Big Five Farce¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter excoriates the Five Power Conference as a farce, arguing that its complete failure to agree on any major question exposed the irreconcilable aims of the Allied victors. The core narrative thrust is that the post-Second World War settlement is worse than that of Versailles, and that the greatest horror for international socialists is the role of the Stalinist regime, which comes to the conference table speaking the same language of power politics as the capitalist-imperialist powers. The chapter claims that Molotov demands not liberation for small nations but a Soviet sphere of influence in the Balkans, driven by economic extraction and strategic positioning against his nominal allies. Britain and America, in turn, feign concern for democracy in the Balkans only to undermine Soviet control, while showing complete indifference to the absence of democracy in India and the colonies.
The text draws on the historical context of the immediate post-war period, when the wartime alliance was fracturing into what would become the Cold War. It highlights the hypocrisy of the Labour leadership, singling out Ernest Bevin as a bold defender of British imperialism, and contrasts this with the stance of the United States, which demands joint control of the Balkans while maintaining total domination over occupied Japan. A notable polemic is directed against the Stalinist bureaucrats and their British echoes in the Daily Worker, who complain that the treatment of Japan is not harsh enough—not out of principle, but because America is converting Japan into an anti-Soviet base. Every agenda item, the chapter argues, was examined solely for economic and strategic advantage in preparation for the next conflict. The only thing binding the Western powers to the Soviet bureaucracy is their shared fear of revolution. The chapter concludes that the coming decade or two promises worse crises than the interwar armistice, and that genuine peace, democracy, and prosperity can only be achieved through the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Soviet Socialist United States of Europe and the World.