For a nuclear free world

By Lisa Macdonald
The world today is dominated by the fact that, despite human beings' capacity for rational thought, our society is thoroughly irrational. The issue of nuclear weapons provides a good example. Society has developed and harnessed a huge amount of scientific knowledge to develop a technology which can destroy the very existence of this planet in a matter of minutes. When considered with a clear head, uncluttered by all the system's propaganda about "deterrence" and "peace through strength", it's clear that a system which uses its enormous knowledge and resources, not to better human life, but to destroy it, cannot be called rational.
The development of nuclear weapons has involved many very conscious decisions by the powers that be. The first nuclear bomb, the one dropped on Hiroshima 50 years ago, took the US 150,000 people and $2 billion to make.
Since then we've learned much more about the hazards of nuclear energy — about the life-destructive dangers of the whole technology.
With all that accumulated knowledge, a rational system, one which possessed a healthy instinct for selfªpreservation and quality of life, would surely give the game away.
Not this system. Not international capitalism. On the contrary, the most "advanced" countries are already in possession of some 17,000 bombs, equivalent to almost half a million Hiroshima size bombs. And while they are producing more plutonium for more bombs, they don't let it be known that there is still not one scientist who knows how to safely dispose of plutonium, the tiniest speck of which can kill.
Plutonium doesn't occur in nature. Once it is created, it cannot (as far as we know today) be destroyed. It has a half-life of 24,000 years, more than four times as long as human civilisation has existed. Where do you put such a deadly substance — 1500 tonnes of it to date — and be sure it won't be disturbed or leak out for tens of thousands of years? No one has an answer, yet they are actually producing more of it every day.
This suicidal drive can be understood only by understanding the nature of the capitalist system which dominates the world today.

Imperialism

A defining feature of this system is that the land, natural resources, machinery and factories (the means of production) are owned by private individuals. The result is that around 10% of the world's population owns over 80% of global wealth. Their ownership of the means of production gives that minority, the capitalist class, enormous power — the power to decide what gets produced and what gets distributed.
This means they are able to make most of the decisions about social priorities. Their priorities become society's priorities, and their priority is to ensure constantly increasing profits. The drive for greater and greater profits forces the needs of the mass of people, environmental preservation and human rights way down the list of priorities.
Over the last two centuries, capitalists' search for increasing profits has driven them to conquer, usually by military force, territory and peoples across the globe. Every part of the economy of a colonial country, once conquered, is subordinated to the interests and dictates of foreign capital. This is what we call imperialism. Today, fewer than 700 corporations control most of the world's total economy.
Today, with almost every Third World country controlled by multinational corporations, the imperialist countries are in a continual struggle with each other for domination of a greater share of the world economy. In the course of this struggle, the capitalists have imposed two world wars on the world's people, the first resulting in 10 million dead and the second killing 80 million.
The post-1945 rise of national liberation movements forced imperialism to grant formal independence to colonies. But this did not mean the imperialist system disappeared. On the contrary, even with nationally elected governments, the great majority of Third World countries are more exploited than ever as a source of cheap raw materials and cheap labour for multinational capitalists. The IMF and World Bank are these countries' new rulers.
The UN has estimated that the transfer of wealth from the Third to the First World is $50 billion per year. In the last 10 years, international banks have received $250,000 per minute from Third World debtors, yet these countries now owe 60% more than theting capitalists. On the other side, they must be able to suppress the inevitable rebellion of oppressed peoples and nations.
To do both, the imperialists need military might. They need it to install and protect puppet regimes which will allow a free rein to the multinationals regardless of the effects on their population. And they need it to fight wars against popular regimes that decide to put their people's needs first. This has resulted in more than 100 wars since World War II, killing more than 20 million people.
The resources needed to maintain imperialism's military arm cost around US$1000 billion a year. That is equivalent to the total national economies of the poorest half of countries in the world. Since their development, nuclear weapons have, for obvious reasons, held centre stage in the imperialist powers' race for military supremacy.

Nuclear proliferation

For so long as imperialism exists, nuclear weapons will exist. For so long as the exploitation of billions of people in the Third World exists, the misery and deprivation that result will cause rebellions, attempts to overthrow the system which brutalises and destroys them. Faced with growing challenges to their ability to extract more and more profits, the major imperialist powers use the threat of nuclear attack as blackmail against what they call the "rogue" states or the "terrorist" states — those countries whose populations and/or governments threaten to undermine imperialism's interests.
The US alone has seriously threatened nuclear attack 23 times since the bombing of Hiroshima, and no imperialist power has ruled out the use of the bomb. During the Gulf War in 1991, the US actually had 1000 nuclear warheads in the hands of units fighting in the region.
If the continued development, stockpiling and possible use of nuclear weapons are totally interconnected with, made necessary by, the capitalist system which now dominates the world, does this mean that the destruction of the planet and human life is inevitable?
Socialists don't think so. We believe that it is not only necessary but possible to change the system, to assure human survival and a better quality of life across the world and to eradicate forever the driving force of nuclear armament and war. The only rational course is to work for the replacement of capitalism with a fundamentally different economic system which puts people before profits, which eradicates the profit motive altogether.

