A Warmongers’ International

 Otto Kuusinen

original text published in Pravda, 27 August 1951

At the beginning of July this year, the Anglo-American politicians put into operation in Western Germany new units in what would appear to be two different lines of strategy. On the one hand, McCloy, the American gauleiter in Bonn, summoned Adenauer and a number of Hitlerite generals and ordered them to speed up to the utmost the formation of the German divisions for inclusion in the ‘European army’ of the North-Atlantic military alliance. On the other hand, in Frankfort on the Main, under the protection of the Anglo-American occupational forces, a congress was held of the Right-wing Socialists of the North-Atlantic Alliance countries and of several other countries and a so-called ‘Socialist International’ was inaugurated. The direct leadership of this latter unit was entrusted to Morgan Phillips, the secretary of the Executive Committee of the British Labour Party; he, too, was elected chairman of this International.

What is this International? Is it the resurrected old Second International, which had lived so dishonestly and had died so ingloriously, or some new invention?

To be able to answer this question we must first ascertain what attitude this International adopted towards the major problems of present-day international politics.

‘Socialist’ Boosting of American Imperialism

It is not worthwhile asking the present-day Right-wing Socialists what their attitude is towards the imperialism of their respective countries. Everybody knows that the British Labour Party leaders have long been officially carrying out the policy of British imperialism, that the French Right-wing Socialists have been carrying out the policy of French imperialism, the Dutch Right-wing Socialists have been carrying out the policy of Dutch imperialism, and so, forth.

And it is equally useless asking them what their attitude is towards imperialism in general, for to this question they answer without batting an eyelid: of course, we are opposed to imperialism... In the declaration of the aims and objects of their International they claim that they oppose imperialism in all its forms. Thus, their words constantly contradict their deeds.

But even this verbal repudiation of imperialism melts away on the lips of these ‘internationalists’ as soon as the question of their attitude towards American imperialism is brought up; and this is a question that no workers’ party in the world can brush aside, for everybody knows that after German imperialism was crushed in the Second World War, the United States of America became the principal centre of international imperialist reaction. Hence, if American imperialism is not opposed, the hollow phrase ‘oppose imperialism in all its forms’ can deceive nobody.

This is exactly the case with the policy of the Right-wing Socialists. They obsequiously support the execution of all the imperialist plans of the United States government — the Marshall Plan, the North-Atlantic military alliance, the remilitarisation of Germany and Japan, and so forth. And yet they have the brazenness to assure the workers that they oppose imperialism in all its forms!

At the Frankfort congress Mr. Morgan Phillips was not ashamed to characterise the United States’ policy as ‘progressive and unselfish’. In the documents of the congress, the United States and other imperialist countries are described as idyllic ‘free democracies’. There is not a single word in these documents to suggest that such a thing as American imperialism even exists in the world. The Right-wing socialist press in a number of countries circulated an article by Norman Thomas [5] in which this old perjurer on behalf of the American bourgeoisie, in obedience to his new instructions, asked whether America is an imperialist power and declared that American imperialism is only a vestige of the past. Thus, all the data of science and politics concerning the existence of the most arrogant imperialism of our times is annulled at one stroke.

Nor is this all. Having undertaken the task of boosting the United States’ policy, the leaders of the Frankfort International go so far as to describe the predatory plans and methods of the American imperialists as ‘socialistic’. This is incredible, but it is a fact.

Thus, for example, Morgan Phillips exclaimed: ‘Rearmament [of Germany] may further socialist development.’ (!) He also said at the preliminary conference in Copenhagen: ‘The Marshall Plan and the assistance rendered by President Truman is practical Socialism on an international scale.’

Does not this beat the record of shameless boosting? What will be said to this by the people of Western Europe who are groaning under the burden imposed upon them by the ‘assistance’ rendered under the Marshall Plan? And what will the cruelly exploited American workers and farmers say to the following statement uttered by another Labour Party leader, Kenneth Younger: ‘Much is being done in the United States which Europeans would call Socialism.’ (?!)

