In Defence of Marxism

Collapse of Nazi regime

Even before this, the bourgeoisie would have ended the war and sought to reach an agreement with the British and Americans. Unfortunately for the German bankers and industrialists, it was not possible to influence Hitler or remove him from office by constitutional means. Therefore they resorted to conspiracies with a section of the general staff. An attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944 failed and a savage purge ensued in which thousands were arrested and murdered. Colonel Graf Klaus von Stauffenberg, the chief conspirator, was shot. Rommel, the hero of the Africa campaign who was also implicated, was ordered to take poison. Other officers were not so lucky. Eight of them were hanged with piano wire – an unambiguous message from the Gestapo to any other officers with doubts about the Fuehrer. Having liquidated the bourgeois opposition and terrorised the General Staff, Hitler and his clique were now more determined than ever to fight to the bitter end, irrespective of the consequences for Germany and the bourgeoisie.

The Nazi regime was now in a state of total disintegration. Some of the Nazi leaders were still hoping for a split between the USSR and the British and Americans. They were trying up to the last minute to come to terms with the latter. One such attempt was made by Himmler through the Swedish government, but it came to nothing. When Hitler found out about it he was furious. According to eyewitness accounts, he raged like a madman, his face turned bright red and he was almost unrecognisable.

Lord Acton wrote: "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Hitler was completely out of touch with reality, and this unhinged his mind. In the end he was obviously insane. He ordered the complete destruction of the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland, to stop it falling into enemy hands: He ordered that "all industrial and food-supply installations within the Reich, which could be of any immediate or future use to the enemy for the continuation of his fight, will be demolished." (Milton Shulman, Defeat in the West, p. 283.)

"Hold on till the end", Hitler ordered. But by this time, Hitler's hold on his state and army was slipping. The Ruhr was not destroyed. General Friedrich Koechlin, the commander of the 81st Corps, later wrote: "The continuation of resistance in the Ruhr was a crime." (ibid., p. 284.) On April 16, 80,000 German soldiers gave themselves up to the Allies. Two days later, 325,000 troops, including thirty generals, crawled out of their holes to surrender.

Almost to the end, Hitler continued to issue orders to non-existent troops, and to move imaginary planes and divisions. But the Twilight of the Gods had arrived. He committed suicide on April 30th and his body was soaked with petrol and burnt – a fittingly sordid end for a fascist monster. As his corpse went up in flames the sound of Russian guns was heard in the heart of Berlin. On May 1, the Soviet flag was hoisted over the Reichstag. The following day the Soviet forces were in complete control of the German capital.

Once it became clear that a deal with Britain and America was impossible, what remained of the Nazi leaders' will to fight on collapsed. Five days later, Germany surrendered.

Counterrevolutionary policy

As it became clear that the Soviet Union would emerge as the dominant force in Europe after the War, Churchill's reactionary tendencies, which he had been compelled to dissimulate, came to the surface. For this counterrevolutionary gangster, the main enemy was no longer Nazi Germany. It was the Soviet Union. The Red Army had smashed the armies of Hitler in East Prussia and was on the point of entering Berlin. Churchill wrote to the Soviet Government that the Red Army's achievements deserved "unstinted applause" and future generations acknowledge their debt to them "as unreservedly as do we who have lived to witness these proud achievements." (Correspondence..., Vol. 1, pp. 305-6.)

But these words reeked of hypocrisy. In reality, Churchill was not at all pleased at the Russian advance. The American general Eisenhower planned to encircle and destroy the German forces defending the Ruhr, and then divide the enemy forces by linking up with the Soviet army. But this plan was vehemently opposed by Churchill, who wanted at all costs to keep the Russians out of Berlin. He wanted the British and Americans to take Berlin, not the Red Army. He wrote a cable to Roosevelt on April 1: "I therefore consider that from a political standpoint we should march as far east into Germany as possible, and that should Berlin be in our grasp, we should certainly take it." (Roosevelt and Churchill, Their Secret Wartime Correspondence, p.669.)

The British Prime Minister wrote in his memoirs that the destruction of Germany's military power "had brought with it a fundamental change in the relations between Communist Russia and the Western democracies. They had lost their common enemy, which was almost their sole bond of union." Outlining his strategy, Churchill advocated the creation of a front to halt the advance of the Red Army. This front had to be as far to the east as possible. Berlin was the main objective. The Americans should enter Prague and occupy Czechoslovakia. And a settlement should be reached on all major issues between the West and the East in Europe before the British and Americans "yielded any part of the German territories they had conquered." (Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. VI, p. 400.)

