On 13 August 1961 the German Democratic Republic began construction of the Berlin Wall.

The below is from the Socialist Standard February 2011

How much longer are you willing to sit around and let a tiny minority divide us?

According to the Bible, 1400 years before our saviour arrived on Earth, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down; demolished by the buglers of the Israelite army marching around the city walls blowing their trumpets. No mention is made of any aural damage.

[Socialists eschew religion This first paragraph is intended as fantastical irony.]



Walls, have had several roles in society since their inception. Several thousand years ago our ancestors would have built rudimentary walls for shelter against the elements, and these eventually evolved in to the walls of communal living spaces.



With the emergence of private property walls began to assume a new role in society: the defence of landed property. Kings, queens, emperors and a motley assortment of nobles laid claim to the land through divine approbation and conquest. What had once been held in common ownership gradually came to belong to a tiny minority that enforced their ownership through coercion.



Fortress and City walls were not enough for some rulers. The threat of losing the property that had been stolen from the majority led to the construction of fortifications of immense proportions. The Great Wall of China was under construction from the 5th century BC up until the 16th century to protect the Chinese Emperors from a northern threat to their borders. Nowadays, it is a major tourist trap. However, it is doubtful whether the tourist guides reveal that ‘it is estimated that over one million workers died building the wall’ [wikipedia.org].



Medieval walled cities had become commonplace, but walls also served another purpose for those in power, and that was for imprisonment. Dungeons were often used to hold prisoners prior to execution or transportation. And, there was also debtors’ prison, where the debtor was imprisoned until the debt was repaid. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that the modern prison system took root, beginning in Britain, when incarceration was viewed as a punishment in its own right. Walls could now be seen to confine members of society as well as repel them.



The Berlin Wall demonstrates how capitalist states can contain and control their populations. The construction of the ‘Wall of shame’, as the West Berlin state dubbed it, began on the 13th of August 1961. The state capitalist élite of East Germany declared that it was erected as a defence against fascists who were conspiring to impede the ‘will of the people’ from the building of a socialist state – which is a contradiction in terms. Its real function was to prevent the mass emigration of East German workers to the private capitalist workshops of the West. However, by 1989 the economic decline of the Russian empire led to a change in policy by their ruling élite, and access to Russian coercion was to be denied to the puppet states. It was this that brought about the tumbling of the Berlin Wall.



Amid the rejoicing some people in power were not as jubilant as the East Berliners, and millions elsewhere. Margaret Thatcher, wary of a united Germany, was reported to have pleaded with President Gorbachev ‘not to let the Berlin Wall fall’, and to ‘do what he could to prevent it happening’ (The Hindu, Sep 15 2009). Similarly, the French President, François Mitterand warned Mrs Thatcher that a unification of Germany could lead to them making ‘more ground than Adolf Hitler had’, and ‘that Europe would have to bear the consequences’ (London Times, 10 September 2009). Both quotes offer an insight into how the competitive nature of capitalism affects the thinking of its leaders, and directly works against the overwhelming majorities’ hopes, dreams and desires of living in a humane world.



Israel’s ruling élite ordered the construction of their wall in 1994, and duly baptised it the ‘Separation Barrier’. You would have thought that the Israeli’s might have recalled the wall that the Nazi’s imprisoned 400,000 Jews behind in what became known as the ‘Warsaw Ghetto’ prior to their elimination, but evidently memories are short, and propaganda long. The justification for its construction is that it has been built to protect Israeli’s from Palestinian suicide bomb attacks. Opponents regard the wall as a means to further annex Palestinian land, and that security is just a subterfuge. The wall also violates international law as laid down by the International Court of Justice. However, ‘justice’ under capitalism inevitably pans out as ‘might is right’, especially when the US is your Godfather.



The establishment of an Israeli state was the goal of Zionism and its founder Theodor Herzl’s entry in his 1895 diary reveals the thoughts of a ‘righteous’ man:

“We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly” (Righteous victims, p. 21-22).

The Israeli ‘settlers’, are also opposed to the barrier, but their opposition is because it appears to relinquish the Jewish claim to the ‘Land of Israel’. This is the land that God promised to the descendants of Abraham. This is a biblical deal struck between God and the Jewish ‘people’ some 3500 years ago. It is also the ideological engine of Zionism, and the Likud party’s rationale for the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.



