World View: Nuclear Testing (1996)

From the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

China’s nuclear test on 8 June sparked off a wave of protest. Greenpeace sent one of its ships to Shanghai. Demonstrators gathered outside Chinese embassies in Asia and Europe. Socialists are opposed to all weapon tests of any kind by any government but we know that governments don’t take any notice of protests.

They can't allow themselves to as under capitalism, where all states compete against each other for profits and spheres of influences, might is right. All capitalist states (and China is a capitalist state) must seek to arm themselves with the most effective weapons they can afford, including weapons of mass destruction like nuclear bombs.

The test ban treaty, which China says it will sign when its current series of tests is over is just a cynical move by the nuclear powers to maintain their monopoly of this particular weapon of mass destruction. Possessing nuclear weapons gives them an advantage which they don’t want any more of their rivals to possess. They won’t give up their nuclear bombs and missiles but they want to stop other states developing them. There will never be nuclear disarmament under capitalism so the threat of a nuclear war will exist as long as capitalism does.

Socialism is opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions that breed war. It is a new form of society in which the people of the world will work harmoniously together for their mutual benefit, for there will be no privilege, property or profit to cause enmity. No coercion will be needed because each part of the world will gain from co-operating harmoniously with the rest. With the establishment of socialism, i.e. a worldwide system without frontiers where the means of production and distribution are held in common and things are produced solely in order to meet human needs, war will disappear and humanity will have taken the first step out of the jungle.

Some anti-nuclear protesters, while agreeing that capitalism is the cause of war in the modern world, maintain that although a new social organisation may be necessary, a nuclear war would prevent the establishment of this, perhaps for all time, and therefore the anti-nuclear movement should be given priority over socialism.

This argument is logically unsound. It assumes that which has yet to be demonstrated. It pre-supposes that such a campaign will be able to prevent a nuclear war occurring. But for it to “succeed” it would have to have a majority of people who were opposed unconditionally to nuclear weapons, in the major countries of the world. These majorities would have to be prepared to oppose their own ruling classes, to put aside all, nationalistic feeling and be immune from all attempts of their rulers to influence them during periods of international crisis and tension.

Is it possible that such internationalist solidarity could be achieved by a movement which would be composed of so many fundamentally diverse elements and which lacked any clear conception of an alternative to our inhuman social system, No, only a revolutionary socialist consciousness could ensure such a united unshakeable attitude and in that event the question of opposition to nuclear weapons alone would be redundant.

Our view is that there is no way out of the contemporary dilemma other than by the building of a new kind of society. Socialists re-affirm the supreme relevance of Marx's classic exhortation—Workers of All Countries—Unite!

Chapter Five: Reforms At Election Time (1984)

From Samuel Leight's book, The Futility of Reformism

About 2½ weeks prior to the Mid-term General Election, during a televised speech on October 14, 1982 President Reagan, our leader at the helm, in a supposed non-partisan report on the economy, urged:

“We can do it, my fellow Americans, by staying the course.”

Meanwhile, below decks, the working class were at the oars and 11.6 million unemployed American workers were overboard in the high seas attempting to survive.

The candidates were all united on one basic issue—capitalism was unquestionably acceptable, but adjustments were needed and proper leadership was necessary. The reformist programs verified that the system was in no jeopardy whatsoever. The “leaders,” all apparently endowed with superior talents at problem-solving, masqueraded as opponents representing different ideologies that professed disagreements but maintained an unspoken alliance on fundamentals. The political stage-setting was customary; all items were concerned with the running of capitalism, while none stood for the interests of the working class.

Both the Republican and Democratic Parties echoed the same refrain of cutting down the federal deficits, keeping a hold on taxes and limiting governmental powers. A third candidate for the U.S. Senate race in Arizona came from the Libertarian Party. He sported an unconventional beard and ponytail, but appearances are no indication of revolutionary thinking. The Libertarian Party’s main thrust is to reform capitalism by attempting to curtail government interference until it eventually declines and is no longer needed. However, as they are not suggesting a replacement with socialism this notion becomes outlandish wishful thinking.

There were a total of 237 statewide ballot measures in 42 states with the Nuclear Freeze as the most common issue, followed by the Environment with four Western states seemingly concerned that the landscapes should not be sullied with discarded cans and bottles. Crime was also a prominent topic, and there were 27 ballot items dealing with taxes.

The State of Arizona had various measures on the General Election Ballot, submitted for voter approval or rejection. They ranged from establishing deposits and refunds for certain beverage containers, to a “nuclear freeze” proposal allied to a declaration of a “Peace Sunday.” The nine propositions were all described in a Publicity Pamphlet issued by the State of Arizona, typical of political trivia that was presented country-wide. The nuclear freeze issue was subsequently approved in 8 out of 9 states, with Arizona being the sole dissenter. Other specific issues included the regulation of ambulances and ambulance services; prohibiting bail for persons charged with or convicted of a felony who pose a danger to society; an amendment relating to the compensation of state elective and judicial officers; tax exemption for certain property in slum or blighted areas; the composition of the State Board of Education; establishing a system of permitting registration of voters at the time and place where they apply for a drivers license; and a recommendation by the Commission on Salaries for Elected State Officers to increase the salaries of Legislators.

All these propositions, were they to be approved or disapproved, bear no relevance to any of the real problems that beset propertyless workers, beleaguered with unemployment, insecurity, poverty and war. They constitute an enticement to the unwary to become involved in piddling non-issues.

The text of Proposition 201, dealing with the Nuclear Freeze issue, reads as follows:

“Be it enacted by the people of the State of Arizona:

Section I:Text of Transmittal. The governor shall prepare and transmit on or before December 1, 1982 the following communication to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and all members of the United States Congress:

  ‘The People of the State of Arizona recognizing that the safety and security of the United States must be paramount in the concerns of the American people, and further recognizing that our national security is reduced, not increased, by the growing danger of a nuclear holocaust between the United States and the Soviet Union which would result in millions of deaths of people in Arizona and throughout the nation; do hereby urge that the Government of the United States propose to the Government of the Soviet Union that both countries agree to immediately halt the testing, production and further deployment of all nuclear weapons, missiles and delivery systems in a way that can be checked and verified by both sides.’

Section 2: Peace Sunday — The Governor of the State of Arizona shall declare the last Sunday in May of each year to be Peace Sunday for the purpose of remembering those who died in combat, and to encourage the people of the State of Arizona to work for peace.”

Proposition 201 was accompanied by various arguments “for” and one “against.” The pro-argument given by the Phoenix Chapter of Business Alert to Nuclear War was unbelievably insensitive and tasteless with its heading in bold print: “Nuclear War And The Arms Race Is Bad For Business.” Immediately following this absurdity the first sentence reads as follows:

“The most profound result of accelerating our nuclear arms race is the eventual destruction of our people and our society, along with our business-economic system.”

Granted that the sequence in the sentence places “people” before the “business-economic system,” but to even mention the destruction of the system, and to apparently mourn its passing, in the same context of a catastrophe that could eliminate humanity, gives an insight into the warped approach that some supporters of capitalism possess. To discover such sentiments within a government publication would pre-suppose a sympathetic reaction from the powers-that-be. Of one thing you can be sure—socialist attitudes were not aired. Many religious groups were in evidence along with various bodies and individuals all clamoring for peace; arguing that with the present build-up of nuclear weapons “enough is enough,” and “the freeze is the first step.”

The argument against a Nuclear Freeze has been the assertion from President Reagan and his supporters that the U.S.S.R. is ahead of the U.S.A. in its nuclear power, and they want a verifiable reduction in arms to equal levels, prior to a freeze; coupled with the problem of appropriately being able to monitor Russian weapon development.

