Workers World, Vol. 21, No. 25
June 19 – The SALT treaty should be supported. However, it should be supported from a wholly different political perspective than the one being promoted by the Carter administration and the capitalist media.
The support for the treaty in the working class and the progressive movement should be free from all the poisonous anti-Soviet propaganda which accompanies the administration’s promotion of the treaty. Support for the treaty should be based not on any new, pacifist-sounding phrases and interests of the different ruling groups in the capitalist establishment, but on sound working-class interests – which at bottom are diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruling class.
In his report to the Congress immediately upon his return from Vienna, Carter said his support for the treaty was not done as “a favor to Russia.” That is for sure. He said it was based on the “national interests” and “national security” of the United States, on the “self-interests of the nation.”
The terms “national security,” “national interests,” and “self-interest of the nation” are time-honored ambiguities understood altogether differently by the ruling class of the United States than by the mass of the people. They also have sharply differentiated meanings when used by the military-industrial complex, the banks, the huge multinational corporations like the oil companies, and others.
To a worker, to an ordinary person, national security or national interest means his or her or the people’s security, the people’s interest. This is not the way the bankers and industrialists view it. Nor are these terms at all understood this way by, for instance, the U.S. Senate.
This arm of the government is virtually a millionaires’ club because there are so many millionaires and multi-millionaires in it and because almost all of them have some real interest or connection with the large corporations. Almost all are beholden to the banks and have stock holdings in the military-industrial complex. Aside from the fact that almost all members of the Senate are extremely rich people, there is not one Black or Latin Senator our of a hundred and not one who would proclaim himself a representative of the workers or the oppressed.
When these people talk of “national security” and “self-interest,” they mean the interests of the ruling class. When they say that something is good, they mean it in the same sense as a former head of General Motors Corporation, who once put it bluntly: “What’s good for General Motors is good for the U.S.”
It is in this context that one must consider the pending debate in the Senate on the ratification of the SALT treaty.
In the first place, the treaty should be regarded as an extension of the 1963 test-ban treaty. That treaty between the USSR and the U.S. prohibited the testing of atomic weapons in the atmosphere. Anyone who considers that treaty in the light of today’s conditions can readily see that it not only did not harm but, on the contrary, did some good in that it at least stopped to some degree atomic pollution of the atmosphere.
Of course, it didn’t outlaw underground testing or the testing of other nuclear weapons systems. Nor did it stop or slow down the nuclear arms race.
Nevertheless, it was correct from a working class point of view to support the treaty – not because of any special confidence in the U.S. military establishment’s desire for peace or because one detected a new note of caution in the Pentagon regarding its drive for military superiority, but because the measure was in and of itself progressive. The test-ban treaty took place in spite of the inherently aggressive and militaristic character of imperialist policy. The basis for the U.S. government accepting the test-ban treaty was that it would serve both the USSR and the military establishment in the U.S. equally well.
Anyone who thought, even for a moment, that the Pentagon’s war drive would lessen rather than accelerate because of the test-ban treaty was wholly mistaken. Anyone who was taken in by preachments of a new era of peaceful coexistence because of the treaty was, or should have been, soon disillusioned by what happened: the U.S. intervention in Viet Nam on an accelerated basis, the U.S.-Israeli aggression in the Middle East, the intervention in Santo Domingo, the overthrow of the Nkrumah government in Ghana, and the bloody counter-revolution in Indonesia.
The forces which fueled these counter-revolutionary conflagrations are as congenital today to U.S. finance capital and to imperialist politics in general as they were yesterday. Let there be no mistake on that. The ratification of the SALT treaty, should it come, will not change the perspective of the U.S. military, nor will it be able to curb its aggressive urge to expand, to exploit, and to conquer.
On the other hand, the employment by the U.S. of nuclear weapons is a matter which the ruling class, in its contemporary phase of development, and even the most unbridled militaristic elements in the Pentagon, must view with caution. This is not due to any newborn sense of humanity on the part of the Pentagon or the ruling class as a whole. It is strictly a product of a new constellation of world forces which has placed a severe constraint on the inclinations and aims of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.
This can all be summed up in the existence of the USSR as a mighty socialist fortress which, having broken the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons, has developed a nuclear capacity of its won and which over the years has achieved, according to almost all bourgeois sources, rough equivalence with the U.S. in nuclear weapons systems.
This is an extremely unpalatable fact for the U.S. military and the summits of U.S. industry and finance. But there is no possible way in which they can overcome this staggering fact of contemporary international relations without brining down a holocaust and ruining themselves in the process.
Of course, there are maniacal elements in the military and in the Congress who would be willing to gamble on the life of humanity, were they in a position to do so. And this also must be taken into account. Zumwalt, Jackson, Tower, Helms, Stennis – these are but a few. Under the surface there are many more, and they may not be deterred by any sort of treaty, any more than Hitler was deterred in his day.
Imperialism’s record of abiding by treaties is not a very happy one, least of all the many treaties the U.S. government made with Native nations in this land. The capitalist press, however, is all filled with forebodings of cheating by the USSR in the matter of verifying compliance with the obligations contained in the SALT treaty. Rarely, if ever, is any reference made to possible cheating by the U.S., and only on occasion is reference made to verification or compliance by both sides.
