the capon:
The it 1s extremely unlikely, and anyway would mean a horrific cost in human life and destruction.
the fact that the Soviet Union has built and stockpiled nuclear weapons that has saved humanity up till now from a nuclear holocaust. Without this "balance of terror" it is practically certain that search for already have used nuclear weapons and so against the 'Chinese volunteers' durin ing the Korean war and the Chinese and unleashing a the second Indochinese war, indeed Although GRES against other revolutions.
Although nuclear This clearly shows that it has been thus, the definitely. would Vietnamese revolutions during believe that the 'balance of terror' has prevented for a whole historical period the use of weapons until now - and successive reprisals and escalations that would lead to the outbreak of the third world war - we do not consider that this will continue inWhat makes possible a change in this situation is the increase in the structural crisis which is afflicting the world capitalist system ine onterence m we present siep ping up of the nuclear arms race from that in the 1950s and 1960s is that it corresponds to an intrinsic economic need of the imperialist economy, linked to the longterm decline of the economic situation of capitalism. In conditions of stagnation of the rate of profit and of the 'normal outlets', arms production is more and the more the 'substitute market par excellence that is impelling a resumption of • capital accumulation.
The greater is the weight of arms spending in the imperialist economy, the greater is the pressure to increase austerity and dump the welfare state in all its forms. At the same time, the more the class struggle is exacerbated including for immediate and defensive aims, and the more the imperialist bourgeoisie is forced to look for a change in the political regime in its
socialist federation) which outlaws the production of any major weapons and. which is able to ensure that this rule is respected.
The balance of terror" increasingly loses its effectiveness, as the depression and the longterm capitalist crisis worsen, as the relationships of force the imperialist societies modify, as the austerity of fensive and the war drive intensify. These phenomena linked The fate of humanity depends on the outcome of a race between the capacity of the international workers movement to overthrow the ruling power in the principal imperialist fortresses obviously weakening would contribute to that overthrow but cannot substitute for it - to make a breakthrough in the progress towards socialism; and on the other side the attempt by imperialism to intlict decisive defcats on the international workers movement, would leave the way open to nuclear Indeed, the austerity drive and remilitarisation sooner or later to a challenge to the essential democratic rights workers movement, which in its turn would open the door to a fundamental change in the political personnel of As the austerity offensive acclerates, as remilitarisation increases, and as there are serious attacks poltica. gains of the proletariat in the imperialist countries murderous and against the colonial revolution "balance of terror" tends to lose effectiveness as a principal obstacle on the road towards the third world war. As this progresses, the importance of the anti-war movement (particularly anti-nuclear war) tent. The 12 June demonstration of a million people in New York (the biggest demonstration in the history o the United States, if not of the imperialist countries, with a million participants) is only a first indication of the potential of this movement.
Those who pedantically deny the objectively the action of these masses, under the pretext that they do not at first glance objectively bourgeois are structurally exterior tial point, which decrees economic crisis, offensive will lead masses, own hands.
more on the social and other - along with barbarous attacks the the former situation grows to the same exmost unilateral thousand revolutionary impact of In workers' movement and the youth these mass mobilisations unleash an anti-capitalist dynamic independent of the phraseology used by certain of their leaders. These mass actions have imposed and will con tinue to press not only for objectives of unilateral disarmament (against Cruise and Pershing missiles, against the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bases). but also for an economic policy founded on the anti-capitalist alternative to remilitarisation and austeri ty - jobs not bombs, schools and hospitals not military bases, the 35 hour week through the radical reduc. tion of the military budget, etc.
In a more general manner, the struggle against the nuclear arms race and against the remilitarisation offensive intersects, at least on one essenwith the struggle against the capitalist crisis and capitalism in crisis. This struggle teaches the widest layers of the masses that there is no pre-ordained fate decreeing that there will be a third world war, therese hit a preter has do fate that GLY MOTO that thirty five million unemployed in the imperialist coun tries, famine in the third world or tor ture everywhere. The 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse' can be stopped, if the the expoited, the oppressed take their destiny into their In the same way we resolutely support the autonomous mass movement against the arms race in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Eastern European countries Not that we put the workers states and the bourgeois states on the same footing as the capitalist ones, or that we nave forgotten the duty to defend against the latter in the case of military conflict.
But we understand that, in the today, everything that helps the biggest and unified mobilisation for by imperialism in Burope thousands times harder against imperialism, and thus a contribution a time HOTE etfective in defence of the USSR and the workers states, than a few more rockets, or a few less diciplinary conflicts in the army of this or that workers states.
taking the bourgeoisie one of its main arguments