[FMLN: "the new generation of vanguard revolutionary fighters"…]

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FMLN: "the new generation of vanguard revolutionary fighters" Harry Sloan's article entitled 'How revolutionary is the Salvadorean Communist Party?" in your May 26 issue, deliberately falsifies the positions of the Salvadorean CP, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front as a whole, and the Socialist Workers Party. For reasons of space I can only refute a few of your slanders here. Among the most important are the following:

1) 'Neither Handal, nor the party he represents, have moved in real terms to the left'. . In other words, "in real terms" there is no difference between the Salvadorean CP's participation in the pro-imperialist regime from October 1979 to January 1980, and its participation since January 1980, alongside the other mass revolutionary organisations in the FMLN, in the armed struggle against that dictatorship! Sloan's "real terms" are a world of fantasy.

2) 'CP General Secretary Handal took a seat on the centralised guerrilla command, the DRU, indicating a miraculous about-face by sections of the left, which had consistently and correctly denounced the CP's politics as 'rightist'." Another lie, the objectives of the FMLN and its forerunners, the CRM and DRU, were never modified to gain the CP's support. They include the destruction of the bourgeois army, the expropriation of imperialist and oligarchic property, a radical . agrarian reform, and a thorough literacy campaign (see the programme of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, reproduced as an appendix to the excellent book by Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk, El Salvador: the Face of Revolution).

3) ' • on this question, on this too (the question of the party), Handal remains an unregenerate Stalinist. With not so much as a whisper of inner party democracy, he insists that one fundamental aspect of a Marxist Leninist party must be 'an iron discipline . . : impressed üpon and maintained in the ranks.' Sad to relate, comrades, the need for 'iron discipline" is a little harder to ignore in the conditions of ferocious repression and civil war in El Salvador than in the petty bourgeois discussion circles known as Constituency Labour Parties, where your organisation buried.

Discipline

The FMLN, least of all, would claim that discipline within the movement is as firm as it could be; on at least two occasions, the January 1981 offensive and the March 1982 "elections" different FMLN radio stations But this cicad of dither lines, democracy" is now recognised as beneficial only to the enemy and will hopefully never be repeated. And "iron discipline" is taken from Lenin, not from Stalin.

4) The "potted history of the Salvadorean left" which Sloan refers to (''Salvadorean rebels press forward united after loss of two top leaders and fighters"

May 6), was in fact written to counter the imperialist disinformation campaign after the assassination of Comrade Ana Maria and the suicide of Marcial.

The key objective of this campaign is to sow division and demoralisation among the FMLN and its supporters abroad and thus facilitate Washington's military escalation in For example, the claim in the April 22 New York times that Marcial was in fact assassinated by the Cubans, the Nicaraguans or the Salvadorean CP (allegedly in order to sell out the liberation struggle) is clearly sucker bait for petty bourgeois radicals, and it seems to have had the intended effect with Sloan, who summarises Handal's outlook as follows: 'if you can't beat them (the other components of the FMLN), join them - and crush the life out of them." (Emphasis added). With enemies like Socialist Organiser, Reagan and his Salvadorean puppet regime sure do not need friends.

5)And finally, "of course the Cuban leadership has since been assimilated fully into the Stalinist apparatus". Of course, after all, if you've got Sloan's word for it, who needs proof? Precisely how the sabotage of Che's guerrilla front in Bolivia by the pro-Moscow CP, the insistent Cuban demand that Moscow and Peking step up aid to Vietnam and the refusal of the Cubans to follow Moscow in recognising the Salvadorean junta, can be fitted into this schema, Sloan doesn't say.

Generation

The new -generation of vanguard revolutionary fighters in Central America and the Caribbean have proven themselves, not once but countless times, by leading, organising and arming our class to take power into its own hands and rebuild society on new foundations, and devoting as much as possible of their meagre resources to the international extension of the revolution, all this in the face of unrelenting military and economic pressure from Yankee imperialism.

And it is against the lies, threats and aggression of imperialism that Larry Seigle's offending article is directed, like all the SWP's coverage of and activity around Central America. Sloan's article, written in the imperialist country whose government supports and participates most actively in the US war drive, is directed against -the FMLN and the SWP! Sloan directs his fire at the wrong target; so not surprisingly, he ends up serving the interests of the wrong class.

Comradely, A Very Angry Reader And part of that turn involves Send letters to Socialist Organiser 28 Middle Lane, London N8. No longer than 400 words, please: longer letters are liable to be cut. answer to that question, my