New Thieves’ Kitchen Formed¶
Core Argument¶
New Thieves’ Kitchen Formed
This chapter offers a Marxist polemic against the founding of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference of 1945, framing it as a direct successor to the League of Nations—a body Lenin had already dismissed as a “thieves’ kitchen.” The core argument is that the new organisation is built on an even more farcical basis than its predecessor, and that its pretended objective of preserving peace is a sham designed to fool the masses while the great powers pursue their rivalrous imperialist interests.
The chapter draws heavily on the historical experience of the League of Nations, which it describes as having been created to uphold the Treaty of Versailles and Anglo-French domination, and as an instrument directed against the Soviet Union. The League’s fate—its impotence in the face of a series of wars, its expulsion of Russia during the invasion of Finland, and its ultimate failure to prevent the Second World War—is presented as confirmation of the predictions made by Lenin and Trotsky. The new United Nations, the chapter contends, is even more hollow. It notes that it was openly admitted at San Francisco that if the great powers fell out, the organisation could not prevent war. Consequently, all real power was placed in the hands of those very powers, via the Security Council and its veto mechanism. The struggle over the veto is highlighted as the central drama: Stalin threatened to walk out unless he got his way, while Britain and America, backed by satellite states and blocs, wanted to use the organisation as a breeding ground for anti-Soviet plots. The result is described as a “Punch and Judy show” that will collapse at the first serious crisis.
The chapter’s polemical thrust is directed simultaneously against the Western imperialist powers and the Stalinist bureaucracy. The emergence of Russia as the greatest military power in Europe and Asia is identified as the source of British and American nightmares. The Soviet bureaucrats, it argues, are not interested in democracy or the rights of small nations, but in extending their own power, privileges, and a chain of friendly states under their domination, while ruthlessly exploiting the peoples of the Balkans, the Middle East, China, and Central Europe. The common bond uniting the imperialists with Stalin is a shared conspiracy against socialism and the workers’ revolution. The chapter cites the admission of semi-fascist Argentina and the failure to address the independence of Syria and Lebanon as evidence of the organisation’s hypocrisy. It concludes by invoking the Fourth International’s warning that the United Nations will prepare for World War III, and that only the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Socialist United States of the World can bring genuine peace.