So They Say: Protests too much (1977)

The So They Say Column from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Protests too much

An article in The Spectator of 12th November entitled “The irrelevance of class” which attempts to justify its title by showing how various important men have risen from what are discreetly referred to as “humble births”, reminds us that the class war still prompts professional hacks (and quacks) to issue it, at regular intervals with a formal death certificate. The entire irrelevance of class structure within society led the writer of the article to over 50 column-inches to make his point and if The Spectator is prepared to pay for and publish this sort of thing, we have high hopes for our own submission entitled “The irrelevance of air—hot and cold.”

The inconvenient obstacle to the claim however is one of fact. Obstacles of this nature may or may not impress Spectator’s writers who are prepared to spend a good deal of time apparently in dealing with what they consider “irrelevances”, but it cannot seriously be denied that capitalist society is divided, on the one hand into those who own and control the means of life and on the other, into those who must work for a member of the owning class in order to live. If this class division were non-existent, or irrelevant, we could only express surprise at the great deal of verbiage mustered to assure us of the claim.

Not cricket

Although the owning class as a whole have class interests in common, namely the retention of private- property society and they will unite on issues which may threaten this, each member also has individual interests in the day-to-day business of increasing their particular share of the social wealth, and this process obliges them to enter into battles among themselves. Whereas the working class, the non-owners, represent a class enemy to be held off by a variety of means, other members of the capitalist class are rivals and as such require direct attention.

Fresh diplomatic protests have been tendered by the Government over breaches in agreements by Japanese (Motor) manufacturers to hold down sales in Britain.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

The British motor manufacturers claim that the Japanese are carrying out an “invasion” of the British markets contrary to an undertaking given by the Japanese to restrain sales to the UK. It all sounds very reasonable—an arrangement between friends. The Japanese motor men have argued before that it had all been a misunderstanding and they may well do so again. The fact that the British government now argues the case on behalf of its own national manufacturers shows that they are not deceived. Both parties are aware that “undertakings” are weak restraints on the pressures of capitalist expansion.

Making the point, in the same newspaper, was the Chairman of the Welsh council of the CBI who advises his members that British manufacturers can satisfactorily meet Japanese competition by putting in “the same intensity of effort as the Japanese”, by which he means a greater degree of exploitation of the British working class. This gentleman was speaking from experience. He is the chairman of a machine-tool company.

Last year I put one Japanese firm out of business and two other Japanese firms have given up their markets to me.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

It seems probable that the aforementioned Japanese firms may be petitioning him soon to give an “undertaking” for restraint.

Plenty of problems

The Japanese Prime Minister has become increasingly concerned at the economic problems he faces as the yen rises against other currencies and the exporters are finding it more difficult to compete successfully in overseas markets. He now refers to exports as a “negligible factor in expanding economic growth in future.” The new strategy he revealed is to be the stimulation of home demand by increasing public spending, which we seem to have heard somewhere before.

Mr. Fukuda neatly put his finger on one of the major difficulties facing the Japanese, who are by no means alone in the matter, and shows that capitalism, despite the efforts of so-called planning, simply continues to produce problems and contradictions. The profit motive governs production.

The important thing is to create demand in the midst of the problems of overcapacity and unemployment.

(The Times, 11th November 77)

Capitalist ideologies

The Chinese are said to have approached the British government with a view to ordering Harrier jump-jets. Apparently the so-called socialists are faced with a build up of forces on their border with the other so-called socialists, the Russians. The fact that the British government also refers to itself as “socialist” no doubt lends justification to the approach and completes the picture of this happy socialist band who act so differently from the capitalist governments. To an un-trained eye it would appear to be a straightforward business arrangement.

However Britain is a member of a NATO organization called Cocom whose function is to prevent the sale of weapons and plant for producing them, to “communist” countries. America is also a member and it might be thought that they would, as they are entitled, veto consideration of the order. Surely the Americans would not permit any hole-in-the-wall arrangement between all these “socialists". It appears however that the Americans have an un-trained eye in the matter. They have their reasons too.

The fact that there is a company to company agreement between Hawker Siddeley and Macdonald Douglas to manufacture the Harrier under licence in no way interferes with the sale of the Harrier by Britain to other states, I was authoritatively informed yesterday. A non-British member of Cocom’s coordinating committee told me a few days ago that the United States rarely raised any objection to the export of strategic materials to a Communist country if it was produced or manufactured in America.

(Daily Telegraph, 9th November 77)

Labour’s Department of War (2025)

From the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people are surprised and disappointed by Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Yet, it is a typical Labour government. Fundamentally, it is a belief in state action to co-ordinate the market economy that characterises them in power. Thankfully, any association between this belief and socialism has long since been dispelled.

Indeed, to their credit, this government is faithfully carrying out the objects set out in the Labour Party’s rulebook, which commits the Party to work for:

‘A DYNAMIC ECONOMY, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and cooperation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high-quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’ (Clause IV.2.A).

And:

‘Labour is committed to the defence and security of the British people and to cooperating in European institutions, the United Nations, the Commonwealth and other international bodies to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all’ (Clause IV.3).

No-one can pretend that the present Labourites have not been up-front with this commitment, at least: anyone voting for them without illusions should have known.

We can see this in action in the way that Downing Street announced the UK taking part in the NATO agreement to spend 5 percent of GDP on Defence.

‘Marking a step change with the approach of previous governments, the National Security Strategy directly answers to the concerns of working people, aligning our national security objectives and plans for economic growth in a way not seen since 1945’.

The reference to ‘working people’ is labour-washing this strategy, which will be about making phenomenal amounts of profit for defence contractors and arms manufacturers. As the NATO press release on the agreement notes:

‘Research and development (R&D) costs are included in defence expenditure. R&D costs also include expenditure for those projects that do not successfully lead to production of equipment’.

This is the NATO agreed definition of defence expenditure. The agreement is for this figure to reach 3.5 percent of member states’ GDP, with an additional 1.5 percent of GDP to be spent:

‘annually to inter alia protect critical infrastructure, defend networks, ensure civil preparedness and resilience, innovate, and strengthen the defence industrial base’.

So, NATO states are preparing to fiddle the figures by defining as much as they can as defence expenditure (see for example rumours Italy is looking at designating a transport bridge as defence expenditure).

Of course, the US has long done this, with a substantial veterans benefit system: spending about $300 billion annually, 90 percent of which is split between income support for veterans (including pensions) and medical costs. This is itself part of the economic conscription of workers to fight in the armed forces for the people who own the country.

Starmer’s government wants to use its military spend as part of its drive to generate planned profits for capitalists through that ‘dynamic economy.’ According to the MOD 463,000 jobs (about 1 in 60) are supported by the defence industry (that includes 272,000 jobs supported by military spending – 151,000 directly and 121,000 indirectly) on top of the 181,890 serving military personnel.

However, as the Institute for Government notes:

‘The single largest cost to the MoD is the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, which is responsible for the procurement, maintenance and disposal of the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet. This was allocated 38% of the 2023-2033 Equipment Plan, or 20% of total defence spending’.

That is, maintaining the UK’s capacity to launch a nuclear device at any nation in the world. Interestingly, they also note that:

‘Most additional UK defence funding between 2015/16 and 2023/24 was allocated to capital spending, to acquire or maintain fixed assets like equipment and land. This element of spending increased by 95.5% in real terms over this period’.

Depending on how you count it, the UK is the 5th or 6th biggest-spending military country in the world. This expenditure is necessary to give continued diplomatic clout.

This comes at a cost. Those tens of thousands of service personnel are removed from the workforce and from doing any potentially useful work (neither generating profits for capitalists, nor creating use values for the community).

