The reactionary national defence

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Why is it that power rests in the hands of people Many of the scientists who developed the atom bomb were horrified at the result of their work. Why was that work controlled by people prepared to use the bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

What makes many people accept nuclear weapons is the doctrine of 'national defence. Nations must detend themselves, so the argument goes. Nations are threatened by other nations. Britain, for example, is "Thus nations must be armed - and armed on the huge scale necessary to take on other armed nations. The whole argument becomes But why do nations threaten nations? And is there an alternative? Throughout history, the scramble for advantage amidst scarcity between rival ruling groups has led to war. The modern technology created by capitalism opens the possibility of a world without scarcity, where everyone can have enough on the basis of co-operation in proIn fact, however, capitalism has created a highly unequal world. In pre-capitalist societies, most economic activity was strictly local:

Peasant families produced almost all they needed themselves; lords lived principally by extracting surplus production from the peasants on their land; only a small proportion of goods were traded across any distance.

To this economic system corresponded a political system split up into local fiefdoms and principalities, only loosely linked together.

As capitalism developed, starting in the Middle Ages, it created larger, more homogeneous nation-states — bound together by their own language and communications, rather than just by the person of an overlord - as the framework for the new economics of the free market.

But the new nation-state unit became out-dated in its turn - long ago. Modern techniques of production and communications make the Each capitalist class has developed close ties to its own nation-state institutions. A large part of its profits, its markets, and its power are tied up with those institutions. Thus the capitalists are not capable of making a decisive step forward to world-wide co-operation.

Instead, they have 'internationalised' by means of th big capitalist powers competitively seizing control and influence over the poorer The root cause of World War 1 and of World War 2 was the competitive struggle of the big capitalist powers to seize more colonies and wider spheres of influence. 'National defence' for the capitalist rulers, meant defence of their international profits and plunder.

Leon Trotsky concluded nearly 50 years ago: 'The defence of the ration state, first of all in Balkanised Europe - the cradle of the nation state - is in the full sense of the word a reactionary task. The nation state with its borders, passports, monetary system, customs and the army for the protection of customs has become a frightful impediment to the economic and cultural development of humanity...

'The-task of complete national determination and peaceful cooperation of all peoples of Europe can be solved only on the basis of the economic unification of Europe, purged of bourgeois rule. The slogan of the United States of Europe is a slogan not only for the salvation of the Balkan and Danubian peoples but for the salvation of the This argument - that capitalism's competitive drive for profit and world-wide plunder is the root cause of war bewteen nations - seems to fall down on one fact. What about wars between socialist states? Even if you disregard the USSR's invasions of Hungary and Czecheslo• These bureaucratic states are not socialist. Socialism can guaranee peace because it means the free, self-regulating co-operation of seople on the basis of 'from each according to his or her abilities, to ach according to his or her need'. The rule of the KGB and the priThe Stalinist states are not capitalist, either. But they are a peculiar nutation of post-capitalist economic forms within which many of the The USSR originated in a genuine workers' revolution. But socialism was never possible in one country alone. When the workers of the West were defeated, and the revolution was isolated in backward Russia, a faction of the revolutionaries (led by Stalin) came together with the careerists and officials of the old regime to create a new bureaucracy. They crushed the incorruptible revolutionaries.

This ruling bureaucracy, and its counterparts in the other Stalinist states, are every bit as rapacious and brutal as any capitalist class.

The different economic basis does make a difference, however. The USSR does not have the same inbuilt economic drive to world expanThat (together with the US's technical superiority, of course) is the reason why the West has set the pace in the arms race. Since World War 2 the major cause of war has been the attempts by the big capitalist powers, led and dominated by the US, to prevent further areas being taken out of their grip by revolutionaries which lead those areas into Korea, Vietnam, Central America, all fall into this pattern. Diplomatic negotiations, or general efforts to influence public opinion, are never going to stop the drive to war. The answer is to uproot the social causes of war - to overthrow capitalism in the west, and bureaucratic rule in the east, in favour of a democratic, co-operative socialist To organise for that, we need to start by rejecting and arguing pinst the doctrine of national defence. The 'national interests' of Brih capitalism - its profit-grabbing activities across the world - are not a The onty was worth fighting is the class war. The sort of defence e mue working dass of Britain needs is a people's militia, able to is not. Ji% agars igreign aggression but also against our 'onn' WHY IS there a threat of nuclear war? minority of the executive of Most people would never 'press the button' to wipe out millions. Labour CND, they mounted like Thatcher and an attack on the autonomy Reagan who would? of Labour CND as a specialList section of CND at the CND National Council meeting on October 15-16.

Members of the majority of threatened by Russia. the executive of Labour CND were bitterly attacked by CND executive nominees who had a vicious circle. previously been 'placed' on the Labour CND executive with the power of veto.

This vicious attack was immediately followed by a call duction and equality in distribution. for 'unity' from a CND executive member (sounds all too familiar...)

HAROLD EVANS, former nation-state too small as an economic unit. editor of the Sunday Times and former editor of the Times, has his first volume of autobiography published later this month - and it's not