Chairman Mao; Chairman Mao waved to them in acknowledgement and posed with them for pictures...” 

Khan’s triumphal visit was rounded off with the inevitable banquet, while in East Bengal, untold numbers of peasants were starving to death as Khan’s regime held up aid sent after the cyclone disaster.

THE JOINT communiqué issued as Yahya Khan set Pakistan after his November 1970 talks with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, is worth recalling in view of the subsequent developments in East Bengal. A key section reads: 

"Premier Chou President Yahya Khan held talks in a very sincere and friendly atmosphere on important international issues, further development of friendly relations and co-operation between China and Pakistan and other questions of common interest. Both sides were highly satisfied with the results of the talks."

Once again, great stress was placed on the Kashmir question, but nothing was said about Bengal. There was no mention either of national-liberation struggles in Indo-China.

Khan had no intention of upsetting his American backers more than was necessary. 

(Khan was at that time negotiating a new arms agreement with President Nixon. Some Asian observers thought the Peking trip was designed to twist the Americans’ arm!) 

Enthusiastic 

Armed with Mao’s political and, if necessary, military backing Yahya Khan returned from Peking to face the December general elections. 

Broadcasting a week before polling day, Khan told his listeners about "the enthusiastic reception accorded to me" while in China, and about his "very useful exchange of views with Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En-lai." 

He then made an observation whose full meaning only became clear three months later: 

"I believe our growing friendship with China is a positive contribution to peace, stability and progress in our region. We appreciate the abiding and sincere interests of the People’s Republic of China in Pakistan’s struggle and development, and are grateful for its generous assistance in economic and other fields..." 

Naturally, the full details of the Khan-Mao-Chou talks have not been revealed. But their political and military implications became obvious in the first days of the fight in East Bengal. 

Denied the use of Indian air-space, West Pakistan troop carriers refuelled in China before landing in Dacca, an arrangement that surely must have been agreed well before the fighting broke out in March 25. 

China’s press and radio blacked out all news of the massacres in East Bengal by Khan’s troops. After all, it was only four months previously that Peking workers had been summoned on to the streets to cheer Yahya Khan as a great ally of the Chinese people! 

When it became obvious that Bengal was not to be subdued by West Pakistan army terror, China began reproducing Khan regime reports of the situation. 

Then, on April 11, the Chinese Communist Party "People’s Daily" came out with an editorial which openly ranged Mao on the side of Yahya Khan. 

Already the leaders of British and American imperialism had declared the massacres in East Bengal to be an "internal affair" of the Pakistan government. Now Peking used this formula to justify their intervention on the side of Khan: 

"The relevant [sic!] measures taken by President Yahya Khan in connection with the present situation in Pakistan are the internal affairs of Pakistan, in which no country should or has the right to interfere..." 

This reactionary principle is used by imperialism to defend right-wing dictatorships in Spain, Greece and South Africa, to name only three examples. 

Presumably, Mao would oppose revolutionaries coming to the aid of popular forces in these countries too. 

Safeguard 

        This treacherous statement of support for Yahya Khan ended: 

"The Pakistan people have the revolutionary tradition of opposing imperialism and colonialism, and have waged unyielding strugsles against aggressors and interantionists from outside."

"The Chinese government and people will, as always, resolutely support the Pakistan government and people in their just struggle for safeguarding national independence and state sovereignty against foreign aggression and interference." 

Ironically, the only "interventionists" crossing into E Bengal from India in the early days of the fighting were Maoist peasant guerrilla leaders from West Bengal Naxalbari province. And they went in to fight for Bangla Desh against Mao’s ally, Yahya Khan. 

Sabotage 

The "People’s Daily" editorial was followed up the next day by a message from Chou En-lai to Khan, declaring once again that "what is happening in Pakistan at present is purely an internal affair of Pakistan."

Chou went further than the "People’s Daily" when he said "It is important to differentiate the broad masses of the people from a handful of persons who want to sabotage the unity of Pakistan." 

In this Maoist topsy-turvey world, 75 million East Bengalis had become "a handful of persons" and the regime repressing them "the broad masses of the people." 

Even Yahya Khan’s propaganda machine could not match this style of lying, and it is no sutprise when the West Pakistan "Morning News" stated in an editorial on April 14: 

"China has, as befits a true friend, spoken out her support in unmistakable terms..." 

Another pro-Khan paper, "The Azad," was equally outspoken in its praise for Peking:

"We extend our heartiest greetings to the Chinese government for their firm support. The way China has come forward with support deserves thanks from all patriotic Pakistanis...” 

So, too, did Peking’s attempts to portray Khan as a hero of the East Bengali people. A new China News Agency report gave the following account of a nonexistent pro-Khan rally in - of all places - Dacca: 

"A huge mass demonstration was held in Dacca, capital of East Pakistan, on April 13 in protest against the Indian government dispatching armed personnel to infiltrate into East Pakistan and interfering in the internal affairs of Pakistan..." 

Peking’s support for Khan went far beyond publishing lying reports about the situation in Bangla Desh. New China News Agency announced that Air Commodore Kamal Ahmad, Commander of the Pakistan Air Force Staff College "arrived in Peking on April 18 and attended a banquet given in his honour by Kuan Jen-nung, Deputy Commander of the Chinese Air Force." 

His arrival in Peking was almost certainly connected with Pakistan’s continued use . of Chinese air space and refuelling stations for planes flying between West Pakistan and East Bengal war zones. 