The whole question is insoluble, impractical and a complete waste of time. First, the colossal build-up of nuclear armaments has already been accomplished, it is a fait accompli. A so-called freeze will do absolutely nothing to diminish the potential for destruction that already exists. Second, the cause of war is inherent within capitalism—this is a chronic condition that is both irremovable and incurable as long as the system survives. Given a society organized as a gigantic market place, wars will continue to be fought over private property and related issues when diplomacy and negotiations fail. The big question is: will the “small” wars continue on a daily basis, as they have for decades, or will they be interrupted by a worldwide nuclear disaster? At the present time the U.S.A and the U.S.S.R. have the capability of destroying life on earth many times over. We are therefore being asked to sanctify the existing nightmare by calling a halt to further advancement of the madness, but at the same time doing nothing to eradicate the cause of the problem. If it were possible to introduce a so-called nuclear freeze tomorrow the conditions that could activate World War III would still remain—in fact, they always will until the system is removed. Incidentally, it was estimated in 1976 by the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that within nine years about 35 countries will be able to manufacture atomic weapons. China joined the nuclear “club” in 1968; Britain, France and India are “members,” and many other nations may already have the weapons in their possession. The situation, therefore, becomes a global one, not limited exclusively to the two major powers, or for that matter within their control.

A “freeze” on nuclear armament production would be “bad business” for certain arms manufacturers; good business for the capitalist class as a whole who would be saved substantial tax sums. It would not change the status of the working class one iota. The possibility of both classes being wiped out by a nuclear war would remain undiminished, freeze or no freeze.

Crying out for peace, joining in peace marches, creating peace movements, deploring the nuclear build-up and writing pleading letters to heads of governments, are all activities that are useless from a practical standpoint because they ignore the cause of war. They are always fully manned by the reformists and supporters of capitalism—the culprit that is never properly identified or condemned, except by the socialist. Ironically, many of the “peace proponents” in the past have broken ranks when wars occur, willing to justify their change of policy under the banners of newly discovered ideals and revitalized nationalism.

The reformists, disregarding the causes of war and the true nature of capitalism, have permitted an unprecedented arsenal of the most horrendous weapons to be created. Then, after the stock-piles acquired a grotesque over-kill capacity, they once again ply their trade with fresh reforms that will preserve the creation but hopefully would prevent its further growth. Should the so-called freeze ever take place the world would still be left as a sitting target because the nuclear weapons would not have been deactivated but would still be ever-ready to fulfill their original function should the buttons be pressed. Capitalism has so far not been able to satisfactorily solve the disposal problem of ordinary nuclear waste, let alone the elimination of nuclear armaments which are firmly established as a supposed deterrent, akin to mutual terror, ora first-strike possibility.

It can be assumed that a nuclear war, should it erupt, will not be started as a result of democratic procedures, but will occur either through a surprise first strike initiative or through some kind of miscalculation or technical error—unlikely, but still a possibility, “Peace Sundays” and “Nuclear Freezes” notwithstanding. Further, according to the 1982-83 edition of Jane’s Weapons Systems, a London-based military survey, war in space is now feasible and aircraft-launched anti-satellite systems are the latest developments in the U.S. and Soviet arsenals, likely to destabilize the balance of power. Add to all the foregoing the existing “conventional,” germ and chemical warfare weaponry and the very contemplation of reformism as a practical solution becomes illogical and pathetically incomprehensible.

 II

Candidates for political office nation-wide discussed other issues that included unemployment, social security, crime and violence, a balanced budget, the environment, military affairs, abortion, prayer in the schools, water needs and education. Most of these questions ultimately involve decisions related to, directly or otherwise, the allocation of funds, the determination of priorities, together with the collection of revenues to defray expenditures. They are business matters concerned with the running of capitalism. When workers become involved in such considerations they abrogate their own interests in favor of their masters’.

Unemployment, referred to elsewhere, defies the rhetoric of the politicians together with the ingenuity of the professional economists. In times of world recession it assumes an international character that affects the majority of the countries, especially those that find themselves dependent upon each other for trade. The malady does not limit itself to national borders and therefore solutions are not discovered fortuitously by the candidates at election time. Capitalism always runs its course, controlling the performance of the administrators more than they would care to confess.

“Social security” is a misnomer for the reorganization of the misery and poverty of the elderly. Most receive meagre allowances at the age of 65 and, on average, survive for only a few years afterwards. The fund has reached a financial crisis with an expected need for new revenues of between $150 billion to $200 billion through the next decade, as reported by the Social Security Review Commission in November, 1982. Assuming that the system is kept afloat, it guarantees the recipients a sub-standard poverty level for their few remaining years.

When one considers the legal theft that occurs when workers produce surplus values for which no payment is given, and the legal violence unleashed by the state machine when wars are prosecuted, the illegal acts of individuals, deplorable as they might be, are put into proper focus. To discuss the pros and cons of handgun control, for example, and at the same time condone a society that can produce a nuclear war, which could destroy untold millions, is nothing short of political madness displaying topsy-turvy priorities. The imposition of stiffer penalties for crimes, the expansion of jail facilities, the attempts to control drug smuggling, are all doomed for failure. They deal only with the effects of a system that spawns anti-social behavior patterns caused primarily by antagonisms, conflicts and situations related to insecurity, poverty and private property. A study conducted by the Center for Applied Social Research at Northeastern University in Boston was published in an issue of the journal Crime & Delinquency in 1981. The study of capital punishment in New York from 1907 to 1963 indicated that the number of homicides increased slightly in the month after an execution was carried out. The researchers called the implication of their findings “ominous.” Of course, the evidence has always confirmed that punishment has never been an adequate deterrent to acts of personal violence and crime. Socialism cannot be expected to immediately eradicate 100 per cent of all forms of violence. There would certainly be no comparison, however, between the violence produced by capitalism as compared to the anti-social acts of a small minority, in socialism, who might well be genuine cases requiring medical attention, possibly hangovers from the previous era.

The Reagan administration has conceded that deficits in the Budget could crest between $150 billion to $200 billion for fiscal 1984. The politicians clamor for a balanced budget but the problem remains. This is not a working class issue—workers are challenged enough attempting to balance their own budgets, let alone those of the ruling class. It’s their system—let them figure it out, while we introduce a replacement!

Years ago the military sahibs of the British Empire, ensconced in their comfortable clubs, would delight in theoretical discussions of military maneuvers relating to past and present wars, sometimes using cruets and silverware to simulate the movements of armies. The technology of destruction has now escalated to the nuclear age. Their modern-day counterparts in the U.S. are now engrossed in the analysis of theB-1 bomber program, the contemplated MX missile horror, together with a host of other major weapons systems. Working class participation in such matters is tantamount to becoming involved in grandiose schemes for their own possible future demise. Alongside of these deadly considerations, incongruous concern is shown for “the environment” with the proper monitoring of air standards and the extension of cleanup deadlines. The reformists are intent on both a “strong America” and “a clean one.” We can only hope that the first aspiration does not, at some time, negate the second.

Abortion is a non-political issue as far as the socialist is concerned—a personal matter between the individuals, their medical advisors, and their conscience. It is presently being used by the politicians to suit their own purposes of demagoguery and hypocrisy. When politicians and priests evoke a supreme reverence for life by opposing abortion, they contradict their professed compassion and become charlatans with their support of wars and their acceptance of the conditions that give rise to them.

The educational system is under continual surveillance because it has the responsibility to produce potential workers equipped with the ability to function properly in a highly complex and technological society motivated by the profit incentive. In addition, pupils receive a nationalistic indoctrination that proves beneficial for military recruitment purposes and the prosecution of war. Currently, a minor furor has developed amongst candidates as to whether organized prayer should be allowed in schools. The socialist opposes all the supernatural, man-made fantasies of religion wherever they may occur, either inside or outside the schools. To the extent that the working class become socialist, religion will be rejected; socialist parents can then be relied upon to rebut any religious nonsense that the schools might offer.

The Los Angeles Times reported October 24, 1982 that 50 school officials recently met secretly with Attorney General George Deukmejian, the Republican candidate for Governor in California, who subsequently was returned to office. One might be deservedly skeptical of such anti-democratic procedures. However, Deukmajian did spell out to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that:

“Teacher strikes are illegal, and I will work to keep them so.”

Quite obviously the good governor is not a strong union man; neither apparently does he favor open public meetings, irrespective of the issues under discussion.

For the fourth time George Wallace was re-elected Governor of Alabama. It is interesting to recall that this apparently “reformed” segregationist and racist emerged on the national scene in 1963 when he personally blocked the school house door in an attempt to prevent federal officials from enrolling a black student in the previously segregated University of Alabama. A majority of black voters must have forgiven him, because without their support he would not have won as easily as he did, 60 per cent to 40 per cent. Apparently, in this instance, one past generation must surely have learned a lesson about bigotry which, sad to relate, was soon forgotten by another.

