57

p The ideological struggle on the international scene was frequently activated in the past during periods of war. At first glance, this may be regarded as a paradox, for if of all the methods and means of struggle for foreign policy objectives the choice falls on war it would be logical to expect other methods and means, including the methods of persuasion, to recede into the background. Why had this not happened and why, having given preference to military means, governments found themselves compelled to activate ideological, propaganda efforts in order to influence their own and other peoples? The answer to this question must be sought in the fact that of all the problems of foreign policy war has always powerfully and directly affected the vital interests of the masses. Also, of all the means of pursuing foreign policy war demands the active participation of more or less considerable masses of the population.

p The changes in weapons and methods of warfare, the changes in the character and consequences of war have naturally heightened the interest of the masses in problems of foreign policy and gave them greater possibility of prevailing on this policy.

p In recent years bourgeois sociologists have also begun to recognise the link between the changes in weapons and 58 the character of wars, on the one hand, and the ideological struggle, on the other. In particular, they refer to the appearance of nuclear weapons as one of the factors determining the increased significance of the ideological struggle in international relations.

p Precisely what do they have in mind?

p First, the circumstance that the appearance of weapons of mass annihilation makes an all-out thermonuclear war an unsuitable or, in any case, an “impracticable” means of struggle for the attainment of imperialism’s basic foreign policy objective of crushing the socialist countries. Naturally, this enhances the role of other, including ideological, means of foreign policy.

p In the West, it should be noted, this view became widespread not only as a result of the development of nuclear weapons and modern means of delivery. This question was not raised as long as the imperialist powers had the monopoly or, at least, considerable superiority in this sphere. The situation changed only when at the close of the 1950s and the early 1960s the Soviet Union’s achievements in the production of nuclear weapons and of the means of delivering them (notably, missiles) had become obvious. That marked the beginning of the period of so-called " painful reassessment" of imperialism’s military-political doctrines, when the suicidal concept of “liberation” and "massive retaliation" gave way to the doctrine of "flexible response”. The emphasis was shifted to a quest for political means that held out the promise of success without a direct threat of a global missile-nuclear conflict.

p This was the period when the new realities in international relations began to receive recognition in Western political literature. Typical in this respect is the way this question is put by Charles H. Donnelly. "Armed force,” he writes, "remains an important instrument of national foreign policy but, today, the danger inherent in its use has caused the world powers to turn more frequently to other means of attaining national objectives. These means include use of political or diplomatic pressure; economic measures, such as loans, grants, favourable trade arrangements, and technical co-operation; and psychological methods which include propaganda, threats, gestures of goodwill, and sometimes domestic policies intended to impress other 59 countries."  [59•*  A concept steadily gaining ground is that weapons are ceasing to be a sword in the sense of a world war and becoming a shield for other methods of foreign policy.

p In analysing the possibilities of fighting socialism in the conditions of the "nuclear deadlock”, many Western sociologists have begun to give prominence to means of ideological pressure, to foreign political propaganda. Among them are Gordon, Falk and Hodapp, who write: "... propaganda today has become an arm of diplomacy, and every modern state is vigorously engaged in the invasion of ideas. In the vacuum created by fear of atomic warfare, this war of words may therefore be the life-or-death struggle".  [59•**  This “vacuum” is mentioned also by Walter Joyce, editor of the journal Printer’s Ink, which may be regarded as the official mouthpiece of the American advertising business (which has lately been showing a growing interest in foreign political propaganda). In The Propaganda Gap, a book urging an all-out ideological war against communism, he writes: "Now we are approaching a political Armageddon. The military capabilities of the Communists and the Free World have, for all practical purposes, cancelled each other, simply because it would be impracticable for either side to resort to nuclear warfare.” Hence the accent on the war of ideas, on subordinating politics to its tasks. "Unless we want to and are prepared to launch an all-out war of aggression against the Communists,” Joyce writes, "there is not a national objective in which psychological aspects are not predominant."  [59•*** 

p This may be taken as recognition of some of the basic propositions of the principle of peaceful coexistence which the Communists had formulated long ago. But the Communists had enunciated this principle long before the appearance of nuclear weapons, proposing that war should be renounced and that the inevitable struggle between the two systems should be confined to ideological propaganda 60 and economic competition. Progress in military techniques and the development of unprecedentedly destructive means of mass annihilation have compelled even some of the most bitter enemies of communism to recognise the expediency of these proposals. It is another matter that these concessions to the demands of life are very small and ambiguous, owing, among other things, to the imperialists’ view of the nature of the war of ideas and the methods employed by them.

