125

p The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the fraternal parties and the world communist movement, relying on Leninist teaching, have been able to make a correct assessment of the issue of war and peace in our time, when the historical situation, along with the importance of the issues of war and peace, has changed considerably.

p The Leninist historical approach to the problem of war and peace presupposes consideration both of the class content of the epoch and of the development of the productive forces that are leading to improvements in the means of waging war. The level of armaments very much determines the scale and character of the military operations, the number of lives lost, the magnitude of destruction and, to a certain extent, the prospects and rate of postwar development. Consequently, a comprehensive assessment of war 126 necessitates more than an analysis of the policy of belligerent powers and classes within them, a continuation of which it is; it also necessitates consideration oi the material resources and armaments.

p The military and technological revolution today signifies a qualitative change both in the mode of warfare and in the nature of its socio-political and economic consequences.

p Any underestimation of the specific nature of the modern weapons of mass destruction or any denial of the part they play in contemporary international relations, just as an underestimation of the new alignment and correlation of class forces in the world would signify a retreat from the vital Marxist-Leninist demand for a specific analysis of the specific situation.

p Tremendous changes in the very foundation of society— the productive forces—have taken place since the war. Nuclear power engineering, missile techniques, cybernetics and new synthetic materials have replaced the steam and electricity that dominated the past century and are acquiring an ever greater importance. Mankind, furthermore, has begun the conquest of space. Scientific and technological progress, which has enabled man to penetrate the deepest secrets of nature holds out for him an ever fuller satisfaction of a great variety of requirements, yet under imperialism it has created monstrous new means of mass destruction.

p The beginning of the atomic age was signalled by the foreboding blasts of American atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people. This first use by the United States of the new weapon had a definite political purpose. Suffice it to recall the words of the then US President Harry Truman: “If it explodes, as 1 think it will... I’ll certainly have a hammer on those boys.”  [126•*  By “those boys” he meant the Russians; or one may record the words of the former Secretary of State Byrnes who admitted that the bomb was needed not so much to defeat Japan, but rather that it 127 should be dropped to "make Russia more manageable in Europe”.  [127•* 

p Therefore, already in the early postwar years, the threat of a new destructive war hung over the world, despite the growth of the peace-loving forces, headed by the Soviet Union, that stood opposed to imperialism. The appearance on the scene of the atomic and then the hydrogen bomb, which both had immense destructive power, and then of missile delivery systems, very much multiplied the dangerous consequences of another world war if it were to break out.

p It is true that even before last wars there had often been pessimistic forecasts about their future consequences and apocalyptical doom for human civilisation. The essential difference, however, between previous forecasts and those made today lie in the fact that previously descriptions of the horrors of the future war were largely the product of emotion rather than reason; they were made by philosophers and publicists and writers of science fiction. Nowadays, the warning is being sounded by people in the natural and exact sciences who refer to concrete facts and figures and to experimental data that are already to hand. One may cite the conclusions of the Third Pugwash Conference: “These documents indicate that if, in a future war, a substantial proportion of the nuclear weapons already manufactured were delivered against urban targets, most centres of civilisation in the belligerent countries would be totally destroyed and most of their populations killed.”  [127•** 

p One may argue that the opinions of the experts on the consequences of nuclear-missile world war do not always coincide, but their differences of opinion reflect not the fact of the vast destructive consequences of this kind of war on a global scale, merely their degree. Some maintain that as a result of the initial nuclear strikes in case of war between the Soviet Union and the United States, a few 128 dozen millions of people on each side would die; others put the figure in excess of a hundred million. Some maintain that the present arsenals of thermonuclear weapons would enable the nuclear powers to wipe out only individual countries; others believe that entire continents would go the same way. Some see the main peril in the white-hot temperature of a nuclear explosion; others see the danger in the subsequent radiation and the genetic effect on the human progeny, and so on.

p All these finer points do not make much difference from the point of view of the interests of social development. Even the smallest assessments speak clearly enough about terrible consequences of the new weapons being used. In this respect a new world war would substantially differ from the other two world wars of this century: after all, no previous war, no matter how destructive it had been, had posed a threat to the physical existence of entire countries and peoples, had threatened with catastrophic biological consequences not only the generation taking part in the war, but also the generation not yet born. This is the gloomy prospect that is a product of contemporary imperialism and its policy of aggression.

