Fifty years ago, the last U.S. troops were expelled from Vietnam, airlifted from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
Against huge odds, the 30-year struggle of the Vietnamese people for independence led to Washington’s defeat after interventions by British and French imperialism. It paved the way for Vietnam’s reunification, the overturn of capitalist property relations and inspired all those fighting exploitation and oppression worldwide.
The horrific cost of Washington’s war — and the living legacy of unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange contamination — is a reminder of the brutal means the rulers of the world’s final empire will utilize to defend their interests.
It highlights why building a revolutionary working-class party capable of wresting state power from the ruling capitalist families is the only road to prevent further conflagrations and the rulers’ march toward a third world war.
Successive Democratic and Republican administrations dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in all previous wars. Millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians lost their lives, along with 60,000 U.S. workers in uniform. As the Vietnamese people advanced, President Richard Nixon threatened to use nuclear weapons. But Washington was unable to prevail.
In the U.S., millions of working people were awakening to political life during the war, inspired by gains fought for and won in the Black-led struggle to bring down Jim Crow segregation. They joined demonstrations demanding U.S. troops be brought home. Workers and unions increasingly joined in the protests. They became distrustful of the U.S. government, its military brass, spy agencies and its lying claim that U.S. foreign policy and wars serve “all Americans.” The story of these developments is told in Out Now by Fred Halstead.
Until working people wrest political power from the U.S. propertied rulers, imperialist wars are inescapable. As their profit rates decline, capitalist classes worldwide are driven to compete ever more fiercely for markets and resources, to rearm and redivide the world to their advantage and to deal blows to their rivals. And they’re driven to push to squeeze more and more from the labor of working people and to attack our unions.
Workers need to break from the twin parties of U.S. imperialism — the Democrats and Republicans. The Socialist Workers Party shows the road to build the party we need, with a tested leadership capable of leading tens of millions to take power from the U.S. ruling class, establish our own government, end capitalist exploitation and join in advancing the worldwide socialist revolution.
There is nothing better you can do with your life than join the SWP.