p The consequences of the changes in weapons and in the nature of warfare are not, however, confined to the fact that the imperialist powers have found themselves compelled to pay more attention than before to non-military means of fighting socialism. These changes have a direct bearing on the question of the people’s influence on foreign policy—the problem that interests us.

p Before analysing this problem we must specify some questions concerning the method of examining it.

p In recent years, some people calling themselves Marxists have sought to question the validity of the problem of the influence of new types of weapons on political relations. These people, Mao Tse-tung and his associates among them, went against the co-ordinated conclusions of the Communist parties regarding the political consequences of modern weapons of mass annihilation. In so doing they go so far as to build their arguments on the Marxist-Leninist teaching that the masses are the makers of history.

p In one of the articles with which Peking started the polemic on this issue it is stated: "We do not subscribe to the theory that nuclear weapons are all-powerful. We have never considered that nuclear weapons decide the destiny of mankind. We are deeply convinced that the masses are the decisive force of historical development, that only the masses decide mankind’s historical destiny."

p The words about the "theory that nuclear weapons are all-powerful" are in this case nothing more than a piece of sheer hypocrisy.  [60•*  No Marxist has ever propounded or supported any “theory” of this kind. But at the moment we are 61 interested in something else: What is there of the MarxistLeninist understanding of history in the thesis that the masses are omnipotent.

p It is quite true that by their production activity, their indirect and direct participation in the creation of cultural values and—in certain forms and at certain stages of social development—by their political activity the masses ultimately determine the course of history. But is this grounds for drawing the conclusion that in class society only the masses decide the outcome of each political event? By no means. The fact that fundamental political affairs are directed not by the masses but by the ruling classes is the bed-rock of exploiting class society. Such was the case in the past and such, despite the increased socio-political role of the masses, is the case in the capitalist countries today. Otherwise exploitation, oppression, social injustice and predatory wars would have been impossible.

p He is a poor revolutionary who fails to see this reality, who believes that the working masses can always, at any time and under any conditions, direct the course of events into any channel they desire. Lenin, it will be recalled, ridiculed the Russian Narodniks (Populists) when they advocated Utopian plans of struggle on the argument that strength was "already on the side of the working people and their ideologists, and that all that remained was to indicate the ’immediate’, ’expedient’, etc,, methods of using this strength”. "This is,” Lenin underscored, "a sickening lie from beginning to end."  [61•* 

p The Marxist-Leninist proposition about the masses being the real makers of history was put forwad to counter the idealist view that history was made not by the masses but by outstanding personalities—kings, military leaders, philosophers, legislators and so on. But this does not mean that the masses can achieve what they want in any situation and under any conditions.

The proposition that the masses are the makers of history in no way invalidates the fact that their activity is limited by objective possibilities, which in each concrete epoch determine the extent of their influence on politics and other social affairs.

62

p As regards weapons, in class society they are not only armaments but also an important material factor of social relations. Indeed, why had the masses been for thousands of years unable to execute their will and forced to submit to the dictation of the exploiting classes? Not even the Peking theoreticians will venture to deny that this situation is rooted in the real historical conditions, which for thousands of years had made it impossible to build a society in which the power would be in the hands not of the exploiters but of the working people. The working masses were oppressed, humiliated and disinherited because for long centuries the power in society was wielded not by them but by the exploiters. This power was ensured by economic domination; by spiritual or ideological domination; and lastly, by force in the direct meaning of the word—by armed force, which had always been the foundation of state power.

p But armed force does not consist solely of a superior military organisation. One of its major components is superior armaments, which the ruling class has and the masses have not. Let us recall Lenin’s well-known pronouncement on this score: "In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, on wage labour, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia—and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance—represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell on it."  [62•* 

p Metaphorically speaking, weapons are one of the instruments by which the exploiting minority has always compensated for its numerical weakness in face of the oppressed majority and nullified the numerical superiority of the working people.

