Big capitalists anticipating nuclear apocalypse
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Thanks ALB. You are right.
It amounts to an assault, to violence, on members of the working class who suffer, as I do, mental instability, i e depression.
The Sun is really going to town, with a 10-point Putin vs NATO war plan to initiate WW3, which Germany has presented as a leaked Russian document.
It seems it sells newspapers too.
Meanwhile the government doesn’t seem too happy with the views of Sir Patrick Blimp:
“In response to Gen Sir Patrick speech the UK prime minister’s spokesman said hypothetical scenarios of a future potential conflict were not helpful and ruled out any move towards a conscription model for the Army.”
The German military spokesmen also seem especially gung ho, and Scandinavia going all out.
They predict WW3 by summer 2025.Makes one suspect it would be NATO kicking things off, not Russia.
That assumes that Trump will not have been elected President. Apparently he once said that NATO is dead and that the US would never help Europe in a war with Russia:
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/donald-trump-says-never-help-europe-attack
Maybe that’s why some European militarists are worried and want to beef up their state’s armed forces and win popular support for this.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/suwalki-gap-russia-belarus-lithuania-sanctions-ukraine/
The Suwalki Gap: where WW3 would start.
It is not up to a president to initiate or stop a war, that is the propaganda made by Trump and his followers, the cause of wars is the market system, even more, capitalists can not control their own market.
Trump dropped more bombs in the Middle East than George Bush and Barrack Obama, he is not a pacifist, there have never been a pacifist president in the USA, in the past one candidate tried to be a pacifist and he was not elected, on the contrary, they elected a warmonger. Trump dropped the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan
Before WW2 more than 75% of the American ( USA ) did not support wars, but the USA was forced to participate in that war despite the opposition made by the vast majority and they used Pearl Harbor as a pretext to start a war and then millions of enlist themselves in the armed forces.
The USA ruling will not let Russia or China to take over the market of Europe or other continents, and at the present time NATO is not dead, on the contrary, the USA has more control on NATO than during the time of Donald Trump and Barrack Obama .
In the case of Russia the USA used the same tactic that they used in the war in Kuwait, and they killed two birds with one shot.
If the capitalists drop atomic bombs in Europe it is going to be the elimination of all others and all the workers including the one that will the bombs
How would the market do that?
Most wars are not fought over markets but over sources of raw materials and trade routes and strategic points and areas to protect these.
As the late comrade Hardy pointed out in an article on “Markets, Monopoly and War” in the July 1985 Socialist Standard:
“What then are the causes of international conflicts of interest and war? Some, but not many, wars are fought over markets. For example the opium wars, when British traders were able to get the government to go to war to compel China to allow the import of opium. In the modern world, markets take second place to strategic issues. (…)
The most frequent cause of conflict and war is the effort of national sections of capitalism to obtain control of needed overseas sources of food and other materials and to protect transport routes. Petrol products have bulked large in this century. It has not been competition by oil producing countries to sell their oil that has threatened war but the importing countries’ need to have dependable supplies (…)
Lenin made a valid point in his Imperialism about some annexationist wars. He wrote that sometimes the powers try to annexe regions ‘not so much for their own direct advantage as to weaken an adversary and undermine its hegemony’.”Lenin’s point explains why NATO, ie the US, wants to control Ukraine — and why Russia went to war to try to stop this. Since NATO wants to control Ukraine not because it is of any particular advantage to them but to weaken Russia I can’t see them giving Ukraine nuclear weapons or them putting Russia in a position where it might feel it has to use its H-bombs. In fact, their declared position is to weaken Russia by keeping it bogged down in a long-lasting war with “conventional” weapons.
The wars in the Middle East have clearly been about the West’s need to have dependable supplies of oil (and now gas). I can’t see how this could lead the US unleashing a nuclear war, can you? It would rather defeat the purpose. Why do you think that Blinken is rushing around trying to prevent even a conventional war breaking out there?
But might not the US be prepared to “bog down” Russia in a war with Europe as a whole? And what if Russia is pushed to desperation by this US-engineered policy?
And what about Lithuania imposing tariffs on Russia over the Suwalki Gap, the land route to Kaliningrad?
Personally I think the war in Ukraine has led some parts of the various state machines of some countries to start to think that because the Ukrainian war has been fought in a conventional way and that there has been no resort to Nuclear weapons, perhaps smaller scale conventional European wars are a threat, option, possibility or more worryingly an opportunity.
That is to say that if perhaps the Russians and their allies are starting to think there is a possibility that non nuclear war is possible where the scale is relatively small and that there may be some advantages gained (gaining the Donbas, perhaps even getting parts of Moldova, reuniting with Kaliningrad etc.) and it might be worth a go. Let’s face it that is what the Western block have been doing over decades (Kosovo, etc.)
On the other side the Western block may well be starting to think that perhaps the greatly feared Russian army is not as fearsome as they thought, seeing that it has been bogged down and in some cases pushed back by the Ukrainians (all be it with Western arms), and perhaps there may be gains to be had in the East or at least to neutralise the threat there.
The worry is that they both seem to be making the assumption that neither side will get to the point where they decide enough is enough and press the button.
I think that generally the Party takes too logical view about war and that was is fought for specific gains. The reality is that war is fought for possible gains. The German state took a gamble in 1939, the Japanese state took a gamble in 1941, neither state gained what they thought they might gain, but there was a chance.If capitalists were always wise about the outcomes of their gambles there would be no business failures, no need for bankruptcy laws, no need for limited liability companies, etc. etc. The whole culture of capitalism promotes risk taking. Sadly those who take the risks get all of the gains, whilst those who suffer when the risk taking goes wrong are the Working Class.
Going back to the original post therefore, perhaps the super rich setting up elaborate Nuclear Bunkers are the equivalent of them putting some of their wealth into Limited Liability Companies. They don’t want their companies or their war mongering to go tits up, but if it does don’t worry the Proles will pay the cost.
Doesn’t seem like a large portion of the German Capitalist class suffered too much following the failure of their gamble in 1938:https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/18/nazi-billionaires-book-hitler-bmw-porsche
And paying for bunkers shows they are ignorant about a nuclear scenario and just might risk it. Their heads of state even have “reinforced” presidential airplanes from which they would surveille their handiwork from above after firing nuclear missiles.
Thank christ for Generation Z in that case…..
“Patriotic emotions seem to be lacking in Gen Z, with the concept itself deemed as outdated, and patriotic symbolism (union jack flag, monarchy etc) are quite often associated with right-wing, nationalistic values, which of course, many younger generations oppose. So, it’s utterly unlikely that we’ll be willing to fight for ‘King and Country’ this time, given that the younger generations are already sceptical about the royal family. According to YouGov, among 18 to 24 year olds, only 30 per cent say the monarchy is ‘good for Britain’ vs the 77 per cent of those aged 65+ who believe it is.”
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