p There is a fairly widespread view that a world nuclearmissile war, due to its possible consequences both for the victor and the vanquished, cannot be a continuation of politics. It is hardly possible to agree with this viewpoint. Evidently, in examining this problem one has to distinguish two questions: the genesis of war as a continuation of politics by other means, and the effectiveness of war as a means of attaining political ends. The fact that a world nuclearmissile war today cannot ensure the attainment of imperialism’s political aims by no means changes its class character. For the imperialists, a new world war, if it were to break out, would be a direct continuation of the imperialist struggle against socialism, against the peoples’ revolutionary aspirations and against social progress. For the Soviet Union, if it were to be drawn into such a war, against its will, it would be a continuation of its just struggle for the freedom of peoples, for socialism and communism and for social progress. Therefore, the impact of the military-technological 129 revolution on the means oi waging war and on its consequences certainly does not disprove Lenin’s idea of war as a continuation of politics.

p The appearance and improvement during the scientific and technological revolution of qualitatively new types of weapons of mass destruction on the one hand, and the substantial changes in the alignment and balance of social forces, on the other, pose in a fundamentally new way the problem of war and peace and make for an immense growth in the importance of the campaign to preserve peace in the life of human society.

p The question of the relationship between war and revolution is also posed differently in the new historical circumstances. Whereas earlier, world wars which the proletariat could not prevent were used by it in order to speed up revolution and social progress, today the position is changing. Naturally, a world nuclear-missile war, if the imperialists were to unleash it, would lead to the demise of imperialism as a system. “Should the imperialist aggressors nevertheless venture to start a new world war,” the Programme of the Soviet Communist Party states, “the peoples will no longer tolerate a system which drags them into devastating wars. They will sweep imperialism away and bury it.”  [129•* 

p If we adhere to the laws of formal logic, it may seem that since the capitalist system would inevitably meet its end in a world war, the sooner such a war starts, the quicker will the end of capitalism be and the sooner will all peoples arrive at communism. Such an approach, however, which is typical of Maoism, has nothing to do with a Marxist specific and historical analysis of social phenomena on which Lenin tirelessly insisted.

p The death of hundreds and millions of people, above all, working people, and the destruction of vast productive forces throughout the world would be too big a price for the world to pay for the destruction of capitalism, already doomed by history. A thermonuclear war would not accelerate progress; it 130 would, on the contrary, set back the movement of mankind towards communism. Communism means a very high level of development of the productive forces capable of ensuring maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and spiritual needs of the members of communist society. A thermonuclear world war would cause colossal and largely irreparable damage to the productive forces, the annihilation of hundreds of millions of people, and the destruction of the very conditions for the existence of life over vast expanses of the globe. Therefore, the international working class is vitally interested in averting a new world war.

p All this heightens the importance of the efforts for a lasting peace by the Soviet Union and all progressive forces. The prevention of a world thermonuclear catastrophe is becoming the most vital task of the day and the prime condition for the very existence of society.

p Engels it was who, formulating the law of development of human history, discovered by Marx, stressed the “simple fact . . . that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.”.  [130•*  If we paraphrase this idea, we can say today that in order to eat, drink, have somewhere to live and to clothe themselves, people first must guarantee that the human species continues to exist. That depends on how the burning issue of the time, the problem of war and peace, will be resolved. The resolution of every other question, economic, social, political and ideological, ultimately depends on that. Albert Einstein, the founder of modern physics, expressed this idea in his own way: “Man must first ensure his survival; only then can he ask himself what type of existence = he prefers.”  [130•** 

p Back in 1917 Lenin described the issue of peace as "a burning question, the painful question of the day”, and today we may speak with even greater justification in precisely the same way. The CPSLJ Programme defines war and 131 peace as the principal issue of today, as a life-and-death issue for hundreds of millions of people.  [131•* 

p One’s attitude to this problem is an important criterion for judging historical personalities, governments and political parties, and social systems. While capitalism in its imperialist stage produced the thermonuclear menace, while imperialism is the principal source of danger of a new world war, the development of socialism and other revolutionary forces today opens up a real prospect of averting such a war. To socialism belongs the service of presenting the issue of war and peace concisely and of mobilising the peoples for campaigning against the threat of another world war. Socialism is the main force capable of resolving the historic task of rescuing mankind from a world thermonuclear catastrophe. The breaking of the American atomic monopoly was of over-riding importance for an effective struggle for peace in the particular circumstances of the arms race and the imperialist aggressive foreign policy. Only powerful weapons of struggle against aggression were capable of containing the belligerent imperialist politicians who could, banking on their impunity, have plunged mankind into the abyss of a new world war.