Throughout the War, the genuine interests of the peoples of occupied Europe were not the main motivating force of the ruling circles in London and Washington. All their actions were merely an expression of the crudest big power politics. And fear of revolution was never very far away. Thus, it was decided that Germany should be disarmed, but that she should be allowed to retain "such forces as were required for the maintenance of public order." These gentlemen remembered only too well the revolutionary wave that swept through Germany after the end of the First World War.

Churchill feared a revolution in Germany after the collapse of the Nazi regime. He later admitted that he had instructed Field Marshall Montgomery in late April "to be careful in collecting the German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be issued again to the German soldiers," if London thought it necessary. (See The Daily Herald, November 24, 1954). This was exactly the same policy pursued by the British at the end of the First World War, when they allowed the German army to keep thousands of machine-guns, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, to put down the German Revolution.

Even while the war with Nazi Germany was still raging, the Allies were preparing to put down uprisings of the masses and prop up right wing regimes, like the regime of Badoglio in Italy. The American historian D.F. Fleming points out: "We sought to preserve the power of the top social strata which had long ruled these countries." (D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960, Vol. 1, p. 210.)

In January 1945 the US State Department proposed the setting up of a Provisional Security Council for Europe or Emergency High Commission to "achieve unity of policy and joint action" in Europe. The purpose of this body was to set up provisional governments in Europe after the defeat of the Nazis and "the maintenance of order" – that is, the suppression of revolutions. The authors of the document stressed that "every possible effort" must be made "to induce the Soviet Government to agree."

The imperialists were terrified that the entry of the Red Army into Eastern Europe, and the overthrow of the Nazi puppet regimes, would be the signal for revolt. These fears were well founded. The spectacular advance of the Red Army and the collapse of the Nazi regimes in Eastern Europe produced a revolutionary wave both in Eastern and Western Europe. However, contrary to the belief of Churchill, Stalin had no interest in seeing workers' revolutions in Europe, because of the effect this would have on the workers of the USSR.

As an indication of his "good intentions", Stalin ordered the dissolution of the Communist International (Comintern), which was set up by Lenin and Trotsky in 1919 to further the cause of world revolution. The Comintern was wound up ignominiously, without even the pretence of a congress, on May 15 1943. This was Stalin's signal to the British and American imperialists that they had nothing to fear from him – at least as far as world revolution was concerned:

A Stalinist author writes: "Replying on May 28 to the question of Harold King, Moscow correspondent of Reuters, as to the effect the dissolution of the Comintern would have on the future of international relations, Stalin wrote that the dissolution of the Communist International facilitated the organization of a common onslaught of the United Nations against the common enemy. The Comintern's dissolution exposed the Nazi lie that 'Moscow' intended to intervene in the affairs of other nations and to 'Bolshevise' them." (V. Sipols, p. 142.)

In 1944 the British imperialists intervened militarily in Greece to crush the partisans who were led by the Communist Party. This was a direct result of the policies of Stalin, who had done a deal with Churchill to carve up the Balkans and Eastern Europe into Russian and British spheres of influence. This is not the place to deal with the diplomatic horse-trading that went on between Russia, the USA and Britain during the war, but it is quite clear that all three powers were jockeying for positions after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Stalin had attempted to come to an accommodation with the imperialist powers between 1944 and 1945 at the Big Three Conferences at Teheran, Moscow, Yalta and Potsdam. Churchill noted down his conversation with Stalin in October 1944:

"The moment was apt for business, so I said, 'Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Romania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have 90 per cent predominance in Romania, for us to have 90 per cent of the say in Greece, and go 50-50 about Yugoslavia?' While this was being translated I wrote out on a half sheet of paper:

Romania: Russia 90 per cent; The others 10 per cent
Greece: Great Britain (in accord with USA) 90 per cent; Russia 10 per cent
Yugoslavia: 50-50 per cent
Hungary: 50-50 per cent
Bulgaria: Russia 75 per cent; The others 25 per cent

"I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down. After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay in the centre of the table. At length I said, 'might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper.' 'No, you keep it' said Stalin." (W. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 227-8.)

The actions of Stalin gave the green light to Churchill to crush the revolution in Greece. In Greece the British army smashed the partisans of EAM, who had led the struggle against the Nazi occupation, in order to give power to the king and his reactionary clique. This led to a bloody civil war and a reactionary government in Greece that lasted for decades.