Voltaire once wrote that ‘if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him’, and like the ancient mariner, Jonah, who was supposedly swallowed by a whale, millions of people swallow the Bible’s fairy tales as literal truths. And this suits the powerful; if it didn’t the Bible, and all of the other ‘holy books’ would have been consigned to the fiction shelf of the Children’s Library a long, long time ago. Within the Bible’s pages we have a superman walking on water, and feeding four thousand people with a shopping bag of groceries. The Red Sea opening up to allow the ‘chosen people’ to cross, but the ‘all loving’ God deciding in his infinite wisdom to drown the pursuing Egyptians. There’s a man whose hair is the secret of his immense strength. A midget slaying a giant. Talking snakes, talking bushes, a dead man coming to life, and the useful trick of turning water into wine. Pages and pages of fantasy. But, in the hands of religious fanatics, and conniving élites these tall tales create intense misery for millions of people. And the ‘Separation Barrier’ is a symbol of that suffering.



Another ‘separation barrier’ has been constructed in the ‘land of the free’. This 1951 mile long wall acts as a ragged border between the United States and Mexico. The justification from the US side about why they have erected this wall is that it is to deter drug smugglers and prevent illegal immigration. On neither count can the US authorities claim any success. The US is awash with drugs, as is the rest of capitalist society, and the answer to drug abuse does not reside in the construction of a wall.



The US Border Patrol in 2005 apprehended 1.2 million people trying to cross over from Mexico, and by their own estimates they only catch 1 in 4. In a country where it is estimated that 40 percent of the population live below the poverty line, it does not take a George Bush to understand what it is that drives these people to leave their homes and families for an uncertain future in a hostile country.



The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), like every other trade agreement is always constructed to benefit the few to the detriment of the many. Contrary to the rhetoric of the capitalist media, NAFTA had a predictable effect on the Mexican people. The peso crashed soon after the NAFTA was passed, and those already struggling were pushed further in to penury. Economic migration became inevitable as this Oxfam report underscores:

“NAFTA has created dramatic economic dislocations in Mexico. These economic impacts, among other factors, are leading Mexicans to migrate…For example; imports of U.S. corn have severely affected the local Mexican agricultural sector. NAFTA arrangements have helped increase the imports from 3 million metric tons in 1994 to more than 5 million metric tons in 2002. Also, the brief rise in outsourced U.S. manufacturing that helped the Mexican economy has ceased as these factories have now moved to Asia” (OXFAM; USDA, Nadal, 2002).

Even the walls that once gave us a feeling of security is undermined by capitalism as the debt incurred on the commodity that people have been persuaded to call their homes, has been transformed in to four walls of anxiety through the threat of unemployment, or just a few upward ticks in interest rates. The question is how much longer are you willing to sit around and watch a tiny minority dominate your life? Why not help us to bring the walls of capitalism tumbling down? We are asking you, as Shelley, once did to:

“Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you.

Ye are many. They are few.”

Andy Matthews

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/search?q=Berlin+wall

 Do we need leaders? Most people think we do. Even the Green Party, reputed to be one of the most ‘horizontal’ in their organisation, are currently locked in a leadership struggle between different candidates. This is a symptom of the almost universal notion that positive change can only happen if certain exceptional individuals hold power – even though reality has shown us time and time again that this is an illusion.

The kind of society the Socialist Party works for is borderless, wageless and moneyless – and entirely leaderless. It will come about when most people’s sense of powerlessness has given way to a recognition of the need for a society of entirely democratic organisation and decision-making – with no leaders and no followers.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

 Do we need leaders? Most people think we do. Even the Green Party, reputed to be one of the most ‘horizontal’ in their organisation, are currently locked in a leadership struggle between different candidates. This is a symptom of the almost universal notion that positive change can only happen if certain exceptional individuals hold power – even though reality has shown us time and time again that this is an illusion.

The kind of society the Socialist Party works for is borderless, wageless and moneyless – and entirely leaderless. It will come about when most people’s sense of powerlessness has given way to a recognition of the need for a society of entirely democratic organisation and decision-making – with no leaders and no followers.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Capitalism is not just a class war; it is a war of the mind. It demands conformity, punishes difference, and uses trauma as a tool of control. Still, resistance keeps bubbling up. Neurodivergent people often develop ways of thinking that refuse to follow capitalist logic, question authority, and imagine new ways of living.

On 9 August 1945 the USA dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan on the city of Nagasaki. Seventy four thousand immediately perished and then, as at Hiroshima, many more died as the effects of radiation destroyed their bodies.

‘Survivors are frustrated by a growing nuclear threat and support among international leaders for developing or possessing nuclear weapons for deterrence. They criticize the Japanese government’s refusal to sign or even participate in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons because Japan, as an American ally, needs U.S. nuclear possession as deterrence. ‘

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/nagasaki-marks-80th-bomb-anniversary-rcna224013

The mayor of Nagasaki said, “Conflicts around the world are intensifying in a vicious cycle of confrontation and fragmentation, If we continue on this trajectory, we will end up thrusting ourselves into a nuclear war.”