p A historic responsibility lay on the shoulders of the Soviet people in this situation. The Soviet people, Soviet scientists, engineers and workers rose to the occasion and, in a short span of time, created not only an atomic bomb and thereby put an end to the American atomic monopoly, but even more powerful thermonuclear weapons. Then, the most up-to-date and effective means of delivering these weapons—missiles of various purposes, including intercontinental and orbital missiles—were created. The Soviet achievements were a decisive factor in restraining the imperialists from letting loose a new world war. It is indicative that even in the aggressive war against the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, not to speak of the later international crises, the American imperialists did not venture to resort to atomic weapons.

p The possibility of averting another world war is 132 preconditioned primarily by the radical change of the balance of power in favour ot socialism. What with the scientific and technological revolution and the massive growth of antiwar and anti-imperialist forces which possess strong weapons for restraining aggressors, world wars are no longer inevitable, despite their main source—the existence of imperialism. In alliance with all anti-imperialist forces, the working class is capable of preventing a world war. Moreover, the resolution of precisely this problem is becoming the principal link in the concerted actions of the anti-imperialist forces. The fundamentally new elements in the objective meaning of the issue of war and peace today have required of the Communist Parties a creative development of Lenin’s ideas, new theoretical generalisations and conclusions, the elaboration of a new foreign policy strategy for the socialist countries and a new general policy for the international workers’ movement. Even in the mid-1940s and the early 1950s, the leaders of the socialist countries and Communist Parties gave prominence in their writings to the struggle for peace and for avoiding a world war. However, the idea of the inevitability of world wars under imperialism was not put to doubt, and usually they spoke of the possibilities and probability of averting a particular war, of postponing it and of provisionally maintaining peace.

p The conclusion reached at the 20th Congress of the CPSU concerning the possibility of averting wars in the present epoch had great theoretical and political significance. This was a contribution to the development of Leninism and Leninist thought on questions of war, peace and revolution. It is noteworthy that this conclusion was made together with other ideas on such closely related issues as the forms of transition of different countries to socialism (the strategy of the revolutionary movement) and peaceful coexistence between states of the two systems (as part of the foreign policy strategy of the socialist states).

p These conclusions on vital international issues excited a wide response throughout the world; they received approval and development in the theoretical and practical activity of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties. This was readily apparent in the work of the Moscow Meetings of 133 Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1957 and 1960, and in the documents they adopted: the Declaration, Peace Manifesto, Statement and Appeal to the Peoples of the World.

p The achievements of creative Marxist-Leninist thought on the issues of war, peace and revolution were embodied in the Party Programme adopted at the 22nd CPSU Congress in 1961 and in the decisions of the 23rd Congress.

p “Our Party is convinced,” the resolution of the Congress states, “that the conclusion of the world communist movement on the possibility of bridling the aggressor and averting a new world war is correct.”  [133•* 

p The theoretical propositions of creative Marxism-Leninism evoked bitter opposition from “Left”-wing opportunists who dogmatically referred to the revolutionary consequences of the two world wars and, on that basis, viewed the campaign against a new world war as a renunciation of the revolutionary perspective. Representatives, for example, of leftist groups who had broken with Marxism-Leninism maintain that world war is to the advantage of the working people, that “war tempers the people and advances history”.  [133•**  Some of the Peking leaders have spoken of the possibility of sacrificing in war hundreds of millions of people for the sake of the world proletarian revolution. In a speech to a meeting of Party workers in Chengtu, Mao Tse-tung said that if the atomic bomb were to reduce the Chinese people to ashes it would not matter greatly since, after the war they could begin to build again; they would build better than they had done in the past. The 9th Congress of the Communist Party of China officially recorded the thesis of the inevitability and even desirability of war.