Attempts by British and other Maoists to present Peking’s support for Khan as a "mistake" are, at best, absurd. 

Treachery 

In most cases, they are a conscious cover for Stalinist treachery. For example, Peking Home Service on April 28 told the Chinese people, who had no means of finding out about the real sitaration in Bengal: 

"Pakistani President Yahya Khan pointed out that there is only one reason behind such open and shameless interference by the Indian government - that is to further aggravate the situation through instigating and materially supporting a handful of peopte to create turmoil..." 

"The barbarous interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan by the Indian expansionists and the two super-powers will definitely lead to their ignominious defeat."

Was it a "mistake" to accuse India, and not Yahya Khan, of barbarism in East Bengal? And to assert, once again, that the upsurge of the Bengali people for national liberation was the work of a "handful of people?" 

For 15 years British Stalinists have bleated about Stalin’s errors. Now the Maoists serve up the same apology for Mao - only with even less chance of fooling anybody.

For this time, the betrayal is right out in the open. 

Mao, the self-appointed champion of the national liberation movement, has ranged himself unashamedly with one of the most merciless butchers of an oppressed people the world has ever seen. 

Cut through all the phrases about revolutionary struggles, "US imperialism and its running dogs" and Soviet "social imperialism" and you are left with a regime that, like Stalin’s and now Brezhnev’s, wants only one thing: 

"Peaceful co-existence" with imperialism, while it enjoys its social and political privileges at home. 

If this demands an open alliance with reaction to strangle revolutionary movements against imperialism, then so be it. 

True to Stalin’s theory of "socialism on one country," Mao subordinates the world struggle for socialism to the preservation of bureaucratic rule in China. 

Stalinism, whether in its Moscow or Peking variants, remains the biggest single counter-revolutionary force within the workers’ movement. 

It must be exposed and destroyed if the working class and semi-colonial peoples are to win their emancipation from imperialist rule.

Long live the Bangladesh revolution! No compromise with the Hindu capitalists!!

Long live the Bangladesh revolution! No compromise with the Hindu capitalists!!

Revolutionary Communist League Statement

With the installation of the “Bangladesh” government in power in Dacca in the aftermath of the defeat of the Pakistan armed forces in E. Bengal, the postwar status quo set up in the Indian subcontinent by imperialism with the connivance of Stalinism and the Hindu and Muslim national bourgeoisies has been irrevocably ruptured. From now on nothing will ever be the same in this part of Asia. A new period has dawned. 

The breakup of the political framework established by imperialism in the subcontinent is directly and intimately related to the ending of the long period of inflationary boom experienced by world capitalism during the past period, and the development of an economic and political crisis of unprecedented proportions opening up a period of revolutionary struggles on a global scale. The Bangladesh liberation struggle and the Indo-Pak war are the products of this new stage in the class struggle. They are the response of the antagonistic classes in society to the precipitation of this worldwide revolutionary crisis and can be understood only in class terms.

The Trotskyist movement, representing the revolutionary interests of the proletariat, defines its position in relation to all these movements, struggles and conflicts from the standpoint of the proletarian struggle for socialism. It declares emphatically and unequivocally that the task of the proletariat is not that of supporting any one of the warring factions of the bourgeoisie but that of utilizing each and every conflict in the camp of the class enemy for the seizure of power with the perspective of setting up a federated socialist republic which alone would be able to satisfy the social and national aspirations of the millions of toilers in the subcontinent. It calls upon the proletariat - in Pakistan, in India, in Ceylon and in E. Bengal - to prepare its forces for the inevitable revolutionary developments that would emerge in the course of the war and its aftermath.

The Trotskyists, therefore, take their position firmly in support of the struggle of the E. Bengali masses for their legitimate aspirations and for an end to military and national oppression. We unconditionally support the right of the Bengali masses - of the West as well as of the East - to unite as a nation, ending the imperialist carve-up of 1947, and to secede from India and Pakistan if they so desire. The struggle to exercise this right by the Bengali masses becomes inevitably transformed into a revolutionary struggle, because it poses an end to the imperialist-designed status quo and to the rule of the parasitic Hindu and Muslim bourgeoisies. The Trotskyist movement calls upon the toiling Bengali masses to unite the struggle for national unification and liberation with the struggle for socialist revolution as the sole guarantee of victory.

Precisely because the Trotskyists stand unconditionally and unequivocally for the struggle for Bangladesh, they stand for the defeat of the Pakistan army at the hands of the Mukti Bahini forces. We declare that the task of the proletariat in Pakistan is to link its fate with that of the struggle for Bangladesh and to fight for the defeat of “their own” army. The Pakistani proletariat in the finest traditions of proletarian internationalism, should take the Leninist position of revolutionary defeatism, because the war waged by the Pakistani ruling class is a war for national oppression, in the interests of the imperialist status quo.

At the same time we demarcate ourselves clearly and sharply from all those who cover up the annexationist and counterrevolutionary aims of the war waged by the Indians - in the East as well as in the West, by their ostensible support for the Bangladesh movement. We call upon the Indian proletariat to reject the claim of the Indian bourgeoisie to be the liberators of E. Bengal. The Trotskyists declare that the Indian armed intervention in E. Bengal had one and only one object. It was to prevent the struggle for Bangladesh from developing into a struggle for the unification, on a revolutionary basis, of the whole of Bengal. The Indian armed intervention was designed to smash the revolutionary Bengali liberation struggle, to crush the upsurge of the masses in Bengal and to install a puppet regime which, fraudulently usurping the name of the government of Bangladesh, would confine and contain the mass movement in the interests of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Thus we call upon the Indian proletariat too to take a position of revolutionary defeatism in relation to the counterrevolutionary war of the Indian bourgeoisie, while supporting by all and every means the struggle of the Mukti Bahini.