Counterrevolution in a democratic form

Plans for the carve-up of post-war Europe had already begun well before the invasion of France. The US army was supposed to occupy Germany from the Swiss frontier to Düsseldorf, while the British were to occupy the territory from Luebeck to the Ruhr. The Americans intended to control France and Belgium, and the British aimed to control Holland, Denmark and Norway. The situation in Eastern Europe was more difficult, because of the presence of the Red Army. But there too Churchill was manoeuvring with so-called governments of exile.

As early as 1943 the British Foreign Office had begun to work out plans for putting down revolutionary movements in liberated Europe. The intention of the British and Americans was to impose on the liberated populations of Europe the rule of so-called governments in exile that were really only right wing bourgeois cliques without any base, who had been sitting in London for the duration of the War, like the "government in exile" of Charles de Gaulle. The so-called "Gaullist Resistance" was not nearly as significant as French bourgeois historians claim it was. It cannot be compared with the real French Resistance, which, as in every other country, was led by the Communists. The latter were actually responsible for the liberation of Paris. De Gaulle was shipped back to France by the British and sent to make pompous speeches in Bayeux and other liberated cities, although his actual role in the fighting – like his "mass base" of support in France – was non-existent.

On August 18th a general strike broke out. Factories were occupied by the workers. On the 19th, the police went on strike and seized control of the Prefecture. Under the leadership of Colonel Rol-Tanguy, the former leader of CGT Metalworkers Union, the Communist Resistance passed over to an all-out offensive. The movement, involving 100,000 insurgents from the outset, was so widespread that the Germans could do nothing. A counter-offensive was considered, but then cancelled. The German commander, General von Choltitz, entered into secret negotiations with the Resistance through the medium of the Swedish Legation.

A truce was agreed on, in which important parts of Paris were handed over to the Resistance and the Germans agreed to treat all Maquis fighters as soldiers. But the ceasefire broke down almost immediately and the street fighting recommenced. Barricades were set up all over Paris. It was a complete insurrection. The demoralized German forces could put up only relatively mild resistance. The officers locked themselves up in hotels and barracks for safety and waited for the Allies to save them from the anger of the masses. After five days of fighting, Paris had fallen – to a revolutionary insurrection.

On the day the communist-led insurrection broke out, the Second Armoured Division under Gaullist command was still 200 kilometres away from Paris. A small number of tanks were rushed ahead to the capital, in order to allow the Gaullist forces to claim at least some part in the uprising, but did not arrive until the 24th, by which time the German forces were already defeated. When de Gaulle finally entered Paris on the 26th, he was horrified to discover that Rol-Tanguy had accepted and signed the official surrender of General von Choltitz on the previous day.

A revolutionary wave swept through France and the whole of Europe. But it was betrayed by the combined efforts of the leaders of the Social Democracy and Stalinism. In Italy and Greece, as in France, the Resistance was controlled by the Communist Parties. They could have taken power after the War but were prevented by Stalin, who feared revolution like the plague. Instead, he instructed the Communists of France and Italy to join Popular Front governments, from which they were later ejected. As a result, in Western Europe, we had counterrevolution with a democratic face.

When Mussolini was overthrown in June 1943, the Allies hastily recognised the government of the fascist marshal Badoglio, who changed sides and even declared war on Germany. But in reality Badoglio's government was hanging in mid air. Power was in the hands of the Italian workers and the partisans who were led by the Communist Party. Not by accident, the first act of the RAF was to bomb hell out of the northern cities in order to terrify the masses and as a warning to the partisans.

But by 1945 the real power in Italy was, in reality, in the hands of the Communist Party and the partisans. They captured and executed the hated fascist dictator Mussolini, who ended his days suitably hanging from a petrol pump together with his mistress. Communist partisans liberated Milan on April 25, just as they had earlier liberated Paris. The workers seized the factories. The road to a socialist revolution in Italy was open. Yet Togliatti and the other leaders of the PCI, following orders from Moscow, held the workers back from taking power. Instead, they advocated entering a coalition with the Christian Democrats. The policies of the Stalinists effectively derailed the revolution and handed power back to the reactionary circles backed by London and Washington.

The counterrevolutionary policies of the so-called "Western democracies" included collusion with Nazis and other right wing forces in Europe. By this time their main objective was to combat "Communism". Churchill was the main moving force in this counterrevolutionary activity, but he was backed (albeit more cautiously) by Washington. In order to prevent revolution, Churchill backed the monarchists in Italy as a bulwark of reaction. It is well known that the British and Americans helped many Nazi war criminals to escape from Italy to South America with the enthusiastic aid of the Vatican. Others went to the United States where they played an active role assisting the CIA in the Cold War.