The declaration of the Right-wing Socialist International says vaguely, without indicating where: ‘In some countries the foundations of a socialist society have already been laid.’ Which countries does this refer to? Not to the Soviet Union, where socialist society was built long ago, nor to the People’s Democracies, where the foundations of socialist society are being laid with great success. This is brazenly denied in the declaration of the Frankfort International. Hence, the authors of the declaration mean some of the capitalist countries, evidently, Great Britain and the United States.

This was made perfectly clear by Spaak, the leader of the Belgian Right-wing Socialists, who, after crossing the Atlantic, announced to the world that in America ‘millionaires are gradually disappearing’ and that ‘American capitalism is achieving socialist objects’.

Such are the lengths to which the Right-wing Socialists go in their mendacious boosting of Americanism. The question is: why do they indulge in this high-powered boosting? Is it only out of obsequiousness to the American imperialists? Of course, they are groveling at the feet of the American imperialists, for they know that their political careers in their own countries nowadays depend primarily upon the goodwill of the trans-Atlantic millionaires and their emissaries. But why call these grasping moneygrubbers ‘builders of Socialism'? It is, probably, no more flattering to them than it would be to a Chicago gangster if he were called ‘holy father’. Obviously, therefore, they have some other aim in view.

Evidently, the main object of this boosting of American imperialism as ‘Socialism’ is to deceive the socialist workers of Europe. The artful dodgers of the Frankfort International (formerly the COMISCO) are attempting by means of this mendacious boosting of American imperialism to make the latter popular in the eyes of the West-European workers who hate the capitalists, but who do not know sufficiently well the worst of all exploiters, namely, the American monopolists.

Everything goes to show that this propagandist function undertaken by the corrupt bourgeois socialists is closely linked (by golden chains) with Mr Acheson’s notorious ‘total diplomacy’. According to reports published in the British press, emanating from the British Foreign Office, James E Webb, Acheson’s Undersecretary, during his visit to London, told Herbert Morrison, then British Foreign Secretary, that the United States government would also like to see closer cooperation between the Yugoslav Tito group and the Right-wing International that is under the leadership of the British Labour Party. Webb said that this would strengthen the political groups in Europe through which the United States and British governments could conduct their propaganda among the workers.

But will even costly propaganda be of much use when the American imperialists are bossing the show in the West-European countries with such arrogance that nothing can conceal their rapacity? And at home, in Washington, as is well known, they shout so loudly about their plans for the world conquest that they can be heard in all five parts of the globe. We recall that even Acheson, their chief diplomat, in a radio broadcast he delivered on 10 September, last year, declared: ‘I believe that with modern weapons and ingenuity we can do again exactly what was done for so many centuries at the time of the Roman Empire.’

After such outpourings from the lips of the official leaders of American foreign policy it is, of course, hellish hard for the spellbinders of the Socialist International to prove to the workers that there is no American imperialism, and that it is not aspiring to world domination.

It is not surprising that indignation is growing rapidly among the masses of the working people in all West-European countries against the tremendous influx of American emissaries — all kinds of advisers, profiteers, spies, senators, military and police officials, in short, all the importunate and grasping agents of the American plutocracy. In spite of the desperate pro-American propaganda efforts of the Right-wing Socialists, the voice of the masses is being heard crying even more loudly and imperatively: ‘Out with the American imperialists!’ ‘Yankees, go home!’

Gravediggers of National Sovereignty and Independence

The sovereignty of the old West-European countries is a hindrance to the rapid execution of the United States’ plans for expansion in Europe.

It is true that, far from resisting, the governments of these countries are facilitating the execution of these predatory American plans. The Cabinet Ministers and big capitalists of Europe are selling the economic and cultural interests of their respective countries to the American monopolies. Those branches of industry which compete with American capital, particularly those in France, Belgium and Italy, are being wound up; productive forces are being destroyed; the economy of these countries is being transformed into an appendage of American capitalism.

When all this is achieved through the complicated machine of continuous negotiation between the local and American magnates, the latter have to keep on haggling all the time, they have to keep on greasing the works, ladling out palm oil. This, of course, is a tiresome and costly business. It would be far more convenient to arrange matters in the way the emissaries of the Morgans and Rockefellers are accustomed to arrange them in countries which have been robbed of their sovereignty, like the Philippines, and many of the Latin-American countries. There, the American magnates simply say what they want and the local ones understand at once what they have to do... It is so convenient when there is no sovereignty!