This is the only revolutionary program for the proletariat in the Indian subcontinent. It flows logically and inexorably from a Marxist analysis of the whole postwar history of the subcontinent.

What has been demonstrated during the last 25 years, ever since the fraudulent “independence” granted by British imperialism to its loyal servants, the native bourgeoisie of these countries, is that none of the basic economic, national or social problems can be solved by those bourgeoisies. Their absolute bankruptcy in the face of these historical tasks is proof of the central thesis of the theory of permanent revolution of Trotsky that only the proletariat drawing behind it the downtrodden rural masses can solve these problems as part of the tasks of the socialist revolution. The carveup of the Indian subcontinent, in conformity with the policy of divide-and-rule, supported by the Hindu and Muslim bourgeoisies as well as by international Stalinism was the framework within which the enormous social and national contradictions were suppressed and contained, ensuring the dominance of capitalism and starvation, famine and misery for the hundreds of millions of the oppressed masses. Those contradictions, developing as part and as a result of the development of the entire international imperialist system, can no longer be contained.

What has been put on the order of the day by the simultaneous precipitation of a revolutionary crisis in India-Pakistan and Ceylon is the ending of the imperialist carve-up, together with the class rule of the bourgeoisie through the revolutionary unification of the entire subcontinent under the hegemony of the proletariat.

The desperate attempts of imperialism and Stalinism to reestablish “stability” in this sector of the globe is doomed from the start.

The development of mass revolutionary struggles in Pakistan in 1969, the armed struggles of the peasantry and the continuing struggles of a daily more restive working class in India, the mass strikes in Ceylon - it was with these danger signals that the 1970s dawned here. Unemployment, landlessness, national oppression and rising cost of living, in the context of stagnant economies, were provoking mass struggles everywhere. Even at the height of the capitalist boom the weak capitalist economies never really prospered and it was only thanks to the servile support given to the corrupt bourgeois regimes by the traditional leaderships of the working class, the Stalinists and the reformists, that the bourgeoisie managed to rule. But the aggravation of the economic crisis on an international scale effectively destroyed the basis for class collaboration. Despite the openly counterrevolutionary policies of the leaderships the masses began to move into battle, coming into conflict at each stage with their own leaderships. Truly the laws of history were proving themselves to be stronger than the bureaucratic apparatuses.

It was this movement of the masses, with the working class in the forefront, that now came into direct collision with the needs of imperialism and native capital, now being forced by the economic crisis, rapidly developing into a major recession, to decisively smash the working class and its organizations. The hostile class forces were being compelled by the objective laws of capitalism to change the status quo in their own favor. Society, irrevocably split into two hostile camps, now faced civil war.

The international phenomenon of civil war, predicted by British Tory P.M. Heath, to be the main danger in the 1970s, was expressing itself and emerging into the open in the Indian subcontinent as well. The uprising of the rural youth in Ceylon in April 1971, the mighty movement of the masses in Bangladesh who independently of their bourgeois leaders developed the struggle for complete national independence, the revolutionary struggles in W. Bengal, all these struggles signify the response of the masses to the crisis. The civil war had already erupted. The most fundamental lines of demarcation were being drawn.

The response of imperialism and Stalinism was swift and predictable. Sinking their own differences in their common fear and hatred of independent revolutionary struggles, they threw their full force against the mass movements.

Imperialism simultaneously armed Indian and Pakistani and Ceylonese bourgeoisies. The USSR supplied arms while their local political agents openly collaborated with the bourgeoisie against the mass uprisings while China denounced the struggles in Bangladesh and Ceylon, sent arms and money to the bourgeois regimes, stepped up its policy of seeking détente with Yankee imperialism, and entered the UN.

Despite the repression backed by imperialism and Stalinism, despite the treachery of their own leaderships, the strength of the mass movement was great enough to resist and to fight back. In the very fires of the struggle the will of the masses was hardening, the leaderships were being tested in battle and the masses were moving more and more to the left.

Thus in Bangladesh, the liberation struggle developed in spite of Mujibur Rahman leadership’s repeated attempts to reach a compromise with the military dictatorship. Though the absence of a proletarian revolutionary leadership allowed the Awami League bourgeoisie to take over the leadership of the movement, more radical left-wing forces were threatening to outflank them on the left. The militants in W. Bengal, so long under the grip of Maoism, began to join forces with the revolutionary fighters of the eastern region, in spite of the open opposition of Maoist Stalinists to the Bangladesh struggle. Bengal was being unified - in a revolutionary way!

The hundreds of thousands of refugees from E. Bengal and the consequent political and economic problems, the rapid development of an economic recession at home, acutely aggravated by the new policy of US imperialism after Nixon’s August 15 speech and the development of a revolutionary situation in Bengal was threatening to unleash massive revolutionary developments throughout India. Precisely at this moment when the bourgeoisie was being forced to provoke the masses into struggle by the economic crisis, when they were faced with the unenviable task of attempting to change fundamentally the class relationships in the country and to crush the inevitable mass upsurge - precisely at this moment the movement in Bangladesh was finding a revolutionary echo inside India.