The final outcome of the election from the 66 million voters on November 2, 1982 was that the Democratic Party picked up 26 House seats and 7 governorships, with no gains in the Senate. One oilman, seeking re-election, spent $14 million, and lost; another shopping center tycoon $7 million, and lost; and other candidates also spent massive sums of their own money to no avail. Money is therefore not the automatic key to political victory. As is usual a large bloc of voters abstained from voting, and one wonders why. Were they apathetic, apolitical, disillusioned, or perhaps in need of a new, revolutionary presentation? We can but hope so. One thing is certain. The only clear message that the American working class who voted gave, was: carry on with capitalism. However, nothing is static, the future lies ahead, and the working class have a mission yet to be accomplished.

The 1984 U.S. General Election found eight Democratic Party presidential candidates competing with each other. One would reasonably assume that as they all belong to the same Party, they would more or less be in agreement with each other on basic reformist proposals. Superficially, at any rate, such is not the case. Once again, the ambitious leaders must convey the impression that they as individuals possess the talent, knowledge and charisma to solve problems that have defied their predecessors for well over two centuries.

In a three-hour, nationally televised marathon debate on January 15, 1984 at Dartmouth College, they peddled and argued the same old, time-worn hackeneyed issues. Proposals for reducing budget deficits were aired—but these were vague in content, without specific price tags. Cuts were favored for the military and agricultural programs, as well as holding down health care costs; a raise in taxes was suggested and additions for selected social programs. “Defense,” or rather armament strategies, were debated; a consensus agreed that a woman should receive strong consideration asa running mate. Apparently there was more agreement than controversy on the nuclear weapons freeze issue. The candidates criticized the U.S. military position in Lebanon, but no one volunteered exactly how to get out.

Walter Mondale, the front runner and former vice president, said that he would have a strong and effective policy to deal justly with all workers, businesses and farmers (my emphasis). Does such puerile, evasive nonsense deserve comment? At one point in the debate Mondale was challenged by one of his Party opponents who said, “You cannot lead this country if you have promised everybody everything.” Mondale denied he had done any such thing. Then he added, I think most pointedly, “America is nothing if it isn’t promises. That is what America is about.”

With some modifications, that is what reformism is all about— unfulfilled promises, wasted energy, and prolonged futility.

Weakness of Nuclear Disarmament Campaign (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many rank and file adherents of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, associated with which are Cannon Collins, Donald Soper, Michael Foot and others believe that they are opposed on principle to nuclear weapons. They might be interested to know the reply which was made to a reader of the Socialist Standard who was seeking an “official and authoritative" reply to the undernoted question, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The question was:—

"Is it the policy of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the next general election to advise their supporters to vote only for a completely anti-nuclear weapon candidate no matter to which party he or she belongs and to abstain in the absence of such a candidate? ”

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament replied in a letter dated June 27th, 1958, signed by Peggy Duff, the C.N.D. Organising Secretary:—

"It is not the policy of the Campaign to advise supporters to vote only for a completely anti-nuclear weapon candidate because we feel each individual must make their decision alone, according to the circumstances in the area in which they live. To do as suggested in many areas would result in the return of a candidate much more opposed to the Campaign than the alternative.”

To put it very charitably, this attitude is certainly not one of principled opposition to nuclear weapons. It is a far cry from A.J. P. Taylor's wildly acclaimed suggestion at the inaugural meeting of the Campaign on February17th this year in Central Hall, Westminster, that politicians who supported the nuclear “deterrent" policy should be branded as “ Murderers! "

It is said by a number of people in the movement itself that some Labour Party politicians are discreetly attempting to use for their own ends the indignation of those who are appalled at the prospects of nuclear warfare and the insidious dangers of fall-out from weapon tests.

Here we see the difference between the approach of the S.P.G.B. to the problem of war and the approach of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Socialist Party of Great Britain sees that war happens because of the way the civilian life of the world is carried on, the capitalist system of production and distribution, with its rivalries between the nations for markets, sources of raw materials and the control of trade routes and strategic points.

We hold, therefore, that the only road to peace is through altering the structure of society from capitalism to Socialism. This requires that a majority shall become convinced of the need for Socialism and democratically take organised political action to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism in its place.

It follows that the Socialist Party is opposed on principle and completely to all who help to keep capitalism going (which includes helping to keep war going). Therefore, the S.P.G.B. opposes the candidates of capitalism, Tory, Liberal. Labour, Communist, or whatever label they may be.

On the other hand there are those who say they are opposed on principle to nuclear weapons, but who do not recognise that capitalism is bound to go on producing wan, large or small.

They think that by concentrating on this particular kind of weapon (regardless of bacteriological, chemical or any other known or secret weapons) they can gain time for more rational political policies to be instituted before the radio-active poisoning of plant and animal life or the destruction of civilisation makes politics redundant.

But when it comes to applying their principle in a practical way they find themselves involved in giving support to electoral candidates who do not share their principle. In face of past experience of such attitudes what can they really hope to achieve by this?

We hope that this short article will stimulate those in the Campaign to write to us so that fruitful discussion of the whole problem of war and nuclear tests may ensue.

B.

50 Years Ago: Futile Appeals For Disarmament (1971)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

A demonstration was held on Thursday October 13th at the Central Hall, to further the agitation for disarmament. It should be obvious that the capitalist governments of the world arm against each other because they must, war being the logical and necessary outcome of their economic rivalry. While, therefore, the prospect of economising, by mutual agreement to limit expenditure, is attractive to the employing class who have to bear the burden, to appeal to a national group of capitalists to give up their only defence against their like-minded predatory neighbours and against the workers from whose robbery the privileged position of the capitalist class arises, is to ask them to commit suicide, and will naturally be given the amount of consideration such a proposal would deserve. Is it to be expected that our capitalist rulers, armed to the teeth to defend their private property, will scrap their armaments and voluntarily sacrifice their hold on the world's wealth merely.in response from muddle-headed reformers?

* * *

The Bishop of London distinguished for his Christianly ferocious thirst for blood in the late war, asked God's blessing on the Washington Conference meaning no doubt that he hopes the Empire would find favour in the sight of the Lord to get a thumping big share of the spoils in the partition of China. The speakers . . . were no doubt doing their duty by the ruling class in talking platitudes about peace in .the present interlude between the 'last war’ and the next ‘last war’, because at the moment it is desirable to distract working class attention from the lining-up for the conflict to decide the mastery of the Pacific.

(From an article The Peace Society’, by E.R.H., Socialist Standard, November 1921).

Mr. Cousins Damp Squib (1959)

From the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

The Labour Party is in a turmoil—and the General Election is near. Mr. Cousins of the Transport and General Workers Union has thrown a spanner into the works. He has been making quite a stir in the news by his opposition to the official attitude of the Labour Party on the H-Bomb and nationalisation.

Mr. Bevan has now become quite respectable as an official spokesman. Mr. Cousins has replaced him as the Labour Party rebel—the “leftist.” It is only farce that is played out every now and then with only a change in the personnel. Is there really any fundamental difference between Mr. Cousins and the leaders of the Labour Party?

He objects to the H-Bomb but supports the Labour Party, which is pledged to a defence programme. Millions were killed in the last war without the H-Bomb being used, but he does not support the only policy that will end war. He believes Mr. Gaitskell is sincere but that his policy on the H-Bomb will not be effective.

At the Transport and General Workers Conference in the Isle of Man Mr. Cousins dropped his bombshell. He is also reported as follows: “I have never believed that the most important thing in our lives is to elect a Labour Government. The most important thing is to elect a Labour Government that is determined to carry out Socialist policies.” (Daily Express, 10th July, 1959.)

Now what does he mean by “to carry out Socialist policies”? To him it means nationalisation—state capitalism. He objects to the official line on nationalisation—buying shares instead of the state taking over the industries. But to him. just as to them, state ownership is equivalent to Socialism. In other words, in spite of the long experience of state capitalism, he blindly accepts it as the fundamental aim, despite the disillusion and unrest in state owned or state controlled concerns and the labour struggles in them for better conditions.