Another inconvenience in sovereign capitalist countries is that their rulers, even the most obliging, are often compelled to resort to all sorts of manoeuvres to carry out the demands of the Americans because the people in these countries are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices. This also retards American expansion.

The American imperialists are determined to rob the peoples of Western Europe of their national sovereignty. They have been trying to do this for the past five or six years. To facilitate their expansion they want to secure the removal of all customs barriers, to redraw the state frontiers of the old European countries and arbitrarily to group them into mandated ‘Beneluxes’ under American rule. Hence, they must secure the abolition of the national sovereignty of these countries.

But national sovereignty has proved to be as hard as ivory, and to be able to gnaw through it one must have the teeth of a dog, and it takes lots of time. That is why the Right-wing Socialists were called in to do the job. Some of the more enterprising of them have repeatedly tried their teeth on it during the past few years, and the subject has been much discussed at the conference and on commissions of the COMISCO, but nothing came of it. So, it was decided to mobilise a whole International for the purpose. The congress of the Frankfort International adopted and proclaimed the following decision: ‘The system of unlimited national sovereignty must be overcome.’

The word ‘unlimited’ in this decision did not drop in by chance. Since this is a delicate matter, the liquidators of national sovereignty wanted to express themselves in the most cautious terms, as much as to say: we do not want to abolish all sovereignty, but only ‘unlimited’ sovereignty; we are willing to allow some of it to remain. How much they want to abolish and how much to leave they, of course, prefer not to say, because however little of its sovereignty any nation retained the American monopolists would consider it too much.

Thus, the Right-wing Socialist International has proclaimed itself an agency for liquidating the national sovereignty of the French, British, Italian, Belgian, Dutch, Scandinavian and other peoples. This means that the ‘Socialists’ in every non-American country have undertaken the task of ‘overcoming’ the unwillingness of their nation to sell its sovereignty.

This task is, of course, beyond their strength. Where will they find a sovereign nation that is willing to surrender its sovereignty? The traitors to their nations may argue until they are black in the face that sovereignty is an ‘outmoded idea’, but the people will persist in retorting: ‘Not for sale!’

What do they offer in exchange for the sovereignty of the independent nations? A ‘new world order’, which is to be created under the aegis of the American monopolists. But the American monopolists themselves cannot decently disguise the fact that they want to abolish the sovereignty of other countries in order to impose their own sovereignty upon all countries.

And so, it turns out that the enigmatic picture of a ‘new world order’ painted by the masters of the Frankfort School is nothing more than the futurist cover of an advertising prospectus of American world domination. Of course, the prospectus promises everybody the possibility of obtaining both ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ in instalments, but every man who knows anything at all, knows perfectly well that there can be no freedom and democracy where American or any other imperialism rules.

As regards the attitude of the ‘Socialist’ International towards the struggle the colonial and dependent countries are waging for national independence, it is very characteristic that in its declaration of ‘aims and objects’ it carefully avoids using the word ‘independence’. True, the declaration talks about the struggle for ‘liberation’, and against ‘the subjection and exploitation of any nation’, but it studiously avoids answering the question: is the Socialist International for or against the national independence of the oppressed nations?

The opportunists of the old Second International often promised the colonial peoples independence, although they always broke their promise; but the 1951 International does not even promise this. Why? Because they grudge a few extra words?

No. The reason is that the American imperialists strongly dislike the slogan of independence for the colonial countries. They are not averse to advocating the ‘liberation’ of some colony or other that is ruled by, say, British or French imperialism, but they assert that there is no subjection and exploitation in the American colonies; such scandalous things are to be found only in non-American colonies, they say. Hence, Washington has no objection to calls for the ‘liberation’ of colonies and for the liquidation of ‘subjection and exploitation’ in them if these calls are couched in general terms, and without any reference to the American colonies. The call for a struggle for the independence of the colonial and dependent countries, however, smacks of revolt against imperialist oppression! The American aspirants to world domination have learned, particularly in China, how dangerous it is for imperialism when an oppressed nation rises to wage a determined struggle for national independence. Even in the Philippines, to whom the United States government granted a charter of nominal ‘independence’, the people are still fighting for real independence.