The jobs and industries supported by defence spending do produce profits for the companies involved, but those profits are essentially transfers from elsewhere, as they are paid for by taxes extracted from the profits of other capitalists.

Defence does bring in some profit. ‘UK arms exports: Statistics’, a House of Commons report from July this year notes that ‘the UK won defence orders worth £14.5 billion in 2023. This is a 39 percent increase in real terms on the previous year’. Over 50 percent of this was aerospace. This would represent a poor return on all that defence investment, but in fact it also reflects the UK geostrategic interests, as shown by where the sales went to:

‘Europe was the largest market for UK defence exports, accounting for 34% of total exports over this period, followed by the Middle East (32%), North America (18%), the Asia Pacific (7%), Latin America and Africa (both 1%). The remaining share (8%) was exported to a mixed or unidentified region’.

There are other defence spin-offs in terms of new technologies. The recently published government document, ‘Defence industrial strategy: making defence an engine for growth’ notes: ‘The Spending Review confirmed that MOD’s research and development budget will be over £2 billion in 2026-27 and will rise each year’. This includes a mandate to spend 10 percent of the MOD’s procurement on novel technologies, including AI-driven solutions.

Finding new and inventive ways to kill people seems a very roundabout way of creating wealth, but it is a way which has to exist in a society characterised by a tiny minority controlling the productive resources at the expense of the majority.

Pik Smeet

An American Broadcast (1958)

From the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a letter from Mr. Charles Sussman, of Philadelphia, informing us of a proposal to broadcast over the American Radio the answers to seven questions relating to armaments which he was putting to us as well as for a tape recording of our views for broadcasting purposes. Below is the script of our answers to the question which was recorded by J. D'Arcy on our behalf.

Speaking on behalf of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, I am responding to an invitation to give our views on a number of questions concerning armaments and foreign policy.

In fairness to you, and to us, I must explain at the outset that we are not asking for your consideration on the grounds that there is large support for our ideas in Great Britain. We are indeed a small organisation, formed in 1904, and growing slowly. Nevertheless, we claim that our views do merit your careful thought, as we have the only practical answer to the problems of a distracted and violence-torn world. As it is unlikely that you have ever heard our views before we appeal to you to give them the consideration that should be given to fresh ideas on a subject of such supreme importance to the human race.

Seven questions have been put to us. In order to make our answers to these questions understandable, I must explain the outlook from which we start.

Our aim is a world in which everything that is in and on the earth will be the common possession of all mankind, without privileged groups of any kind except the old, the infirm and the young. A world in which there would be no buying and selling, or profit motive, and in. which frontiers would have disappeared.

We hold that, economically and politically, we all live in a world that is desperately sick, and this means all the peoples in all the world; in Europe and the Americas, in India, China and Russia, in the West as well as in the East

Holding this view, we do not offer to draw up better foreign policies in place of the existing ones. Such efforts, as the bitter experiences of the past have made clear, are useless for curing the disease affecting the world. The disease is a fundamental one, and requires the elimination of its cause.

I would put it like this.

If the world were organised in the way we Socialists want it, there would be no foreign policies. Foreign policies are concerned with the frictions and animosities that exist between national groups, each pressing forward and defending antagonistic sectional interests. If the interests throughout the world were mutual, there would be harmony and friendliness between the people in all parts of the world, and there would be no need for a foreign policy, or a foreign secretary, to tell us how this can be accomplished.

But the nations are not organised for friendship. They are organised for the aggressive competitive activity of seeking trade and profit Behind these, and directly concerned with them, is the effort to control sources of raw material and trade routes; and behind that again the supporting military forces, up to, and including, the latest horror—the H. Bomb.

Holding the views we do about the kind of world society that could and must be brought about, and holding the views we do about the incurable nature of the evils affecting the world whilst under the present social system, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has declared unqualified opposition to the wars of our time, including the two world wars, the Korean war, the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, and the brutal Russian suppression of Hungary two years ago.

In the light of what I have already said, I now come to the seven questions I have been asked to answer.

Firstly, I am asked what is our view of re-unification and re-militarising Germany?

The very fact that these two questions have to be linked together shows how cruel and evil the world's habitual attitudes are. Surely the situation is absurd in which the simple problem of German speaking people getting together cannot be considered except in relation to armaments.

The second question concerns NATO.

In the world as it is the rival national groups make uneasy alliances for war, under the mistaken impression that they are avoiding war. In the world that Socialists envisage there will be no rival national groups.

The third question is about the construction of rocket missile bases in England.

We do not share the mistaken, and often dangerous, nationalistic prejudices of non-socialists. People from America, or Russia, or anywhere else, are welcome here as far as we are concerned. But then, of course, from our standpoint we would have them come here not to construct weapons and means of destruction, but to help us with the elementary things that people need, or just to enjoy themselves. In any event, we are opposed to people anywhere in the world making or using weapons of destruction, or being the victims of their use. To be willing that others should suffer but not yourselves is part of the evil thinking produced by present conditions.

The fourth question concerns the proposal of a disengagement of the rival military forces facing each other in Europe.

Of course we are always glad to see a war end or a war avoided, but where really does the proposal get us? From a military point of view, with the fast movement of ground forces, and still more with all the weapons that move at incredible speed above the earth, what does disengagement really amount to?

The same applies to the proposal of a European neutral zone free from nuclear weapons.

The sixth question concerns the suspension of all hydrogen and atomic tests.

We are opposed to the threatening of anyone, individually or collectively, with violence or war. We are opposed to the testing, use or manufacture of any weapons for destroying human life, as our object includes abolishing them all. But we are not interested in the limited campaigns of those who are not concerned with abolishing the conditions that cause wars.

The seventh question relates to disarmament under international inspection and control.

This brings us back to our basic point of view which is diametrically opposed to the various conventional views. Trying to inspect and control heavily armed national groups that, by definition, are seeking to deceive each other preparatory to being able to destroy each other, is not a policy for sane and sober well-wishers of our fellows, but for gamblers with the life and death of the human race.

In conclusion, I appreciate that the outlook and views of the Socialist Party of Great Britain may sound utopian and impossible to those who have never heard them, let alone considered them.

However, we are by no means pessimistic. The dire consequences of the present social system are helping, however slowly, to force our solution to the front. Time will accelerate the pace. We are sure that people all over the world will sooner or later recognise the correctness of our approach to world problems, and the need to change the social system in the direction we have described; a need that is as urgent in Russia as in America or Britain.

Don’t hang back too long, and don't leave others to do the thinking for you. With so many scientists concentrating on weapons of mass destruction, and politicians of such limited vision, the fate of humanity depends on your own sober and clear thinking.

I would add that associated with us in outlook is the Socialist Party of Ireland; the World Socialist Party of the United States; the Socialist Party of Canada; the Socialist Party of Australia, and the Socialist Party of New Zealand; as well as groups in other parts of the world.

What’s the deal with Greenland? (2025)

From the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Six months ago nobody would have imagined Greenland making headlines. Almost the only things most people know about the place is that it’s not as big as it looks on maps, and it is covered in ice that’s melting due to global warming.

Then came US Vice-President Vance’s unwelcome and controversial visit to the island in late March. The ensuing furore fortuitously diverted media attention from ‘Signalgate’, the disastrous security blunder which made Trump’s senior appointees look like fools. Democrats furiously demanded the resignation of Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, who inadvertently included a journalist in top-secret discussions about bombing the Houthis in Yemen, and Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, who blithely joined in the chat from his – possibly monitored – hotel room in Moscow. Russia, be it noted, is friends with Iran, who are friends with the Houthis. Republicans too must have been quietly alarmed at such blithering incompetence on the part of people put in charge of US national security. Trump’s self-estimation as a genius clearly depends on him surrounding himself with loud-mouthed buffoons. His protégés duly followed Trump protocol – lie, deny, and go on the offensive – but he probably realised that he ought to sack them and hand the Democrats a big win, because covering for them would undermine his own credibility. But as we later saw with his astounding tariffs and subsequent craven roll-back, he believes his credibility is indestructible.

