Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 15
April 7 – It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a President to tell it like it is on the great questions of war and economic crisis.
If President Carter were to tell the unvarnished truth, he would have to tell the people that the U.S. military establishment is recklessly pushing towards war, that the country is heading for another economic bust, and that he is not proposing any way out from either of these momentous developments.
First about the developing war and the neutron bomb. When this horrendous weapon, that kills people without destroying property, was first proposed, he should have told the people what awful significance there was to the weapon itself and to its deployment in foreign countries. Instead of that, he got one of his henchmen to slip it into the budget in a one-line item entitled “W70 Mod 3 Lance Enhanced Radiation Warhead.”
Only a few people really knew what this was all about. By the time some of the Representatives found out, the steamroller for its passage was on and only about 65 all told voted against it.
As for the continuing economic crisis, one may ask how it is possible to have a great economic bust. Aren’t we already in a period of economic crisis?
Yes, indeed we are. But it is a period of economic stagnation, a period in which there has been a certain levelling off in unemployment and the decline of economic activity. The stagnation is pervasive, it goes on and on, and the economy shows not real signs of a quickening pace upward.
The normal economic cycle under the capitalist system goes through these phases: economic bust, stagnation, recovery, followed by a boom and later another economic bust. But the capitalist cycle which started in the early 1970s and culminated in an economic bust hasn’t gone beyond the stage of stagnation which has been inordinately lengthy and drawn out. The stagnation becomes more pervasive with each passing day.
This is so inescapable now that the capitalist class itself is becoming alarmed and is starting to cry out loud to the Carter administration for urgent measures to find a way out of it. Otherwise, they say, we face another economic bust, one of perhaps greater catastrophic proportion than the one of the early 1970s.
The capitalist class has good reason to be nervous about the state of their economy. But not because of any humanitarian feelings over rising unemployment, sharp cuts in the life-preserving social services in all the major cities in the country, or the general deterioration of all urban life along with the growing political reaction and poisonous racism.
They fear an economic bust now because they remember the big bust that followed upon the great economic crash of 1929. That economic crash was like a paralytic stroke directed against the vital arteries of American finance capital and one from which they recovered only as the result of subsequent wars and military interventions.
The big industrialists, bankers, and manufacturers know very well that after the Big Crash there was a period of recovery with the help of the “riot insurance” labor and social legislation enacted during the Roosevelt administration, such as welfare, unemployment insurance, and Social Security.
But the long stretch from late October 1929 until the middle of 1937-38 barely went beyond the stage of stagnation. The period of the middle 1930s was characterized by long unemployment lines, idle factories, and idle funds in the big banks. It was a period of capitalist stagnation and there seemed to be no way out of it.
Then came the bust of 1937-38, heralded by a sharp drop in the stock market and an accelerated decline of industrial production and economic activity. That was when the U.S. began in earnest to gear up its industries for war, from which there was no retreat and which led to the outbreak of the Second World War.
There have been few, if any, steps backward, and one war after another ever since. The capitalist class therefore sees this period as fraught with grave consequences for itself and for its system because the radical change in the character of imperialist war is threatening to them.
An editorial in Business Week, an organ of high finance and industry which is not inhibited by the electorate and speaks to its own little constituency of bankers, businessmen, and executives, sounds the alarm. The editorial is in the form of a message to Carter and also appeared in well-placed full-page ads in most of the country’s leading newspapers.
Aside from their usual complaints against high wages and calls for a rollback of legislation like the minimum wage and increases in Social Security taxes, this time they bluntly state that “the American economy is in trouble – far more trouble than the Carter administration and its offhand spokesmen seem to realize. Three years after the U.S. dragged bottom in the 1974-75 recession, it is about to go into another violent round of destructive inflation.”
But the real point they are making is that this “will push it back into recession again.” They cite how prices are rising at almost double-digit rate, and moan about “the value of the dollar having collapsed” and that their “financial markets are in disarray.”
What is significant about this lecture to the President is its angry and frightened tone. Yet aside from their pet projects of wage-cutting and moaning over inflation, they have no concrete program for overcoming the imminent bust. Hence what follows is a repetition of the aftermath of the 1937-38 crisis – a sharp and irreversible trend toward war under conditions when armaments have changed fantastically and virtually threaten the destruction of all living things on the planet.
The pervasive capitalist economic stagnation doesn’t lend itself to any basic solution except in military terms – and this explains the crisis in neutron bomb diplomacy.
The outcry from Business Week came at the same time that Carter was maneuvering with neutron bomb diplomacy and had virtually set the entire European capitalist class against him, the Pentagon, and the military-industrial complex. Aware of the fears he would cause in the U.S. ruling class with regard to the economic situation and the magnitude of the political crisis in Europe if he insisted that the NATO European allies publicly agree to the deployment of the neutron bomb in their countries, Carter nevertheless went ahead in the middle of March to force the deployment of the people-killer bomb.
