Workers World Vol. 19, No. 18
April 30 – The SALT talks between the U.S. and the USSR, which may possibly resume shortly, should be clearly distinguished from proposals for general and complete disarmament. There is a very basic and profound difference between the current arms negotiations – the so-called Strategic Arms Limitation Talks – and the concept of complete and general disarmament.
Earlier in this paper (Workers World, April 22), we discussed the position taken by the Guardian on October League’s application of the “two superpowers” theory to the case of the Wilmington Ten. In that same issue of the Guardian (April 13), an editorial appeared entitled, “Imperialism and arms talks.” It confuses the question of general disarmament with the current SALT talks, failing to differentiate between the two.
The current SALT talks are aimed at a specific, concrete type of agreement on the limitation or reduction of certain types of military weapons. These are mostly in the field of nuclear technology. Such agreements with imperialist powers by the USSR or any other socialist country are not only permissible but desirable.
No socialist country would have started to develop atomic energy for military purposes had it not been for the U.S. A socialist country has no reason to develop these weapons except for necessary defense arising from the production of atomic weapons by imperialist countries. A socialist country, moreover, ought to be able to easily convert its atomic as well as industrial and technological equipment from military purposes to civilian socialist construction and be the better off for it. This is scarcely a debatable question. The same cannot, of course, be true of the imperialist powers. Here, the insatiable chase for super-profits motivates the military-industrial complex even more than it does the entire capitalist system. Here the extortionate profits are so much greater, particularly when their very own government happens to also be the principal purchaser, as is so often the case.
There can be any number of concrete, specific types of military agreements between socialist and capitalist states like the one projected for the next stage of the SALT talks.
For instance, the Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the USSR, signed in 1963, prohibited atomic tests in the atmosphere. So far, they have not been resumed and this is all for the better. There could follow a similar treaty to ban atomic tests underground or underwater. No workers’ organization should find the cessation of these tests, resulting from agreements between the U.S. and the USSR, objectionable.
These specific categories of military, technological agreements should not, however, be confused with accompanying broad political or diplomatic agreements. The latter must be evaluated independently from the viewpoint of world, proletarian class interests and the interests of oppressed people.
The so-called Anti-Proliferation Treaty is an example. This was in the nature of a political and diplomatic agreement which, in effect, limits the right of other socialist countries or oppressed nations to develop the kind of defense against imperialist aggression which they deem to be necessary. Cuba, for instance, did not sign the Anti-Proliferation Treaty and others also refused. Any bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the USSR limiting or reducing in any way their military weapons systems should of course be executed in such a way that it does not infringe on the rights of other socialist countries or oppressed nations.
Certainly the SALT talks offer no evidence whatsoever that anything but a specific military agreement to limit or reduce certain types of nuclear weapons is involved. Should it turn out that the U.S. and the USSR are simultaneously working out a political and diplomatic agreement of a broad scope and involving the interests of other countries, this of course would require an independent political evaluation separate and apart from the military agreement.
So far, the present talks are based mainly on the military capabilities of the U.S. and its imperialist allies as against the USSR. Of course, no matter how specific and valuable such talks may be, should they ever be consummated into an agreement it by no means follows that other weapons systems, no less deadly and perhaps even more so, will not be developed.
In fact, that is precisely the course of worldwide military development at the present time. To link the concrete, specific types of agreements to any concept of general disarmament or see them as a basis for general disarmament in the capitalist countries is to feed upon a cruel illusion.
Conversely, it is both erroneous and prejudicial to say, as does the Guardian, that “the arms race has been pursued wildly by both countries throughout the course of the talks.” Insofar as this statement concerns the USSR, it is simply not true and the Guardian should know better.
One may criticize the USSR leadership, as we have done on occasion, for sowing illusions with its proposals for general and complete disarmament and making it look as though this is a real possibility under monopoly capitalism. One cannot, however, condemn the USSR for making specific proposals to restrain or limit the further development of the so-called strategic nuclear weapons or others, which is what the USSR has been pursuing in these and other talks for many years.
The proposals calling for curtailing and cutting down nuclear weapons development have all along been on the initiative of the USSR since the beginning of the military atomic race. It must be remembered that it was the U.S. that started off the race in atomic armaments with the merciless attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the U.S., and the U.S. alone, that is responsible for the proliferation of atomic weapons in the world. The USSR, and for that matter, China, have not supplied even their closest socialist allies with atomic weapons. The attempt of the USSR to supply Cuba with atomic missiles, as all the world now knows, very nearly led to a nuclear confrontation.
The general arms race, of course, does raise the question of the attitude of Marxists not only to disarmament in general, but to imperialist war in particular.
Marxists differ from pacifists, social-democrats, and bourgeois liberals in this very important respect: Marxists take as their starting point for an analysis of any given social or political phenomenon a class point of view. Marxists do not start from timeless moral postulates or vague abstract notions of “peace,” “democracy,” or “freedom,” which cover up the class character of a given state and the ruling class which dominates it.
Lenin mercilessly fought the Kautskyists and the social-chauvinists of his time precisely because they approached the question of war, peace, and disarmament without regard to the nature and class character of the government that was in power. Peace, he said, is impossible for any length of time as long as the bourgeoisie is in power. The bourgeoisie will not permit itself to be disarmed, he taught, except by being overthrown. However, the bourgeoisie may agree to this or that concrete step to reduce or limit certain types of military weapons, including nuclear weapons, if it finds it advantageous to the prosecution of its class interests.
It was obligatory for all communist parties belonging to the International to combat any and all illusions about the general disarmament posture of the imperialist bourgeoisie. On the other hand, it was necessary for the proletariat and the oppressed to learn the use of arms. “An oppressed class that will not learn the use of arms will forever by enslaved,” said Lenin. The ruling class well understands this.
