Socialism, the H-Bomb and War

[p006] SOCIALISM, THE H-BOMB AND WAR HE GREATEST single problem facing humanity T today is how to avoid a new world war—a war which will be fought with weapons so frightful that it is not mere scaremongering, but a seriously de- bated scientific question, whether such a war would not eliminate all life from this planet. Such is the spate of information on H-bombs, radio-active poisonous dust and intercontinental guided missiles (with such horrors as germ warfare tailing behind as second-class weapons in the race to produce devices for humanity’s suicide) that many socialists are now seriously asking whether the invention of modern techniques of waging war has not created a new world situation requiring an entirely new assessment .of how socialists should participate in the struggle for peace. This is a fair question, one of deadly urgency, but one which needs to be investigated calmly, objectively and without panic. We should like to have a discussion about it in Labour Review. We have already arranged for a number of socialists—with widely differing opinions on some of the issues involved —to take part in this discussion in the next few issues. We hope our readers will join in. The problem of how to fight against imperialist war was never, and is not today, a simple one. Time and time again Lenin stressed the fact that Marxists have always found this to be the most complex of all prob- lems. One reason is that the preparation and outbreak of imperialist war is, for the ruling class, at once a great opportunity to enrich themselves and a period of mortal danger to their own rule. For this reason every propa- ganda device, the subtlest and the crudest, is brought out in a deliberate effort to bind the working class to their masters, to enlist the active help of the people in defending ‘their’ country from the ‘foreign invader’. The narrowest prejudices, as old as the human race itself, are decked in high-sounding phrases—and to accom- plish this deception the Press and pulpit, the politicians and professors, the radio and the rag-mags, the ‘social- ists’ and the psychiatrists, all are pressed into active service. We may be sure that, this very day, every single one of these propaganda fakers is hard at work sowing confusion and playing upon every base emotion. Natur- ally every departmental office organizing this deadly . work, in whatever country it is located, carries the hypo- critical title over its door: ‘Committee for Organizing the Fight for Peace and for the Unity of Nations’. There are many people who echo the trite phrases of Khrushchev (they include Eden, Attlee and Eisen- hower, Pollitt, Bernal and the Dean of Canterbury) asserting blandly the possibilities of what is called ‘the peaceful coexistence of States with different social sys- tems’ without making any really scientific analysis of what is involved in this phrase. By obscuring with over- simple words the complexity of the real fight against war, they are succeeding only in lulling the working class into a petition-signing passivity which can do nothing but help the forces making for war. Let us frankly admit (and we thank several readers who brought this to our attention) that Labour Review has, in at least two issues, been guilty of the error of substituting epithets for reasoned argument when, with- 131 out further detailed explanation of our attitude, we spoke in a scoffing, disparaging way about those who advocate the theory of ‘peaceful coexistence’. This led some people to imagine that our criticism of the Russian government was that it had not sent the Soviet Army crusading over the world, H-bombs and all, setting up communist governments everywhere and so achieving the aim of world socialism. This, some people imagined, was the only alternative to rejection of the theory of ‘peaceful coexistence’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Labour Review considers that the prime aim of every socialist at the present time is to work to ensure that the H-bombs are never dropped, that the guided missiles are never loaded, that no army shall move over any frontier. Where we differ from those who preach ‘peaceful coexistence’ is not whether war ought to be prevented but how it can be prevented. Lenin, analysing the stage of capitalism reached before 1914, showed that as a result of the operation of its laws of development capitalism had reached a new phase. In a number of key branches of industry in the advanced ccuntries free competition had been converted into its opposite—monopoly. The big banks had largely taken over financial control of industry and the State and great monopoly capitalists had become closely fused one with the other. Side by side with these developments the remaining countries of the world had been brought into the orbit of control of one or another of these large, advanced imperialist States and were being used to produce, at exceptionally low prices, primary raw materials for the industries of the metropolitan countries and as fields of capitalist investment with cheap labour and super-profits. The first world war was the result of the inevitable clash of the imperialist powers struggling, in accordance with the absolute need of capitalism to go on expanding, to redivide the world in favour of which- ever State, or alliance of States, should be victorious. This struggle for the redivision of the world, in spite of a multitude of side issues, was the real cause of the first world war. War did not come because the wicked