A handy diversion

In the event, Vance’s impromptu and perhaps calculated excursion to the Pituffik airbase in Greenland provided a useful distraction from the Signalgate fiasco. Vance publicly hectored Denmark for its supposedly poor stewardship of the island, reinforcing Trump’s claim that a US takeover was not just desirable but inevitable. Not surprisingly the Danes were politely enraged, saying ‘this is not how you talk to your allies’ and calling the move Trump’s ‘Crimea script’. Even Pituffik’s own commander tried to distance herself from Vance’s remarks, promptly earning herself the sack. The Greenlanders were also not best pleased. In polls, 80 percent of them want independence from Denmark, but 85 percent of them do not want to be annexed by the USA. What they do want, one can only imagine, is some sort of unworldly solution in which they no longer have to scrape by on Danish subsidies yet somehow manage to prosper as a lone island state the size of western Europe, with no industry or infrastructure, or even roads, and a population only one third the size of the Isle of Wight’s.

There is zero chance of that happening, because Greenland is just too important to major powers. Trump has been wanting Greenland since his first Presidency in 2016, and the US, for various reasons, has been wanting it since 1867. That was the year the US bought Alaska off the Russians for $7m. The US Secretary of State William H Seward, who oversaw the Alaska purchase, was also keen on buying Greenland and Iceland at the same time, in order to wedge Canada in on three sides and force it eventually to become part of the US. Trump may well be aware of this Seward plan, which would add context to his comments about annexing Canada. In 1868 Seward began negotiations with Denmark to buy Greenland. But Congress failed to ratify his similar plan to purchase the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands), and the Greenland plan was dropped.

Following a wartime occupation from 1941 to 1945 to stop a German invasion of Greenland, in 1946 the US secretly offered to buy it. Denmark refused, but did allow the US to build air bases there, as both countries were in the process of founding NATO. US interest in Greenland was now mainly military, as the island sits in the middle of the shortest missile flight path to Russia. It’s also part of a crucial choke point in the North Atlantic called the GIUK Gap, between Greenland, Iceland and the UK. Were Russia inclined to attack the US east coast using its Northern Fleet, based at Murmansk on the Barents Sea, its forces would have to pass through the gap. At the same time, a good reason not to press the Danes too heavily on the issue would have been that Denmark sits across the mouth of the Baltic Sea, meaning it could potentially bottle up the Russian Baltic Fleet at Kaliningrad.

Cold war refreezes

US interest cooled somewhat after the Berlin Wall fell and relations with Russia temporarily became less frosty. But now Russia has remilitarised all its old Soviet naval bases in the Arctic, heavily outnumbering equivalent NATO bases, with increasing Russian submarine patrols around the GIUK Gap. The global internet has also intensified concerns over this gap, as critically important undersea data cables pass right through it, or just south of it, making them vulnerable to submarine sabotage. This could potentially blind the USA and cripple its ability to respond in the event of any future Russian incursion into, say, the Baltic States or Finland.

In addition, the US needs ground stations for its military satellites, including in the Arctic Circle. Two of these are in Alaska and Svalbard, but the main base is Pituffik, scene of Vance’s recent outburst against Denmark. And the US very likely wants many more such bases on the island. As things stand, Greenland is terra incognita, a ‘security black hole‘ that’s impossible for Denmark’s meagre forces – mostly one aeroplane and some dogsled teams – to effectively monitor.

Not just wargames

There are also pressing non-military considerations. As the Arctic melts and the sea lanes open up permanently, Greenland could come to dominate global shipping, due to the fact that the two trans-Arctic routes, the Canada-hugging Northwest Passage (NWP) and Russia-adjacent Northern Sea Route (NSR) have the potential to cut 4,000 km off the Panama route and make the Suez Canal largely redundant. Just as the US wants back control of the Panama Canal, it will also be keen to control this polar traffic. Annoyingly for the US, in 1985 Canada claimed sovereignty over the NWP, while the US insists it is an international waterway. That might be another reason why Trump wants to annex Canada.

Then there are the untapped resources. Greenland could be the key to breaking China’s near global monopoly on producing rare earth elements (REEs) and critical minerals, as the biggest deposits of these outside China are in, you guessed it, Greenland. It is thought to have the 6th largest deposit of uranium in the world, and to be very rich in lithium, REEs, graphite, iron, nickel and copper. There is also gold, along with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and a host of other quartzes and gemstones. It has 43 out of the 50 critical minerals needed for the US economy, in particular green tech and electric vehicles. Elon Musk and the other tech bros have declared an interest for this and other reasons, including the fact that the vast territory and freezing temperatures are ideal for server farms, of which an order of magnitude more may be required to enable the AI revolution. And then there are the estimated reserves of oil and gas, which put Greenland on a par with Nigeria and Kazakhstan, and superior to Qatar.

What’s in it for the Inuit?

Almost certainly nothing. The local population doesn’t have the people, money, skills or infrastructure to exploit any of this stuff themselves, so Greenland is a sitting duck for whichever major power acquires it, either through a business deal or by military action. What could very well happen if these resources are exploited in an unregulated way by a ruthless foreign power is that Greenlanders could suffer the notorious ‘resource curse’ of places like the Congo, with the country becoming a corrupt rentier state whose ruling elite siphon off the wealth and defend their position by becoming more repressive and authoritarian (youtu.be/x8j2uWw3WfU). Faced with this awful prospect, the idealistic islanders may realise that their best chance is to do some kind of mutual back-scratching deal with the US, while retaining a fig-leaf of independence.

Deals under the table

After the Vance visit, Russia’s Vladimir Putin told journalists that relations between the US and Greenland were nothing to do with Russia, and that he had no interest in the place. This blithe response strains credulity, given Russia and China’s keen interest in the NSR, and given that a US takeover of Greenland would be as much of a strategic threat to Russia as Ukraine being in NATO, if not more so. Missiles based in Greenland, especially hypersonics, could take out Moscow, St Petersburg and Murmansk before the Russians could even react. And that’s beside the fact that Russia is – since the Ukraine invasion – now hemmed in with the addition of two new NATO members, Finland and Sweden, as well as NATO Norway.

One possible explanation for Putin’s professed indifference is that Transactional Trump has offered a private deal in which Trump takes Greenland and Russia gets to keep its captured territory (and the largest European gas reserves outside Norway) in Ukraine.

Is a similar Trumpian quid-pro-quo over Taiwan possible, making for a three-way neo-colonial carve-up? On the face of it, no. Hegseth continues to sabre-rattle at China by reiterating US backing of Taiwan, and Vance is also waving his stick at China for wanting to expand operations in Greenland. But China has operations almost everywhere, and anyway rejects any comparison with Taiwan, arguing that Greenland is a sovereign foreign state whereas Taiwan is China’s intrinsic territory. Why would they do a deal over what they see as already theirs?

Even so, TSMC and other Taipei chipmakers are racing to set up shop in Texas, California and Arizona in an energetic US bid to make Taiwan less of an Achilles heel for western tech industries. Should this attempt succeed – and there are wage-rate, skill-set and supply-chain reasons why it might not – US support for Taiwan could evaporate.

Take the money and run?

It seems hard to believe that the US would actually invade Greenland by force. But given its tiny population of around 56,000, one intriguing possibility is that the US could wait until the expected declaration of independence from Denmark, and then offer to pay the entire Greenland population $1m each to buy the place. $56bn might sound like a lot but it’s approximately what the place is valued at in potential revenues, and it’s only 1/15th of the planned 2025 US military budget, or about 1/8th of the US annual debt-servicing bill. That way, Greenlanders could all be millionaires and retire to beach houses in Bali. But would they take the payout and emigrate, or opt to stay poor for the sake of patriotism? It’s hard to say. Nationalism is powerfully embedded in capitalism’s ideology, and objective logic often plays very little part.