The White House strategy was as follows: Carter would open up with a bristling, saber-rattling attack against the USSR at Wake Forest University on March 17 which would leave no doubt as to where he and the U.S. military establishment stood in respect to accelerating the pace of war preparations and escalating the arms race to an unprecedented rate. The allies, Carter reckoned, had no alternative but to fall in line after this public pronouncement of war readiness. And the Soviet leaders would get the message in no uncertain terms.
Carter and his principal military and business advisors miscalculated on both grounds.
As we noted earlier, the Soviet Union responded to Carter’s vitriolic attack against the USSR in no less firm but in politer form. And the USSR had also sent individual letters to all the NATO heads of state calling to their attention the seriousness and significance of production of the neutron bomb.
With the NATO allies, the Carter administration suffered a severe setback. Washington had figured that following the Wake Forest University speech, General Haig would line up the NATO ministerial conference – that is, all the foreign ministers of the NATO countries – and have them publicly say “aye” to the deployment of the neutron bomb.
(It should be remembered that Haig was Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff during the days of the so-called Saturday Night Massacre when Nixon pushed out Attorney General Richardson, Special Prosecutor Cox, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruckelshaus.)
First, “Al,” as he is called in Washington’s familiar jargon, was to get an informal yes vote from the NATO ministers and then put a call through to “Jimmy” at the White House and tell him the job was done.
But that is not what happened. There was a dead silence from practically all the ministers. So the March 20 open conference of the ministers where the vote was to take place was cancelled.
This was an absolutely unmistakable sign that something in Washington’s plans had gone seriously awry, because the cancellation of a ministerial meeting, especially at the request of the U.S. made it clear that something new was up. Resistance from the allied imperialist governments can now be rather easily explained in terms that are unmistakably clear now that events have forced them and Carter out in the open. It usually is the only way some truth gets out to the public.
Sure, the NATO imperialist countries want nuclear arms and weapons systems. But they must reckon with the fact that there is enormous, truly tremendous pressure against this new horrendous weapon. The fact that the Carter administration claims they were for it privately shows how fearful the European capitalist politicians are of deploying the bomb.
They are also in the midst of an economic crisis and their every effort to get out of it is stymied by the U.S. bankers and financiers, who robe them of every avenue for their exports while getting a greater and greater share of the European market.
“You ask us to deploy this dangerous weapon on our soil and make us pay for it too?” say the German imperialists. “But at the same time you rob us of a $10 billion nuclear contract with Brazil! You say that that the neutron bomb will protect us against a massive Soviet attack, but the workers here see it, if it ever does come – which they don’t believe – as a war between Germans and Germans first.
“Your papers don’t write much about East Germany but it is strong and they don’t have any unemployment and nobody is trying to force them to have a neutron bomb on their soil.”
And with another voice, this time more publicly, the West German capitalists were saying, “We’ll deploy the bomb, but let the Belgians do it first.” But the Belgian capitalists no less than the Germans also remember something about the U.S. capitalists.
“You robbed us of our Congo colonial wealth and now Zaire is your colony.” Also the Belgians are saying, “We’ll deploy the bomb, but let the Dutch do it first.” And the Dutch are saying, “We too remember the American finance capitalists when Indonesia gained its independence. That’s when we were robbed of our colonial booty.” Plus in the Dutch Parliament, where the politicians have to thank more about the sentiment of the masses, the bomb was voted down.
All in all, the NATO imperialists were saying, “Let Washington produce the bomb and later we’ll see if it’s needed and when.”
All this is not because of any pacifist sentiment on the part of the European capitalists. It arises from the deadly seriousness of the situation where the deployment of evermore sophisticated and devastating weapons can only lead to a new imperialist onslaught which they know can only be more ruinous than the two previous world wars fought on the territory of Europe.
This leaves Washington’s brinkmanship in neutron bomb diplomacy out on a limb. Hence Carter has decided that he will hold off production of the weapon. But not as a negotiating chip with the Soviet Union, as he claims. This is merely a public relations stance, because the postponement of the deployment of the bomb is not a negotiating point so far as the USSR is concerned. The USSR has not started to produce it or threatened to deploy it and this is well known throughout the world. The negotiations on the strategic arms, so-called SALT agreements, are about other matters.
Actually Carter has only halfway backtracked on the bomb. It was not in production yet, and would have taken about a year to get into production. What he has done is to cancel the order while allowing the building of the Lance missile and the 8-inch artillery gun which can be equipped with neutron warheads later on.
As the Washington Post put it in an editorial, “He has kept in train the activities that will make production of these weapons possible in about a year’s time (that is, he has not called off production) and he has said that he will decide later whether to actually start up such production when it becomes possible to do so.”
In the meanwhile, the specter of another economic crisis has not been put to rest and the 1937-38 war production solution to the economic bust seems more imminent than ever. The postponement of neutron bomb production does not resolve the accelerated pace of armaments. They are the only sure thing where money can be made with sales guaranteed by the government, which is the purchaser.
On the contrary, it accentuates the double character of the crisis in the economy generally and in the military-industrial complex, which relentlessly pushes towards imperialist war.
Last updated: 11 May 2026