p Armaments thus play an immense socio-political role as a key instrument of class coercion, which in antagonistic society is a cardinal method of politics.

p This logical link between armaments and politics was traced by the founders of Marxism-Leninism. Important in this respect is the assessment given by Marx and Engels of the invention of firearms. In Wage Labour and Capital 63 Marx wrote: "With the invention of a new instrument of warfare, firearms, the whole internal organisation of the army necessarily changed; the relationships within which individuals can constitute an army and act as an army were transformed and the relations of different armies to one another also changed."  [63•*  Dwelling on the significance of these changes Engels noted in Anti-Dnhring: "And the introduction of firearms had a revolutionising effect not only on the conduct of war itself, but also on the political relationships of domination and subjection."  [63•** 

p It may be asked: If this is the standpoint of the Marxists then what is the difference between their views and the views of the bourgeois sociologists who see the key to the explanation of all social and political phenomena in equipment, including military equipment? There is a difference, and it is a fundamental one.

p Bourgeois sociologists see a direct and closed link between equipment and politics, ignoring the class, social relationships, which are decisive in all cases. The Marxists, on the other hand, regard new equipment only as one of the material elements of economic and political relationships, in the context of the influence which this element exercises on the condition of the given classes and on the relations between them. To illustrate the substance of this approach, let us again refer to Engels’ pronouncement, in which he lays bare the impact of weapons "on the political relationships of domination and subjection".

"The procurement of powder and firearms,” he wrote, enlarging on his proposition, "required industry and money, and both of these were in the hands of the burghers of the towns. From the outset, therefore, firearms were the weapons of the towns, and of the rising town-supported monarchy against the feudal nobility. The stone walls of the noblemen’s castles, hitherto unapproachable, fell before the cannon of the burghers, and the bullets of the burghers’ arquebuses pierced the armour of the knights. With the defeat of the nobility’s armour-clad cavalry, the- nobility’s supremacy was broken."  [63•*** 

64

p The analysis made by Marx and Engels of the consequences of the development of firearms does not, of course, give grounds for drawing direct historical analogies (the appearance of nuclear weapons did not lead to any shift of the class forces in capitalist society.)  [64•*  But it retains all its value as a method indicating the far-reaching political and social consequences that may ensue from a seeming purely technical innovation—in the given case, the invention of a new weapon.

p Moreover, in Anti-Duhring Engels analysed the substance of militarism, the child of the class relations of bourgeois society and of the policies of the ruling bourgeoisie. At the close of the 19th century militarism developed into a social phenomenon that acquired relative independence and, as Engels emphasised, its own "dialectics of evolution".

p Here, too, the point of departure for an analysis consisted of the changes in armaments (the appearance of quickfiring rifles, machine-guns, new types of ordnance, and new types of warships) and in the organisation of armies ( replacement of hired, professional troops by massive armies, which, in effect, meant the arming of whole nations). In considering these changes, Engels wrote: "The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the people are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe. But this militarism also bears within itself the seed of its own destruction."  [64•** 

p In this connection, Engels noted, first, the huge growth of military spending and, second, the fact that the rivalry between states was forcing them "to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the war-lords in command. And this moment will arrive as soon as the mass 65 of the people—town and country workers and peasants—will have a will. At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work, and militarism collapses by the dialectics of its own evolution."  [65•* 

p Engels developed this idea in many of his other works. For instance, in the introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, he summed up the latest changes in military armament and organisation as follows: "The recruitment of the whole of the population able to bear arms into armies that henceforth could be counted only in millions, and the introduction of firearms, projectiles and explosives of hitherto undreamt-of ^efficacy, created a complete revolution in all warfare...by making any war other than a world war of unheard-of cruelty and absolutely incalculable outcome an impossibility."  [65•** 

p This brings out the logic of that brilliant Marxist’s analysis. Using the changes in armaments and in the organisation of armies as his point of departure and taking account of all the economic, social and political conditions of the society of his day, he drew significant conclusions which unquestionably helped succeeding generations of Marxists to map out the correct policy, strategy and tactics for the proletarian class struggle. In these prophetic pronouncements Engels outlined a number of fundamental principles that played & decisive role in the subsequent revolutionary battles of the working class.

p He advanced the important proposition that under certain conditions the military organisation in existence since the close of the 19th century (the transition to massive armies) created the possibility of turning the army of a monarch or a bourgeois republic into a people’s army, in other words, into a revolutionary army.

p He foresaw the national crises that stem from world wars and, in their turn, grow into revolutionary situations.