Naturally, therefore, the gentlemen in Washington no longer tolerate the slogan of a struggle for the independence of the oppressed nations even as mere propaganda. Consequently, the abettors of imperialism, the Right-wing Socialists, also had to stop playing with this slogan in their propaganda.

But in spite of all the efforts of the imperialists and their Right-wing socialist agents, all the nations that are oppressed by the imperialists will continue and intensify their struggle for complete national freedom and independence.

There can be no doubt that the plan to subjugate the freedom-loving nations and to establish an imperialist ‘new world order’ will fail. The first attempt to impose such a ‘new order’ upon mankind — the insane attempt made by German fascist imperialism and its abettors — failed ignominiously. The present plan of American imperialism and its abettors is no less insane and is doomed to the same ignominious failure.

Abettors of the Instigators of a New World War

During the past few years, since the movement of the vast masses of working people in defence of peace began in all countries, the Right-wing Socialists everywhere fiercely opposed the struggle for peace in any form. They prohibited the members of their parties from supporting the defence of peace slogan.  The struggle for peace had got on the nerves of these social-democratic gentlemen to such a degree that they simply foamed at the mouth when they heard the word ‘peace’.

This was the case up to 1951. The reactionary leaders of Social-Democracy have now changed their tactics. The defence of peace roused the broad masses of the working people to such an extent that the Right-wing Socialists stood in danger of becoming completely isolated. Hence, they were compelled to unfurl the flag of peace in order to deceive the masses. This is what they did at the congress in Frankfort on the Main.

But have the Labour Party and Social-Democratic leaders abandoned their policy of opposing peace? Have they ceased to be the abettors of the American and British policy of preparing a new war? No, they have not.

They say that the preservation of peace is ‘the most urgent task of our times’, but actually they are continuing fiercely to attack every mass movement in support of peace and of the conclusion of a Five-Power Peace Pact.

One would have thought that people who call themselves representatives of democracy and of ‘democratic Socialism’ would support the settlement of disputes between countries by means of negotiation. Surely, there is no other democratic way of safeguarding peace.

But did the politicians at the Frankfort congress come out in favour of the settlement of disputes in international relations by negotiation? No, they did not. There is not a word in the documents of the congress about the necessity of negotiations between the Great Powers with the object of preserving peace. Does this not show that the claim of the Right-wing Socialists that they represent democracy and peace is sheer hypocrisy?

It is easy to guess why the Right-wing Socialists did not say a word about the necessity of peace by negotiation. Any statement on their part recommending negotiation might have, to some degree, weakened war propaganda; it would have embarrassed the United States and British governments which are sabotaging all the efforts of the Soviet government to reach a peaceful settlement of the major disputes in international relations. Moreover, such a statement by the Socialist International might have relaxed the tension in international relations and of the war hysteria in the United States, and Acheson and the armament manufacturers would not have thanked the clumsy European Social-Democrats for this.

Instead of calling for peace by negotiation, the congress called upon all the capitalist countries to unite and arm to the teeth. Morgan Phillips arrogantly stated that it is not worthwhile for the Social-Democrats even to think of cooperating with the USSR and the People’s Democracies.

The speeches delivered at the Frankfort congress breathed fierce hatred of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. The Right-wing Socialists showed that the growing ties of friendship between the masses of the working people in the capitalist countries and the peoples who have freed themselves from the yoke of capitalism fill them with burning anger and alarm. The resolutions they passed drip with filthy slander against the Soviet Union, the People’s Democracies and the international communist movement.

All these outpourings of anger and hatred openly bore the character of incitement to war. Nevertheless, the congress unctuously declared that it ‘considers peace the basic aim of international Socialism’.

But did not the congress utterly expose its hypocrisy by its attitude on the Korean question, for example?

In Korea, as everybody knows, American troops, in conjunction with British and other troops, have been fighting for over a year to subjugate and exterminate the freedom-loving Korean people. The question is: what did the Right-wing socialist congress do to help bring about peace in Korea? Nothing. It did the very opposite. It shamelessly supported the war that is being waged by the American aggressors.