Matters in Eastern Europe were very different. With the advance of the Red Army, the old state power collapsed. The ruling class had collaborated with the Nazis and fled before the advancing Soviet forces. Again, the working class could have taken power, but they were held back by the Stalinists, who took their orders from Moscow. Coalition governments were set up in which the Communists were in a minority. But they always held two ministries: defence and interior – the army and the police. In addition, the Red Army was present as an insurance policy.

Trotsky once said that to kill a tiger one requires a shotgun but to kill a flea, a thumbnail is sufficient. The Stalinists liquidated capitalism in Eastern Europe but they did not introduce socialism. These regimes began where the Russian revolution ended – as bureaucratically deformed workers' states. The expropriation of the capitalists and landlords was undoubtedly a progressive task, but it was carried out bureaucratically, from above, without the democratic participation and control of the working class.

The regimes that emerged from this were a bureaucratic and totalitarian caricature of socialism. Unlike the Russian workers' state established by the Bolsheviks in 1917, they offered no attraction to the workers of Western Europe. With the exception of Czechoslovakia, the bourgeoisie of Eastern Europe had been very weak before the War. The US imperialists attempted to strengthen the bourgeois elements and gain control of Eastern Europe by offering them Marshall Aid. Stalin understood the manoeuvre and gave the order. The Stalinists took power by expelling the bourgeois elements from the coalitions and nationalising the means of production.

Origins of the Cold War

President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and was replaced by Vice President Truman. Many people have assumed that Roosevelt was less anti-Communist than his successor. But this is not the case. The reason why Roosevelt did not want an immediate clash with Moscow was that it did not suit the interests of American imperialism to break with Moscow at that point in time. In addition to the considerations already mentioned, the Americans had another reason for not sharing Churchill's enthusiasm for a "crusade against Bolshevism" – or, at least, the timing. The Americans' main preoccupation was the war in the Pacific, where they were still locked in a life-or-death struggle with Japanese imperialism.

The problem was that the USSR had a huge army in the heart of Europe. Only the possession of nuclear weapons gave the USA a potential advantage, since the USSR did not yet have the atom bomb. But the bomb had not yet been tested, and there was no guarantee that it would work. The Americans tested the first atom bomb on June 16, 1945, at the very time the wartime Allies were meeting in Berlin to discuss the post-war situation. Truman and Churchill were informed that the test had been successful and wasted no time in letting Stalin know all about it. They hoped to use the threat of nuclear devastation to tip the balance of the negotiations in their favour.

Some have maintained that the Cold War did not begin until 1947, but in fact it began immediately after the surrender of Japan, and was prepared even before that. D.F. Fleming states: "that President Truman was ready to begin it before he had been in office two weeks." (D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960, Vol. 1, p. 268.) The possession of the atom bomb gave Truman a sense of superiority, which he did not feel the need to hide. James F. Burns, director of the US war mobilisation department, assured Truman that possession of the atom bomb would put the USA in a position "to dictate our own terms at the end of the war." (Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. I, Year of Destiny, New York, p. 87.)

As usual, Churchill was the first to foment an anti-Communist crusade. This rabid reactionary and warmonger was doing everything in his power to push the Americans into a conflict with Russia. Describing his mood at this time, General Allen Brooke, the Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, noted in his diary that "he was always seeing himself capable of eliminating all the Russian centres of industry and population […]" (Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West, 1943-1946, London, 1959. p. 478.) But the British working class had had enough of Churchill. They had had enough of war too, and certainly had no desire to engage in a new war, least of all against the Soviet Union. In the 1945 general election they kicked Churchill and the Conservatives out of power and voted massively for a Labour government.

In any case, Britain was already reduced to the role of a secondary power, a mere satellite of the USA – a role that has continued to the present-day. The Americans did not pay much attention to Churchill's raving because they still had unfinished business in the Pacific. They needed the help of the Soviet Union to defeat Japan, and therefore were not in a hurry to bring about a premature confrontation with the Russians in Europe. That could wait until Japan had surrendered.

The defeat of Japan

The Japanese had a powerful land army in Manchuria, the Kwantung army. Its total strength was up to a million men. It had 1,215 tanks, 6,640 guns and mortars and 1,907 combat aircraft. This formidable fighting force was faced by 1,185,000 Soviet troops stationed in the Soviet Far East. These were reinforced with additional forces after the surrender of Germany and when the offensive began on August 9 totalled 1,747,000 troops, 5,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 29,835 guns and mortars and 5,171 combat aircraft. In a campaign lasting just six days the Red Army smashed the Japanese forces and advanced through Manchuria with lightning speed. The Soviet forces entered Korea and the South Sakhalin and Kurile Islands and were in striking distance of Japan itself.

