Nuclear weapons are the monstrous face of capitalism

80 years ago, the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki plunged the world into unprecedented horror. From now on, the Sword of Damocles hanging over humanity would take the form of the Apocalypse. Far from disappearing with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War blocs, the permanent nuclear threat has increased today, expressing the exacerbation of imperialist tensions between the great powers and the barbarity of war on European soil itself. This sad anniversary is characterized not only by the verbal threats of Trump and Putin, but also by a whole range of propaganda presenting the tragedy of the explosions in Japan in 1945 as a ‘mistake’ of the United States alone, a military ‘folly’ in defence of geopolitical interests. Such acknowledgements even go so far as to confirm what the ICC has always defended: that the explosions were for demonstration purposes, to intimidate and drive back the ‘Soviet’ enemy, and for scientific and military experimentation, with the victims of radioactive fallout serving as mere guinea pigs[1].

As the divorce between the United States and Europe continues, such acknowledgements further tarnish the image of the world’s leading power in decline. Never before have the European bourgeoisie and its media made such ‘revelations’ so openly. Normally they would stick to the official narrative of the Allies, endlessly re-hashed in school textbooks: “the use of the atomic bomb saved the lives of a million soldiers.” The French bourgeoisie has always insisted that nuclear tests were carefully controlled so that there would be no effects on the environment. Today, it reveals the scale of damage caused by nuclear testing in the Pacific, particularly in Mururoa, and the disregard for the local populations and environment. All of this propaganda around nuclear weapons shows that the bourgeoisie lied openly and manipulated the masses, as it continues to do with cold cynicism today.

But these revelations are also propaganda with at least two aims:

• Re-asserting the defence of democratic ideology while exonerating capitalism from the horrors of war and of arms races;
• Justifying military spending, supposedly as ‘deterrents’ against ‘tyrants like Putin’ while weapons and tensions multiply

Far from having anything to do with ‘deterrence’ (even if the misleading appearance of the period of the ‘balance of terror’ might lead one to believe it), the development of nuclear weapons and military spending present a danger and a growing threat of the destruction of humanity. Following the collapse of the USSR, the ICC, aware of the irrationality brought about by increasingly bloody chaos, by the decomposition of the capitalist mode of production, envisages the possibility of a new use of nuclear weapons: “the dissolution of the USSR, because of its depth and scale (now it is Russia that is threatened with disintegration), is a significant factor in the escalation of chaos on a world scale: there is a risk of some of the greatest exoduses of populations of history, of major nuclear disasters”[2]

By republishing a series of articles on the ever-relevant issues surrounding nuclear weapons, we hope to contribute to the necessary reflection on the link between the economic crisis, attacks on living standards and military spending, but also and above all on the absurdity of capitalism, a barbaric and obsolete system that must be destroyed before it wipes out humanity.

 

– 70 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ICC online

– Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Lies of the Bourgeoisie, International Review No 83

– The real father of the atomic bomb is capitalism, ICC Online

In French:

– Le capitalisme menace l’humanité d’un avenir apocalyptique, ICC Online

– Nucléaire et économie de guerre, ICC Online

 

---

[1] See the programme "Hiroshima : la véritable Histoire" on the French/German ARTE channel

[2] Notes on Imperialism and Decomposition, International Review 68