Paddy Shannon

Editorial: An end to the war in Ukraine? (2025)

Editorial from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hopefully the war in Ukraine will end quickly. Ideally, it should end immediately and unconditionally — in the interest of humanity in general and the working class in particular, the killing and destruction should just stop — but this is not how wars end. Unless one side wins outright, there are negotiations based on the perceived balance of force between the two sides.

Russia claims the main issue at stake in Ukraine has been whether or not the country should join NATO, with the rulers of the Russian state arguably perceiving this as an existential threat in the same way that in 1962 the rulers of the USA saw the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. On that occasion Russia backed down and the crisis was defused. In 2022 the US and its allies in NATO refused to back down. So did Russia and they decided to invade.

Normally, wars are fought to win but the US declared that its aim was limited to weakening Russia by forcing it to divert resources into fighting a war without end. Russia has been waging war to win, perhaps not necessarily to conquer the whole of Ukraine but certainly to conquer as much as it can along its frontier and to force Ukraine to sue for peace.

Russia would certainly like to capture Odessa and Kharkov too but it looks as if they will have to settle for the 20 percent of mineral-rich Ukraine that they have already taken, if only on condition that what’s left of Ukraine doesn’t join NATO (or, ideally, the EU either). A block on NATO membership seems to be what Trump has offered Putin as the basis for a settlement, which has come as shock both to the Ukrainian government and the European members of NATO.

The European leaders were also shocked at the US exploiting Ukraine’s weakness to extract free access to rare earth metals there. They saw this as ‘transactional’ and said NATO was about ‘defending democracy’ rather than such sordid considerations. Maybe NATO is not primarily economic but this was no shock to socialists. It’s how we would expect a state engaged in the competitive struggle for profits to behave given half a chance,

Why this change of US attitude? We can only speculate. America seems to have decided that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not after all that strategically important from its point of view, especially when it has other, more important strategic considerations in East Asia and the South China Sea and has arguably been pulling back from many of its foreign commitments for years, the latest being Afghanistan.

Since the complete defeat of the USSR in the Cold War, represented by its break-up into independent states at the end of December 1991, what was left as Russia has not constituted too much of a threat to the US as such. No doubt there are revanchists among Russia’s ruling elite who dream of re-incorporating the parts of the former USSR such as the Baltic statelets, but not necessarily to overrun the whole of the rest of Europe, as claimed by war-mongering generals and fabulating politicians.

The US has decided that that’s not its problem but Europe’s to deal with — and, more particularly, to pay for. European governments, including Labour here, are to increase military spending. Another example of how capitalism wastes resources that, in a different world, could be used to meet people’s needs.

Depleted Uranium? Depleted Minds! (2001)

From the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of whether or not dropping radioactive bombs on people is dangerous is exercising the top minds in the bourgeois media

The recent and still ongoing debate about the effects of depleted uranium adds a whole new dimension to the time-honoured quote that truth is the first casualty of war. Recent evidence would suggest that dishonesty is not only a midwife to war, but very much its bastard offspring.

Depleted uranium (or U238) is what is left of natural or pure uranium after the isotope U235 has been removed for use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and in nuclear power plants. It contains up to 60 percent of the radioactivity found in its pure form and, because it is more concentrated, it is potentially more lethal.

A heavy and dense silvery metal, U238 is also highly incendiary which makes it an ideal core material in anti-tank projectiles and bunker-busting Tomahawk missiles (each one of these contains 3kg of DU). Upon impact, the core of the DU projectile ignites and oxidises at such high temperatures that it becomes glass or ceramic micro and nano particles, containing lethal alpha, beta and gamma rays. The ensuing conflagration other than burning to a cinder the inhabitants, smothers the target tank or bunker with a fine radioactive dust, contaminating a surrounding area for up to 50 metres of the impact sight with lesser contamination detectable many kilometres away. The extent to which British, European and American soldier’s health has been effected as a result of such contamination forms the basis of the debate.

The British and US governments, NATO and the medical experts they have hired to fight their corner insist there are no medical side-effects to the inhalation of DU dust particles. Just as John Spellar the Armed Forces Minister, could claim in December of last year that “we are unaware of anything that shows depleted uranium has caused any ill health or death of people who served in Kosovo or Bosnia,” so too could NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, in a 10th January damage limitation press conference nonchalantly argue there was “no link of any kind” between depleted uranium and leukaemia, that there was “nothing to fear from this particular type of munitions”, and that “we act with the interests of our troops and civilians in mind” (Independent, 11 January).

So convinced were NATO of the rightness of its cause and its preparedness to continue using DU munitions, that their staff distributed dossiers of scientific evidence stifling claims that DU was harmful and even called upon the services of two Pentagon medical experts to refute the claim that DU was harmful.

The broadsheet press, however, wasted no time in revealing an army report entitled The Use and Hazards of DU Munitions, dated 8 March 1997 which stated that “All personnel . . . should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long term risk to health.” This same MOD report warned that exposure to depleted uranium, as used in British and US tank shells, increased eight-fold the risk of lung, lymph and brain cancers.

At the same time it was revealed that the government’s own nuclear safety advisers at the Atomic Energy Agency had warned 10 years ago that depleted uranium shells fired during the Gulf War would pose a health risk. The 1991 AEA report says:

“Handling heavy metal munitions does pose some potential hazards as does the spread of radioactivity and toxic contamination as a result of firing in battle . . . and can become a long-term problem . . . and pose a risk to both the military and civilian population” (Times, 15 January).

All of which cuts no ice with Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon who still maintained days after the revelation of the MoD report that “there is no scientific evidence to support that the use of radioactive material caused illness, including leukaemia . . . here are no risks associated with depleted uranium and certainly no proven link between its use and illness ” (Times, 15 January). If this was the case then why the MoD warning? What scientific evidence were they working from?

One wonders whether those defending the government and manufacturers of DU munitions are aware of the related facts. That of the 53,000 servicemen/women who were stationed in the Gulf, 5,000 are recorded as suffering illnesses including leukaemia and that there have since been 521 deaths.

Are they aware that British and US tank ammunition alone during the Gulf War contained 55,000 lbs of depleted uranium? That 300,000 rounds of depleted uranium rounds were fired during the Gulf War, or that levels of irradiated particles in the air above Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are 20 times higher than over Baghdad?

Researcher Dr Chris Busby found that urine samples taken from Gulf War vets showed that mass spectrometry tests revealed soldiers inhaling dust received doses of up to 778 millisieverts, not the 20-30 claimed by the MoD and suggested as being “of no cause for concern”.

Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, revealed that DU particles stayed in the lungs for 10-20 years and that 10,500 of Britain’s Gulf War personnel could develop fatal cancers. He further warned that thousands of people living near the firing ranges in Britain and the factories producing the DU munitions were likewise at risk of contamination.

The present government position is that there is no case for an enquiry because they refuse to acknowledge any evidence of a significant risk to personnel. The Health and Safety Executive are supposedly monitoring of ranges in Britain, but as their findings are of ringing no alarm bells their level of monitoring can be seriously questioned.

The most the 19 NATO ambassadors will agree to is a working party to coordinate information on DU shells. Reluctant to conduct their own enquiry, they have passed the task over to the UN who they believe are better equipped to deal with the matter, not least because the UN is largely controlled by the US. However, better late than never, they have since demanded that 11 of the 112 sites NATO have pointed them at be cordoned off.