On August 6, the Americans had dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the very day the Soviet army began its offensive, they dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. They did this despite the fact that these were civilian cities with no military value and the Japanese were already defeated and suing for peace. The fact is that these atom bombs were intended as a warning to the USSR not to continue the Red Army's advance, otherwise they could have occupied Japan. The use of the atom bomb was a political act. It was intended to show Stalin that the USA now possessed a terrible new weapon of mass destruction and was prepared to use it against civilian populations. There was an implicit threat: what we have done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki we can do to Moscow and Leningrad.

Once Japan had surrendered, Washington's attitude to Moscow changed immediately. The whole shape of the post-war world was now determined. The world would be dominated by two great giants: mighty US imperialism on the one hand and mighty Russian Stalinism on the other. They represented two fundamentally opposed socio-economic systems with antagonistic interests. A titanic struggle between them was inevitable.

The American imperialists now felt themselves masters of the world. They had suffered relatively little from the war. Their productive base was intact, whereas most of Europe's industry lay in a heap of smouldering rubble. Two thirds of all the available gold in the world was in Fort Knox. The USA had a huge army and a monopoly of nuclear weapons. They could impose their conditions on the rest of the world. Only the Soviet Union stood in their way. The arrogance of American power was put into words by the managing director of The New York Times Neil MacNeil, who wrote that "both the United States and the world need peace based on American principles – a Pax Americana […] We should accept an American peace. We should accept nothing less." (Neil MacNeil, An American Peace, New York, 1944, p. 264.)

Postscript: the end of a myth

Last month's celebrations around the 60th anniversary of D-day were designed to perpetuate a myth. The Normandy landings did not end the Second World War in Europe, which was fought and won on the eastern front.

To say this is not to belittle the courage of the British and American troops. The soldiers who had to endure the Normandy landings went through hell. According to figures issued by Supreme Headquarters, Allied casualties in the first 15 days of battle totalled 40,549. The British lost 1,842 killed, 8,599 wounded, and 3,131 missing. The Americans lost 3,082 killed, 13,121 wounded, and 7,959 missing. The Canadians lost 363 killed, 1,359 wounded and 1,093 missing. This was bad enough Yet it does not bear comparison with the appalling losses suffered on the eastern front. (See Martin Gilbert, Second World War, p. 536.)

In addition to the terrible loss of life, the productive base of the Soviet Union was severely damaged by the depredations of Hitler's hordes, who bombed, burned and looted, causing the wholesale destruction of industry in the occupied territories of the USSR. Yet after the war, the USSR rebuilt its economy in a very short space of time. The superiority of a nationalized planned economy, which was already demonstrated by the War itself, was confirmed in the period of post-war reconstruction, when it achieved a regular rate of growth of 10 percent per annum.

Western historians, motivated rather by political considerations than historical truth, have systematically minimised the role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. This systematic campaign of distortion has increased a hundred-fold since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The defenders of capitalism are not willing to acknowledge the achievements of the nationalized planned economy in the USSR. They cannot admit that the spectacular military victory over Hitler Germany was due precisely to this.

In order to belittle the role of the USSR in the war, they exaggerate the importance of things like American Lease-Lend to the Soviet Union. This falsification is easy to answer. The fact is that the Red Army had halted the German advance and begun to counterattack by the end of 1941 in the Battle of Moscow – before any supplies had reached the USSR from the USA, Britain or Canada.

These supplies came mainly in the period 1943-5, that is, at a period when the Soviet economy was already producing more military hardware than the German war machine. They accounted only for a fraction of Soviet war production: two percent of artillery, ten percent of tanks and twelve percent of aircraft. In no sense can this be considered decisive to the Soviet war effort as a whole. Its importance was marginal.

The real reasons for the marvellous achievements of the Soviet Union in the Second World War was something the Western historians are never prepared to admit – firstly, the superiority of a nationalised economy and central planning, and secondly, the determination of the Soviet working class to defend what remained of the conquests of the October Revolution against fascism and imperialism.

This was no thanks to Stalin and the bureaucracy, who had placed the USSR in extreme danger by their criminal and irresponsible policy before the War, but in spite of them. The Soviet workers, despite all the crimes of Stalin and the bureaucracy, rallied to the defence of the USSR and fought like tigers. This was what ultimately guaranteed victory.