Its attitude on the question of reducing and controlling armaments was exactly the same. Instead of backing the demand of peace supporters for the reduction of armaments by all countries, the congress declared that the capitalist countries ‘must strengthen their military power’. To counteract the rising anger of the masses against the insane armaments drive of the imperialist countries, the Labour Party and Social-Democratic leaders decided to mobilise their International for the purpose of conducting raging propaganda in support of their governments’ programmes of rearmament and preparation for world war.

In his address, Morgan Phillips brazenly stated that it was the ‘moral duty’ of the Socialists of all countries to agree to the sacrifices entailed by rearmament. This may be the ‘moral duty’ of those ‘Socialists’ who have personally received an advance from their imperialist masters, but it is quite obvious that they have no right whatever to impose any duty upon the masses of the people to bring sacrifice to the altar of war.

It must be particularly emphasised that these pseudo-socialist ‘peacemakers’ are conducting propaganda in favour of unlimited arming by the imperialist powers and of the employment of the most barbarous methods of exterminating the people. They have fought and are continuing to fight furiously the demand of peace supporters for the prohibition of atomic weapons. They have not uttered a single word in condemnation of the notorious plan of the American military authorities to employ in war poison gas and the bacteriological weapons they have borrowed from the Japanese war criminals.

It goes without saying that these people who pose as champions of peace strongly oppose the prohibition of war propaganda. When the legislatures in the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies passed laws prohibiting war propaganda, the Right-wing socialist newspapers, in chorus, denounced these laws as unwarranted restriction of ‘freedom’. But who wants freedom to conduct war propaganda? Only the imperialists and their agents. For the cause of peace it is harmful.

Can the Right-wing Socialists consent to the prohibition of war propaganda? Of course not. That would mean prohibiting the chief function they perform in the service of international imperialist reaction.

Lies and Slander: The Weapons of the Aggressors

As we know, a characteristic idea current among the Hitlerite leaders in fascist Germany was that it is more profitable in politics to resort to big lies rather than to small ones because, they argued, the people are more likely to believe big lies. Acting up to this idea they, for example, organised the burning of the Reichstag and then accused the Communists of this crime. They also often employed the ‘big lie’ method in foreign policy. This method of political gangsters and provocateurs is now being widely employed by the Anglo-American warmongers, including the Right-wing Socialists.

The slanders and lies to which the present-day imperialists resort in their foreign policy are not simply camouflage to cover up their real aims, they are actual weapons. At the very time that the Japanese imperialists were preparing to invade China, General Araki, one of their most prominent leaders, said: ‘We Japanese are apostles of peace. We have not the slightest intention of attacking other countries.’ This was a simple lie. Had Araki said that China was planning aggression against Japan, and that the latter was therefore preparing for ‘defence’, it would have been a complex lie, so to speak.

The present-day imperialists resort to all sorts of lies. We know that even Truman and Attlee  try to camouflage their aggressive policy with olive branches, but for their purposes ordinary camouflage is not enough, because, firstly, they cannot conceal from the peoples the fact that the American and British governments are preparing a new world war; their military-strategical preparations: war budgets, armaments drive, remilitarisation of Germany and Japan, military alliances, American naval and air bases in all parts of the world, and so forth, have assumed such vast dimensions that they cannot be concealed. Secondly, they cannot give up their war propaganda, which also glaringly exposes their aggressive aims. But since they must find some justification for their war policy, what can they do to deceive the masses?

Here falsehood again comes to the rescue of the imperialists. They thought of the following: we can proclaim ourselves the defending side and the peaceful countries against which we are preparing aggression as the aggressors. Then everything will be in order, and on the plea of ‘defence’ we can continue instigating war and our practical preparations for a war of aggression...

As we know, the American and British aggressors are employing this lie in connection with Korea. They have proclaimed the Korean people, who are defending their country, as aggressors, and are brazenly shouting that the American and British troops who have been sent to Korea to kill the Koreans and to seize their country are defending America and Britain! The Americans seized the Chinese island of Taiwan and bombed Chinese towns and villages, but on encountering detachments of Chinese volunteers in Korea they proclaimed the Chinese People’s Republic an aggressor!

