August 2 - Today in Sydney and in the next few days worldwide, hundreds of thousands will demonstrate on the anniversary of the greatest single war crime in history: the U.S. military's incineration of the people of Hiroshima. The globe's masses are right to fear more Hiroshima-type horror. Look at what is happening now. The imperialist occupiers terrorise the Afghan people while in Iraq they are killing hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, here in Australia the capitalist rulers allow their racist cops to kill Aboriginal people in custody and with complete impunity.

Can the danger that these brutal rulers will commit yet another nuclear holocaust be averted through treaties? No! For horrors like the atomic bombing of Japan are not just the result of crazed decisions or a symptom of an uncontrollable weapon. And they are certainly not a product of simple misunderstanding. Instead, these horrors are driven by the workings of an irrational system - the capitalist system. Under this system decisions get made according to what makes the most profit for the individual capitalist company owners. For this profit-based system to perpetuate itself the capitalists of the rich countries must seek new sources of labour to exploit in the poorer countries and new raw material reserves and markets to seize control of. To defend such colonial profiteering these rich country capitalists will wage war against any poorer country that does not submit as, indeed, the U.S. - assisted by its allies - has been doing to grab control of Iraq's oil. The imperialists will of course also fight each other over who has the "right" to rob the "Third World." The Pacific War which eventually culminated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war fought between the U.S./Australian imperialists on the one hand and their Japanese rivals on the other over who would get to subjugate the rest of Asia.

There is also a third type of war that will continue as long as there remain systems of exploitation. And that type of war is a class war: a war between the exploiters of labour and those whose labour is exploited. The necessary victory for the oppressed in this class war happens when the exploited masses succeed in overthrowing their capitalist robbers. But when such an overturn first happens in one area, the class war does not simply end then and there. The former oppressors together with their still-ruling counterparts around the world will try to regain their lost power and crush the "terrible" example of toilers establishing their own state. This is partly why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so callously atom bombed: the Western powers wanted to send a threatening message to the then workers-ruled (albeit in a bureaucratically deformed way) USSR. Today, a large part of the U.S. military build up in the Pacific from Guam to ever-bigger military exercises with Australia is aimed against pro-communist China and its North Korean ally. We should not be neutral in such conflicts which are, in fact, key battles in the class war. Whatever problems that the existing workers states in Cuba, China etc may have, we must defend them against those seeking to restore capitalism.

Based on the above understanding of how wars come about what attitude should we then take to Kevin Rudd's proposal during a recent trip to Japan to "establish an international commission on nuclear non-proliferation to be co-chaired by former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans." Well, we should be hostile to this proposal. Let's remember that the last major war, the U.S./British/Australian invasion of Iraq, was started under the banner of enforcing "nuclear non-proliferation." And today the next impending war - a possible U.S./Israeli attack on Iran - is also being justified under the guise of "nuclear non-proliferation." The fact is that the slogans of peace and disarmament can be utilized, on the one hand, by the masses who want to disarm their oppressors and want to save themselves from being sent off as cannon fodder in wars for profit; or on the other hand can just as well be used by imperialists as justification to wage war against their "anti-peace" opponents. Rudd is definitely in the latter camp. His "nuclear disarmament" Commission aims to ensure a monopoly of nuclear weapons strength for the Western powers, seeks to provide a cover to maneuver against non-capitalist countries like China and North Korea and aims to legitimise U.S. threats against Iran.

That slogans of "peace" and "disarmament" could be used in this way is hardly a new thing. For example when Hitler first came to power in 1933, he became an activist in international diplomacy promoting "peace" and "disarmament." This was only because the German imperialists realized they were at that time too militarily weak to confront their rivals. So they demanded the disarmament of their French rivals and sought to make "peace" demands that they knew their competitors would not accept in order to then be able to justify the rearming of Germany. We know what came next!