He anticipated the basic tactical watchword of the working class vis-a-vis the war unleashed by capitalism, namely: "Turn the imperialist war into a civil war!"

66

p Lastly, he drew the prophetic conclusion about the " dialectics of militarism": by swelling militarism to gigantic proportions the capitalist system has sown the seeds of destruction not only of this bloodthirsty creation of its own but also of the social system on whose soil militarism has grown and which it is dragging into the grave after it.

p Lenin enlarged on the tenets of Marx and Engels in conformity with the new level achieved by armaments and military organisation in the first quarter of the 20th century. He laid bare the social significance of these changes not only in order to add to the exposure of capitalism’s antipopular nature but also in order to chart for the working class a new approach to the struggle for socialism, to the struggle against war. Wars between countries, Lenin noted, "will end only when the capitalist system ceases to exist, or when the immensity of human and financial sacrifice caused by the development of military technique, and the indignation which armaments arouse in the people, lead to the elimination of the system".  [66•*  Nadezhda Krupskaya tells us that as early as the beginning of 1918 Lenin said that "modern technology is now helping wars to become more and more destructive. But the time will come when war will be so destructive as to be ruled out completely".  [66•** 

p Borne out by the further course of history, these precepts of the founders of Marxism-Leninism preserve their full significance andjserve as a reliable method for analysing the changes that have taken place in international relations in the subsequent decades.

p As regards the impact of the innovations in armaments and military organisation on the role played by the masses in international politics, the first problem that we have to consider is that of massive armies and the destiny of militarism.

Of the innovations in the military sphere, on the basis of which Engels drew his conclusions, the most important from the standpoint of historical experience was the appearance of massive armies in the principal European powers. Indeed, beginning with the last 30 years of the 19th century these became standing armies.

67

p What is the fundamental significance of this fact? First, that the bourgeoisie found it had to train and arm its class adversaries—the workers and peasants. It was no longer a professional army consisting of representatives of the ruling class (such as the medieval knights) or of declassed and bribed strata of society (such as were the mercenary armies of the monarchs) but the armed people that had to become the military mainstay of the capitalist oppressors and the weapon of their anti-popular aggressive foreign policy.

p Further, the transition to massive armies made wars increasingly more destructive. The foreign political adventures of the ruling classes cost the people a steadily heavier price in blood and enormous material privation, which inevitably intensified the class hatred of the working people for their oppressors, for the warmongers.

p Lastly, war, waged by massive armies, had become total war, and under certain conditions could weaken and disorganise the political rule of the capitalists, i.e., create one of the indispensable prerequisites of a revolutionary situation.

p It would be hard to overestimate the significance of these factors. All operate in one direction, that is to say, they intensify the social contradictions of capitalist society, facilitate revolutionary action by the proletariat and other working people and inexorably push the masses into the struggle against militarism and the bourgeois system that has given it birth.

p This theoretical conclusion, drawn by Marxist thinkers at the close of the 19th century, has been fully borne out by developments. Many of the major wars provoked during the past century by the aggressive bourgeoisie were accompanied by powerful revolutionary action on the part of the working masses headed by the proletariat. One of the consequences of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 was the Paris Commune. The Russo-Japanese War ended not only with the Treaty of Portsmouth but also with the revolution of 1905-07. The First World War ended with socialist and democratic revolutions in many countries, notably with the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. Imperialism was punished for the Second World War by the peoples of a number of European and Asian countries shaking off 68 bourgeois rule and taking the road of socialism, and by a massive upsurge of the national liberation struggle, which quickly destroyed the main colonial empires.

p We thus see a definite interdependence: where the class antagonisms of bourgeois society are aggravated, wars with the participation of massive armies end with serious upheavals in a growing number of countries and, moreover, with the destruction of the social system that gives rise to armed conflicts. Of course, this does not mean that wars are the cause of socialist revolution.  [68•*  But many of the wars during the past century have stimulated the processes giving rise to revolutions, accelerated them and cleared the way to their victory.