The Right-wing Socialists in particular took a fancy to this lie. They became so enamoured of it that at the Frankfort congress they decided to add their mite to it. They proclaimed that the aggressor in the war in Korea is the... Cominform! Mr Morgan Phillips, the dashing leader of the International, went even further and proclaimed Russia the aggressor in Korea! This is the limit.

Thus, the imperialists and their socialist henchmen found a ‘convenient’ means of military and political attack upon the nations they have chosen as the objects of their imperialist aggression. Lies and slander are now officially accepted weapons in the arsenal of the North-Atlantic military alliance, on a par with atomic bombs, poison gas and plague germs. With the aid of these weapons they can proclaim any war of aggression they launch as the ‘aggression of the Cominform’, or as ‘Russian aggression’.

Whether such a lie is worth anything is another question. The entire ‘method’ is based on bare assertions. For example: everybody knows that from the moment it came into existence the Cominform has been fighting for lasting peace among the nations, but the Right-wing socialist congress blatantly asserted that the Cominform’s policy compelled all the ‘free democracies’ (meaning the United States, Great Britain and their satellites) to attach first-class importance to military defence. The congress, of course, adduced nothing in support of this mendacious statement, and did not even attempt to do so.

This congress also backed the well-known fable that the countries in the North-Atlantic Alliance are arming in order to ‘avert the war’ which, they allege, the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies are planning. But could they adduce any facts to support their claim that the United States, or Great Britain, or any other country in the North-Atlantic Alliance, is threatened? No, they could not. They themselves do not believe that any such danger exists. The Soviet Union is not building war bases in other countries around the United States or Great Britain; but the United States is building such bases everywhere around the Soviet Union.

Thousands of facts prove that the Soviet Union is pursuing a policy of peace. All the pronouncements and proposals made by the Soviet representatives in the United Nations testify to the undeviating efforts of the Soviet government to safeguard peace. The United States and British governments, however, mobilising the support of the states that are dependent upon them, are more and more converting the United Nations into an instrument of aggressive war. As a consequence, as Comrade Stalin has pointed out, the United Nations is ceasing to be a world organisation of equal nations, is killing its moral prestige, and is dooming itself to collapse.

In the interview he gave a Pravda correspondent in February 1951, Comrade Stalin exposed the favourite lie of that most outstanding leader of the bourgeois Socialists Attlee, then British Prime Minister. Comrade Stalin said:

Premier Attlee has to lie about the Soviet Union, he has to make out that the peaceful policy of the Soviet Union is an aggressive policy, and that the aggressive policy of the British government is a peaceful policy, in order to mislead the British people, force upon them these lies about the USSR, and thus inveigle them by deceit into a new world war, which the ruling circles of the United States of America are engineering. 

Evidently, Mr Attlee and his partners think that the people will believe his lies. Falsehood in politics is a sign of weakness, not of strength. The lies the Anglo-American imperialists tell are whoppers, but they all the more easily burst like soap bubbles.

American intervention in Korea has given the people of all countries a glaring example of the employment of the ‘big lie’ method by the imperialists, and since then the ‘secret’ of this despicable weapon has been discovered by the broad masses, thus paving the way for its utter exposure.

* * *

In face of all these facts it is not difficult to answer the question as to whether the present ‘Socialist International’ is the resurrected old Second International or a new revelation. It is undoubtedly the natural offspring of the Second International, which was the international agency of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement. From the day the first socialist state in the world was set up, the Second International, to the end of its days, was a counter-revolutionary body hostile to Socialism. Its offspring is following in its footsteps.

From the moment it came into existence, the new International became one of the most zealous detachments of the bodyguard of present-day imperialism. Its leaders curry favour with the most reactionary section of the bourgeoisie. The Right-wing Socialist International has already shown that it is an agency of the most aggressive imperialism in the world, namely, American imperialism. The chief and immediate function of this International is to incite aggressive war against the entire camp of democracy and Socialism.

Hence, the new Right-wing Socialist International contains a lot of new knavery.

All the more reason, therefore, have not only the Communist Parties of all countries, but also all honest Socialists, and all peace supporters, to secure by their ceaseless educational activities among the working people the complete isolation of the pseudo-socialist abettors of the warmongers, for they are the worst enemies of peace, democracy and Socialism.