Ger- mans had invaded tiny Belgium. The Kaiser’s army did not march because the wicked British supported the reactionary Tsar. War was the inevitable result of ob- jective forces at work in capitalism in its new mono- polist phase. Therefore only the ending of imperialist domination of the world could have prevented war. The ‘international general strike’ of the Basle 1912 resolu- tion was accordingly a correct socialist policy because this strike would have raised directly the question of who should rule—should the imperialists continue to rule and to fight out ‘their’ war or should the workers assume power and build a socialist society, which has no need for war? _ These direct (though not simple) propositions of Lenin and his generation of Marxists will be familiar to most readers of Labour Review. Since 1914 the world has seen enormous changes. One third of the world’s population, Russia, East Europe and China, has been torn from the orbit of imperialism. Millions of colonial people are actively resisting their retention within the field of colonial exploitation. Yet the productive capa-

[p007] city and need for expansion of the great imperialist powers have also continued to grow enormously. Is it - not true, therefore, that the objective need of imperial- ism for a redivision of the world is also more pressing today than in 1914 or 1939? Is not imperialism an un- stable agglomeration of predatory powers, more ex- plosive today than ever before in its history? Add to this explosive situation the most explosive bomb the mind of man could ever conceive and we have a very explosive world indeed. No dialectical twist could pro- duce ‘peace’ out of this mixture. Surely then, the question of peace or war has be- come today, even more directly than in 1914, a problem of power. So long as power remains in the hands of the imperialists, the horror of war is immanent. Today, more surely than in 1914 or 1939, the fight for peace is the fight in every country of the world for workers’ power and socialism. It is this basic Leninist teaching which Stalinism has consistently revised and perverted. We sometimes hear repeated, even in pacifist and socialist circles, that with the ‘ultimate weapon’, the H-bomb, in the hands of the great powers no State will risk its very existence by launching war. From the world-wide possession of the H-bomb, the Great De- terrent, they say, will come peace. Are not the capitalists themselves and their families also in danger of atomic disintegration in a new war? No rational government, whatever its political colour (so the argument goes) would dare to launch atomic war today. This theory, we believe, is just one more subtle product set in cir- culation by the ‘Committees for Organizing the Fight for Peace’. In reply we ask: since when have capitalist govern- ments started to act on the basis of ‘rational’ arguments of this sort? The only rational argument a Tory Govern- ment ever listened to was the rationality of greater pro- fits and the rationality of the continued existence of the rule of the class it represents. We have often heard tell of some ‘good, kind-hearted capitalists’ who really do not like exploiting ‘their’ workers, but who have to con- tinue to do so because not to do so would mean liquidat- ing themselves as capitalists. In like manner there may be (though we have yet to discover them) “good, peace- loving imperialist governments’ which do not like war, but which have to continue to prepare for, and even to fight, world wars, because not to do so would mean ceasing to be capitalists. It has yet to be shown that even the fear of the H-bomb is any match for the fact that no privileged class voluntarily leaves the scene of history. We believe it would be foolish for the working class to rely upon the ‘rationality’ of the ruling class to prevent war. We cannot pretend that we have really discovered or written anything new here. But this restatement of the basic propositions of Marxism on imperialist war should be the starting point for a discussion on the fight for peace. It is a beginning, however, and not the end of the debate. Can peace treaties signed between capitalist coun- tries ever help to prevent war? Can treaties between Russia and China and the West help to prevent war? Can the people ‘force’ the capitalists to disarm? Indeed, will capitalist governments ever disarm and are dis- armament conferences any more than mere propaganda tricks? Can a ‘people’s movement’, above party politics, force imperialist governments to take a peaceful path? Can the United Nations be fashioned into an organiza- tion which will impose peace upon its members? Is in- dividual pacifism sufficient? Or is the question of peace or war in every country of the world still a question of which class rules—the workers or the imperialists? These are some of the questions with which the debate in Labour Review will deal. None of them can be given a slick, easy answer. There is no panacea for peace in this complex world. But, together, in an atmosphere not dominated by panic or pessimism, but rather in an atmosphere of calm, objective, confident appraisal of the facts as they really are, we believe it will be possible to devise for the working-class movement a strategy of winning peace and socialism. And a sound strategy guiding the Labour movement will be more powerful than a million of the largest ‘Ban the Bomb’ banners —because it can guide the movement to the central arena of the struggle for peace, where the decisive battles will be fought.