p The Peking pseudo-revolutionaries spread the idea that world war is the best way to achieve world revolution and they find an echo in certain bourgeois concepts. In his book The Nature of Communism, published in 1962, the American historian Robert Daniels asserts: “In retrospect we 134 can see that communist success has depended heavily on the strategic utilisation of a certain kind of situation—world war and postwar chaos.”  [134•*  The same idea is voiced by M. Akagi, a prominent member of the Japanese LiberalDemocratic Party, who has maintained that “it is precisely war that brings the danger of the genesis and growth of communism”.  [134•** 

p While such assertions by bourgeois writers come as no surprise they sound monstrous coming from people who call themselves Marxists-Leninists. They are alien to the whole spirit of Leninism and do not conform to Lenin’s statements concerning the relationship between war and revolution. Lenin considered it was necessary to use war (once it had broken out) to the benefit of the revolution, yet he certainly did not draw the conclusion from this that any war automatically gives birth to revolution.

p The emergence of a revolutionary situation and the triumph of socialism are largely the consequences of the maturing of objective conditions within the bounds of the social and economic system as a whole, and of the development of internal contradictions and the subjective factor in certain countries. While earlier, the state of imperialism determined one’s evaluation of the objective prerequisites for socialist revolution, today it is the development and attainments of world socialism that serve as an essential prerequisite. This factor was underlined in the Statement adopted by the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1960: “The fact that both world wars, which were started by the imperialists, ended in socialist revolutions by no means implies that the way to social revolution goes necessarily through world war, especially now that there exists a powerful world system of socialism.”  [134•***  War is an offspring of imperialism, it is a product of the policy of the ruling classes—whether it is a civil or a world war. The proletariat, however, is interested in winning without a war 135 which would bring it great losses and suffering. The proletariat is only obliged to wage war if the bourgeoisie leaves it no other alternative.

p Both before it takes power and after, the proletariat is interested in avoiding, stopping and abolishing wars, which are a product of the division of society into inimical classes, the domination of private property and of the exploiting system. “All our politics and propaganda, however,” Lenin said in 1920, “are directed towards putting an end to war and in no way towards driving nations to war.”  [135•* 

p He saw the link between war and revolution primarily in the fact that the victory of revolution facilitates the fight against war, not in the fact that war of necessity produces revolution.

p The Programme of the CPSU develops Lenin’s ideas of the relation between war and revolution, the connection between the battle for peace and the fight for socialism as applied to the new historical conditions: "The victory of socialism throughout the world will do away completely with the social and national causes of all wars. To abolish war and establish everlasting peace on earth is a historic mission of communism."  [135•** 

p The significance today of the struggle against the imperialist policy of aggression and war was again confirmed by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969: “The main link of united action of the antiimperialist forces remains the struggle against war for world peace, against the menace of a thermonuclear world war and mass extermination which continues to hang over mankind.”  [135•*** 

p In setting this task, the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties do not confine themselves to a statement of the need to avert a world war, but, through a comprehensive analysis of the situation they indicate the real possibility of solving this historical task. The final Document of the International 136 Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969 says: "A new world war can be averted by the combined effort of the socialist countries, the international working class, the national liberation movement, all peace-loving countries, public organisations and mass movements.”  [136•* 

p Indisputably, the world socialist system, with its vanguard, the Soviet Union, which possesses an immense economic and defensive capacity, is the fundamental force of the present day which blunts the aggressive intentions of imperialism. Edward Gierek, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, said at the 24th Congress of the CPSU that the Soviet Union bears the major burden of the struggle against the forces of imperialism, and its great historic service lies in the fact that it has opened a real prospect for averting world wars.

p One must take into consideration, in examining the conditions for avoiding world war today, the two interconnected aspects of the same process—the immense growth of progressive and peace-loving forces and the obvious narrowing of imperialism’s possibilities for starting a war, and the dangerous consequences of military ventures for imperialism itself.