The conclusion may be drawn that the above-mentioned changes in the nature of wars have made the ruling classes much more dependent on the working masses, on their will, sentiments, and attitude to the foreign policy of their governments. This has become a new real factor, which can no longer be ignored. Also of immense importance is the fact that with the appearance of massive armies the sentiments and morale of the masses have become a cardinal element of the military potential of any country. "In the final analysis, victory in any war,” Lenin wrote, "depends on the spirit animating the masses that spill their own blood on the field of battle.... The realisation by the masses of the causes and aims of the war is of tremendous importance and ensures victory."  [68•** 

69

p Moreover, the changes in the nature of wars have, for the first time, compelled the bourgeoisie, when starting a new adventure, to reckon with the possibility of defeat in battle and with the real prospect of revolutionary action in the rear. The attitude of the masses to war and to the foreign policy preceding it thus becomes not only a supreme military but also a major political factor on which may depend the destiny of the social system guilty of unleashing wars.

p The risk linked with war has thereby increased considerably for the imperialists, for their power and privileges may be jeopardised. The changes that have taken place in armaments and military organisation in the first half of the 20th century have heightened the people’s interest in foreign policy and increased their real possibilities of influencing international relations.The working people have used these possibilities time and again. Suffice it to recall their antiintervention struggle under the slogan of "Hands Off Russia”, which substantially influenced the policy of the ruling classes. Fear of possible action by the masses was one of the reasons imperialism did not dare to unleash aggression against the socialist countries immediately after the Second World War when it still had a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

p The first post-war months of 1945 could not fail to reaffirm in the eyes of imperialist politicians the fact that with antifascist feeling running high throughout the world the existence of massive armies could seriously affect imperialism’s political plans. In fact, at the time, the mood of the masses compelled Washington to speed up demobilisation. "We and our Western allies,” Dean Acheson wrote, "demobilised our military forces. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the people demobilised themselves."  [69•*  Ordinary Americans saw no necessity not only for a large army after the victory over the Axis powers but also for compulsory military conscription. Congress rejected Harry S. Truman’s energetic efforts to make it law. General George C. Marshall, who was Chief-of-Staff of the US Army, said in the autumn of 1945: "For the moment, in a widespread emotional crisis of the American people, demobilisation has become, in effect, 70 disintegration, not only of the armed forces, but apparently of all conception of world responsibility."  [70•* 

p It goes without saying that this could not force the monopoly bourgeoisie to renounce its aggressive foreign policies. But neither could it totally ignore the changes: it had to, as in other major issues, adapt itself to the new realities of the age. First and foremost, this concerned its efforts to make careful political and ideological preparations for war through the establishment of an absolute dictatorship and through an offensive on democratic rights and freedoms, and also through intensifying the indoctrination of the public mind by means of massive internal and external political propaganda.

p Moreover, a striving was evident to break the dependence into which the imperialist rulers had been forced by the need to maintain a massive army. Bourgeois politicians, military leaders and theoreticians very quickly realised the danger harboured by this need. Directly after the First World War the quest for ways of doing without massive armies and replacing them with machines served by a small professional army became one of the chief directions of the development of imperialist military thought. In this connection one can refer, say, to the "air war" doctrine of the Italian Giulio Douhet and the American General William Mitchell, or the "tank war" theories of Generals J. F. Fuller (Britain) and Heinz Guderian (Germany).

p Bourgeois research in the development of armaments followed the same line of thought. The persevering, unceasing quest for “super-weapons”, for "total weapons" was doubtlessly dictated not only by the aspiration to achieve military supremacy over the external enemy but also by the desire to have a safeguard against the “internal” enemy—the working masses. As the Second World War showed, the desired result was not brought about either by aircraft or tanks or other types of new conventional weapons.

p An atomic bomb was used for the first time in the history of war in August 1945. The development of various types of weapons of mass annihilation went forward rapidly during the following decades. New and continuously perfected 71 means of delivering these weapons—jet aircraft and later rockets—appeared in parallel.

