UNO Thieves Kitchen¶
Core Argument¶
UNO Thieves Kitchen Socialist Appeal
This chapter delivers a blistering Marxist indictment of the newly convened United Nations Organisation, dismissing it from the outset as a direct continuation of the League of Nations — which Lenin famously branded a “thieves’ kitchen”. The core argument is that UNO is not a genuine instrument for world peace but a mechanism for the victorious imperialist powers — principally America, Britain, and the Stalinist USSR — to carve up spheres of influence, control territories, and divide the economic spoils of the Second World War. The addition of Russia, the text insists, does not alter this essential character.
The chapter draws on the earliest sessions of the UN Assembly in London to substantiate its claims. It points to the real locus of power lying not in the Assembly but in the Security Council, and more precisely in the secret deliberations of the Big Three. Minor questions are brought into public only when they cannot be settled behind closed doors. Two examples are cited: Persia (Iran), backed by Britain, raising the issue of Russian troops in Azerbaijan; and the Stalinist delegates countering by raising British military activity in Greece and Java. The text is careful to note that the Stalinist intervention was not a principled denunciation of imperialist oppression but a diplomatic weapon in the game of power politics — an act that disorientates rather than enlightens class-conscious workers who still harbour illusions about Stalinist Russia.
The chapter’s most pointed polemic is reserved for the discussion of mandated territories. Bevin’s offer to transfer League of Nations mandates to a UN Trusteeship Council — excepting Palestine and Transjordan as “special cases” — is exposed as a fraud. His accompanying statement that Britain would continue to administer these territories until they were “ready for self-government” is dismissed as mere rebranding of colonial oppression. Truman’s claim to former Japanese Pacific islands for American security is treated with equal contempt.
The theoretical context is classical Trotskyist internationalism. The chapter argues that without the destruction of the imperialist powers and the introduction of socialist society, a third world war — fought with atom bombs — is as inevitable as the first two. The working class can expect nothing from UNO. The only genuine international organisation, the text concludes, must be built and controlled by the working class itself, uniting victors and vanquished alike. The programme of the Fourth International alone prepares workers for this task, pointing towards a Socialist United States of the world.