The underlying factor of course is costs. A clean-up operation in Bosnia and the Gulf would, it is estimated, run into $trillions, not to mention the cost in compensation to the military and civilian population involved.

Moreover, the DU shells are a relatively cheap and highly effective method of murder, bearing in mind the core material is a waste product, and indeed manufactured by an industry that governments do not wish to take contracts from; they exist as powerful lobbies. And which government would ever come clean and admit to error? That so much of the evidence emerging pertains to the Gulf War, when the Conservative Party were in power, helps explain why they, the Tories, have not sought to make political capital out of the issue, and hasn’t Tony Blair an election on the horizon?

So we can expect the issue to be no nearer a propitious outcome in the coming months than we can expect the causes of war itself to be abolished. The lies and disinformation will counter every new revelation proving the detrimental effects of DU. For the defenders of capitalism, there is too much at stake for them to concede just one inch that maybe, just maybe, their critics are right. When it comes to counting the casualties of war, we must still be prepared to list truth right up there with them.

John Bissett

Material World: Technology, capitalism and war (2024)

The Material World column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern warfare entails the destruction of both means of production and workers themselves, as we all see on our TV screen at the moment in Gaza and Ukraine. It represents quite the opposite of any progression of our productive potential — a drastic regression — and poses a massive threat to everyone.

What we are referring to here is the technology devoted to the art of killing human beings on a potentially industrial scale and reducing their habitat to an utter wasteland. The very thought of it strikes us as repulsive and inhumane. Little wonder people feel so ambivalent about ‘technological progress’. Little wonder that, for so many, the future has come to look so bleak.

While some innovations have provided us with both benefits and disadvantages, the same most certainly cannot be said of certain other technological innovations one can think of – like, say, a Tomahawk cruise missile costing about $2 million apiece. There are thousands of Tomahawk missiles at the disposition of navies around the world, not to mention all those other kinds of missiles in service. The destruction they could inflict on the planet does not bear thinking about. One cannot even pretend that there is any real benefit to be gained from any of this — unless you count employment for workers in a factory producing such weapons as a ‘benefit’. But then, these same workers could have been far better employed producing something social useful.

There is an argument that is sometimes made that for all sheer waste of human talent and material resources that the military establishment represents, technological innovation in the service of this establishment has had important spinoffs that benefit us all. According to NATO’s website, for instance:

‘Our militaries have one paramount duty: to keep us safe from any threat. Over the years, countless inventors from NATO countries have created new technologies, big and small, that contribute to that ultimate goal. The spill-over effects of this innovation are all around us and have laid the foundations of our modern world. NATO has supported science and innovation for more than 70 years. The Alliance not only provides direct funding to researchers, but also maintains networks that bring together thousands of scientists from around the world to collaborate and build on each other’s work. Military innovation in science and technology has helped to create some of the most iconic and essential items in our streets, offices and homes. Here are seven of the most interesting inventions pioneered and popularised by NATO militaries that are now common in everyday life’.

The article then goes on to list the more well-known inventions initially intended for military purposes, such as the internet, GPS satellite navigation, microwaves, duct tape and so on, plus a much longer list of ‘honourable mentions’ only cursorily referred to.

If this is not an example of special pleading then one wonders what else it could possibly be. Reading this, one might be forgiven for having overlooked that NATO, like any other military bloc, is a huge killing machine that consumes massive quantities of resources and manpower for the purpose of waging war. How is that a socially beneficial use of resources and manpower? Satellite navigation is great if you want to find the shortest route from A to B. But satellite navigation can also deliver a Tomahawk missile to its intended destination resulting in appalling destruction and lives lost. That is not so great.

The spurious reasoning in the NATO piece lies in the apparent implication that but for the existence of the military establishment we wouldn’t have at our disposal something like that handy roll of duct tape to seal our leaking pipe. But who is to say this would be the case at all? It seems presumptuous to make such a claim. Maybe someone would well have invented duct tape or, indeed, something superior to duct tape had there not been any capitalist nation states around or military establishments built up to defend them. One might also note in passing that every military establishment claims its role is purely ‘defensive’ but obviously this cannot be the case otherwise wars would never have occurred in the first place.

The potential for war, however, does not exist because we just happen to possess the means of waging war. On the contrary it is wired into the very system of global capitalism that created these means. Since the so-called Great War of 1914-18, dubbed the ‘war to end all wars’, there has not been a single day when there has not been a war going on somewhere in the world.

War is the military expression of capitalism´s competitive struggle over resources, markets and trade routes where other methods of securing these things have failed. This is notwithstanding attempts to rationalise or justify this conflict in terms of supposedly irreconcilable religious or ethnic or whatever other differences one can conjure up between the warring parties concerned. That, however, is just the froth on the surface of things — the whipped-up pretext for war, rather than its fundamental cause. Dig deeper and you will always find an ulterior, economic motive.

Robin Cox

The Cynicism of Capitalism: 2: Partners Wanted (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The company’s prospectus is a colourful document of orange, red, yellow and gold paper. Pages are perforated by cut-outs of hearts. If all this seems a bit unusual, the prospectus offering is more so, as The Guardian (17th January) revealed. It is an invitation to the West German public by Kohle Liengeschaften to purchase limited partnership in an operation currently consisting of brothels in Konstanz, a town on Germany’s Swiss border, and Kaiserslautern which is near Mannheim and a NATO base.

“The oldest profession in the world is also the solidest,” the Company says on the cover of the prospectus. And an accompanying letter to potential investors suggests that purchasing a partnership in the enterprise “is an investment worth while because Irma La Douce never has a recession.”

The profession may have been around for a long time but it is believed that the Kohle venture is the first time capital has been publicly — and legally — raised in West Germany for an enterprise of this kind. And the financial enticements are substantial since the company is guaranteeing a minimum annual return of 9 per cent. “This is a better investment than stock,” asserts Herr Kohle, founder and managing director.

In Germany prostitution is considered a social necessity. The administration generally approves the existence of bordellos on the ground that they keep prostitutes off the streets (brothel bedrooms are officially referred to as places of work). So accepted is the profession in fact that there is even a slickly-written travel guide to West German brothels and red-light districts that lists each house and its location on a city-by-city basis and rates the house according to parking facilities, prices, service and amenities.

Prostitution is not a new venture for Kohle Liengeschaften. The real estate operation currently derives its income from renting small apartments to prostitutes and from concessionaires such as the night-club operators at the Kaiserslautern facility. The company, Herr Kohle emphasises, receives no direct part of any prostitutes earnings. Herr Kohle says that there are currently forty-seven “lady tenants” at Kaiserslautern and thirty-five at Konstanz. Generally, he says, a girl stays for three or four years. How long she stays usually depends upon whether she is making money and whether she feels secure.

The brothels are advantageously situated. The Kaiserslautern operation is the only one of its kind near the NATO base, while the Konstanz operation is near a casino and just across the border from Switzerland, where prostitution is illegal. The brothels’ “lady tenants” are checked by the management for police records, among other things. "We don’t take all the girls who apply,” Herr Kohle says. “For example, we don’t want wild women.” The girls, he adds, come from all over Europe. In return, the girls sign rental contracts for an indefinite period. In addition to protection, Herr Kohle says the company also provides apartments at Kaiserslautern where the girls’ relatives can stay when they visit. He adds that the company is also considering construction of a separate facility next year at Kaiserslautern for children of the prostitutes. These features, Herr Kohle says, offer the girls some security and "take some of the harshness out of the profession”.