Thus what Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

In striking back at Mr. Cousins Mr. Gaitskell made some very significant statements. He made it clear that a Labour Government was not bound by the decisions of the rank and file of the Labour Party and that he was first and foremost a patriot. Here are some extracts from his speech at Workington on the 11th July, 1959:

A Labour Government will take into account the views of the Conference, but, as was clearly demonstrated in the correspondence between Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in 1945, annual conference does not mandate a government.

Both a Labour Government and the Parliamentary Labour Party must be left free to settle in matters of detail how and when the principles and decisions are to be applied in practice. This has always been understood in the past, and it must be clearly understood again today. (Observer, 12th July, 1959.)

Earlier in his speech he was even more emphatically the leader who would disdain the decisions of the Labour movement he claimed to represent:

To give such a pledge [not to resume nuclear tests] might conceivably be to jeopardise the future security of our country, and that I will not do under any circumstances. Those of us who have the responsibilities of political leadership have to remember always that we shall be expected to stand by our pledges.

We will not bother to remind him of the pledges the “political leadership” have broken in the past, but we can remind him that no one is forcing him to take the “political leadership” job. If he doesn’t like what the people who appoint him want him to do he can always resign his job and not fly in the face of their decisions. But that would be the democratic way and leadership is the antithesis of democracy!

Time and again we have pointed out that what the Labour Party was mainly concerned with was not principles but votes. This futile controversy has spotlighted it once again. Labour M.P.’s are wrathful and shaking in their shoes at thought of the effect this blow-up may have on their votes in the next election. That is their main and all-consuming worry. Even Mr. Cousins expostulates that his proposals will not split the Labour Party, and anyhow, he will abide by conference decisions—in spite of the prospect of dire calamity unless the H-Bomb is abandoned.

While the Labour Party storm may have a bad influence on their election prospects it will have no influence upon the subject position of the worker. Only Socialism can remove that subjection—and this has no place in the Labour programme, nor in Mr. Cousins’ outlook.

Gilmac.

Letter: Socialists and Nuclear Disarmament (1959)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

Although I am a supporter of the S.P.G.B. for the last ten years, it is not my usual practice to write to you whenever I happened to disagree with the Party on minor issues; but now I am compelled to write this letter, because the point I should like to raise here is a very important and a serious one—it is the Party’s relation towards the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (C.N.D.)—I have read your short A Point of View (May, 1959). I entirely agree on every point you raised and explained in relation to the cause of war and its remedy; but what I don’t agree, is your attitude towards C.N.D. It crystallizes in one single sentence in the first para. “We hold that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is on an unsound basis and inevitably leads in the wrong direction.”

I think this tendency to disassociate with a movement of this character and make judgment that it is uon an unsound basis” is due to your incorrect or false evaluation of the social forces. Most of you may be probably still thinking that it is a movement started by a few non socialists like Canon Collins or Michael Foot or Bertrand Russell or perhaps they (the leaders) might be conscious of the dangers of the present situation, but the people in general who follow them have no clear understanding of our society. This view or any other similar view which is trying to picture that movement as if it is completely dominated and controlled by such a leadership, is superficial, grossly incorrect and an oversimplification of the whole social process which brought C.N.D. into being.

New Consciousness

In the first place I should like to point out that it is not the leaders that came before the movement, but the movement armed with a new social consciousness pregnant with a new force of energy, which appeared first and then a set of leaders are born out of that specific social situation. In the last ten years powerful nations on both sides were boasting that they have more effective and better weapons of destruction than the other side. Many influential politicians and military leaders in Britain, Russia and America repeatedly stated that they are developing bigger and better bombs.

Along with this all round boasting they were actually strengthening all their forces of destruction and arming up to the teeth. Almost every aspect of society was alerted. A new awareness or perhaps consciousness began to develop among all sorts of people of the seriousness of the situation in which they are involved. They began to be conscious of the weakness of their social and political institutions which hitherto they supported, to prevent a new world war. They began to doubt the chance of their survival in the nuclear warfare. They felt it is their duty to “revolt” against this ridiculous situation where two great rival nations threaten each other by clenching their fists. It is this new social situation which gave birth to C.N.D. But this new social consciousness is blind. It has no eye to see the barrier in front of it which is to be removed for their survival. As one of the leading members (sociologist?) of the U.L.R. (Universities and Left Review) pointed out it is a “leaderless” movement. Unfortunately what he implied, later in his speech, was that U.L.R. should try to assume its leadership if not of the whole at least its youth section. Hundreds and thousands of people, especially youths, turned up and joined the C.N.D. fully conscious that they need something new, yet they did not know what they wanted!

It is true various types of political factions in C.N.D. are trying to utilize this blind consciousness as a ladder to climb to political power or at least to strengthen their original position, being utterly unaware of the significance of this new development. But it is the Socialists’ duty to move along with them in order to provide them with an eye so that they can see the barrier which stands in their way. In other words, we should try to create a situation so that the Socialist concept, as an eye, should assume the leadership of this new consciousness.

Isolation

I strongly hold the view that it was our duty, Socialists’ duty, either individually or collectively organized on a party basis, to march along with them with our own banners and slogans and take the opportunity of speaking to such a huge conscious gathering. We lost that opportunity! No Collins or Foots or Taylors can claim even the partial control or ownership of a movement of this character. Nor does it belong to them. It belongs to the whole society. In my view this kind of participation in C.N.D. is only a logical extension of what we had already been doing—selling our literature, discussing with non Socialist marchers etc. Now I begin to feel that it is this type of social isolation or regimentation of S.P.G.B. from the rest of the conscious and militant social forces (as Rosa Luxemburg indignantly pointed out about another aspect—the relation between the masses and the political leadership) which makes our unassailable case ineffective instead of being a powerful political force.

H. J. Panikkar. 

London.

Reply:

We regret that Mr. Panikkar’s letter was too long to publish in full.

During its 55 years of existence, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has seen many organisations which like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, have been pledged to abolish a particular evil of capitalist society. The hunger marchers and the pacifists of the 1930’s were described as movements “armed with a new social consciousness.” Today, members of Road Safety Committees can possibly be described in the same way— at least their death statistics are less in dispute than those of the C.N.D. In truth, as capitalism throws up problems, so it throws up organisations which try to deal with one or more of them in isolation. There is no doubt about the sincerity of some of these movements, or that they concern themselves with very real and terrifying matters. But because they do not demand an understanding of the roots of the problems, their efforts are doomed to futility.

Because of this socialists have no place in these organisations. But this does not prevent them stating, at every possible opportunity, the socialist attitude to such horrors as war. We do not isolate ourselves from our opponents, we are always eager to put our case to them. Mr. Panikkar cannot have missed, on page 78 of the May Socialist Standard, the account of our activities at the last Aldermaston March. This is typical of S.P.G.B. work, whatever non-socialist organisation we are dealing with.

Weapons of war are inseparable from war itself. To abolish them, we must get rid of war. These are caused by the clash of interests between groups of capitalists who want to protect or exploit markets and fields of valuable natural wealth. The need to do this is the result of the fact that, in capitalist society, goods and services are produced with the motive of profitable sale. Obviously, each group will strive to arm itself more powerfully—which means more destructively—than its opponents. Hence the development of modern weapons and the horrors of nuclear warfare. We can solve this problem by abolishing private property. Only a socialist movement can effectively advocate this.

In contrast, the C.N.D. is in favour of the continuation of capitalism. It does not even oppose capitalism's wars, but wants them to be gentlemanly affairs in which people are killed by conventional armaments. Even on the score of nuclear weapons, the C.N.D. is confused. Many of its members support the return of another Labour government—yet the last one started the British H-bomb and missile programmes. This confusion is typical of organisations which may be well meaning, but lack the essential knowledge with which every socialist is equipped. Mr. Panikkar claims that C.N.D. members are ". . . conscious of the weakness of their social and political institutions . . . to prevent a new world war.” Our guess is that the next election will see them voting for the very political parties which administer the capitalist basis of those social and political institutions.