p Could it be that these were the weapons the reactionary politicians and generals had dreamed of for so long? Were they not the very means for the "push-button war" that would at last have made them invulnerable against the wrath of the peoples and turned the peoples into pawns that could be moved about the chessboard, exchanged or sacrificed in the sanguinary gambits of imperialist expansion?

p Some Western political and military leaders entertained illusions of this kind. But they sobered up very quickly. This was largely due to the fact that Soviet achievements in the development of armaments had broken the US monopoly on nuclear weapons. Besides, military experts had come to the conclusion that massive armies were still necessary. But the main factor dispelling such illusions lay in the social and political consequences of the invention and development of modern weapons of mass annihilation.

p It is not the purpose of this work to analyse these consequences. We are only interested in problems that have a direct bearing on the new potentialities and directions of the people’s influence on international politics, and hence on the increased role of the battle of ideas in international relations.

p At preceding stages the development of armaments and military organisation had made the question of war and peace and, thereby, of foreign politics, increasingly more vital to the masses and gave this question prominence in the political struggle of the working people.

p It this connection Engels and then Lenin underscored the implications of the economic and political consequences of militarism. They noted, in particular, the immense growth of spending on armaments, which was threatening to throw out of gear the entire economic mechanism of even the rich powers, and the burden it was placing on the shoulders of the working people. The further course of events fully bore out their prevision.

p Some idea of the material expenditures that have been consumed by wars is given by the computations of the West German engineer Bernhard Endrucks, who had devoted many years to a study of this problem in order to substantiate his plans for disarmament. He gives the following figures: 72

p "A total of 52,600 million dollars were spent on the preparations for the First World War. The war itself and the destruction wrought by it cost mankind 260,000 million dollars. The Second World War cost approximately 12 times as much—3,300,000 million dollars. During the first seven years after the war, 1945-52 (the last year in Endrucks’ computations.—G. A.), mankind spent 777,600 million dollars on military requirements. Altogether, from 1900 to 1951 wars and the preparations for them deprived the peoples of the fantastic sum of 7,000,000 million dollars."  [72•* 

p If we take Endrucks’ figures as our basis we can, of course, introduce some corrections. But official figures do not differ very much from his computations. In 1968 the Economic Bureau of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency published a review in which military expenditures in the world during the period from 1900 to 1967 were estimated at more than 4,000,000 million dollars and it was stated that "if the current level of military spending should continue, this total will be doubled in only 20 years".  [72•**  Such are the astronomical sums being absorbed by modern militarism.

p An idea of what these figures mean in terms of real values is given in an interesting computation made by the American pacifist Quaker Jerome Davis. According to his figures, the money swallowed by the Second World War would have sufficed to built a five-room house for every family in the world and thereby to solve the housing problem, which is among the most acute in all countries. Moreover, enough would have been left to build and maintain for ten years a hospital in every town of over 5,000 people and thereby solve yet another major problem, that of public health.  [72•*** 

p It goes without saying that questions of this kind have never worried the monopoly elite, which determines the policies of the bourgeois countries. The reason for this lies not only in the fact that it is little concerned with the moral aspect, including how world problems could be resolved on the money absorbed by war and militarism, but also in the 73 fact that quite different book-keeping rules guide the monopolies in their calculation of the efficacy of their investments: they are concerned not with the direct or indirect losses sustained by society but with the profits derived by them as a result of the military expenditures of nations, of expenditures that turn into a mammoth pump directing social wealth into the safes of the industrialists and financiers.

p But a situation, in which the growth of military expenditures depletes national wealth, strengthens the economic position of the ruling bourgeoisie, maintains a high level of profits and, at the same time, does not in any way threaten the stability of capitalist society could not be expected to last for ever.

p The fantastic achievements of science and technology in the development of means of destruction inevitably brought with them a similarly fantastic growth of military spending. This growth could not fail to have qualitative economic consequences.