As a matter of fact, the capitalist regimes in Britain and the USA, in an indirect way, admitted the superiority over central planning over market anarchy during the war. When matters were really serious and their backs were against the wall, how did they react? Did they say, as they do nowadays, that everything should be left in private hands? Did they sing hymns to the glories of market economics and private enterprise? They did not!

They introduced emergency legislation to centralise production, especially of the war industries. They introduced measures of planning, the direction of labour, rationing and so on. Why did they do this? For one very good reason: because these methods gave better results. So much for the argument about the alleged superiority of the "free market economy"!

Of course, this was not socialism. The basic levers of the economy remained in the hands of private capitalists. Real planning is not possible under capitalism. And the nationalized industries were run by bureaucrats. But despite these limitations, even these elements of a planned economy gave serious results for a time. The elements of planning, even on a capitalist basis, gave better results than the free-for-all of the market economy. Just imagine the results that would be possible in a real socialist planned economy in which the benefits of a central plan would be combined with the democratic control and administration of the working people themselves.

After 1945 the United Nations was set up, supposedly to guarantee world peace. But today, six decades after D-Day, the world is anything but a peaceful place. One war succeeds another in one country after another, in one continent after another. In the modern epoch wars are the expression of the unbearable contradictions that flow from the capitalist system itself. The entire world is dominated by a handful of super-rich nations, which in turn are dominated by a handful of super-rich and powerful corporations and banks. The actions of these are determined – as they were always determined – by the greed for rent, interest and profit, for markets, raw materials and spheres of influence.

In the Second World War, fifty-five million men, women and children perished. Millions more will perish in the coming years and decades, not just in wars and other military conflicts, but from starvation and epidemics like malaria, AIDS and simple diseases caused by the lack of clean drinking water.

The worst thing about all this is that it is objectively unnecessary. In the first decade of the 21st century, when science and technology have performed unheard-of miracles, the majority of the human race faces a grinding struggle to survive. The gap between rich and poor has widened into an abysm, and at the same time the gap between the so-called rich and poor nations has never been greater.

These facts lie behind the tensions and antagonisms that create wars, ethnic strife, terrorism, and all the other horrors that afflict our tortured and turbulent planet. As long as these central contradictions are not resolved, wars and other violent conflicts will continue to sow death and destruction. It is useless to bemoan the results of war, as moralists and pacifists do. It is necessary to diagnose the source of the illness and prescribe a cure.

The enormous potential of a nationalised planned economy was demonstrated by the Soviet Union, before, during and in the first 25 years after the Second World War. Despite all the efforts of the bourgeoisie and its hired prostitutes to deny it, the fact is that the USSR (and later China) showed that it is possible to run an economy without private capitalists, bankers, speculators and landlords, and that such an economy can obtain spectacular results.

Ah, but the Soviet Union collapsed. Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed after decades of bureaucratic and totalitarian rule, which completely negated the regime of workers' democracy established in 1917. As early as 1936, Leon Trotsky predicted that the Stalinist Bureaucracy that usurped power after Lenin's death, would not be satisfied with its legal and illegal privileges, but would inevitably strive to replace the nationalised planned economy by privately owned monopolies.

The capitalist counterrevolution in Russia, however, offers no way forward to the peoples of the former USSR. It has been accompanied by a horrific collapse of the Russian economy, living standards and culture, as Trotsky predicted. If there is a country in the world where capitalism stands condemned, that country is Russia.

The prolongation of senile capitalism threatens the future of human culture, civilization, democracy, perhaps even the survival of humanity itself. The world is crying out for a fundamental social and economic transformation. The only hope for humanity consists in the radical abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a harmonious system of production and distribution based on the common ownership of the means of production under democratic workers' control and administration.

The future socialist planned economy will not be based on backwardness, as was the regime established by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky in November 1917. It will draw on the colossal advances of industry, science and technology, which will become the servants of human needs, not the salves of the profit motive.

On the basis of a modern, technologically advanced economy, rational planning will spur production to an unprecedented level. It will be possible in a relatively short time to abolish hunger, homelessness, misery and illiteracy and all the other elements of barbarism that make life a hell on earth for countless millions of people. In place of the old strife and rivalry between nations it will be possible to unite the productive forces of the whole planet in a socialist commonwealth, where wars will be consigned, along with slavery, feudalism and cannibalism, to a museum of barbarous relics of the past.