Herr Kohle’s “new style” operations have borne financial fruit. So far nearly £600,000 in limited partnerships has been purchased by 120 to 130 investors. The limited partnerships are sold in £5,500 units. However, to attract the small investor and to provide anonymity, several investors may each put up £550 and pool their investments to make the minimum for a partnership unit. According to its prospectus, Kohle Liengeschaften is currently offering equity capital equivalent to £1 million or about £150,000 less than the estimated market value of the two properties. By the end of 1973 the company hopes to have eight brothels in Germany and Austria. To reach this goal he says about £4.5 million will have to be raised.

The company is advertising in newspapers and is selling partnerships through investment consultants and through its own sales office, which includes some former IOS Mutual Fund salesmen. Herr Kohle is a 43-year- old entrepreneur who is also in the construction and investment business and says that he put together Kohle Liengeschaften because "there was still room for adventure” in his life. He says he is optimistic about the future of the venture. “Prostitution has weathered all the storms over the past 2,000 years without a crisis and I don’t see one now unless the human race changes,” he says.

Here we have an example of the mentality that views all things as commodities, including the female sexual capacity. The brothel in this case is the market place, the buyers desirous males. Herr Kohle need fear no change in the human race, but he has left out of his calculation the fact that a section of the human race — the working-class section — will change conditions and, as a consequence, will change the behaviour of the human race. This is a change that will remove the commodity status from society and thus eliminate all forms of prostitution — and prevent the likes of him from exploiting women.

R. Ambridge

More nationalist madness in the Balkans (2001)

From the August 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Late June and early July saw much tension in Macedonia, threatening once more to ignite nationalist hatreds that have ripped the Balkans apart now for almost a decade.

It was uncannily ironic that as Yugoslavia was sending former president Slobodan Milosevic to stand trial in The Hague on war crimes, a mob of 5,000 Macedonian protestors, including police, soldiers and reservists, stormed their parliament and forced president Boris Trajkovski flee in fear of his life. His crime? He had agreed to a Western brokered cease-fire with Albanian rebels and also allowed NATO to ferry rebel fighters to safety from a village they had captured six miles away from the capital Skopje. Not only was the mob furious that their government had signed a cease-fire with a movement that Nato’s own command had labelled “terrorists” and “murderers”, but here was the West once again coming to the aid of insurgents.

Ostensibly, the Albanian rebels claim to be only interested in winning equal civil rights for Albanians and constitutional changes. This however is no civil rights movement. If so, then why the armed insurgents and why do they call themselves the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA)? The answer is simple, they are nationalists bent on creating a greater Albania. They are after territorial gain and control of the porous borders which show a fair profit in drugs and arms smuggling and the lucrative trade in “illegal” immigrants. Violence and guerrilla warfare as practised by the NLA is not normally the stuff of “civil-rights” movements, which generally pursue a non-violent agenda. It is the remit of liberation forces intent on wresting territory from its present owners. What has prompted the NLA to pass themselves off as a “civil-rights” movement is NATO’s refusal to redraw the borders of the Balkans.

Moreover, why do they launch attacks on government forces? Simple – they hope to incur a heavy-handed response from Macedonian forces which would win them support from Macedonia’s Albanian population, who perhaps need a little egging on, bearing in mind their social and economic gripes, and from Kosovo – Albanians and Albania itself. They have further counted on benefiting from a similar situation when their parent organisation, the KLA, incurred such a harsh and brutal response from Serb forces that NATO was forced to intervene on behalf of the Albanians in 1998.

The risk of all-out war is serious enough. It is feared that the mob fury could now be focused on isolated pockets of Albanians in Macedonia (they make up one third of the population) now that Trajkovski has agreed to the temporary EU brokered cease-fire. At present the rebels have captured areas of territory in the west of the country and have cut off water and electricity supplies, further inciting Macedonian hard-liners in Skopje to demand armed intervention – a situation made all the worse with the rebels threatening to descend on Skopje to protect Albanians living there.

Chief protagonists of the Macedonian Slav majority, including Prime Minister Ljubco Georevski still hanker after a ham-fisted solution to the problem and perhaps the fact that the government has recently taking delivery of eight new attack aircraft – doubling the size of its air force – and that Georgevbski’s VMRO-DPMNE political party have recently handed out automatic weapons to 2000 reservists suggests they are not putting much faith in a peaceful solution to the crisis. If Macedonian Slavs, tired at the slow pace of a settlement in their favour, frustrated with the unchecked gains of the rebels, decide to even the score and attack ethnic Albanian areas, this will most certainly witness the beginning of a new wave of civil war.

 A political settlement however is still on the cards, with negotiators from the EU and NATO having set an unofficial deadline for a peaceful solution, which would then pave the way for British, French, Italian and Greek soldiers to take part in a mission to disarm Albanian rebels. The cease-fire, signed by the heads of the Macedonian army and police force as well as the NLA, consists of two linked agreements – one between the NLA and NATO and the other between the Macedonian forces and NATO, with the NLA agreeing to disarm if a political settlement can be reached.

Critics, meanwhile, warn that by acknowledging the NLA as a legitimate protagonist in debates about Macedonia’s future, the West has effectively conceded the carving up of Macedonia along ethnic lines – and this is cold comfort for Macedonian nationalists and the paramilitary groups now springing up and arguing for the expulsion of Albanians from Macedonia’s mixed communities. Many Macedonians still remain distrustful of the US, who they see as pro-Albanian following the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and are contemptuous of any Western-designed solution.

Little surprise, then, that Balkan analysts see only a deteriorating situation and one that can’t be solved by further Western solutions that sparked the storming of the Macedonian parliament.

To date the present conflict has not been as bloody as previous Balkan disagreements, but it has nevertheless resulted in 100,000 refugees who represent perhaps 5 percent of the population. It is perhaps too early to predict events in the coming weeks in Macedonia. Whilst nationalism, like the disease it is, can be diagnosed, there remains no immediate prognosis. For it feeds on fear and insecurity, alienation and ignorance which themselves can lead to irrational passions and attempts at quick-fix and spontaneous violent attempts at remedy which always prove counterproductive and detrimental to all concerned.

Nationalist conflict has raged for 10 long years in the Balkans. What, in all honesty, have any of the victors gained? What is the “independence” they yearn after, if it means being trapped within borders – artificial constructs, no, prisons – inside of the bigger prison of capitalism?

John Bissett

SALT in the wounds (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the post-war struggle between East and West to establish spheres of economic and political influence, global networks of alliances have been sealed with aid in the form of arms and supportive technology. The foreign policies of the two major powers have been essentially nothing more than preparations for war. While direct confrontation has been avoided, opportunities to test the kill-effectiveness of their respective arsenals have not been lacking. The first thirty years of the United Nations saw 119 wars waged on the territories of 69 countries, involving 81 states, with a total duration of conflict exceeding 350 years and at a cost of tens of millions of casualties. The invitation of nominally independent, but in fact puppet, governments has been invoked to justify the presence of American and Russian armed forces in the Third World. An increase in the number of wars fought by proxy on foreign soil and the spread and strengthening of capitalism through nationalist movements and new states are responsible for the huge increase in conventional armament expenditure in the last decade.

Seventy million men and women are now fully engaged, directly or indirectly, in capitalism’s military programmes. Spending on ‘defence’, including research and development, has trebled in real terms since 1948 and now accounts for more than 7 per cent, of total world output, a figure representing the combined incomes of almost half the world’s population. No sharp contrast is evident between the general conditions of the Cold War and Detente eras; in fact, as far as actual war is concerned the latter is the more violent. The major powers have nevertheless gone to some trouble to ensure a truly lasting world peace. We have witnessed a considerably more polite use of diplomatic language and the number of nuclear weapons rise to 40,000, a figure exceeding the level of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). With fire strength increased a millionfold since ‘Little Boy’ fell on Hiroshima, present stockpiles are sufficient to annihilate the total world population a little over 690 times.