Up to a point Lord Copper. If we continue to allow capitalism and its obsession with competitive advantage to continue then the odds on the advantages and profits that capitalism perceives as the benefits of wars will be fatal for the whole human race.

No War But Class War

‘ A modest little tale about Cuban snails offers a fine comment on how the capitalist money system values everything in terms of prices, often with disastrous results. Polymita tree snails have spectacular shells like painted artworks. This attracts collectors who then make money by selling the shells. The trade reduces the snail population, and as they become rarer, their price goes up, which makes them even more collectible. This accelerator effect is driving them to the edge of extinction, like so many other hunted animals.

The BBC describes them as ‘threatened by their own beauty’. What really threatens them is capitalism, a profit-hungry beast which won’t stop until it devours everything. Or until we abolish it.’

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

‘ A modest little tale about Cuban snails offers a fine comment on how the capitalist money system values everything in terms of prices, often with disastrous results. Polymita tree snails have spectacular shells like painted artworks. This attracts collectors who then make money by selling the shells. The trade reduces the snail population, and as they become rarer, their price goes up, which makes them even more collectible. This accelerator effect is driving them to the edge of extinction, like so many other hunted animals.

The BBC describes them as ‘threatened by their own beauty’. What really threatens them is capitalism, a profit-hungry beast which won’t stop until it devours everything. Or until we abolish it.’

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

On the Eightieth anniversary of the dropping, by the USA, of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, we reprint one of many pieces from the Socialist Standard on this horrific action and reiterate the conclusion at the end of the piece below.

‘Socialists want no part of this nightmare world. Socialists are opposed to war, whether nuclear or “conventional” weapons are used.

The solution however, does not lie in the banning of a specific kind of weapon. Weapons are only necessary in a world of capitalist competition. The real enemy is the social system that breeds it. Our task is to keep the issue clear. To insist on the need for a society without privilege, poverty, or war. We take our stand solely for socialism.’

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘“We take no pride in being able to massacre millions of our fellow human beings, to poison the air, to cripple the children of the future. We find no safety in weapons designed only for wars that nobody can win… “

These words from the leaflet announcing the second Aldermaston March, expressed the feeling of the idealistic element of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Heard above the suave evasions of politicians, and the arrogant threats of generals, this call, to those enchanted, seemed the golden echo of truth itself; promising in victory, a finer and happier life for Man.

How and why did this protest arise? What has it achieved? Will it set the foot of Man on the long-sought path of Peace and Happiness?

To answer these questions one must go back to see how it came into being and how it has grown.

THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB

On July 16th, 1945, in the New Mexico desert, the Los Alamos scientists successfully exploded the first atomic device. Reports of this were hurried to President Truman at the Potsdam Conference. After consulting his advisers he gave authority to an air force group, in special training since the autumn of 1944, to prepare to use the atomic bombs.

In the early days of August, from a warship in mid-Atlantic, Truman gave the final order to begin the atomic bombing of selected Japanese cities. At the earliest indication of clear weather over Hiroshima, a B-29 was dispatched. A uranium bomb, assembled in the air on the way to the target, was dropped. Hiroshima on the morning of August 6th, 1945, became the first atomic crematorium. The “new weapon of special destructive force” which Truman had casually mentioned to Stalin, was a secret no longer.

The Russian government, fearing a belated American attempt to deprive it of some of the spoils of Yalta, hastened to declare war on Japan. A right to participate in the final share-out of the Far Eastern loot; a desire to safeguard their sphere of influence, these were the main concerns of the Russian rulers. No protest at a sickening outrage. No sorrow expressed at the agonies of the Hiroshima victims, the seared, stunned survivors; the radio-active remnants of what had been men, women and little children! So much for the party of Lenin and Stalin in the glorious fight for Peace!

Truman’s other allies, the British ruling class, their interests now in the care of a Labour Government, watched, from afar, the results of their joint scientific and industrial enterprise. Three days after Hiroshima, Attlee’s representative, Group Captain Cheshire, was present at the bombing of Nagasaki, where a plutonium bomb, operating on a new principle, was used.

Public awareness of the circumstances in which the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan has always been limited by the facile myth that these bombs were necessary to break the back of Japanese resistance, thereby saving Allied lives. Japan was, in fact, on the verge of collapse.

A GRUESOME EXPERIMENT?

Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, towns on a carefully selected list of possible targets, a gruesome experiment? A callous scheme of sections of the American military, designed to discover the respective merits of different kinds of atomic bombs when used against densely-populated industrial centres?

