(The following document appeared as a fullpage article in the June 9 issue of Was Tun, the weekly newspaper of the International Marxist Group (GIM), West German section of the Fourth International. It appeared under the headline, "No new SS-20s!" and was signed by the "Leadership of the GIM." The translation is by Peter Thierjung.]
1. Summit meetings of state and government chiefs of the seven largest imperialist countries in the world have in recent years become increasingly more of a forum for them to disagree on foreign policy. As opposed to last year, when the dispute over the natural gas pipeline dominated the meeting at Versailles and the Social Democratic Party-led regime in Bonn impeded a clear "yes" from the NATO countries to the stationing of medium-range missiles, this year the seven governments have succeeded in uniting around one position, which comes very close to the hard line of the U.S. administration.
NATO demands, furthermore, the total and unilateral Soviet scrapping of the SS-20 medium-range missiles. This so-called "zero option" is one of the variants by which NATO is trying to regain overwhelming military superiority. Only if it can force this through would it be willing to forego installing any additional missiles in Europe. An interim solution would of course not be ruled out. The Soviet Union's counterproposals, for example to reduce the number of SS-20s to the number of French and British missiles and warheads, are condemned by NATO, however, as a "splitting maneuver." At the summit the imperialist countries did not make any more negotiating proposals of their own. They thereby endorse the policy so far followed by the U.S. government of installing the new nuclear weapons no matter what the price.
installation of the missiles will begin in the fall. On the level of negotiations, the Soviet Union no longer has any chance to prevent this massive NATO buildup. What the bureaucratic leadership of the Soviet Union never wanted to admit is becoming obvious: for the imperialists, negotiations are only a means to better carry out their aims. If talks are not useful to them, they will either reject them or only go through the motions.
The Soviet Union must therefore consider other ways to prevent NATO's buildup. In a pronouncement to the summit in Williamsburg the Soviet Union posed three possible countermoves:
• Lifting the moratorium on stationing additional SS-20s in the European part of the Soviet Union.
• Stationing short-range missiles, which can reach West European soil in a shorter time than the Pershing 2, in East Germany or Czechoslovakia.
• Leveling first-strike weapons against the United States itself.
3. The warmongers in the Pentagon are pursuing the goal of making the Soviet Union subject to military blackmail, to force it to renounce all support for liberation movements in the world, be they in Central America or in the Middle East. Moreover, they have never renounced their goal of destroying the noncapitalist property relations in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe and to once again open these countries to capital. It is the right of the Soviet Union to defend itself against this; it is the duty of the peace movement to defend this right. For this reason, we reject the equation of East and West.
Even if we take the side of the noncapitalist countries against the military threats of imperialism, this does not change our opposition to the bureaucratic repression in the Soviet Union, in Poland, and elsewhere. The repressive regime of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and other noncapitalist countries must be overthrown, in order to reopen the way to a democratic and self-governed socialism. This can only be the task of the working class itself.
4. The answer of the Soviet bureaucracy to the imperialist arms buildup must nevertheless be perceived by the peace movement and the workers movement in Eastern Europe and in the West as a threat. It is neither suited to defend the Soviet Union against imperialism, nor prevent a nuclear war.
• While a political answer is necessary, the Soviet answer remains military. The Soviet Union strives to improve its weapons arsenal in order to be on a par with the West in conducting a limited regional nuclear war. Therewith, it enters a race to perfect weapons systems. So it is attempting to do what it so far has itself declared impossible: to wage a limited nuclear war. That leads objectively to the conclusion that they have become an accessory to the growing danger of nuclear holocaust.
• The perspective of socialism and the foundations of a society not based on a profit economy cannot be defended through nuclear war. Nuclear war will take humanity back to barbarism. One cannot build a free socialist society where immense tracts of land will be made unlivable, where people by the explosion of ABC-weapons will be crippled and through gene damage made unfit for life for generations thereafter, as happened in the limited framework of the Vietnam War.
• The Soviet bureaucracy is pushing a deceitful and criminal game, if it is seeking to create the impression that it could win a nuclear war. It has no chance to economically, militarily, or technologically overtake imperialism. Private competition and wage labor plunder the workers more effectively than can a layer of parasites that manages the economy bureaucratically, enjoys its privileges, and deprives the working masses of their political rights.
The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are behind the imperialist West economically as well as technologically - and therefore also militarily. This is not proof that "planned economies just do not work." It only shows that the bureaucratic management methods, the lack of political rights for the working masses, and the privileges of the ruling layer make a democratically planned economy impossible and in the nationalized industries lead to mismanagement and waste.
5. Only through the independent mobilization of the working class in the West as well as in the East can the warmongering policies of NATO be stopped. Therefore the working class in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe must have the opportunity to organize itself in self-governing, democratic structures for peace.
The professions of peace by the same ruling state and party apparatuses that ordered the tanks to roll against the workers in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and in Poland in 1980, and that supported the bloody occupation of Afghanistan, cannot win the slightest credibility in either East or West.
We therefore support the initiation of a peace movement in the Soviet Union and in the East European countries that is independent of the state. Military measures that are necessary to defend against imperialist attack cannot be carried out against the will of the masses. The Soviet working class must maintain the right to decide for itself the allocation of economic resources between civilian and military sectors; it must be able to control the decision-making in foreign policy and in the army and also be able to affect unilateral disarmament decisions.
We protest against all attempts by the Soviet bureaucracy to go over the heads of the masses in wanting to station nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe. This violates the national independence of the peoples and the principle of equality of rights that applies between noncapitalist societies.
6. The Soviet bureaucracy attacks the Western peace movement, for whose partnership it is striving, from the rear. Its military decisions sabotage the goal of preventing a nuclear war before one breaks out. The rulers in the East and West are holding fast to a "balance of terror" that gets ever more dangerous.
The working class and the peace movement must take the protection of peace into their own hands. The overthrow of the warmongers in the West is therefore just as necessary as the elimination of the bureaucratic rulers in the East.
No new nuclear weapons in the West or East! Solidarity with the independent peace movement in East Germany and the Soviet
Union!
For a nuclear weapon-free Europe from Portugal to Poland!
For a democratic, self-governing, and socialist
Europe!
Notes
2. Unless the upcoming elections in Great Britain or in Italy bring about political change, the