It was against this background that in June a United Nations Special Session on Disarmament was convened in New York (a monastic gathering to chat about the sanctity of life) and NATO heads of state at a Washington summit decided upon substantial military reinforcement in Europe.

The Big X-Ray

In April and May tentative agreement was reached in Moscow on the terms of the second SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty intended for signature next winter. We can safely state that its concern will not be with reduction of nuclear weapons, but the setting out of marginal differences in their increase. According to a spokesman from Washington’s Arms Control and Disarmament Agency the treaty ‘will not prevent the United States from doing anything that it would otherwise have wanted to do’ (Guardian, 28 April); the quantity of nuclear warheads ‘permitted’ by 1985 will be at least double that of 1974. On 8 May, when nobody was looking, the two sides adjourned indefinitely quite separate talks in Geneva on banning radiological and mass destruction weapons.

Seven thousand nuclear warheads are deployed in Western Europe and half that number, but with considerably higher yields, behind the Iron Curtain. The strategy of massive nuclear retaliation has fallen out of favour as the capabilities of both sides have increased and underground and submarine based delivery systems introduced. United States policy in the event of a (much discussed) Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg is that attempts should be made to restrict the war to Europe, using tactical nuclear weapons (‘the theatre nuclear rung of NATOs ladder of flexible response by controlled escalation’ as the military would put it — or calculated genocide in English). The concept of ‘limited’ war, with homelands as sanctuaries and Europe as the graveyard, has not surprisingly found little support among political victims. This scenario has been played out in five NATO nuclear war games in the last two years, with victory being secured at the expense of Europe and the copyright sold to Waddington’s.

In 1977 American military strategists, concerned at the increased ground attack capability of Eastern block forces and inspired by the President’s Human Rights campaign, enthusiastically adopted the neutron bomb. What endeared the device to them was its ‘increased kill capability, principally against personnel’ (US Defence Department spokesman) and relative sparing of property. Radiation emitted on impact would penetrate the armour of advancing tanks and kill cleanly those within a mile radius; after the crumbling off the skin, several days of spontaneous internal bleeding would be faced before death. The weapon could wipe out Russian armoured divisions in St. Peter’s Square without harming the Pope or damaging the Sistine chapel. Thus, not only would Christian civilisation survive, but the clearing away of bodies rather than the rubble of cities would mean significant savings. In short, a really effective labour killing and labour saving device. The diplomatic heat generated by the warhead’s proposed deployment led however to its temporary shelving; in June the United States Senate authorised procurement of components for its manufacture in 1979.

American capitalism’s investment has in the past few decades been increasingly transferred to ‘developed’ regions rather than raw material and extractive operations. Its vast investment in European industries, unsuccessful military intervention in Vietnam, and concern at the modernisation and expansion of Warsaw Pact forces (they are unsportingly weakening ‘NATOs historic qualitative advantage’) explain the desire to re-establish military credibility. At NATOs summit meeting members of the alliance agreed on an eighty million dollar increase in military spending for 1979 and outlined plans to bolster the morale of combat troops and patch up the southern flank. Calls were made to expand NATOs traditional military role, particularly to include Africa, where super power involvement is naturally discussed in terms of ideology rather than economic interest. On occasion however the military is liable to express clearly capitalism’s priorities, and in the week of the summit the last chairman of NATOs Military Committee stated:

The Allies are united in their detestation of the South African Government . . . but . . . South Africa produces three quarters of the West’s gold, she has three quarters of the world’s known reserves of chrome and is second only to the Soviet Union in its production, she has a similar share in industrial diamonds, and is second only to the United States in the production of uranium. All these undeniable facts make it mandatory for the Alliance to devise adequate defence of the Cape.

(Sir Peter Hill-Norton No Soft Options: the Politico-Military Realities of NATO)

Standardisation of arms equipment was also on the summit agenda, providing an example of possible conflicts of interest within the western capitalist class. Although its need is generally accepted, standardisation could mean a loss of home development and production programmes by some countries, leading to a loss of technological expertise and profits from arms exports.

Meanwhile, back at the UN Disarmament Session the main Soviet speaker Gromyko was radiating goodness and light, calling for an end to the production of nuclear weapons and the complete destruction of nuclear stockpiles. President Carter sent film actor Paul Newman along, John Wayne being indisposed. Those awake were treated to a brief repetition of the Soviet government’s views on unpleasant wars and cruel weapons of mass destruction; they very much favour old fashioned mass destruction and humane devices like their own chemical warheads.

The peculiarities of the Soviet language were further illustrated in two recent documents. In a letter sent to President Carter by Russian scientists, we read that "for the first time in human history, favourable conditions have been created for concerted international measures to curb the arms race” and learn of a “disarmament campaign which progressive forces around the world have been waging for years” (Soviet Weekly, 25 March). The architect of the Russian Navy, Admiral Gorschkov puts it in a slightly different way however:

Soviet naval power, merely a minor defensive arm in 1953, has become the optimum means to defeat the imperialist enemy, and the most important element in the Soviet arsenal to prepare the way for a communised world.

(The Sea Power of the State, Moscow 1977)

This confusion of peace with war is not an easy mistake to make. The Soviet Union has 87 strategic nuclear powered and 286 conventional submarines, with an armoury of 845 nuclear missiles. They have not been sitting back contemplating their naval strength either. The tank force has increased from 47,000 to 60,000 in ten years, 4,600 combat planes are deployed on the Eastern front lines and 3.67 million people are under arms or engaged in support activities. The Soviets are also planning a new intercontinental missile family for the late 1980s.

The recognition that war may be suicide does not affect the drive towards a new world war. To argue, as would the liberal, that arms production and trade arc a cancer on the body politic is to misunderstand the nature of society. Militarism is a natural growth of capitalism. Armament expenditure offers the liberal a convenient explanation of world poverty; the transfer of ‘scare resources’ and money to areas of need is viewed as simply a question of will. In fact under capitalism war is the extension and consequence of underlying international conflict in trade and other spheres, and for the ruling class arms are essential for the maintenance of their privileged position and defence of their interests against rival states. Indeed in some cases, greater economic aid could result in radical changes in the economic and social structure of developing nations and so lead to the overthrow of political alliances favourable to the superpowers.

There is evidence of a strong association between high military spending, high rates of industrial growth and foreign dependence. The rise of weapons system armies coincides with the beginning of industrialisation and the need to create or preserve a social structure in which economic expansion can take place. The overwhelming part of aid received by underdeveloped nations consists of military assistance. Although Third World defence industries are growing in size and becoming more widespread, international trade in arms remains the chief source of major weapons. America and the Soviet Union have captured, respectively, 38 per cent. and 34 per cent. of the conventional arms market, with Britain and France bringing up the rear. In the Middle East, with its resources vital for the economic expansion of the major powers, arms spending has now increased at an annual rate of 22 per cent. since 1965, compared with 15 per cent. in Asia and Africa. Iran has one of the world’s most sophisticated defence systems and in May signed a protocol with the British Government which could lead to the latter’s biggest ever arms contract — £750 million.

Force has played an essential role in the process of economic and social change throughout history, the particular form of force reflecting its social setting. Whereas formerly the weapon was the instrument of the soldier, the soldier now appears to be the instrument of the weapons system, reflecting the importance of machines in society as a whole and minimising the possibility of individual action. Developments in electronics are rapidly rendering weapons platforms, aircraft carriers and tanks vulnerable and completely depersonalising the killing between enemies at war.

The barbarism of the Twentieth century cannot be explained in terms of conflicting ideologies of malevolent leaders and nothing is more fallacious than the idea that increases in knowledge and the progress of what is called civilisation bring with them increased social harmony. The sterility and waste of capitalism are laid bare in its wars — men fall in their millions that shares might rise.