Was the atomic bombing a practical demonstration of American technical superiority in warfare to warn the Russian rulers against expansion which might further encroach upon American spheres of influence?

Whatever answers posterity may yield, however intricate the web of truth, to Socialists, there is no word, no line, to justify this deed. Nothing can excuse the roasting of the newly-born or the incineration of infants at play, the slaughter of thousands.

Whatever may have been the reasons, political, economic, military or personal, that may have moved the principal actors to speak the lines and play the parts they did, to Socialists one thing is the essential point. This war and all its misery and fire, was rooted in capitalism.

It is not the villainy of militarists, the schemings of armament kings, the bellicosity of dictators, the ineptitude of statesmen, that is the cause of war in the modern world. It is not deceptions practised upon honest by dishonest politicians.

It was not the manoeuverings of Roosevelt and Churchill nor the embargo placed upon raw materials for Japan in 1941 and all the machinations on both sides of the Pacific leading up to the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbour that were the causes of war in the Far East.

STRUGGLE FOR MARKETS 

Basically, the cause of the war, which led to the bestiality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was the conflict between the different national groups of capitalists, each aiming to improve its position in the relentless struggle to maintain or expand its control over markets and sources of raw materials. Little territory or resources, easily exploitable, remained to the nations such as Germany, Italy and Japan which had come late to the table.

To satisfy their growing appetites, arising from industrial and commercial expansion, the senior predators, they thought, must yield to them a large share of the economic fruits of earlier piracy.

The Japanese forces slowly advancing into Indo-China were a menace to American, British, Chinese, and Dutch interests in the islands and archipelagoes of South East Asia, fabulously rich in raw materials. Rubber, tin, nickel, oil and the like were never absent from the calculations of all concerned. The Japanese sought to control the Chinese mainland and to bring all South East Asia under their economic and cultural sway, by force of arms, if necessary.

In the West, if Germany over-ran Europe, the American rulers would find their long-term interests threatened, by a collossus commanding vast technical and industrial resources. A bitter struggle therefore ensued. The bomb and the bayonet became the means to convince where the honeyed modulations of sleek and urbane ambassadors had failed.

The attack on Pearl Harbour, the possibility of which American admirals had been discussing since the early thirties, helped to persuade the ordinary American people, who like people everywhere else, had no desire to become involved in war, that war was necessary in the interest of the nation as a whole. The Pearl Harbour attack roused the American people to a fury; they were in the war before they knew what it was all about. To the American man in the street the atomic bombing was a justified reprisal for the Japanese attack four years earlier. Thus does violence breed violence.

RUSSIA

It must not be thought that Russia comes into conflict with the other powers because of ideological reasons; because its social system is alleged to be “Socialist.”

Russia is a capitalist country. All the basic features of capitalism exist there; class monopoly of the means of production, backed-up by a powerful state apparatus, the dominance of commodity production and the profit motive, the subjection of the majority to wage-labour, the “anarchy of production” called “state-planning”; all are there.

All modern nations have these basic attributes. They may have particular features arising from the different national and economic backgrounds from which capitalism developed in each country. Each emerging capitalist class was born into a certain historical situation. The new industrial capitalists of England in the nineteenth century had the world at their feet; the later arrivals to the capitalist jungle, while having advantages in being able to learn and apply the latest techniques, found themselves surrounded by already entrenched rivals.

It is not what men think or say about themselves that is crucial to the analysis of a social system. It is how they are related to other men about the means of production, what role they play in the productive process, what, in fact, they do. In struggling with the traditional capitalist groups of the world, the top-ranking Communist Party bureaucrats, and politicians, the military, and industrial senior executives, in short, representatives of Russian capitalism, are different in no fundamental way. They are all as helpless to prevent war, and all as ruthless in its prosecution when diplomacy has failed.

FOR SOCIALISM

Socialists want no part of this nightmare world. Socialists are opposed to war, whether nuclear or “conventional” weapons are used.

The solution however, does not lie in the banning of a specific kind of weapon. Weapons are only necessary in a world of capitalist competition. The real enemy is the social system that breeds it. Our task is to keep the issue clear. To insist on the need for a society without privilege, poverty, or war. We take our stand solely for socialism.’

B

Appended at the bottom of this article in the original issue of the Socialist Standard:

Lord Attlee and the Bomb

“He [Mr. Truman] had to take the decision about the atom bomb. It is questioned sometimes. In my view, in the light of the knowledge we had at that time, he was absolutely right.”

Lord Attlee at a Pilgrims’ Dinner (July 21st, 1956) reported in “Daily Telegraph” (July 22nd, 1956)

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/05/hiroshima-nagasakithe-background-1959.html