p The journal US News and World Report published incisively eloquent figures to illustrate the rising cost of arms. Whereas an American aircraft carrier of World War II times cost 55 million dollars, a modern atomic-powered aircraft carrier costs 545 million dollars. Whereas a submarine of the World War II period cost 4,700,000 dollars, a nuclear submarine built in 1968 cost 200 million dollars. In the 1940s a bomber cost 218,000 dollars, while the B-52 bomber built in 1961 cost 7,900,000 dollars. The cost of a modern inter-continental ballistic missile exceeds 2,000,000 dollars.  [73•* 

p The expenditures on the large modern weapons systems, on which present-day armament is based, are running into incredible figures. For instance, according to American estimates, the anti-missile defence system (whose efficacy is extremely doubtful) will cost from 30,000 to 60,000 million dollars. In 1968, when the Republican Administration was installed in the USA, the War Department’s projects for putting new weapons systems into operation cost approximately 100,000 million dollars.

p Under the present development level of armaments one 74 can easily picture new systems of armaments whose creation would within a few years ruin even the richest country with the greatest economic resources. Symptoms of this danger have lately appeared in the United States economy, which has run into serious difficulties.

p Inflation, a growing state debt and currency difficulties characterised the US economy even during the rapid and prolonged upsurge of the 1960s. Beginning in 1970, when a cyclic crisis of overproduction set in, the existing problems were supplemented with new ones such as steadily mounting unemployment, diminishing production, decreasing corporate profits and falling prices of shares in the stock market.  [74•* 

p The economic difficulties are accompanied by an aggravation of the social contradictions of American society and the emergence of a wide range of internal problems linked with poverty, the urban crisis, the condition of the Nefgo population and the growth of crime. The stresses working on the US budget and the inability to allocate funds for the solution of pressing social problems are becoming increasingly more pronounced.

p Most of these difficulties have been caused by the huge spending on armaments and the war in Vietnam. They have aggravated the political situation in the United States itself as is seen by the mounting and increasingly more energetic opposition, including the massive Negro movement, the movement of the poorest sections of the white population, and the turbulent actions of young people.

p In this situation even the struggle of the American working people for their direct interests—which has been and remains one of the cardinal elements of the class struggle in every capitalist country—has begun to go beyond purely economic 75 demands and leads to large-scale political actions, including opposition to the Government’s aggressive foreign policy. A similar situation obtains in other capitalist countries whose governments have actively joined in the arms race and war preparations.

But material expenditures are not the only, nor even the heaviest part of military expenses. More fearful is the tribute in blood, in lives and health, that is demanded by war and which grows continuously with the advances in armaments and military organisation. The Soviet demographer B. T. Urlanis compiled the following table to show how many lives were lost in wars in Europe during various periods of economic development  [75•* :

Period Years Number of soldiers and officers killed (millions) Duration of the period (years) Average annual number of killed ( thousands) I. Pre-monopoly capitalism Crystallisation of the capitalist mode of production Industrial capitalism II. Imperialism 1600—99 3.3 100 33 1700—88 3.9 89 44 1789—1897 6.8 109 62 1898—1965 28  [75•**  68 410

p But even these losses pale in comparison with what a nuclear war would cost in terms of human life. Such a war would threaten the physical existence of entire nations, and the losses would be measured not in tens but in hundreds of millions of lives. Besides, the radioactive ruins of the present large and small centres of production and culture would endanger the life not only of the survivors of a thermonuclear war but also of many generations of their descendants.

p Modern weapons of mass annihilation have thus enormously intensified all the war-linked factors that as early as the beginning of the present century made the question of war 76 and peace, i.e., of foreign policy, so vital to the broad masses and placed this question in the centre of the basic interests and, therefore, of the struggle of the masses.

p The conclusion may be drawn that the revolution in armaments, which produced the modern weapons of mass annihilation, has led, to use Engels’ terminology, to a new turningpoint in the entire dialectics of militarism.

p First, if imperialism ventures to start a world thermonuclear war the masses will sweep it away as a system responsible for a monstrous calamity. This is recognised even by some of the most bellicose bourgeois theorists. For instance, in a book entitled On Thermonuclear War, which the American public justifiably regarded as incendiary, Herman Kahn, director of the Hudson Institute (USA), had to acknowledge as one of the most dangerous consequences of such a war the fact that there "would probably be a complete rejection of the pre-war government, and possibly the pre-war ideas and institutions as well."  [76•* 

p Moreover, whereas formerly revolution was the penalty, as it were, inflicted on imperialism for the crime of war, today by the objective logic of social life, it may be a measure to avert the terrible menace overhanging mankind. This is the consequence of the development of new weapons of mass destruction in a period witnessing fundamental sociopolitical changes in the world. The prospect of imperialism paying that penalty is linked with the tremendous growth of the people’s influence on socio-political life.