Marches and demonstrations are glamourous and exciting. Alongside, our insistence on knowledge may seem rather dull. But the marchers are going to dissension and futility. The socialist movement alone offers the world any hope.

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

This is the 16,000th post on the blog.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (1960)

From the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Capitalism throws up some unusual problem or, what is more often the case, a. new variation of an old problem, there are always plenty of sincere but misled people ready to throw their weight behind the movements that mushroom into being for the purpose of trying to deal with these phenomena in isolation from their cause. Failing to see the inter-connection and common origin of all the problems of Capitalism these people merrily waste their time and efforts tinkering with effects. One of the most plausible sounding of these movements is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. After all, the H-bomb is such a hideous and terrifying weapon that anyone who wants to ban it is sure of a fairly wide appeal

Nothing is more plausible than to see the H-bomb as an evil in isolation from everything else in society and set out to ban it as though it were a self-made monster without reference to the system which produces it.

Although we readily acknowledge the sincerity of people who support CND and understand their horror at the thought of nuclear war, there is no greater folly nor a more deadly danger than approaching the problem in this way.

The hydrogen bomb is the result of technical and scientific development within capitalism. Ban this weapon and keep this system with its world market and profit strategy, and science will still produce other such monsters. It must do so while science remains the servant of the capitalist class who pay for it. In fact, it is already common knowledge that other terror weapons exist. CND argue that time is short the way the world is today, so that the H-bomb must be treated as an immediate priority. If they mean this and mankind is really balanced on the edge of oblivion, then there certainly is not time to deal with all existing and all possible horror weapons one at a time as they come up. The stark reality they must face is that to deal with capitalism is the immediate priority.

Is the CND prepared to switch the attack, get down to causes, and deal with capitalism? Alas, the very nature of the movement precludes this. Their membership is drawn from all shades of political and religious opinion. They may think this their strength, but in fact it is their most fatal weakness.

An organisation with such a widely mixed membership can agree on one thing only—the demand for nuclear disarmament. In fact, this is all they are required to agree upon. Outside of this they are just as “British-and proud of it” as any other supporter of Capitalism. They have the same nationalistic prejudice as other non-socialists. They uphold the same basic features of capitalism, wages, profits, trading and competitions for export markets, as the rest of the misled working-class. The sad truth is that the CND member is as surprised to learn and as reluctant to accept that the conflicts within capitalism give rise to war as any other workers.

Workers who vote Labour, Conservative, or so-called Communist have made their major blunder at the ballot box. They have voted capitalist politicians the power to maintain capitalism. They have given them the power to build armaments to maintain capitalist interests. To do this and then to march, demonstrate and protest at the effects of their own action presents rather a bewildering spectacle to say the least. After the elections, the capitalist class know that they can count on the overwhelming majority of the electorate for support in war preparation by appeals to patriotism and by posing as the champions of peace. Which all sides do.

To properly understand the arms race it must be seen as something complementary to the struggle for markets, oil and trade-routes. Not as a determined struggle between national leaders over their ideals or national ways of life. The only “way of life,” so far as the competing nations are concerned, is the capitalist way. The details of administration vary amongst the countries in both the great-power blocks, but their aims and methods of achievement are the same. It is not different ideals that set them at each other's throats; it is the scramble for resources and trade. In as much as the struggle for markets in pursuit of profit is fundamental to the capitalist scheme of things, so the conditions of conflict and war are all part of this system.

The production of armaments is a priority commitment of industry and resources for all major powers, both for their own use and that of their junior partners. To a tremendous extent since the end of the last war, world industry has been devoted to the production of means of destruction. Thousands of millions of pounds, dollars and roubles, etc., representing colossal amounts of materials and labour-time have been poured into the world war machines. The louder the competing States have voiced their peaceful intentions, the more and more murderous have become their inventions. Weapons have been developed and scrapped. Weapons have brought forth counter weapons and counter-counter weapons in the frenzy to make us feel secure. Great hopes are pinned on summit conferences, negotiations and mass demonstrations as the working class desperately looks for a way out of the capitalists’ nightmare.

To campaign for nuclear disarmament implies acceptance of so-called conventional armaments. The Socialist Party rejects this most dangerous attitude. We are often accused of taking an ivory-tower view of things that go on in the world from day to day. This accusation is made by people who do not understand what Socialism entails. Ours is a class attitude to capitalism in general and to war in particular.

We take the view that workers of all lands have fundamentally common interests. Workers own nothing of the vast vested interests of capitalism and have nothing to fight for since no working-class issue is involved in its thieves’ quarrels. This international Socialist outlook has kept us firmly in opposition to two world wars. We stick to our path not out of sectarian cussedness, but because the evidence shows it to be correct.

Harry Baldwin

A Message for Aldermaston Marchers. (1960)

From the April 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

When your house is on fire you drop everything until you have put out the flames: and if your neighbours come in to help, you are glad to see them, without asking whether they are vegetarians or teetotallers or anything else. So might the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament argue, to justify the political diversity of their membership, united as it is only in the desire to abolish nuclear weapons.

We can all agree that these weapons are monstrous. The two Japanese cities were terrible enough: since then, the bombs have been made many times more destructive. The Home Office publication Nuclear Weapons estimated that a bomb a little smaller than that exploded by the Americans at Bikini in 1954 would cause total or irreparable damage for a radius of six miles and would certainly kill everybody within half a mile, by burns if not from other causes. A Chief Inspector of Fire Brigades has said that a hydrogen bomb on London could cause 100,000 fires—and might temporarily alter the course of the Thames. These forebodings are several years old. Now we have even bigger bombs, and rockets which can deliver them over thousands of miles. Yes, nuclear weapons must be abolished. How can it be done?

What if the governments yielded to the pressure of the nuclear disarmers and agreed to scrap their bombs? This would be worth no more than all the other solemn vows to disarm, or to refrain from taking up arms, or to be non-aggressive, which governments, when it suited them, have broken in the past. The fact that Germany in 1919 signed an agreement not to arm did not prevent her becoming a powerful military nation a few years later. The non-aggression pact of 1939 between Germany and Russia did not prevent the conflict of 1941-45. But let us suppose that governments, strangely, kept the promise to forego their nuclear weapons. That would only take us back to 1945, when wars were fought with blockbusters and flame throwers and Napalm bombs. There is nothing desirable about that. Or we could make a really good job of it and go back to the weapons of 1914-18. Or 1870, or 1415 or 1066.

Of course, it is foolish to expect a modern government to run an army of longbowmen. It seems too obvious to say that as one country develops a weapon, so the others must find one similar or better. That is how the military aircraft and the nuclear bomb, for example, were born. Nowadays, no foreign minister has much of a say unless he has a fistful of H-bombs. In the last election campaign, Sir Winston Churchill said, ". . . you are more likely to obtain a hearing for your views if you have some substantial stake in the balance of world power. And these stakes . . . are still much measured in military terms." To win a stake in world power, the French and Chinese are working up their atom bombs—and the established nuclear powers, to keep their stake, have to make rockets and missiles with Hydrogen bomb war heads.

When the first French atom bomb was exploded a few weeks back. General de Gaulle exclaimed, “Hurrah for France! " He knew that he was really saying hurrah for destruction and death, because that is what military power means. But military power is only necessary to modern states because in peace and war, they are struggling for economic advantage. This is a world where everything is produced with the intention of selling it profitably, which means that sellers compete for markets, manufacturers for plentiful raw material sources and transporters for trading routes. These are the disputes which, when everything else fails, are settled by force—by war. So France hangs on to Algeria for, among other things, the oil that is there. So Britain fought for years in Cyprus, because it is a base near the strategically important Suez Canal and the vital Middle East oilfields. So the last two world wars were started—and so a third could start if, for example, Russian economic influence in the Middle East or the Caribbean became too great a threat to British and American interests.

In these conditions, national states are bound to maintain a military machine to fight for the interests of their ruling classes and to equip that machine with the most powerful—the most deadly— weapons possible. It is futile to expect them to do otherwise. In 1917, it would have been suicidal for them to have thrown away their tanks, or in 1944 their bombers. In 1960 they are similarly reluctant to give up their nuclear bombs. There is only one way to deal effectively with this problem. Go to the roots. The capitalist system is the cause, from beginning to end, of modern war and the horrifying methods of its prosecution.