p This objective factor was bound to have a corresponding effect on the ideological and political activity of contemporary imperialism, on its attitude to the problem of another world war. Bourgeois realists are more and more renouncing their reliance on a global nuclear-missile war against socialism as a means of attaining their political ends. In the new circumstances, the age-old wisdom expressed in the Latin saying Vae victis! (Woe to the vanquished!) is becoming an anachronism. A nuclear-missile war would mean woe also for the victors, as the French General Beaufre agrees: “No matter what the outcome of the struggle, the conqueror and the vanquished—if these distinctions exist any more—must pay an exorbitant price in atomic destruction....”  [136•** 

p This is an idea that is increasingly gaining recognition in speeches by bourgeois statesmen. In one of his last speeches, 137 President Kennedy had these prophetic words to say about “the agonising reappraisal of values” by modern imperialist leaders when faced with the radical changes in the balance of power between the two systems in favour of socialism: “The family of man can survive differences of race and religion. ... It can accept differences in ideology, politics, economics. But it cannot survive, in the form in which we know it, a nuclear war.”  [137•* 

p In his Report to the Congress “US Foreign Policy for the 1970s”, President Nixon had to admit: “Both the Soviet Union and the States have acquired the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on the other, no matter which strikes first. There can be no gain and certainly no victory for the power that provokes a thermonuclear exchange.”  [137•** 

p When he was the Canadian Foreign Minister, Lester Pearson wrote: ”. . .In today’s nuclear world . .. national interests cannot any longer be separated from humanity itself. Indeed, by far the greatest national interest is, and must remain, the prevention of a war which would destroy humanity.”  [137•*** 

p Bellicose calls, however, continue to resound in the West. Some, like Herman Kahn, an ideologist of American imperialist policy, try to play down the extent of danger associated with the thermonuclear war and to get people used to it. Others, like Edward Teller, “the father of the H-bomb”, advocate a “limited” nuclear war. Thomas E. Murray, former member of the American Atomic Energy Commission, has written: “I have been urging for several years that the United States concentrate on the development of nuclear weapons in the lower order of destructiveness. We must equip ourselves with a wide range of weapons in this category, in order to strengthen our capabilities for waging in a civilised fashion [!] every manner of warfare into which we might be forced.”  [137•****  Similar ideas are voiced by the retired 138 American general N. F. Twining: “It would therefore seem axiomatic that the first principle of our national security policy would be to seize and maintain the initiative in all dimensions of modern war; to include the economic, psychological, political, military, and the technological.”  [138•*  Yet others openly advocate the idea of “the logic of total war” and call for the manufacture of even more powerful megaton bombs capable of destroying an entire continent. Another group—and these are probably in a majority—believe “the balance of fear” to be the height of political wisdom.

p In answer to the proponents of such views, the American scientist and public figure Charles Price avers that containment through mutual fear is no reliable basis for avoiding catastrophe. There are too many possibilities for the manifestation of emotions produced by fear, hatred or irrationality; of course, he goes on, no sane person would intend to begin such a suicidal destruction, but hopes for the continued sanity of all people for all time is too slender a thread on which the future existence of human civilisation should hang.

p Another popular view in the West is that horrific destructive power of the latest weapons more or less automatically guarantees stability and peace. The above-mentioned French General Beaufre has written: “Our age, before atomic weapons, has known two vast world conflicts . . . and we must be thankful to atomic weapons that up to now we have not yet seen a third even more devastating war.”  [138•** 

p This type of reasoning shows that bourgeois ideologists tend to ignore the role of social, class factors in international relations. No up-to-the-minute weapon is capable, by itself, of preventing war. Only the fact that the imperialist countries are not alone in possessing modern weapons, and that the Soviet Union is maintaining, at the price of tremendous efforts, such a level of military potential and combat preparedness of its armed forces as to restrain the hotheads among the militarists and aggressors, can paralyse 139 aggressive intentions and help to preserve universal peace. One recalls the aggressive plans and actions of the US ruling circles during the time when America had an atomic monopoly. Conversely, the successful arresting of aggressive imperialist action as, for example, in the Middle East conflict of 1956–57, was possible precisely at a time when outstanding advances had been made in strengthening the Soviet Union.

p McGeorge Bundy, former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, wrote in Foreign Affairs that “even the most cold-blooded of American planners has always understood, at least since 1954, that a concept of the strategic first strike by the United States is wholly unacceptable because of the prospect of Soviet retaliation”.  [139•* 

Therefore, the absence today of the fatal inevitability of another world war does not by any means imply the automatic inevitability of peace. The danger of world war does exist; moreover, at certain times it has been greater due to the growing activity of imperialism’s aggressive policy, and especially that of American imperialism, which has created a gigantic war machine, is stepping up the arms race and is planning and developing so-called local wars.