The Indian bourgeoisie collaborated with the Awami League leadership to hound the left wing of the Bangladesh liberation movement, to imprison the leftist leaders and to prevent a linkup of the revolutionary forces in E. Bengal with those of the West. The Indian bourgeoisie cannot tolerate a revolutionary Bangladesh which would unite both East and West. The grip of the Awami League leadership was too weak to effectively guarantee a stable bourgeois regime in E. Bengal in the event of a Pakistani defeat.

On the other hand, the Pakistan military regime, hated and despised in E. Bengal, increasingly coming into conflict with a militant working class moving into struggles in the West, desperately attempting to continue the subjugation of national minorities to the Punjabi and Pathan bourgeoisie, was facing defeat in the East. The Mukti Bahini fighters enjoyed the support of the masses. They are based on the masses and they are fighting for a cause.

It was in this situation that Indira Gandhi decided on direct military intervention. The Indian bourgeoisie could not allow a really independent Bangladesh to come into being, posing revolutionary unification of East and West Bengal, liberating a powerful revolutionary wave which would sweep away every prop that now kept up bourgeois rule in India and Pakistan.

By its very essence, a Bangladesh confined to the eastern half of Bengal is no Bangladesh at all. A genuine Bangladesh demands the unification of East and West, and thus inevitably poses the question of ending the imperialist inspired carve-up of India. Neither of the two imperialist created states, Pakistan and India, can tolerate an end to national oppression and the right of self-determination in the same way that they cannot tolerate the development of mass revolutionary movements in the subcontinent.

The political vacuum created by the debacle of the Pakistan military forces in East Bengal at the hands of the Mukti Bahini was being filled by the development of new organs of power based on the masses - the embryonic forms of Soviet power. The conditions were becoming favorable for the Bangladesh movement to be taken beyond the bourgeois-democratic framework through the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government. The revolutionary proletariat of East Bengal, at the head of the millions of struggling peasants, calling upon the workers and peasants of India and Pakistan to rise in their defense and immediately posing a revolutionary socialist republic in Bangladesh as part of a socialist India through its revolutionary unification, would have unleashed the revolutionary floodgates.

The treachery of the Awami League leadership which had so long played the role of containing the mass movement in East Bengal, striving only for a better bargain with the West Pakistan bourgeoisie, once again came into the forefront at this juncture, exposing the whole liberation struggle to mortal danger. Fearing the revolutionary upsurge of the masses above anything else, it betrayed the whole struggle of the masses into the hands of the Indian ruling class.

The Indian government’s intervention was a completely counterrevolutionary one. Under the fraudulent claim of supporting the Bangladesh struggle, it intervened to crush the development of a unified revolutionary Bengal and to set up a puppet regime in a castrated Bangladesh confined to the east. Its military intervention was designed to annex East Bengal, impose military rule with the connivance of the Awami League leadership and to effectively crush the popular rebellion.

The Awami League, under the pretext of getting the aid of the Indian government, opened the door to the imposition of Indian military rule in East Bengal. Their agreement to set up a joint military command under the leadership of the Indians, effectively destroyed all independence of the Mukti Bahini forces. The masses of E. Bengal, for two decades subjected to the brutal oppression of the Punjabi bourgeoisie, now face the same treatment at the hands of the rapacious Indian capitalists and landlords.

We do not confuse the revolutionary nature of the struggle for Bangladesh with the counterrevolutionary annexationist war of the Indian bourgeoisie carried out under the ostensible aim of helping to set up an independent Bangladesh.

Whatever be the political calculations of imperialism and whatever methods it may utilize, there can never be a return to the old status quo. The point of no-return has now been transcended. Intimidation and pressure on the Indian bourgeoisie to reestablish the old relationships on the subcontinent through political maneuvers in the UN and military maneuvers in the Indian Ocean express the very real fear that imperialism feels at the breakup of the old status quo. A deal between the Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisie with the collaboration of the Awami League leaders - this is the objective of imperialism which needs to preserve a united counterrevolutionary front in this region in order to effectively smash the revolutionary developments that are bound to occur in the coming period. It wants to preserve that collaboration between the national bourgeoisies, the Stalinists and the imperialists that was put into operation against the rural uprising in Ceylon in April 1971.

The struggle, however, is not over. On the contrary this is just the beginning. Each passing day makes more acute the economic crisis of world capitalism, accelerating the trend towards slump and trade war. It is linked to the enormous crisis which now grips the Stalinist- dominated workers’ states, exploding the myth of “building socialism in a single country.” These developments will aggravate enormously the pressures and burdens imposed on the bankrupt capitalist economies of India and Pakistan by a costly war. Inevitably the bourgeoisie will attempt to shift this crisis onto the backs of the masses already in conditions of abject poverty and near starvation. Those factors combined with the political breakup of the postwar status quo will create the conditions where a revolutionary crisis of unprecedented proportions, depth and scope would sweep through the whole subcontinent finding an answering echo in Ceylon as well.

The forces unleashed by the war cannot be contained except through bloody repression. The youthful fighters of the Mukti Bahini will not accept with folded hands the imposition of Delhi rule. The military defeat of the Pakistani regime in the East will immeasurably strengthen the revolutionary forces in the West. The masses of India will see through the demagogy of their rulers as the very real economic and political attacks multiply.

The Ceylonese Trotskyists call upon all militants in the subcontinent to learn the lessons of the first stage of the unfolding of the socialist revolution in the subcontinent in order to arm themselves for the struggles which will be forced on them from now on.

