Paris Brawl is Ended¶
Core Argument¶
Paris Brawl is Ended
The Paris Conference of 1946, after eleven weeks of deliberation, exposed the fraud of post-war peacemaking. Far from a gathering of “peace-loving” nations to organise world harmony, the sessions conducted themselves as a public-house brawl. The Nuremberg verdict, condemning German imperialism as the aggressor of the last war, was still fresh; yet the conference gave the lie to any pretence that eliminating Germany, Italy, and Japan would usher in peace. What was actually being discussed was not peace but the new power relations established by the imperialist war itself.
The Stalinist bureaucracy held the whip hand in the Balkans by virtue of military occupation and strove to consolidate its hold. Anglo-American imperialism, in turn, sought to dominate Trieste and gain a foothold on the Danube to extend trade and markets, but above all as a means of penetration into the Eastern sphere to undermine Stalinist positions economically and strategically. Both camps were preparing for the eventual settlement of the struggle—then waged on diplomatic and economic planes—by military means. If the former allies of Stalin did not turn on him immediately, it was only because of the virtual impossibility of waging war at that moment, given the mood of the masses throughout the world.
Invisibly dominating the moves of both sides were the questions of Germany, the Dardanelles, the Middle East, and economic and strategic positions in Asia. The world was one vast, interlinked field of manoeuvre for the great powers, above all Russia and America. Russia, because of the reactionary policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy, participated in the revolting extraction of reparations from the defeated countries. American imperialism, not needing reparations that would embarrass its own economy, could parade as “generous”—but revealed its real aims in demanding compensation for Allied property confiscated in the Balkan states and “free and equal” trade facilities on the Danube, to break down Russian domination and establish what Molotov termed “dollar democracy.”
The conference concluded with the great powers exactly where they started. Even decisions taken by a two-thirds majority were only recommendations to the Big Four, who would take final decisions. The chapter drives home the Marxist thesis: so long as the causes of war remain, it is impossible to eliminate war. The conquest of power by the working class and the overthrow of both capitalist powers and the Stalinist bureaucracy is the sole road to peace. The polemic is directed simultaneously against American imperialism, the Stalinist bureaucracy, and the entire framework of great-power diplomacy that masquerades as peacemaking while preparing the next war.