p The desire to avert a world thermonuclear catastrophe is sufficient motivation for the most energetic mass political actions and, under certain conditions, for revolution In this respect the threat to the physical existence of whole nations creates as large if not a larger potential and a similar if not a more revolutionary situation than poverty, political oppression and national tyranny, which have hitherto roused millions of people to the revolutionary struggle.

p Possibly, neither the working masses themselves nor the imperialist rulers have realised the full implications of these new elements of the contemporary political situation. But these elements are already making themselves felt if only as factors restraining the imperialists and compelling 77 them to manoeuvre and resort to subterfuges, thereby markedly influencing the international situation.

p Second, the threat to mankind by the advances in armaments has set in motion new vast social forces of self-defence and self-preservation against not only the menace of a thermonuclear war bvit against all wars of aggression, against militarism and, in the long run, against imperialism’s aggressive foreign policies.

p The present situation in the USA is very symptomatic in this respect. As early as the beginning of the 1960s that country’s ruling circles saw that by relying solely on a thermonuclear war and political blackmail with such a war as the threat they were narrowing down the possibility of using force to back up their policies. The doctrine of " massive retaliation" was replaced with the doctrine of "flexible response" providing for a “dosed” use of force, in particular in “limited” and “local” wars.

p This was designed as a means to calm the "home front”, i.e., American public opinion, to force it to reconcile itself to Washington’s aggressive policy in its modern shape and thereby give the ruling circles a free hand to pursue this policy. Vietnam became the proving ground of the new military and political doctrines.

p It grew quite apparent that parallel with its inability to secure a military victory in Vietnam US imperialism had suffered a serious political setback in its own country, where a mass protest movement has unfolded.

p The “local” and “limited” war in Vietnam showed millions of Americans more vividly than ever before that a situation where the ruling circles could involve the country in a perilous adventure was abnormal and impermissible, the more so in the epoch of thermonuclear weapons. The movement against the criminal aggression in Vietnam grew into something bigger, into a struggle against all manifestations of aggression, against the arms race and against the rise of the war-industrial complex and militarism.

p For the first time since the Second World War the Pentagon and the war-industrial complex became the target of scathing criticism from not only Left-wing circles but also from a considerable section of Congressmen, liberals and many bourgeois press organs. A striking indication of this change of mood was the publication of a secret Pentagon 78 report in The New York Times and other leading American newspapers. This exposure of United States policy in Southeast Asia, despite the efforts of the Government to prevent the publication of the above-mentioned report, was doubtlessly made possible through the support of a substantial section of the country’s ruling circles. On the whole, one can draw the conclusion that in the USA the opposition to militarism is now growing into a mass movement.

p It the summer of 1969 Professor John K. Galbraith wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine designed as a "moderate programme" of opposition to the war-industrial complex and militarism. "When I started work on this paper some months ago,” Galbraith wrote, "I hazarded the guess that the military power was by way of provoking the same public reaction as did the Vietnam war. Now this is no longer in doubt.... What is clear is that a drastic change is occurring in public attitudes towards the military and its industrial allies."  [78•* 

p The future will show, of course, how strong and effective this anti-military movement becomes and whether it will be able to shake the position of the brass hats and war industrialists who have strongly entrenched themselves in the US economic and political world. But the very fact that such changes are occurring in public attitudes may be the herald of far-reaching political and social battles in the United States, a country that has long ago become the bastion and mainstay of modern imperialism.

p The revolution in armaments and methods of warfare has brought to the political scene new forces, which are opposing war and militarism with growing determination. This opposition must inevitably develop into a struggle against the social system that has given birth to militarism and war.

p As is underscored in the Document adopted by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, held in Moscow in 1969, the "main link of united action of the anti-imperialist 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".  [78•** 

Thus, drastic changes are taking place in international relations, one of the mainsprings of which is the growing 79 role played by the masses due, in particular, to the fact that they have a larger stake than ever before in questions of war and peace, in questions of foreign policy.