Stalinism, both the Moscow and Peking varieties, has compromised itself utterly. Both bureaucracies took positions of complete hostility to the liberation struggle in Bengal. Against the revolutionary masses, they lined up on the side of the bourgeoisie. Whatever illusions the militants may have had about Maoism have now been shattered forever and Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism as the main prop of the bourgeois order in the world has been proved to the hilt.

The Bangladesh struggle has at the same time proved conclusively that the national bourgeoisie can play only a counterrevolutionary role in the mass struggles of today. The treachery of the Awami League leadership is already clear to many militants. It will become clearer tomorrow.

Only the program of the Fourth International of fighting for the setting up of a socialist republic which solves the national problems as well can show the masses the way forward. Only the Fourth International opposed the imperialist carve-up of India in 1947. Only the Fourth International fought and continues to fight for the independence of the proletarian, for the alliance between the workers and peasants, for the right of nations to self-determination and for the voluntary and revolutionary federation of all the nations of the subcontinent.

The proletariat in the Indian subcontinent needs this program for victory. Thus it needs, as the most urgent task today, the building of the Fourth International in this region as part of the building of the FI on a world scale.

It is at this historic juncture that the criminal role of the revisionists who destroyed the Indian Section of the FI becomes crystal clear. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India (BLPI) section of the FI founded in 1942, despite its many weaknesses, fought heroically during those difficult days against imperialist and Stalinist repression and against the treachery of the Congress leadership. But its promising beginnings were cut short by the revisionist cancer which nearly destroyed the FI, Pabloite revisionism. The full responsibility for the destruction of the BLPI through its liquidation into the Congress Socialist Party in 1950 and other such formations, must be placed on the heads of the revisionists who today masquerade under the name of the “United Secretariat of the Fourth International” and their collaborators of the Ceylon LSSP.

The Ceylonese Trotskyists appeal to all honest and revolutionary militants to begin the struggle for the rebirth of Trotskyism in India through an uncompromising confrontation with the history and the method of revisionist liquidationism which today leaves the Indian proletariat without a revolutionary party at the most critical moment of history.

The Ceylonese Trotskyists appeal to all proletarian fighters, to the students and the youth, and to the peasant militants to unite on the basis of the founding program, the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. The rebirth of Trotskyism, expressed in the development of the FI through the battle against revisionism waged by the International Committee commencing from 1953 has already commenced in Ceylon. This now needs imperatively and urgently to be extended to the mainland, to India and Pakistan.

Comrades, unite with us to carry through this historic task to a successful conclusion through the building of the FI as the leader of the toilers and the party of the proletariat.

Long live independent, socialist, united Bangladesh!

Down with imperialist-UN intervention!

Down with Pakistani repression and Indian invasion!

Victory to the Mukti Bahini!

Materialism versus idealism: Einstein's relativity PART TWO

Materialism versus idealism: Einstein's relativity PART TWO 

BY MARTIN ZARROP, from Bulletin Vol. 7 No. 18

LET US suppose that you awake one morning and find yourself inside a closed box. In order to gain information about the motion of the box, you perform a simple experiment. 

Take two coins (of different denominations) from your pocket, hold them apart at arm’s length and release them. 

If the coins remain motionless, what conclusions can be drawn? 

The most obvious one - probably brought to mind by seeing TV pictures of the Apollo astronauts - is that the box has been transported to some region of outer space, far distant from any massive object. 

In other words, we may conclude that gravity is absent and that the coins, therefore, continue to "float." 

However, we may alternatively draw the conclusion that the box and its contents are falling freely in a gravitational field. As all objects fall with the same acceleration, the simple experiment that our observer has performed would yield the same result. 

Therefore the principle of equivalence does not allow the observer to differentiate immediately between "free fall" under gravity and no gravity at all. 

We have to add the word "immediately" for the following reason. 

If the box was falling in the earth’s gravitational field, then the coins would move towards each other as the earth’s centre approached. 

This is because the "vertical" lines traced out by falling bodies converge at the centre. 

Such an effect would not appear for our "outer-space" observer (except a negligible one due to small gravitational attraction of the coins for each other). 

Therefore the free-falling observer only "eliminates" the gravitational field "locally" - but the field itself maintains a real existence, gravity is a real force. 

We can draw a parallel with our "everyday" view of the earth itself. We can assume for most purposes that the surface in our immediate vicinity is flat, wherever we may be. However, we know that, overall, the earth is (approximately) spherical. 

In other words, we can only "eliminate" gravity locally, just as we can only "eliminate" the curvature of the earth locally. Neither the "roundness" of a sphere nor gravity are illusory. 

Let us now return to our "general" observer, enjoying his ride on the big dipper. 

If he is completey enclosed and unable to watch the scenery go by or feel the wind, he may interpret his sensations in terms of a changing force of gravity. 

At the top of a loop he feels lighter, at the bottom he feels heavier. 

As he travels round a bend, gravity appears to change direction. Close your eyes next time you are on a big dipper and try it! 

Here we have the box experiment in reverse - instead of "eliminating" gravity, we appear to "create" it. 

We have therefore reached the position at which we can say that an observer executing the most complex acrobatics can be considered equivalent to a stationery observer being influenced by some complex gravitational force. 

To take a simple case: it has been proposed by space scientists to construct space stations in the form of rotating wheels. 

