A friend from China had an interesting reaction when he saw the 2005 documentary Sir! No Sir! This friend sometimes gets upset when I talk about China as a rising imperialist power. I’m trying to make the point that when imperialists start wars with each other over control of the word’s riches, we “don’t have a dog in that fight.” But my friend is painfully aware of the history of racist humiliation the Chinese experienced from the middle of the 19th century until the communist-led revolution in 1949. This colors his thinking. Clearly, if we are to have Chinese workers and youth as friends and eventually comrades, we must know a little history (see box).
Learning from the Vietnam Rebellion
So what impacted my friend profoundly about that film? Sir! No Sir! presents original footage from the Vietnam war period in the 1960s and 1970s, interspersed with interviews with former soldiers, several of whom are shown in the archival footage as young women and men. As the war went on, they began to see with their own eyes what it was really about— as opposed to the official U.S. propaganda their officers told them.
In the Tet offensive of 1968, the communists of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and their South Vietnamese comrades in the National Liberation Front overran most of the country with the support of the civilian population. This made it clear that the Vietnamese people did not view the U.S. as the “liberators”. U.S. soldiers started to publish underground anti-war newspapers—a dangerous undertaking inside the military.
Soldiers began disobeying orders, organized rebellions and even killed their gung-ho officers who wanted to force them into battle against the workers of Vietnam. One Black soldier explained it this way:
I seen Charlie … NVA …, right there laying down as I walked by, I looked at him, he looked at me. Keep on goin’ about my business. This man didn’t do me nothin’, he ain’t hurt me in no type of way, he ain’t hurt none of my Black people, none of my families, so why should I shoot him?
Over 500,000 soldiers, according to the Army’s own statistics, deserted the military. Soldiers were beaten, shot and imprisoned but the rebellions grew. By 1971, according to Marine Colonel Robert Heinl, Jr., the military was no longer under the officers’ control.
By every conceivable indicator, our army that remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.
(Originally published in Armed Forces Journal,6/7/1971)
On an intellectual level, my friend understands that millions of U.S. workers have organized and struggled against U.S. imperialism for decades, including thousands in Progressive Labor Party. But it was not until he saw that documentary did the truth sink in. An imperialist army can have such anti-imperialist soldiers that it turns into something else. Wars are won or lost more by political understanding and commitment than by technological advantage. Smart bombs can be neutralized by thinking soldiers (see Bertolt Brecht poem).
This is a useful film to show friends. It was produced and directed by David Zeiger, who worked at an anti-war coffee house near Fort Hood during the Vietnam war. Find it on Netflix and YouTube. It would be even more useful if it had subtitles in Spanish, Chinese, Russian and other languages so that workers on other lands could have the same insight my friend had.
Win hearts and minds
The rulers of the U.S., China and other imperialist countries recognize the need to “win the hearts and minds” of potential soldiers. Witness the hugely popular series of “Rambo” movies (1982 to 2008) in the U.S. and their Chinese parallel, “Wolf Warrior” and “Wolf Warrior 2” (2015 to 2017). Communists must intensify our work in opposing the poisonous nationalist ideas of the ruling class. The role of revolutionaries is to equip soldiers, workers, and youth— present and future—with understanding that will make it possible for them to do what is in their class interests, as those brave young soldiers did during Vietnam.
The enemy is the generals on both sides, not your brother or sister wearing the other uniform. This understanding must be spread far and wide if we are to turn the coming inter-imperialist war into an international revolutionary war for communism.
BOXX
Century & a half of history, in brief
In 1839 The British attacked China in the first of the “Opium Wars.” They won several concessions from the Chinese, but, 17 years later, pushing for deeper commercial penetration of China, they invaded the country and marched on Beijing, destroying the Summer Palace and forcing the Chinese to sign a degrading treaty. Under that agreement China had to let Europeans and Americans occupy parts of the major seaports, foist their products on the Chinese (including legalizing opium imported from the British colony of India), and extract riches from the country. Westerners were not subject to Chinese law in their “concessions,” large areas in several port cities, so Chinese workers employed there could be beaten or even killed and their Western bosses were not liable to any sanction from a Chinese court. To an American, it sounds a lot like the inhuman, racist treatment of Black people abducted from Africa into North American slavery.
This humiliation was not reversed for over 80 years. During and after World War II, the Chinese Communist Party, at the time under leadership of Mao Zedong and others trying to build socialism in China, mobilized millions of farmers and workers into a Red Army and drove Chiang Kai-shek and his capitalist ruling class off the Chinese mainland, despite Chiang’s strong backing by the United States. Mao Zedong then declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. After a generation of socialist development, the CCP took a
decisive turn toward capitalism. This choice of the “capitalist road” is associated in the thinking of most Chinese today with the death of Mao in 1976. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping, who had been disgraced during the Cultural Revolution as a capitalist roader, became “paramount leader” and led China’s return to a capitalist market economy.
China’s current rulers are thoroughly capitalist, presiding over huge inequality, massive sweatshops and, since 2001, admitting capitalists into full membership in the CCP. Still, they make a point of presenting themselves as carrying forward the banner of Mao. To the extent that Mao was a Chinese nationalist, there is some truth to that. But around the world workers admire Mao Zedong as a revolutionary and an internationalist. The problem is that the CCP “owns the brand.” In China president Xi Jinping’s main speech to the Party at their October, 2017, congress, he invoked the name of Mao repeatedly and cast himself as modern China’s third great leader, after Mao and Deng. The ruling Chinese capitalists in the CCP recognize the power of Mao’s image over the political feelings of the Chinese people. They cynically build up the nationalist side and negate the communist side of Mao Zedong as a way of winning the people’s loyalty for the coming war.
*****
General Your Tank is A Powerful Vehicle
General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.
Bertolt Brecht
Published in German, 1939
(“Der Mensch hat einen Fehler: Er kann denken”)
