Rifts in the Atlantic Charter

When this war began, as when the last war began, there was a general chorus of “Never again.” To those who accepted the theory that wars are caused by the malevolence and greed of one man, Hitler, or of a group of Nazi leaders, it was easy to sketch the future peace. Remove the aggressors, disarm the aggressor Powers, then, in the words of the Atlantic Charter, a peace will be established which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries. But the Atlantic Charter, like Wilson’s 14 Points of the last war, is founded on a myth, the myth that nations in a capitalist world are just associations of human beings, able and willing to dwell within their own boundaries and to enter into mutually beneficial trading relationship. Capitalist states are entities in which one class, the owning class, lives by exploiting the property-less class, and must, in order to realise the profits of exploitation, sell goods in the world market in fierce competition with the capitalists of other states. There will be no enduring peace in the world until the world’s capitalists are dispossessed; the means of production and distribution made the common property of society as a whole; and goods produced not for sale at a profit but solely for use. The Atlantic Charter is silent on this point, but whenever the statesmen descend from the clouds of rosy hopes to the practical business of international relationship it keeps on breaking through. After the last war Lord Keynes told America that the only way, short of making an annual present to Europe, was that “America must buy more and sell less”: but the capitalists who own and control America’s great mass production industries (like their fellows in every other country) are not in business for charitable purposes, and their ruthless determination is to sell more, not less. In this war discussions have been going on round rival British and American plans for financing international trade. We need not go into the details, it will suffice to emphasise the fact that they are rival schemes, each group being concerned to safeguard its own interests. Here is the comment of a British Financial Editor (Manchester Guardian. August 24. 1943) on the latest version of the American plan : —

“As it now stands the American plan is entirely unacceptable to any country which has learnt by bitter experience that the attempt to prevent variations in exchange values by internal deflation is bound to produce mass unemployment. This is a grave matter. For three years the pessimists have been telling us not to expect any genuine co-operation from the United States in the financial and economic field and to prepare instead for an independent policy. . . . This plan . . will enormously strengthen British commercial isolationism. If it is persisted in those in Britain who are working for a truly international economic policy will be disastrously weakened. . . Let is be said at once that no British Government could accept anything remotely like these proposals and remain in power beyond the first post-war election.”

Here is the voice of the British capitalist, on the matter nearest to his heart—trade and profits. How far removed it is from the woolly optimism of the Atlantic Charter !

Then let us look at the question of territorial claims. The Charter has it that the signatories “seek no aggrandisement, territorial or other”—but what about the real post-war world in which the armed Powers again look to their defences, strategic frontiers and so on, and invoke the old principle of seeking security by alliances and the balance of power? On August 31, 1943, the Daily Mail, in an editorial headed “Where we Stand,” made a very forthright declaration of British imperial interests. Affirming that the American and Russian Governments at the proposed three-Power conference would “resolutely defend the vital interests of the American and Russian nations,” the Mail summarised the vital interests of the British Empire. Accepting the doctrine of the European balance of power, the Mail says that Britain “went to war, and not for the first time, so that no single Power or coalition of Powers should dominate Europe.” For this reason, says the Mail, “she is pledged to restore the independence of Poland—of all Poland and not half of it. She is pledged to restore the independence of Yugoslavia. She is in honour bound to liberate all the nations, big and small, who have fought on our side. . . . And this is so of all Europe, not only of Western Europe. Eastern Europe is as important in the balance of power as Western. The independence of the south-eastern countries of Europe is as necessary to the security of the Eastern Mediterranean, and therefore of Imperial communications, as the independence of the Low Countries is to the security of home waters.”

The significance of this is that the Russian Government, though pledged to restore “a strong and independent” Poland, has declared its unwillingness to restore Poland’s 1939 frontiers (statement published by Russian Embassy in Washington, Daily Mail, February 27, 1943).

The Daily Mail regards these rival interests as being capable of settlement, but with Germany and France for the time being too weak to exercise much influence, it is obvious that the relationship between America, Britain and Russia after this war will be a crucial question. An American writer on foreign affairs, Mr. Walter Lipmann, in his “U.S. Foreign Policy,” puts the isue in dramatic form when he writes that if the post-war settlement of the European States on Russia’s borders discloses a conflict of interests between Russia and the Western Allies, “then every nation will know that it must get ready and must choose sides in the eventual but unavoidable next war.”

In this connection it will be recalled that Russia has its own version of the balance of power; in the words of Foreign Commissar Molotov : “We have always held that a strong Germany is an indispensable condition for durable peace in Europe” (speech to the Supreme Soviet, October 31, 1939).

These are the European and Anglo-American problems that will confront a capitalist world after this war, but each continent and ocean contributes its own further problems. China hopes to emerge as a dominant Pacific Power controlling lands formerly held as colonies by Western Powers, and bent on speedy industrialisation and entry into the world market as a powerful competitor. The South American Republics have their rivalries with each other and with U.S.A. Africa will again be the scene of struggles for trade between European, British and South African interests and the Eastern Mediterranean has its problem of Jew and Arab—”Trouble is brewing in Palestine,” says the Cairo Correspondent of the News-Chronicle (August 30, 1943). “Both Jewish Zionists and Arabs are armed and both are preparing to use their arms against each other. … As the menace of the world war ebbs from the shores of the Mediterranean, a wave of civil war threatens to break over Palestine.” The struggle between Indian and British capitalism has yet to be decided, under the slogans of national independence. Turkey and the proposed Federation of Arab States have to carve out their place in the sun.

In short, the world will still be a capitalist world based on private ownership and competitive struggle. The remedy lies neither in the amiable hopes of the Atlantic Charter nor in the so-called “realism” of the Daily Mail, but in the achievement of Socialism, which alone can destroy the forces which make for wars and organise world co-operation of the human race.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, October 1943)