The rotation creates a "force" and all bodies, including the astronauts, are held to the rim of the wheel as if it were motionless and a real gravitational field existed. For the astronauts, "down" is "away from the hub." 

The equivalence principle has therefore eliminated the need for special observers. In fact, every observer can be considered "special" if we are allowed to "manipulate" gravity. 

Einstein’s general theory of relativity expresses this mathematically - if there are no special observers, then the form of the laws of nature must be the same for every observer.

In this way, the equivalence principle is built into natural law from the start and therefore so is gravity. 

For Einstein this was the strength of his theory: 

"The possibility of explaining the numerical equality of inertia and gravitation by the unity of their nature gives to the general theory of relativity, according to my conviction, such a superiority over the conceptions of classical [i.e. Newtonian] mechanics, that all the difficulties encountered in development must be considered as small in comparison." (‘Meaning of Relativity’, p. 57.) 

Difficulties there certainly were. Einstein’s equations are complex and their solution involves lengthy mathematical calculations in the few cases where they can be solved.

However, two things were essential. 

Firstly that, where the gravitational field is weak, we must be able to get back (as an approximation) to Newton’s theory of gravitation and, secondly, that the new theory should predict new qualities of matter, detectable in practice. 

Einstein himself verified that his theory "contained" that of Newton and also "transcended" it. It reveals a real unity of inertia and motivity. 

Whereas Newton has to express quite separately the force of gravity and the motion of matter acted on by gravity, they appear as inseparable in Einstein’s theory. 

His experimental predictions are far more difficult to check. Quantitative differences with Newton are infinitesimally small and require highly refined techniques to detect.

Probably the most famous prediction concerned the planet Mercury, the nearest to the sun. Astronomers could not account completely for Mercury’s orbit even when the disturbances caused by the gravitational fields of all the known planets were included. 

The discrepancy was extremely small but detectable. The orbit of Mercury was slowly rotating round the sun, taking about three million years for each revolution. 

Perhaps some unknown planet, situated between Mercury and the sun was the cause? Calculations were made and the necessary properties of such a body were estimated, but the astronomers. could detect nothing. Vulcan, the new planet, didn’t exist. 

Einstein’s theory, applied to the movement of a planet round the sun, predicted the rotation as a new quality of planetary motion. 

The "discrepancy" was a necessary part of Mercury’s motion. Quantitatively, the agreement between observation and theoretical prediction was almost 100 per cent! 

Only two other predictions have been checkable experimentally, with satisfactory results for Einstein. 

The regions where Einstein’s theory will be decisively tested and its limits discovered will probably be where the most powerful gravitational fields occur - the interior of stars -  unless we are able to create such fields in the laboratory. 

For a theory so little tested in the laboratory, its persistence over 55 years stands as a tribute to its firm theoretical foundations. 

ON AN astronomical scale, gravity is the dominant force. 

Although it is extremely weak in comparison with those forces which come into play within the atom (and is therefore neglected in fundamental particle theory), it far "outdistances" the atomic forces. 

While the latter are effective over distances of about a millionth of a centimetre, the gravitational pull of a planet such as the Earth can be considered to extend millions of miles into space and, in fact, never vanishes completely. 

It decides whether or not a body can "hold" an atmosphere (the moon can’t), just as surely as it governs the motion of the planets round the sun at distances of thousands of mil- lions of miles. 

Astronomical observation also supports the conclusion that gravitational attraction is responsible for the rotation of certain neighbouring stars around each other and that, therefore, gravity is not something peculiar to our small corner of the universe.

The gravitational field is an all-pervading form of’ "matter in motion," which suggests that any theory of gravitation, including both Einstein’s and Newton’s, should lead us to certain conclusions about the structure of the physical universe as a whole. 

However, we must insist that Einstein’s general-relativity is not a final, all-embracing theory that can tell us "everything" about the universe, all the "fine detail." 

"Holes"

In fact, being a theory of gravitation, even solid matter, as well as the electromagnetic field, can be taken inte account only as "external" factors, introduced artificially. Solid matter, insofar as it appears naturally, does so as ‘holes’ in the gravitational field, the content of the ‘holes’ being open to conjecture, as far as relativity is concerned. 

Astronomical observation, particularly with the use of the radio-telescope, has given us a fairly detailed picture of the observable universe. 

On this scale, the distances involved are so immense that it is necessary to deal in lightyears rather than miles. 

As light travels about six million million miles in a year, we can begin to grasp the "smallness" of our own solar system. 

The moon is a mere one and-a-third light-seconds away while a trifling distance of eight light-minutes separates us from the sun. 

At the speed of light you can be out of the solar system in 5 1/2 hours! 

The nearest star (not visible from the northern hemisphere) is Proxima Centauri and at a distance of 4.2 light-years (l.y.) it is about a million times further away from us than the nearest planet. 

However, looking up into the sky, it is apparent that the stars do not form a uniform pattern. 

On a clear moonless night, the Milky Way - a great belt of mainly faint stars - is seen to stretch trom horizon to horizon. 

In fact, it forms part of a complete circle dividing the sky into two equal halves.

It has been concluded that our sun is part of a system of 200 billion stars - the galaxy - shaped like a disk or a watch. 

The disk is about 20,000 Ly. across and 1,000 ly. thick. 

When we gaze at the Milky Way, we are seeing the galaxy "edge-on." 

It has been calculated that our sun is very close to the central plane of the galaxy and about halfway from its centre to the rim. 