It is worth noting that, today, the person nominated to head Rudd's nuclear disarmament Commission, Gareth Evans, was foreign minister when Australia took part in the 1991 first Gulf War slaughter of Iraqi people. Rudd's Commission harks back to the Canberra Commission that was established by the Keating Labor government in 1995. To get a sense of the purpose of that Canberra Commission one only needs to look at some of the people who were on it: former Commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command (which ran the U.S. nuclear force!) George Butler, U.S. defense secretary during the Vietnam War period and president of the World Bank from 1968-1991, Robert McNamara, the former head of the British Army Field, Marshall Michael Carver and the once prime minister of nuclear-armed & imperialist France, Michel Rocard. Rudd's modern day version stands squarely in the same hypocritical tradition.

Yet, unfortunately, some leftist peace activists have at least partly been falling in behind Rudd's schemes. The official flyer for today's march put out by the Hiroshima Day Committee concludes with a call to "Restore the Canberra Commission." Of course, many peace activists genuinely want peace unlike the capitalist rulers whose "disarmament" slogans they are seeking to find common ground with. But herein lies a big problem! If we are seeking some point of unity with the imperialist warmongers then we cannot be campaigning for a just peace as that requires the exact opposite: struggle against the capitalist rulers.

The struggle here against senseless war should be based on demands like: Close the U.S./Australia spy base at Pine Gap. Pine Gap collects information directing U.S. bombings and would be used in a future U.S. nuclear first strike. We should also demand the closure of the newly-approved U.S. bases in Australia like the one at Queensland's Shoalwater Bay. Most immediately we should seek to translate widespread horror and disgust at the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq into domestic industrial action that opposes these occupations. Indeed, in the U.S. on May 1 dock workers on its West coast held a union stopwork in protest at the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. This was a powerful act that should be replicated and deepened here in Australia. We must also stand with Iran against Washington and Tel Aviv's imperialist threats to attack her despite (and while solidarising with genuine leftist internal opposition to) the oppressive religious regime in Iran. Furthermore, the workers movement here should demand the ending of the Canberra-led occupations of East Timor and the Solomon Islands. These interventions not only rape the resource wealth of poor countries but also help to encourage Australian military adventures further afield, not to mention its jackbooting Northern Territory intervention within Australia's own borders.

Many young people have been energized in campaigns against predatory wars. But too many such people get disheartened and drop off from the struggle. Such demoralization is not warranted! For one, it is worth noting that not every major power in the world is an imperialist power. There is an exception. That exception is the Peoples Republic of China (PRC.) For all the uncompleteness and deformities of China's transition to socialism, the fact is that in the most populous country in the world the big industrial and banking enterprises are run not according to capitalist greed but in rough (albeit sometimes very rough) accordance with the fact that they are under state-ownership of a working people's state. Not only does this mean that the PRC state is not driven to send in its troops to plunder the oil resources of poor countries but it also means that the PRC acts as some sort of deterrent to the imperialists' war moves. PRC recalcitrance is probably the main reason why Iran has not already been bombed by the U.S. The capitalist powers want to remove this obstacle to their world domination. They also want to make sure that the masses in their own countries don't see the successes of the PRC's socialistic development as an example to, in part, emulate. Hence today's relentless China-bashing campaign in the Western media around the Beijing Olympics.

There is another huge reason why we should be optimistic. And this is because in the long term the masses will not be fooled because the militarism of the capitalist rulers does not benefit them. Indeed the whole system does not benefit working class people. Even in boom time here (which is not based on 'good management' but has piggybacked on pro-communist China's growth) most people have not benefited. And for some rising rents, higher food and oil prices, deteriorating public services and ever-more arrogant employers mean that their lives have gotten much harder. Such people will not all willingly send their children to fight wars just for the sake of those who worsen their lives at home. They may for a time be swept up by Australian militarist propaganda but certainly not indefinitely. The bigger danger is that some of the most enlightened working class people will be swept up by the bogus use of "peace" and "disarmament" slogans by the capitalist warmongers. It is the duty of leftist activists to prevent this from happening. In this way they will prepare the mass resistance against those whose irrational system drives aggressive militarism. When this mass resistance culminates in the disarming of the imperialists and establishment of toiling people's rule all over the world we can finally be sure that there will never be a day like the one the people of Hiroshima experienced on 6 August 1945. ♦

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