The editorial in the Guardian denounces the “current breakdown in the arms talks” and blames it on “Carter’s sudden passion for ‘human rights,’ which has obviously been a U.S. exercise in demagogy designed to step up the ideological war with the Soviet Union.” So far, so good. Then the Guardian asks, “But what about the Soviet threat – and Soviet aggression? Frankly we believe it has been overstated.” (!!)
This is a real caricature of Marxism. It might as well have been better said by Representative Les Aspin of Wisconsin, Jonathan Bingham of New York, or Senator Proxmire. That’s their stock in trade. But for the Guardian to say so merely reflects the timid murmurings of an ever-shrinking and fearful bourgeois liberal element in the U.S. ruling class.
When ruling class elements argue over a “greater” or “lesser” threat of aggression from the USSR, it is from a common class view of the USSR. Their view is not, as they hypocritically lead the workers to believe, based on the alleged imperialist ambitions of the USSR. It is based on their alarm over the fraternal assistance the USSR has given to Angola, Mozambique, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos, as well as other oppressed nations.
Only a socialist country can do what the USSR has been able to do in relation to material and military assistance to these countries. The great alarm in the ruling class today is that the USSR may extend military assistance to other beleaguered national liberation movements, not only in Africa but elsewhere in the world. Would France, Britain, West Germany, Holland, or the U.S. do that? They’re on the other side of the fence promoting counter-insurgency movements and puppet regimes.
The USSR has done this in spite of its great bureaucratic deformations. The imperialists see the USSR as a great danger because of its enormous possibilities inherent in the socialist mode of production which characterized the USSR as well as China and other socialist countries. But finance capital regards the USSR as the main danger because of the industrial and economic potential arising from its socialized planned economy and public ownership of the means of production.
The liberal bourgeoisie, mainly because of fear of getting into a confrontation with the USSR which would destroy the imperialist system, tend to regard the USSR as a lesser danger on occasion and talk about accommodation, which in the end amounts to merely talk.
It is the socialist potential of the USSR and not the fear that the USSR has “departed from socialism,” as the Guardian says, that motivates the imperialist attitude to the USSR. And that is as true of the hawks as the doves in the capitalist establishment of the U.S.
To equate the bourgeois liberal fears of the growing role of the socialist countries with the military aggression of imperialist is to do violence to the actual course of social development in the USSR and other socialist countries. When the Guardian asks the American workers to choose between a “lesser” and a “greater” threat, that is, between the USSR and the U.S., it is resorting to the very same social-democratic policies for which Lenin castigated the social-democratic centrists and others, who sought refuge from taking a consistent and anti-imperialist and defeatist position in the first imperialist war by counter-posing the “greater threat” from Germany to the “lesser threat” from little Belgium or little Serbia. The question then, as now, is first of all to recognize the class character of the given state which is in struggle or in contention – is it an imperialist state or is it a workers’ state?
On this question the Guardian takes a typically centrist position on the USSR. It regards the U.S. as the main or greater danger. On the other hand, it covers up the progressive class character of the USSR and creates a false common denominator between imperialism and the USSR. It thereby obliterates the fundamental antagonism between the two hostile respective social systems, each of which is based on an opposing social class – in the USSR the proletariat, and in the U.S. the monopolist bourgeoisie.
In the one the mainspring of development arises from monopoly capitalism’s insatiable appetite for super-profits, markets, spheres of influence, and the consequent predatory imperialist wars and adventures. This is not what characterizes the mode of production in the USSR. The USSR can easily convert its entire military-industrial complex to civilian production and insure a smoother and speedier development to a truly socialist society, based on not merely the abolition of private ownership of the means of production as it exists now, but the wiping out of gross social and economic inequalities and the gradual withering away of the state. This is what the imperialists cannot do, driven as they are to go on continually stoking the fires of imperialist armaments.
It’s the imperialist encirclement which to a large extent (but not exclusively) forces the USSR to spend an ever greater amount of its gross national product on the military and thereby consume a large portion of the fruits of socialist construction.
It is impossible to discuss the arms negotiations between the U.S. and the USSR, as does the Guardian, unless one takes a firm and principled class position not only on the U.S. but also on the USSR. This may be very difficult in the heartland of anti-communism, but it is utterly unavoidable.
The duty in the U.S. is, as the Guardian correctly says in this case, to fight our own bourgeoisie.
What the ordinary worker would want to know, however, is what about the USSR? It’s impossible to avoid the question, even though the Guardian tries. The Guardian position on the USSR is no less lamentable than that of October League (OL), but from a totally different viewpoint.
The Guardian holds a correct position on the need for an anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle insofar as the U.S. is concerned. OL, on the other hand, has all but embraced a pro-imperialist position, notwithstanding all protestations to the contrary. The Guardian attacks OL and other Maoist groups who hold the position “that the Soviet Union is the more powerful, the more aggressive or the more dangerous enemy.”
Ironically enough, the Guardian say, “Indeed were it not for the fact that the People’s Republic of China has advanced the thesis that the Soviet Union is the ‘more dangerous’ of the two super-powers, no one on the left would be arguing this view.” That is true enough.
But it was the Chinese leaders who also originated the thesis that the Soviet Union was an imperialist state in the first place.
And the Guardian swallowed this hook, line, and sinker, and only bethought itself after both the Chinese leadership and the local Maoists carried this thesis to such a ridiculous and fantastic extent.
The original error lies in blindly accepting the thesis that the USSR is an imperialist state, merely because the Chinese leadership found it a handy weapon in their factional struggle with the Soviet leadership.
Last updated: 11 May 2026