What lies outside the galaxy? If by this we mean concentrations of solid matter, then we will have to travel 1 1/2 million l.y. until we reach ... another galaxy. 

In fact, galaxies (extragalactic nebulae) appear at fairly regular intervals in space at approximately this distance between neighbours.

Astronomers have observed millions of such star-systems with optical and radio tele- scopes that can "see" hundreds of millions of light-years into space. 

It is useful to use a scale model in order to grasp the relative magnitudes of the tremendous distances involved.

- The earth, travelling 1,200 times faster than an express train, makes a journey of 600 million miles around the sun every year.

Let us represent this journey by a pin-head one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter. 

This fixes the scale of our model and shrinks the sun to a speck of dust less than a three-thousandth of an inch in diameter!

The nearest star in the sky must be placed 225 yards away and to contain even the hundred stars nearest to our sun, we must build our model a distance of a mile in every direction. 

Encompass

To encompass our galaxy we need to cover an area considerably larger than the continent of Asia and then travel about 30,000 miles to reach the next galactic system. 

Even on this scale, therefore, we would still have to go some millions of miles to reach the edge of the observable universe. 

The. total ‘number of stars in our model would be comparable to the number of specks of dust in London. 

However, to scale, we need to put the specks about a quarter of a mile apart. 

This gives some idea of how empty space is of solid matter - about equivalent to six specks of dust in Waterloo Station, evenly spaced out! 

It is so low "on the average" that if we take a sphere whose radius stretches from here to the nearest star and fill it with matter at the average density, the total mass of its contents would equal that of only 100 gallons of water, approximately.

This picture is, of course, simplified. 

The "gaps" between the stars and the galaxies contain regions of gas as well as gravitational fields, electromagnetic fields and other radiation. 

One of the problems, for example, which has not yet been resolved is where "cosmic rays" come from - showers of high-energy particles which originate in outer space and find their way to Earth. 

It has also been discovered that the Earth is continually bombarded with intense beams of fundamental particles called neutinos, which are so penetrating and interact so weakly with solid matter that they pass right through the earth without being stopped. 

It requires several lightyears of solid lead to stop a neutrino beam! 

This then is the overall picture of the universe as revealed by experiment; "matter in motion" taking many different forms. 

This raises a number of problems. 

Valid

Why should we assume that Einstein’s theory is valid over such vast distances?

Firstly, because of the long-range nature of the gravitational force and, secondly, because of Mach’s Principle. 

If we are convinced that the inertial properties of a body in the solar system are not determined by "absolute space," but by a necessary interaction with other matter, then we are forced to consider the system of galaxies "as a whole." 

Why? Suppose that inertia was determined only by the distribution of matter in our own galaxy. 

Because the galaxy is disk-shaped and not spherical, we would expect to find different "resistances" to moving a body in the plane of the galaxy from moving it out of this plane. 

No such effect has been detected and we must therefore go further afield - to the system of galaxies, fairly evenly distributed throughout space. 

There is one important property of this system that we haven’t mentioned. 

The universe appears to be expanding, in the sense that the galaxies are moving away from each other. 

Our nearest "neighbours" are receding at about 150 miles per second and the velocity increases with distance. 

If we take a galaxy which is five times further away, it recedes five times as fast and so on. 

Static 

The main difficulty with the attempts at developing a model of the universe during the 19th century was the assumption that the universe was static. 

In particular, this led to the astounding conclusion that if the stars were evenly spread out over the whole of space then, instead of seeing a dark sky at night, we should observe the entire sky burning with the intensity of a star’s surface! 

This ‘paradox’ (due to Olbers, 1826) is resolved once the expansion is taken into account and this was verified experimentally in the 1920s by Hubble and his co-workers.

However, Newtonian theories of the universe (cosmologies) are merely of academic interest, in the sense it is assumed today that Einstein’s work has superseded them.

However, once we try and build an Einsteinian model of the universe we seem to get rather strange results. 

For instance, Einstein’s original static model turned out to be both infinite yet bounded. 

If an observer travelled far enough he could return to his starting point! 

Straight lines somehow become loops - all the assumptions that we hold as ‘obvious’ about geometry are challenged. 

THE WORD ‘geometry’ - at least for those who can recall their school-days - usually conjures up the memory of sitting for long hours, poring over incomprehensible tangles of lines and attempting to prove various theorems which appeared to have little to do with anything. 

The theorems themselves follow from a small number of assumptions (axioms) which were laid down by the Greek mathematician Euclid and form a logically consistent system. 

For the modern geometer (or any pure mathematician) the question of whether these assumptions, or the conclusions that can be drawn from them, have any connection with the real world is unimportant. 

However, Euclid’s work in geometry (literally, "earth measurement") attempted to establish certain "truths" about the structure of the universe. 

For our purpose, the main conclusions of Euclidean geometry are that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points and that two parallel lines never meet. 

Until the advent of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, these truths about the real world were never challenged, even though Lobachevsky in 1826 showed that it was possible to construct other ‘geometries’ by omitting certain of Euclid’s axioms. 

Certainly, Newton took it as real that we live in a "three-dimensional Euclidean space" and, as with his theories of mechanics and gravitation, this assumption holds good providing we remain within certain limits, which we have already discussed. 

We reject absolute space apart from matter and consider space as the quantitative aspect of matter’s extension. 

Fields 

Between material bodies, there exist physical fields (gravitational, electromagnetic, nuclear, etc.) and when we talk about the structure of "space," we are in fact discussing the structure of these fields. 

