The changed relationship of forces in Europe and the role of the Fourth International¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter’s core argument is that the end of the Second World War has produced a radically new configuration of world power, defined by the overwhelming preponderance of two states—the Soviet Union in the East and the United States in the West—and the corresponding reduction of all other powers to subordinate or satellite status. The author insists that the military and diplomatic settlements being imposed by the “big three” (the USSR, the USA, and Britain) are not genuine peace arrangements but secretive partitions of Europe and the world into spheres of influence and zones of exploitation. The satellite states are admitted to the United Nations only to provide a democratic facade for decisions already taken by the great powers behind closed doors.
The central claim is that the overriding preoccupation of all three victorious powers is not the consolidation of peace but the fear of proletarian revolution, above all in Germany and across Europe, as well as in the colonial East. This fear, the chapter argues, is the real cement holding the wartime alliance together and will continue to do so in the future. The alliance is thus not a harmony of interests but a counter-revolutionary pact aimed at staving off or repressing the inevitable working-class upheavals that will seek to destroy capitalism.
The chapter draws on the historical trajectory from the Treaty of Versailles to the present, arguing that the shift in the relationship of forces between the two world wars has now been starkly revealed by military outcomes. France is reduced from a great power to a third-rate one, its army destroyed and its ruling class exposed as collaborators. Italy, its economic base too weak to withstand war, is reduced to the level of a Balkan country. The smaller nations of Eastern and Western Europe—Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic and Balkan states, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia—have all lost independent weight. Britain, unable to maintain its continental position and subordinated militarily to its “Yankee patrons”, is now revealed as the “biggest of the small nations”. American imperialism, with its gigantic economic and military resources, has leapt to the forefront, turning the Pacific into an “American lake” and drawing the British dominions into the dollar orbit while they remain nominally tied to the motherland.
The polemical thrust is directed against any illusion that the post-war settlements represent a progressive or democratic outcome. The chapter implicitly argues against reformist or Stalinist perspectives that would present the United Nations or the great-power conferences as vehicles for peace and self-determination. Instead, it insists that the real content of the new order is the preparation for the repression of revolution, and that the Fourth International must understand this changed relationship of forces to orient its strategy accordingly.