Melvin Tenner

Letters: Legal war? (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Legal war?

Dear Editors,

I am horrified to watch that NATO are waging war on Yugoslavia without declaring war, in fact, no UN Resolution was passed by the Security Council permitting NATO’s barbaric bombing of Serbia.

I do not condone ethnic cleansing anywhere on this planet, equally I cannot condone Anglo-American-led NATO International Gangsterism in the Third World, getting one country or religion against another and promoting proxy wars for hegemonistic goals.

The Western alliance which arrogantly describes itself as the “International Community” has now embarked on a multi-faceted aggressive campaign to bring Iraq, Yugoslavia and other Third World countries to their knees.

Curiously, Russia and China, permanent members of the Security Council of the UN, are not being consulted; on the contrary they are being rebuffed. China is more interested in her world-wide economic interest and as such China is not challenging the Anglo-American aggressive designs anywhere. The US has become the UN and Kofi Annan its General Secretary, is reduced to an American stooge.

I often ask myself: what have we done to deserve this. “New World Order” or more appropriately “New World Disorder”, especially after the ending of the Cold War.

Is this what is called the “Ethical Dimension” of foreign policy? The self-appointed “International Community” has become judge and jury and executioner.

In the political dictionary, the word “imperialism” is out of style but the barbaric bombing in Serbia, Yugoslavia tells us that “imperialism” is alive and kicking, bullying, intimidating, bombing and killing small nations of the third world.

Avtar Pabla, 

Coventry  

Reply:

It is true that, unless they conform to the UN Charter, wars are technically illegal under international law. Yet even since it was adopted in 1946, wars have gone on in some part of the world, the biggest of which, the Korean War, was waged under the UN flag. This merely illustrates what Socialists have always argued, that peace treaties are merely worthless scraps of paper. We have never placed any confidence in the UN as a means of stopping war. As wars are caused by the rivalry between capitalist states over markets, trade routes, investment outlets and raw materials that is built into capitalism, only the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by the world-wide system of common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit can do that- Editors.  

Mistaken identity

Dear Editors,

I can’t work out your rationale on Serbia—Stop the bombing!!—Stop the bombing!! And? Then what? Count how many hundreds and thousands of Albanian Kosovan refugees have been forced out of their homes?

Count how many unmarked, mass, civilian Albanian Kosovan graves are currently being filled over by Serb tractors?

Count how many Albanian Kosovan women, young and old, have mysteriously “disappeared” into “Serb safekeeping”?

Count how many Albanian Kosovan houses, shops, workplaces, villages and small towns have been left in smoking ruins by the Serb military?

Count how many mines the Serb authorities are placing around all the Kosovo borders so that Albanian Kosovans “who have nothing to fear” can feel safe and wanted in their own country?

Is this the same SPGB who claim to be on the side of the oppressed and powerless? Supporting the demands of one of the most brutal, right-wing, authoritarian, unreconstructed, military regimes in Western Europe? With the Serbs’ proven track record in Bosnia and Croatia over the last 10 years?

Shame on you?

“Uncle Vladimir”, 

London N16

Reply:

Although we are in favour of the immediate stopping of all wars, i.e. of the killing of innocent workers on both sides, the posters you have seen proclaiming “Stop the Bombing” have not been put up by us, but by some Trotskyist group which is no doubt supporting Serbia as the lesser evil in the current NATO-Serbia war. So your criticism is misdirected. Besides, of course, as V.I. Lenin you may be their uncle but you’re no relation of ours.

And just because we don’t support the NATO bombing campaign does not mean that we therefore support the Serbian army. We are against both sides, Serbian capitalism as well as NATO imperialism who are fighting over an issue—who should control the territories of the former Yugoslavia—which is not worth the sacrifice of a single worker’s life- Editors.  

“Socialism” or what?

Dear Editors,

Your pathetic reply to Paul Azzario’s letter (April Socialist Standard) illustrates quite convincingly the need to change the name of the party.

When the “S” word is propagated by Socialists, the bemused recipients will have mental pictures triggered of anything stretching from the Labour Party, the “Socialist” countries via Russia’s Soviet past. Surely, even you must admit that nearly 100 years of dedicated slog, has produced no discernible dent in the solid front of political ignorance.

Socialist propaganda goes in and out of the mind with the greatest of ease, because actual examples of Socialism in action are difficult to point to, thus the mind has nothing to work on.

Whatever Socialists do, life will be difficult, so I am suggesting that they try “Lateral Thinking” to assist in getting around part of the problem.

At the moment Socialists use “Direct Thinking”!, e.g. we are “Socialists”! and refuse to change our name no matter how great the confusion! It is the “Charge of the Light Brigade” mentality, the ruinous head-on clash! We count the few survivors and honour them but we are no nearer to Socialism.

Why not attack from the flank. Disarm the enemy by changing your name and use only meaningful words, where others cannot follow. E.g. “One World, Free Access to Everything Produced”. This is a bit of a mouthful, but it is pure Socialism, where no-one else can follow!

I am sure that a competent wordsmith can improve on such a heading, which cuts out all mistaken ideas associated with that “S” word. Supporters of Blair, Benn, Yeltsin, Castro, Trotsky and others will have the ground cut from beneath their feet and be forced to start thinking positively—for the first time.

Sam Levitt, 

London NW3

Editorial: The Balkan War (1999)

Editorial from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again European cities are being bombed. Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be the lot of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe. Now full-scale war has returned to Europe. The illusion that permanent peace and prosperity is possible under capitalism has been shattered.

The NATO bombing raids on Yugoslavia are aimed not just at direct military targets but at the industrial infrastructure of power stations, fuel depots, factories, chemical plants, roads, railways and bridges which serve civilian purposes as well as supplying the Serbian military machine. All this represents the destruction of useful wealth. As Socialists have always said, war means social regression.

But is it sometimes necessary? Although we are not pacifists (we would countenance fighting should a pro-capitalist minority take up arms to try to prevent the democratic establishment of socialism) we say there is no such thing as a “just war”. Wars are fought over markets, investment outlets, raw material sources and trade routes and strategic points to control them.

The present Balkan War is no different. It is a continuation of the process that started in 1991 when Slovenia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, in which the stake has been: who shall control the territories of the former Yugoslavia—Serbia or the West, in particular Germany?

When “communism” (in reality state capitalism) collapsed, the NATO powers had a choice. Let the Serbian ruling class continue to maintain order and stability in the area so that trading and profit-making there could continue normally. Or apply the principle of “national self-determination” in the hope that a collection of smaller, more “ethnically pure” states would provide greater stability.

Reunited Germany, with its historic enemy Russia on its knees, was able to revive its ambitions in Eastern and Central Europe and it led the way in working for the break-up of Yugoslavia so that it, rather than Serbia, could dominate the area. First Slovenia, then Croatia, then Bosnia, then Macedonia broke away or rather were broken away. The result, however, has not been stability. Quite the reverse, with only a NATO army of occupation maintaining a fragile peace in Bosnia and eastern Croatia.

And now Kosovo. Serbia claims that it is fighting to retain Kosovo because this is the cradle of “Serbian civilisation”, but there is more at stake than the bones of Prince Lazar. As retired Canadian Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded UN troops in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo, has pointed out: “Quite frankly, they want the northern half of Kosovo. That’s where the mines and natural resources are” (Times Colonist, Victoria, 26 March). There has been speculation in the media that this may be the compromise that will emerge once the killings and bombings have stopped: the partition of Kosovo with Serbian forces controlling an ethnically-cleansed north and a NATO army of occupation looking after the impoverished refugees in the south.

Faced with this latest manifestation of capitalist barbarity and cynicism we once again place on record our abhorrence of all war and call upon workers everywhere to unite to bring the war-prone capitalist system to a speedy end.