Marching from Aldermaston, sitting in the mud at Swaffham, or lying in jail, the nuclear campaigners deserve our respect for their concern with one of the horrors of modern society. But we can only regret that so much energy is wasted in such a topsy-turvy movement. If it is desirable to abolish one weapon of war, how much more so is it to get rid of them all? Or to get rid of war itself? Our house is burning because it is made of inflammable materials—and people will keep dropping lighted matches. It is useless to tackle each fire as it breaks out. We must build ourselves a new house.

Ivan.

Letters: Socialism and PR (1984)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism and PR

Dear Editors

I have been reading your monthly magazine for several months now and agree with much of what you have to say. Particularly on comments made in the December issue about religious superstition and how the SPGB propose to change society by standing in democratic elections. However, I wonder how democratic our first-past-the-post system really is.

I would be obliged if you would tell me what the view is of the SPGB on proportional representation. If opposed to PR, why? If you support a PR system, which one and why?

C. Roberts

London SW17

Reply:

Socialists are not interested in the question of whether one method of electing a capitalist government is “fairer” than another; for that reason we do not support any reformist campaign in favour of PR or any other change in the electoral system. We are aiming at a socialist revolution, which will not be a matter of the Socialist Parties changing society but the democratic act of a majority of conscious socialists throughout the world. When socialist ideas have reached such a pitch it will not matter very much, which electoral system is available for their being put into effect. It is reasonable to assume that then, as now, there will be various systems in operation in different parts of the world. Socialists will use them all, as they need to. The “first-past-the-post" system in operation in places like Britain does lead to anomalies such as the election of a government on a minority of votes but the socialist revolution will not be a matter of the working class giving some political party power to run capitalism in the interests of a minority. Any electoral system which allows the assertion of socialist consciousness will do.

Editors

Animal rights

Dear Editors

I am writing in response to your comments pertaining to animal rights in the December issue of the Socialist Standard. Your apparent disregard for the other species that inhabit our planet surprised and disappointed me. The case for animal liberation is not built on sentimentality, as you infer, but on logic and justice.

All animals are living, feeling, intelligent creatures, not just our species. Setting ourselves above all other animals is absurd. What if evolution had taken a different path, making us dumb and giving a higher IQ and powers of communication to some other primate? Would you then be condoning the exploitation of “inferior” species?

The two specific issues that you mentioned, animal farming and vivisection, can easily be shown to be unnecessary, and indeed counterproductive. There are superior alternatives to both. The rhetoric of exploitation is always the same, whether the theme be race, sex, class or species. Socialism must know no boundaries. It cannot stop at the end of one race, sex or species.

It’s possible that you consider animal rights as a minor topic or a side issue. Mass exploitation and suffering can never be that! I sincerely hope that you will review and change your policy in this area.

Steve Addison

Macclesfield

Reply:

We do not regard human behaviour towards animals as a "minority topic”; it reflects the type of society in which we live, its priorities and its morals. That is why capitalism, with its production for sale and profit in the interests of minority, uses animals so pitilessly and why, as the item in the December Socialist Standard pointed out, socialism will end such practices. However we cannot deny that human beings are superior to all other species; while socialism will provide a better environment for all forms of life, only humans can conceive of it and can bring it about. Socialist society will cherish animal and wildlife but. if human interests are at stake and there is no other way then animals will be used, for food and even for medical experiments.

Editors

Greenham women

Dear Editors,

I refer to the Article “Defeat at Greenham” in the December issue of the Socialist Standard. I feel that the way in which the achievements of the women at Greenham were equated to zero and the over-simplified and superficial analysis which led to this conclusion can only be compared with similar distorted articles in the national press. Since I expect more from such an excellent magazine as the Standard. I feel impelled to write this letter.

The SPGB publishes the Standard in order to reach out to the working class and to stimulate them into abandoning the undemocratic system of capitalism. Similarly, the women of Greenham Common, by hanging dolls and baby clothes on the fences etc. were attempting to trigger the public (most of whom are the working class) into thinking about the introduction of cruise missiles and the undemocratic control of such in order to stop it. Much media coverage has been given to the demonstration at Greenham. As a result, the questions of cruise and associated issues such as warfare and undemocratic control have been brought to the attention of the public. How then can the SPGB argue that the women’s experiences are “dismal" and “wasted" when they have pointed out some obvious shortcomings of the capitalist system to the working class? How can the SPGB argue that the women were "wrong" to use propaganda (in the form of publicity stunts) in order to overcome the state machine? Isn’t that exactly what the SPGB does by publishing the Socialist Standard? Why have the women failed to achieve their objective because the missiles have arrived and yet the subject of their arrival is still controversial? Does the SPGB stop publishing the Standard in the belief that they have failed since capitalism is still here after so many years of fighting it? Fortunately not; they continue to put an alternative to the working class in the form of socialism which I wholeheartedly support.

If these women do not advocate socialism now, I would still suggest to you that because of their efforts, the task of attaining socialism can only be eased. I agree with your view that the women “ought” to advocate socialism rather than reformism. However, I also think that the best (if not only) way to win someone over to socialism initially, is to point out to them some of the more obvious insanities of the capitalist system. I think that the Greenham Common women have done this splendidly.

I do not think that the SPGB should support reformist policies but I do think that they should be more careful, when criticising those who do. not to be condescending and unnecessarily aggressive as I feel your article was, since these people are closer to socialist thinking than most. 

J. Peet

Urmston 

Manchester

Reply:

The SPGB cannot be said to have failed since the idea of socialism has not yet been put into practice; meanwhile all the available evidence supports the case that only socialism can solve the problems caused by the capitalist social system. In contrast, the ideas of the nuclear disarmers have been put into practice. They argue that it is possible to support capitalism through voting Labour, Communist. SDP/Liberal and so on, yet oppose the inevitable effects of capitalism — in their case nuclear weapons. They also argue that the governments of capitalism can be persuaded to change policies which are vital to ruling class interests by means of demonstrations such as Greenham Common. These theories have been disproved; the missiles are at Greenham and are operational (see the Guardian, 18 January).

The nuclear disarmament movement fails, as do all such movements, because they approach the problem from the wrong end. As the item Defeat at Greenham (Socialist Standard, December 1983) pointed out, capitalism, with all its ailments, exists not by an act of will of Michael Heseltine but because the working class, including nuclear disarmers, support it. The only way to abolish all weapons of war is to get rid of the cause of war and that can come about only through a consciously socialist working class establishing socialism. Workers cannot be persuaded to understand socialism by encouraging them to support a reformed, modified capitalism in the hope that this will end their problems; this can be done only through putting a clear, consistent, uncompromising argument for socialism. Far from being condescending or aggressive, the item acknowledged the demonstrators’ . . "sincerity and concern" but pointed out that that is not enough. Socialists take no pleasure in the failure of reformist movements; we bitterly regret the waste of so much sincere endeavour.

Editors

CND at 30 (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

For their own sakes it is to be hoped that the marchers on CND's 30th anniversary trek this Easter did not think they had any reason for celebration. They were repeatedly urged not to be nostalgic, for as Pat Arrowsmith, who was on the first march in 1958 and has been on unnumbered protests since, put it. "The issues are still alive and the young people here today are fighting an even harder battle than the one we began 30 years ago". Wait a minute: issues still alive, after 30 years? Harder battles than ever? CND was formed, and launched its protests, on the theory that huge public demonstrations were the quickest and most effective method of persuading the government to get rid of nuclear weapons. This was, in 1958, an urgent matter, to be dealt with before we could turn our attention to any basic changes in society. If something was not done quickly things would get a lot worse; why, there could be submarines cruising the oceans capable of firing nuclear missiles while still submerged; or missiles which could slip through radar screens by a low-level flight to their target; or a galactic nuclear conflict as the super-powers strove to disable each other's missiles out in space.

