Editorial: This Fearsome World (1960)

Editorial from the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a fearsome and threatening world.

A world in which the two dominant capitalist Powers, Russia and the United States, compete frenziedly with each other to pile up huge stocks of guided missiles and atomic warheads. A world of four-minute “count-downs” and weapons which can be projected even from under the sea to land on targets thousands of miles away with pin-point accuracy. Rivalling these in frightfulness are other abominations—chemical poisons and bacteria, as well as viruses capable of carrying diseases hitherto unknown. Some of these are so virulent, according to recent reports, that one speck would suffice to wipe out the world’s population.

Vast sums of money are spent on armaments of all kinds, only for these to be superseded in a matter of years by others even deadlier and more costly. Some weapons, such as missiles and aircraft, can be out-of-date by the time they become “operational,” or even before. Millions and millions of pounds are wasted by the smaller Powers such as Britain on fiascoes like the Blue Streak, or by France in setting off insignificant atom-bombs in the middle of the Sahara. In such ways are Mankind’s capacities for scientific achievement perverted and mis-used under capitalism.

Apparently unmoved by all these signs of a society gone mad, the peoples of the world go about their daily business, seeking to forget or ignore the grim dark shadow that hangs over their lives.

But capitalism will not allow them to forget or ignore its terrible realities. As though to drag them willy-nilly to face these realities came the news that the Russians had shot down an American plane caught spying over their territory. Denying the story at first, the Americans admitted the accusation when they realised the Russians had captured the pilot alive. And then gradually the details came out—not from the Americans, be it noted, who still took refuge in saying as little as possible—but from our newspaper pundits who had been so quiet previously.

The Observer proceeded to tell us that it was not a weather plane, as the Americans had first contended, but a specially-built Lockheed jet with abnormally large wings (presumably for gliding long distances with the engine cut off) and capable of cruising at 550 miles an hour. Such planes, it added, had been mapping Russian territory for months and this one was not the first to have been hit.

The Guardian took up the story to recall that there hud been similar incidents in 1958 involving the shooting-down of American planes over Russia. This incident in its opinion was “much like the affair of the British frogman who was presumably sent to have a look at a Russian cruiser at the time of the Bulganin-Khruschev visit to Portsmouth—a reference to the ill-fated Commander Crabb whose disappearance caused so much speculation but which was never cleared up.

It was left to Chapman Pincher of the Daily Express, however, to brush aside all the hypocrisy by quite bluntly saying that ‘'though Intelligence is a dirty game every nation plays it. Why, we even spy on our allies.” According to Pincher, British reconnaissance planes had only recently been briefed to fly over French territory to monitor their atom-bomb tests. And as for Britain’s own tests in the Pacific, he added, they had been monitored by both the Americans and the Russians, the latter from submarines.

Of the few who reflected on the possible serious consequences of all these manoeuvrings. Paul Johnson in the Evening Standard noted the significant fact, that it was Khruschev himself who had given the order to destroy the aircraft. It was for Khruschev personally to decide, according to Johnson, whether the plane was just another intelligence mission or really the harbinger of a full-scale nuclear attack. In the event, “his nerve seems to have held, and he chose merely to destroy the aircraft rather than unleash the retaliatory deluge.”

Over-dramatic—and quite possibly an exaggeration of the situation. But the essential warning is there. Nobody can be certain that one day someone might not press the button, even in error, and “unleash the retaliatory deluge.”

A fearsome, threatening world, indeed—which only Socialism can transform info a secure and peaceful one.