Socialism is possible

Imperialism is enormously powerful. Nevertheless, the history of the peace movement demonstrates that imperialist armies can be hindered, forced to retreat, defer or refrain from invading other countries if they think the political cost will be too great.
The mobilisation of mass antiwar sentiment in the US and Australia into a broad, inclusive and active anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and early '70s is still one of the best illustrations of the power of public opinion, if organised and mobilised, to deter and help stop imperialist wars.
The success of that movement and the persistence of the "Vietnam syndrome" — the mass antiwar sentiment that the movement generated — make it politically much more costly for these imperialist countries to send troops all over the world. They have to think twice about the possibility of public opposition before they act.
Of course they do still act. In the last five years, imperialist forces have been sent to Somalia, Haiti and Iraq, to name just a few. They also intervene indirectly, such as by using UN forces, or as in the case of the Australian military's defence of corporate interests by "aiding" the Indonesian and PNG governments to suppress independence struggles in East Timor, West Papua and Bougainville. The point is that it is not as easy for them to do this today.
A second factor weakening capitalism's war drive is the struggle for national independence in the remaining colonies and neo-colonies.
But to achieve genuine disarmament and lasting peace, we have to eradicate the capitalist system altogether. How do we do this?
The bottom line in any struggle for revolutionary change is that oppressive systems will be changed by those who are oppressed, those who therefore have a real interest in changing it, who will be or almost the entire population of the Third World, all of these people make up the forces for change. That's about 90% of the world population.
Considered in this light, the right-wing arguments, echoed by the more "realistic" (read conservative) sections of progressive social movements, that socialism is a utopian dream and that revolutionary change is impossible, are absurd.
The reality of today and the prospects for the future are as much shaped by the fact that revolutions have been made and are in the process of being made, as by the fact that the power of imperialism at times seems overwhelming.
Going for the lot — struggling to overthrow the system in its entirety — is a thoroughly realistic and rational approach which has been borne out repeatedly in real life. The people of Cuba and Vietnam were frequently dismissed as utopians for taking on the might of the US, yet they made their revolutions. They, and millions of revolutionaries in struggle before and since, recognised that you may not always win all that you strive for, but you'll never win goals that you never strive for.
Changing the world, however, allows for no short cuts. The majority of people won't struggle for fundamental change spontaneously. They don't do it, or see the need to, without some sort of major crisis or upheaval in their lives which forces them to look for real alternatives. And given the immense strength of imperialism today, they won't be able to do it without being well organised, confident and experienced at making and carrying out their own decisions collectively and democratically.
A longer term perspective is needed. In the end, however, what puts history on socialism's side is that capitalism is so fundamentally irrational that it generates crises continually, economic crises and political crises. As the contradictions of the capitalist system deepen — such as the fact that this system is destroying the environment, destroying the very underpinning of society — it becomes harder for capitalism to hide or find ways out.
With every crisis of legitimacy, every crisis of "business as usual", capitalism is weakened. In most countries today, capitalism is having increasing difficulty convincing the majority of people that the system not only works, but works for them.
At certain points, especially in Third World countries, where capitalism's irrational and oppressive face is more naked, such crises can cause a complete loss of legitimacy of the existing order. This creates situations in which revolutions can and have been made.

Organise!

This doesn't mean that socialists should just sit back and wait, that there's no point in acting until the crises occur.
For one, the global ecological crisis and the persistent threat of nuclear annihilation mean we don't have all the time in the world.
Further, the whole history of social struggles and social change shows us that every struggle by the oppressed, whether or not it is immediately and/or completely successful, weakens the status quo.
In every struggle for reform, the capitalist system — its unjust and repressive legal system, its undemocratic parliament and political parties, its bureaucratic functionaries in the progressive movements — is publicly challenged and exposed for others to see.
If the struggle is successful, the rulers are either blocked from increasing their level of exploitation or forced to make concessions. Sometimes these concessions, while they are not a fatal blow to the system, can make continuing the struggle or taking it up in other areas just that bit easier. Successes and concessions (such as if the French government is forced to refrain from nuclear testing in the Pacific) also win us some time, which is important when confronting global destruction.
Secondly, in every campaign for reform, regardless of the final outcome, the people who are fighting, and the movements they are a part of, accumulate more experience, skills and knowledge about how to organise to carry out struggles against the ruling class in the future.
Every reform that is won by people in struggle also increases the confidence of those people — confidence that change is possible, confidence that they can make a difference in the world and confidence to challenge the system in a more fundamental way.
Struggling together also raises people's confidence in each other and increases their understanding of the need to overcome all the divisions that capitalist ideology creates between oppressed people — between black and white, male and female, young and old etc. Stronger unity and solidarity increase the chances of winning demands against any and every instance of oppression.

What does this mean for us right now? Australia is a major player in the imperialist world. Where and how Australian big business decides to "invest" and extract profits, where the Australian military directs its troops and "aid", and what the Australian government decides to do in its foreign, economic and social policy, has a major impact on billions of people in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and around the world.
In this context, what each of us does today, in each and every progressive campaign, will have a major impact on how the struggle against capitalism develops in this country and internationally. What we do now — how hard we struggle and how high we aim — does matter.