Early optimism

Since 1958 we have had four changes of government and numerous CND marches. The governments have been unmoved; the situation has got worse. Not only have the disowners failed to remove the problem quickly but what effect they have had — or can now hope to have — can be assessed by the fact that they still feel a compelling reason to protest and that another of their veteran campaigners can say, in 1988:

 But although we know atomic weapons will never disappear, it is clear that their development is being intensified against all political claims of disarmament. (Liz Baker, Observer, 3 April)

In spite of that rueful admission that CND never had a hope of persuading the government to change its mind and, whatever the other powers did, throw away its nuclear weapons, it is true that the early CND marches encouraged a measure of optimism. In June 1960, after observing the march that year, a contributor to the Socialist Standard could write:

  Yet there is some comfort in this march. After the barren years of the delinquents, large numbers of people seem to be getting active in a movement of protest against a social problem.

That was a reaction, not so much to the promise of CND as to the frustration of confronting years of complacency among a working-class who seemed popularly to agree with Harold Macmillan that they had never had it so good. Especially galling was the fact that this cynicism was so apparent in young people, who excused it with the assertion that social problems were peculiar to, and the fault of, an earlier generation. CND was significant for puncturing that complacency and. by focussing the unease about nuclear destruction, encouraging young people to question what capitalist society was all about. A few youngsters even got the answer right, left CND and joined the movement for a socialist revolution. Many of the rest could not surmount the reformist obstacle of a preference for massaging symptoms rather than excising their cause.

Changing tactics

But misplaced enthusiasm can breed only confusion and CND was quickly blundering from one desperate expedient to another. There was a heavily publicised split over the emergence of the Committee of 100, much of whose appeal was that they had attracted Bertrand Russell to their ranks. Surely, someone who could write all those clever books on philosophy couldn't be wrong about the way to get rid of nuclear arms? The Committee's argument was that the government would take little account of orderly marches and rallies; what was needed to make them sit up and take notice was a lot of people sitting down in the middle of the road. The resultant disruption and publicity would soon bring the government to its knees, willing to throw away its nuclear armoury rather than subject the motorists of London to another moment's delay in a traffic jam. What actually happened was that the police were sent in to lug the demonstrators out of the way and to arrest those of them who particularly did not want to be removed. Meanwhile. far away from the scene of it all, the production of nuclear weapons continued its uncongested way.

Since then CND has changed its line often enough to satisfy the most erratic of reformist tacticians. At one time it was into direct action, by which it meant diverting a few of the more athletic demonstrators into attempts to storm Regional Seats of Government. If CND expected a great howl of outrage at their revealing the existence of these places they were badly mistaken; a more likely response from the working class was one of gratitude, that the government should so thoughtfully provide somewhere for what was left of British capitalism to be administered after the nuclear holocaust. There was another spell, when CND seemed likely to cease being a single-issue movement and join itself to the long list of organisations which campaign, day in and day out. about wages, housing, poverty, health and the rest. It has tried high-profile leaders like Joan Ruddock and Bruce Kent and low profile, like the present. One tactic it has not considered: a campaign against class society as the cause of war and all weapons, nuclear and conventional.

Courting Labour’s leaders

Much of CND's energy — its enthusiasm and its despair — has gone into its long battle to win over the Labour Party. To some extent this was understandable, since so many Labour leaders have been keen to be associated with them. The most prominent of these, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, have been at the head of many a march, and Foot told the rally at the start of this year's march:

  I came to the march in 1958 with a different dog but with the same wife. This march is a sign that the campaign will go on until nuclear weapons are wiped off the face of the galaxy. It has nothing to do with nostalgia.

A strong, ambitious way of imparting the same message of failure as Pat Arrowsmith and Liz Baker. But there is one very important difference. Not so long ago Foot, as Labour leader, was bidding to become prime minister, to lead a government whose party had in theory committed it to unilaterally getting rid of British nuclear weapons. How strong, how ambitious was he then? Well, at Labour's 1982 conference he was arguing for multilateral nuclear disarmament — for all the nuclear powers doing it at the same time — which was a long way from CND policy. Foot's words then might just as easily have been in the mouth of Reagan or Gorbachev or of any Tory claimant to a policy of peace and disarmanent:

  The greatest task which this Labour Party will have to take (sic) is to carry out our policy for securing nuclear disarmament in this country, and throughout the world.

During the 1983 general election, pushed into a comer by Tory propaganda that a Labour government would eagerly abolish the military power of British capitalism — a myth which won the Tories a lot of misinformed votes — Foot firmly pledged a "strong defence (his word for it) for Britain and Britain's allies" and a continuing adherence to the nuclear armed, American dominated, power bloc of NATO. Asked about Labour's commitment not to abolish British nuclear arms but only to get rid of one kind of them the Polaris missile — Foot was clumsily evasive: "Read the statement carefully and read the manifesto carefully and clarity will descend on all quarters".

CND’s “successes”

What did not descend on all quarters was the assurance that a Labour government would be be less resolved to keep a British bomb than would a Tory one. Foot was trying to juggle with his misled party activists on one hand and the voting British working class on the other. The activists were of course let fall. By 1983, with Kinnock in the leadership, the confusion was less; Labour's election manifesto was quite clear that a Labour government would keep the bomb while trying to start negotiations to remove some of the weapons from Europe as a step, they argued, towards them being abolished together, all over the world — much the same as the recent deal between Russia and America over the INF missiles.

Which brings us to what CND claims to have been its successes. The "success" of the 1963 Test Ban Treaty can be gauged against the subsequent developments in nuclear warheads and delivery systems, not to mention the increase in the number of weapons in the world since then. It is a strange sort of remedy, which is followed by the complaint getting worse. Last year's INF treaty should remove some of the less powerful weapons from some places but it was followed by the nuclear powers scrambling to plug the gaps which the treaty opened in their armouries. It is a peculiar type of success, which looks likely to leave us worse off — more threatened, less secure — than before. In any case CND had mixed feelings about each of these "successes", fearing to make too much of them in case they convinced too many people that the cause of nuclear disarmament had won the day and need not be supported any longer.

Foreseeable failure

In human beings the age of 30 is seen as an important threshold, when workers have a rough idea of how the rest of their lives will be spent — what type of exploitation they will get their living at, how long they will be chained to their mortgage, what they feel about the people they have agreed to spend the rest of their lives with. Personal horizons, over which we disappear when we die, can be described, albeit a long way off. Failures, mistakes and prospects can be evenly assessed. CND at thirty might try the same exercise, asking themselves why all that well-intentioned energy has been so sadly misplaced. Is their fear of nostalgia more a morbid suspicion that their failure must extend into the foreseeable future?

Ivan

Disarming critics (1983)

From the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Michael Heseltine, who did not get where he is today through any diffidence about upsetting people, is robustly enjoying his job as the government’s scourge of the nuclear disarmers. He could hardly be expected to jeopardise this happy state by publicly debating with CND although the reason he gave for refusing — that CND have closed minds — has the deterring implication that Heseltine has an open mind on the issue and that it is not therefore beyond possibility that he could be converted to CND. That would mean more than the end of his pullulating ambition to be Prime Minister; he would have to exchange all those elegant pin-stripe suits for a demo-battered anorak and trim his hair so that it is no longer a ready handhold for a policeman dragging him away from a protest lie-down.

But until that happens — or at least until the next general election — we must endure Heseltine's audacious claim to be both a leader of the peace movement and a last line of defence against the menace of a Russian dictatorship. For it is unlikely that the government feels it has anything to fear from CND; more to the point is the decision of the last Labour Party conference to support unilateral nuclear disarmament, which may have given the Tories an electoral weapon to extinguish the last twitches of life from Labour’s ravaged body. This situation has its irony, for every Labour government since the bomb first went off have been firm supporters of British nuclear weapons and only the silliest of Labour Party supporters are likely to believe that this gruesome tradition is not safe with Michael Foot who, since that embarrassing conference, has industriously applied his oratorical gifts to fudging the issue.

The Thatcher government, like its Labour predecessors, base their case on the deterrent theory, which appeals to anyone who is able to set aside difficult things like historical facts. The theory begins with the crude nationalist assumption that it is always the other side which needs to be deterred — in this case Russia, no longer a staunch ally in the war to save the world for democracy but a ruthless aggressor:

  . . . as early as 1949 Russia was plainly showing her belief that Soviet ideology must dominate the world, and her readiness to use military force to achieve that. (Government film, The Peace Game.)

