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How can our common goals be realised?
THE FOLLOWING article was written as a contribution to the debate around the Prague Appeal by comrades of the Fourth International.
JACQUELINE ALLIO and ERNEST MANDEL
Your letter to the last END convention held in Amsterdam in July 1985, has raised a debate which has been the subject of several contributions. We would like to underline the importance that we attach to the dialogue which has started up in the last few years between peace activists in the two European blocs. The fact that a text like the Prague Appeal exists, is circulating, sparking off debates and forcing people to take positions - especially in the East -is testimony to the internationalist character of the peace movement and to the willingness to have the debate which exists. This does not, by any means, exclude differences developing. The point of view which you express on a whole series of questions is far from being unanimously supported but the important thing is that the debate is opening up. We would like to contribute to that debate by making a few remarks.
In relation to the division of the European continent, you declare yourselves convinced that the establishment of an independent and democratic Europe will mean that
International Viewpoint 24 March 1986 the people will have to take their destiny into their own hands; it will mean the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw pact and the withdrawal of all nuclear arms installed in Europe or directed against Europe and the withdrawal of US and Soviet troops from the territories their respective allies. We are in complete agreement with such a perspective, which in fact incorporates many of the demands put forward by the peace movements of both the West and the East. Moreover we would add that the nuclear disarmament of France and Great Britain should also be undertaken in the same way since they are also imperialist powers.
Where we differ, however, is precisely on the means which you put forward for achieving these ends. And this relates to the impor tance which you attach to the Helsinki Accords adopted ten years ago by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). You see in this nothing more or less than "a programme of European and EuroAmerican cooperation" ratified by
from Cracow, declared that "There is no peace when the existing state system oppresses, imposes its ideology or where individuals are denied their own free will, where all initiative is forbidden, where all traditional liberties are denied." This is true but we can see that even in a country like the Netherlands, where such freedoms do basically exist, the perspectives for peace are still no brighter, and those in power do whatever they like. And when these pacifists get to be too much, some governments even go as far as to get special agents to plant bombs as was shown in the Greenpeace affair. The French government, which is conducting the military policy of a big power, is not above recourse to state terrorism to sink a ship full of ecologists who were simply observing the programme of nuclear tests in the Pacific in order to expose them to the world's media.
In light of all this, how can we expect that these same governments will take concrete measures to bring about peace?
Your text stresses the importance you attach, not only to the Helsinki Accords, but to treaties between states in general and to the negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries cannot agree with you in this regard and we cannot disguise the fact that we share the scepticism expressed i replate by the Polish and East German comrades in their replies to your Appeal. Have not the recent Geneva negotiations proved once again to be a lot of hot air? Nothing was to be expected from US imperialism since it has made plain its determination to pursue a policy of aggression and impose its rule in all four corners of the globe. It is determined to carry on with the arms race, in particular maintaining the running in the area of nuclear weapons with the launching of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI - Star Wars) programme.
Nobody could consider that the proposals put forward by Gorbachov in Geneva represent a radical change in the USSR's military policy. It is true that the Soviets are concerned to put a brake on the arms race and above all on Star Wars, which puts an intolerable strain on their country's economy. But to conclude from that that the speeches of their leader on defence systems limitation represent anything more than diplomacy or that they could open up a new era in negotiations on arms control is going too far.
The proof of this is that the oh-sogenerous offer to reduce the nuclear arsenals was accompanied by a thinly veiled threat that if the United States did not put an end to Star Wars, it would be useless to think that there 20 could be any limitation on production of strategic nuclear weapons. This is a long way away from the demands for unilateral nuclear disarmament put forward by the Western peace movements. The meeting of these demands would, however, be a step, however limited, in the direction of disarmament and peace. If Gorbachov had really gone along this road, this could have helped Western peace activists in their struggle to force their own governments to take steps towards disarmament. How to change the status quo in Europe
But this was not the case, because Moscow (no more than Washington) has no intention of upsetting the status quo established by Yalta and reinforced by the Helsinki Accords. This is a status quo which allows each of the major powers to pursue its own policy on the international level and which, in the case of the USSR, allows it not only to control those countries in its sphere of influence but also to dominate the peoples of that huge state of the Soviet Union, relying on the presence of troops and weapons to better suppress any possibility of revolt. That is why the Helsinki Accords have remained a dead letter. We do not have to teach you — hounded, isolated, attacked and condemned as you are for merely saying out loud what most of your fellow-citizens feel - the fact that the undertakings made by the signatories of this accord on respect for democracy are not worth the paper they are written on, But the same is also true in the West with regard to promises for the right to work or economic equality for all. The tens of millions of unemployed people in the countries belonging to NATO are in a good position to understand the cost of the militarist policy of their governments. Because when these governments have to choose between producing more butter or more cannons, between spending more money on social
LESBEN IN, DER KiRCHE
East Berlin (DR)
policies, on arms programmes, it is always cannons and armaments that they choose.
But for all that we agree that it is important to fight for the realisation of a series of goals set by the Helsinki Accords and that governments should be taken at their word in pressing for initiatives which are aimed at the establishment of nuclear free zones, as you suggest in the appeal, and which would encourage different sorts of relations and dialogue between the groups, organisations and individuals in the different countries. In this we are fully behind you. But we are convinced that the political changes which you, like us, would like to see in Europe have to be linked, in the first instance, to the activity of the mass social movements capable of fighting against the policy of existing governments and that they will depend on the establishment in both parts of Europe of democratic, peaceful, self-managed societies based on the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and their socialisation. In other words, as the signatories of the contribution from the GDR point out, what is needed is a form of democratic socialism where political power would really be in the hands of the workers. You say nothing about this in the Appeal. As far as we are concerned there is no doubt that the realisation of the aims which you put forward is not possible in the framework of a society managed for profit as in the West or dominated by a minority which monopolises the means of production as in the case of the East. The existence of a united and democratic Europe depends on the determination of all the social and peace movements to effect radical reversals in the balance of social forces. It does not depend on treaties that the present governments might circulate amongst themselves.
We hope that the debate on these questions can be continued among all those who are involved in the fight for the peace movement, for equality, for social justice and for democracy.
AMESTE International Viewpoint 24 March 1986
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