The significance of the treaty lies in the fact that at least a section, and a large one at that, of the capitalist establishment has come to realize that it cannot go its own unilateral nuclear way without taking into account the USSR and its vast nuclear potential. This is the basic point that must be borne in mind.
It must be borne in mind that a poor, industrially backward country, where millions upon millions of peasants and workers lived in abject poverty and unspeakable oppression and exploitation, overthrew the old, outmoded Czarist regime, overturned and revolutionized the basic social and property relations, and established a new society based on a planned economy and with the object of constructing a new socialist system.
On the basis of this planned economy and a new mode of social production, it was able to resist and destroy the fiercest and bloodiest invasion in history, although at the cost of 20 million lives. In the course of such a struggle, the Soviet state proved itself to be a viable new progressive social formation.
That it was able to both acquire and develop some of the most modern achievements of science and technology proved the viability of its social system. That it has surpassed, at least in some decisive areas, the most advanced capitalist country, such as the U.S., is now beyond doubt.
Since it was the first country to launch an earth satellite and open up the era of space exploration, it is only natural that it should also have developed the missile technology necessary for modern weapons systems. That is has acquired the necessary know-how in nuclear energy is also now beyond doubt.
These are matters which world imperialism was unable to forestall. The latter has carried on campaigns to “contain” the USSR, as the phrase used to be, and at other times to blockade it. At different periods in its sixty years, the imperialists have tried subversion, intervention, and attempts to economically and politically isolate the USSR. While to some extent these hostile measures succeeded in slowing down and retarding social and political advancement of the USSR, imperialism has been unable to stop its dynamic onward development.
The fact that the USSR has achieved what the bourgeoisie now claims is rough military equivalence with imperialism is an outgrowth of the viability and progressive character of the USSR’s social system. It cannot be accounted for in any other way, and it acts as a deterrent against the wild ambitions of world finance capital.
The SALT treaty debate shows that the ruling class as a whole is universally gloomy about its own destiny. It can no longer be the policeman for the entire globe. It can no longer dictate policy to the whole world.
It has suffered tremendous setbacks such as the ones in Southeast Asia and others still to come. It would like to once again achieve world military superiority so as to be able to dominate the world economically and politically. But this has become ever more dangerous and ever more costly.
Moreover, it no longer seems practical to apply military force as it once did since this brings down political disasters for which a so-called military victory is poor compensation.
From the vantage point of the USSR, the SALT treaty is a highly progressive measure. If the treaty becomes effective, it can divert Soviet technology and personnel from the military field to the civilian sector. It would aid socialist construction. The profit motive, which is the driving force of capitalist society, is not the motive force in the Soviet economy. On the contrary, the conversion from military to civilian production, aside from technical and related matters, can in the Soviet Union be accomplished with relative ease and act as a spur to socialist construction.
Conversion from military to civilian production in a capitalist economy, such as the U.S., is an altogether different matter, notwithstanding the literally hundreds of bourgeois economists, scientists, and politicians who have been advising the ruling class how much better off it would be if it converted from military to civilian production.
Certainly the working class movement should demand it and fight hard for it, as some unions are beginning to do. But if the rate of profit were higher in the civilian sector of the economy, if the military-industrial tycoons could garner the same fabulous profits by investing in civilian rather than military projects, they would scarcely need any encouragement from “outsiders” to do so.
The extortionate profits that are raked up in military contracts can scarcely compare to anything that can be realized in, for instance, housing or in rebuilding the great metropolitan cities of the U.S.
All of this must be taken into account in evaluating the significance of the SALT treaty. The working class and progressive movement and all the oppressed people should be for its ratification.
First of all, this would be a rebuff to the most extreme, the most maniacal militarist elements in the country. Secondly, it would be a measure of solidarity with the peace-loving sentiments of the broad masses all over the world. While fighting for ratification one naturally allies himself or herself with the peace sentiments of the masses but not with the arguments, not with the political positions, not with the capitalist lies and deceits of “peace.” Fighting for a genuine peace means fighting against militarism and capitalism at the same time.
In voting for ratification in the Senate, a true representative of the working class would say, “I vote for ratification because I am unalterably opposed to the military-industrial complex and to the entire ruling class with which it is inextricably bound up. I vote for ratification because I want to ally myself with the peace sentiment of the masses. But I reject, without qualification, the lies and deceits of the capitalist politicians, for whom the SALT treaty is merely a means to expand the military establishment by other means, such as the MX missile, and accelerate arms expenditures.
“I do not have the least confidence in the administration’s professions of peace. To do so would be to do violence to the record not only of this administration but of a half-century at least of imperialist wars, counter-revolutionary interventions, and overt and covert CIA operations.
“As long as the ruling class holds the reins of power, as long as they own all the means of production, all the plants, all the factories, and all the banks, so long is war inherent in the capitalist system. Only when all the means of production are transferred into the hands of the people – the workers and all the oppressed – only then will a durable peace be possible.”
Last updated: 11 May 2026