No nuclear power has yet admitted to having weapons which are aggressive; they all claim that their bombs are defensive and a contribution to world peace. It has been like that from the very beginning; Truman did not describe Hiroshima as an avoidable disaster but as an "overwhelming success”. The first Russian bomb in September 1949 was greeted by Moscow’s British mouthpiece, the Daily Worker, as "tremendous news” which would encourage "peace loving people everywhere”. When the first British bomb exploded Churchill "warmly congratulated” all those concerned, not forgetting Attlee and his Labour government who had initiated it. In 1964 the Chinese government was exultant about its bomb:

  . . . a major achievement of the Chinese people . . . The development of nuclear weapons by China is for defence and for protecting the Chinese people from the danger of the United States launching a nuclear war.

Then there are the statistics about how many tanks, guns, aircraft, bullets, the Russians and the rest of the Warsaw Pact states have. According to The Peace Game, they outnumber the NATO forces 2½ to one in tanks, nearly 3 to one in guns, well over 2 to one in aircraft. To adjust this imbalance, and so to prevent a "conventional” war, the NATO powers say they need a strong nuclear force:

  . . . the last war was the worst we have ever experienced. It is wars like that which we are trying to prevent with the nuclear deterrent . . . (Margaret Thatcher, Sunday Telegraph, 20 February 1983.)

But it is not just "conventional” wars which nuclear weapons are supposed to guard against; Heseltine sees them as also stopping the "unconventional”, nuclear type: "If we want to be safe from nuclear attack we must possess a nuclear deterrent that is effective”. (Party Political Broadcast, TV. 23 February 1983.)

The confidence in that statement imbued Heseltine's entire performance that evening; he put the deterrent case in a few pointed words: "History shows one nation will only attack another when it is too weak to defend itself". But he then rather spoiled the effect by instancing the Argentinian attack on the Falklands, perhaps forgetting that this was an example of a non-nuclear, and therefore weaker, power attacking a nuclear, and therefore stronger, one. This gap in Heseltine’s argument was soon smothered with a blood-stirring shot of a Union Jack being run up a flagpole. Patriotism is often a handy substitute for logical argument.

But there can be no substituting for reality. The deterrent theory has masked an arms race unprecedented in human history. Since those quaint days of Hiroshima. when there was a bomb which could kill only in tens of thousands, the weapons and their delivery systems have been refined and strengthened to the point when they have the power to kill in millions. Thirty-six countries now have the bomb or the capability to produce it. The world nuclear stockpile represents the equivalent of four tons of TNT for everybody on earth. This, in a rare flash of candour, the nuclear powers call overkill and it exists not to protect human freedom or to make us happier or more secure but to protect the interests of some of the minority class in society who. although their numbers are relatively small, own the world in the sense that they monopolise the means of life.

If the deterrent theory works then major war will have been eliminated, the nations will go on developing more and more horrific weapons and stockpiling enough of them to kill us all several times over but all of this will be a sort of game because there will be no intention, or opportunity, to fire them. Capitalism will have undergone a character change which would have no precedent in human history. Wealth will still be produced as commodities, with the minority class continuing to own the means of production but what has hitherto been an inevitable result of this — international conflicts — will no longer be inevitable. The capitalist class will still have interests to defend but will suddenly lose the will to do so.

The less credulous — or perhaps the more aware — will find it easier to believe that the deterrent must eventually fail; capitalism cannot exist without conflict and sooner or later there will be such a clash as will make the use of nuclear weapons unavoidable if one power or group of them is to hold its own against its rival. If that happens. say the supporters of deterrence, there will be a massive riposte ending in mutual destruction — as if that would be some consolation, among the atomised ruins of our lives. There will in any case be very little time for those who believed in deterrence to realise how wrong they were; the refinements of all those deterring weapons will ensure that they are delivered on target with the very minimum of delay. So what is the theory worth?

Well in spite of what Heseltine said the fact is that Argentina should have been, but was not, deterred from attacking the Falklands by the knowledge that they might provoke a nuclear response from Britain — and there is of course some evidence that the Task Force did carry nuclear weapons. When the 1939/45 war — the sort which Thatcher says she wants to guard against with the bomb — started, there was an expectation, based on the experience of air raids in the first world war, the Spanish Civil War and the Sino/Japanese war, that there would be a swift, crushing air strike which would lay waste to many British cities and kill about 600,000 people. Such was the fear of this that trenches were dug in the parks and commons, 38 million gas masks were issued and plans were laid to evacuate 2 million people from the officially doomed cities. But this did not act as a deterrent to the British government declaring war, when they felt that the interests of their capitalist class left them no choice. When the German air attacks came they did so in spite of the fact that by then the deterrent was operating in the other direction; the British were building the bombers and the organisation which was to wreck far, far worse destruction on German cities and their people.

For the deterrent theory to hold good, it must be assumed that war is an ordered, rational affair which is governed all the time through a series of sage, balanced assessments of reality. Why then did the Germans attack Russia in 1941, landing themselves with massive problems of supply and communication, to say nothing of the hardships of the winter? The motivation for that attack took little account of such obstacles; in 1941 Hitler enthused: “Where is there a region capable of supplying iron of the quality of Ukrainian iron? Where can one find more nickel, more coal, more manganese, more molybdenum?” And a little later he told his generals: "II I do not get the oil of Maikop and Groznyi, then I must end the war".

The war was embarked on over the German expansion into the mineral fields and the markets of the world; from that point it was escalated to a climax in the ruins of Stalingrad, Berlin and Hiroshima. It was a procession of chaos, with its own grisly momentum and with episodes — for example the German policy of antagonising the people of the countries they conquered when a more successful attitude would have been one of reconciliation; for example the profitless destruction of Dresden by the Allied air forces — which fall outside even the requirements of war. If that war had been plannable, on some historical blueprint, it would hardly have moved beyond a stalemate. Today there are still the same basic conflicts of capitalism; only the sides have been shuffled. the uniforms changed, the regions of conflict may have shifted, the armouries are ever more frightful. In a recent advertisement designed (presumably) to encourage young people to join the Royal Navy, we are reminded of the development of the oil and gas fields in the North Sea, which did not exist twenty years ago:

   As a Royal Navy Officer your job would be to keep watch on them; ready to deploy surface and airborne units as well as the Royal Marines company specially trained for anything which might threaten their safety.

Perhaps it is a measure of the confidence which the nuclear powers place in the deterrent theory, that they do not spread the knowledge for the production of the bomb more widely. The effectiveness of a deterrent must be in direct proportion to the number of countries which have it. If every state had the most destructive weapons available then they could all deter each other into a perpetual stalemate. In fact no nuclear power has welcomed the development of the bomb by its rivals. The Russian bomb, said Harry Truman, emphasised “. . . the necessity for that truly effective, enforceable international control of atomic energy which this government . . . support”. When it became apparent that the British were about to explode a test bomb, the Daily Worker damned it as “. . . an unmitigated curse . . . a coward's weapon, designed for the unrestrained massacre of the civilian population". As the Chinese tested their first bomb the Foreign Office, with typical pin-stripe restraint. expressed “deep disappointment".

Capitalism has not changed its character; war cannot and will not be spirited away through the so-called deterrent any more than by an equally miraculous bout of CND-inspired pacifism among the nuclear powers. This social system provides no confidence that the interests of its people are of any consequence beside those of its master class. In fundamental terms, nuclear weapons are significant only as a development in the methods by which modern private property society carries through its conflicts. Here, for example, is how US Vice President Bush — whose finger is a mere coronary away from the Button — describes the attrition theory of the 1980s, in words to warm the cockles of the heart of the late Earl Haig:

  You have a survivability of command and control, a survivability of industrial potential protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict on you. That's the way you have a winner. (Observer, 6 February 1983.)

Before it gets to that, those citizens, might act; the fact that they have the power to do so, and to stop it all, is obscured by the false securities of both the deterrent theory and the exhalation of their fear and anger in futile demonstrations. The world's citizens could set up and operate a social system in which war could not happen; beside that overpowering fact, the debate between deterrence and disarmament is reduced to an irrelevance.

Ivan