In other words, we replace Newton’s statement that "absolute space is three-dimensional Euclidean space" by "within certain limits, 3-D Euclidean geometry is an accurate approximation to the real, physical fields."

Cosmic space - the space of Einstein’s general theory - is the quantitative aspect of the gravitational field’s extension. 

It is in this way that geometry and gravitation become linked. 

Space and geometry are no longer part of a fixed background against which matter moves, acted on, by disembodied forces. There is a continuous interaction between material bodies and the gravitational field and Einstein had to develop a geometry which reflected the field’s structure. 

Einstein found it necessary to develop his theory mathematically through a geometry originally developed by Reimann. Because of the intimate connection between space and time (see part I) this geometry is four-dimensional, by which we mean that any point is fixed by four coordinates - three for space and one for time. 

Einstein calls such a point an "event." Minkowski showed in 1908 how 4-D geometry could be used as a framework for the special theory. 

"Nobody has ever noticed a place except at a time," he said, "or a time except at a place." 

In Minkowski’s mathematical world, the universe is stripped to the limit of its physical qualities. All that remains is a space-time skeleton, the four-dimensional bones.

Einstein takes over Minkowski’s method in his general theory. It is at this point that the mathematical vultures descend and, aided by a multitude of god-fearing physicists, attempt to confuse the issue. 

Reality 

The mathematical model becomes the reality and the real world vanishes. 

The physicist Hermann Weyl refers to "the constructive mathematical method of our modern physics, which repudiates 'qualities'." In other words, it is the mathematical symbols (expressing quantities) which are real, while the qualitative aspects of processes are illusory!

Sir James Jeans is even more explicit. He tells us: "The theory of relativity washes away the ether...The so-called electric and magnetic forces, then, are not physical realities...They are not even objective, but are subjective mental constructs" i.e. abstract symbols reflecting...nothing! They are "waves of knowledge"! 

Here we have the usual idealist confusion between the theoretical reflection of reality and reality itself. 

An architect may design a house by drawing its plan and elevation on a (two-dimen sional) sheet of paper, but this cannot replace the real, three-dimensional dwelling! 

In Einstein’s theory, the mathematical model gives us a picture of the real world as a projection into 3-D of a 4-D structure, similar to the relation between the house and the architect’s plan. In this case, it is the "plan" which is real. 

In order to get an idea of what the 4-D picture tells us, consider the surface of a sphere. Suppose that a flat, two-dimensional creature lives on it and has no conception of motion other than along the surface. 

His "world" would be far different from Newton’s and his "geometry" would bear little resemblance to Euclid’s. 

If he moved in a ‘straight line’, he would in fact trace out part of a circle. This is the shortest distance between two points (or geodesic) on a sphere. If he continued along this path, he would return to his starting point! 

Unbounded 

Secondly, parallel lines meet. If two of the flatmen start at the "equator" and move "northwards" (i.e. in parallel directions) along "straight lines," then their paths intersect at the "north pole!" 

Finally, the surface of a sphere is finite but unbounded. It has a measurable area, but our creatures can travel forever without coming to an edge. 

This gives an idea of some of the models of the universe put forward and derived from relativity theory. If we suppose that our sphere is a balloon which is being inflated and represent the galaxies as ink spots evenly spaced on its surface, then our observer (without occupying a special position in his universe) sees the galaxies as receding away from him.

This appears to be close to our own view of the universe. 

However, the limits of the 4-D models are oven to experimental investigation and it is early days yet. 

The limitations of Einstein’s theory have already been discussed. It describes the gravi- tational field alone and in its original form solid matter and electromagnetism had to be introduced artificially. 

In "The Meaning of Relativity," Einstein says: 

"The starting point of the theory was the recognition of the unity of gravitation and inertia (principle of equivalence)... The principle of equivalence, however, does not give any clue as to what may be "the more comprehensive mathematical structure on which to base the treatment of the total field comprising the entire physical reality...The first problem is: how can the field structure be generalized in a natural way?" (pp: 127-128.) 

This search for the "Unified Field Theory" preoccupied Einstein for most of his life -  how to generalize his theory so that physical fields, other than the gravitational field, would be included in a "natural" way. 

However, Einstein admits that (as yet) no physical principle like the equivalence principle is forthcoming on which to base such a generalized theory and that therefore he is looking for a "natural" mathematical extension. 

Weakness 

    This is the basic weakness of all such attempts that have been made. Mathematicians and physicists have constructed models of five (and even more) dimensions to no avail. 

What we have attempted to show throughout these articles is that space, time, mass and ‘energy are quantitative aspects of four mutually related modes of existence of matter - extension, motion, inertia and motivity. 

Insofar as Einstein based his work on this approach, he made giant steps forward. 

His attempts to generalize his theory to include all phenomena came to a dead end..

The fragmentation of science in the 20th century, together with the uneven development of scientific research, made his attempts all the more futile. 

Billions of dollars have been spent on lines of research, particularly into fundamental particles, in the drive for new forms of energy and more powerful weapons. Gravitational theory has remained for the most part of academic interest. 

"If it works use it" - this empirical thinking coupled with massive funds has yielded results up to a point, but now runs into immense difficulties. 

Einstein stands out as the last great theoretical physicist of his generation. Insofar as he proceeded from materialist conceptions - although he was never a Marxist - it is necessary to defend his work against all those who have attempted to obscure this essential core of his earlier theories.