Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 28
July 11 – There are at least two significant aspects of the most recent anti-Soviet drive by U.S. finance capital that are not likely to get any attention in the capitalist press in any recognizable form.
The first one has to do with the so-called question of “who is the real aggressor,” who is really responsible for the deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations.
In the eyes of the imperialist monopolies, the Soviet Union “violated the code of détente,” as Brzezinski put it, but giving strong support to both Angola and Ethiopia in their struggle against imperialism and for their liberation from the predatory economic and political domination of U.S. monopoly capitalism.
This is the main point in the eyes of the Pentagon, the White House, and the State Department. Let there be no mistake about that.
There seems to be a belief in certain quarters of the ruling capitalist establishment that the Soviet Union and, for that matter, all socialist countries are supposed to limit themselves to domestic affairs and leave the rest of the planet to the ravages of the multinational corporations headed by the U.S. (Of course, no such agreement can be found in public documents of any sort.)
Africa, you see, is one of those “special preserves” where the special relationship of the imperialist countries to the African continent, with that special type of super-exploitation of the masses known as neo-colonialism, is supposed to continue in perpetuity.
Should the African masses take destiny into their own hands and, in order to promote their own goals, elicit material, political, and military support from the Soviet Union in order to effectuate their liberation from the yoke of finance capital, that is considered subversion on the part of the African masses, not to speak of their leaders. And needless to say, should the Soviet Union render such timely support, it is seen as thereby breaking the “code of détente.”
This is the nub of the issue. This is the immediate cause of the growing tensions between imperialism and the Soviet Union, along with other lesser factors, of course. It need scarcely be stated that Cuba is cast in the same role.
The foreign policy goal of U.S. imperialism, and of imperialism in general is, and always has been, not only to force the USSR and all other socialist countries to abandon their progressive role in supporting liberation struggles abroad, but also to force them to abandon any progressive role in foreign affairs in general. That, however, is only one aim of imperialism. The other one is to subvert the socialist governments altogether, to promote counter-revolutionary struggles, and to overturn what was called, at least until a decade ago, the socialist camp.
To help liberation struggles is thus subversive in the eyes of imperialism. And promoting such subversion calls for punitive measures. On the other hand, those who help Mobutu, Pinochet, Siad Barre, or Sadat are clearly friendly and show a “parallel interest” with imperialism.
The Shcharansky case has to be viewed in this light. The whole so-called dissident movement is so outrageously pro-imperialist that it is difficult to conceive how any genuinely progressive elements in the West or elsewhere in the world can continue to show an interest in it.
The reason why the Shcharansky and Ginzburg cases have picked up such wild orgies of imperialist lies does not rest in the cases in and of themselves. It lies in punitive measures taken by imperialism which to date have not “brought Moscow to heel,” not even the series of provocations in the Soviet Union carried out by U.S. correspondents.
There was, for example, the arrest of Soviet UN personnel in the U.S. last month without cause. The Soviet Union retaliated with the arrest of F. Jay Crawford, a middle-level management agent of the International Harvester Company whose job was to service International Harvester equipment in the USSR. He was charged with violating socialist legality by engaging in illegal practices in foreign currency.
This was important. The International Harvester Company has sold about $300 million worth of equipment to the USSR. The president of the company is regarded as one friendly toward détente and a promoter of normal trade and commercial relations between the U.S. and the USSR. He serves on the Board of the U.S.-USSR Trade Council.
The theory behind the so-called moderate wing of U.S. finance capital, said to be championed by Kissinger when he was in office and by others in and out of office, is that creating an intricate web of social, political, and especially economic relations with the USSR would make it impossible in the long run for the USSR to extricate itself from economic dependence on the U.S. and on imperialism in general. From this would follow not only political and economic influence which would accrue to American finance capital, but the reopening of the era of “liberal economic reforms” in the USSR – a stepping stone towards capitalist restoration.
This is so, in their view, because the capitalist mode of production is still the predominant one on the planet and they reckon that the technological superiority of the advanced capitalist countries (which, however, is being narrowed with each passing day) will ultimately predominate over the USSR. Their position, they claim, has been bolstered by the development of the sharp conflict between China and the USSR.
This is a sort of crude caricature of Marxist economic methodology. The technological advantage of the imperialist world is a temporary and conjunctural one, and will be negated by the potentialities inherent in the nascent socialist system as against the disintegrating imperialist system.
But even given the present conjuncture, when the imperialist powers still maintain dominance over the greater portion of the planet despite the tremendous advances in the socialist countries, their technological advantage will not prove decisive. To say otherwise merely reflects the needs of bourgeois historiography, and totally leaves out and dismisses the creative role of the masses in history.
Even when capitalism represented a relatively progressive social system as against feudalism, the bourgeoisie did not win power from the feudal lords solely on the basis of the development of technology. It is very well known that the bourgeoisie enlisted the masses, especially the peasant masses, against the feudal lords in the struggle to seize political power (only to betray them at a later date). Of course, the productive forces were decisive in the long run in the struggle between ancient slavery vs. feudalism and feudalism vs. the bourgeois mode of production, but nowhere did the new ruling class triumph solely on the basis of an automatic development of the productive forces with the masses relegated to a merely schematic and passive role.
Today the capitalist mode of production, while enjoying a technological level built up over centuries and centuries of development, hinders the rational use of the means of production even in the advanced imperialist countries while strangling any independent economic development in the vast super-exploited areas of the world. Understanding only too well the depth of the economic crisis plaguing their system, with its intractable unemployment and depressed markets, the capitalist rulers are preparing for war with the rising socialist system which, despite its problems, has clearly shown its superiority based on a harmonized and planned economy.
But it is the role of the masses – driven by the forces of capitalist economic crisis, of unemployment and imperialist war – that will prove decisive in this contest. The very conditions created by capitalist crisis will inevitably loosen the hold of this decadent moribund ruling class over the masses and enable them to enter the arena of struggle as a decisive force.
The hard-liners in the U.S., of course, especially among the military, look with disdain upon the theory advanced by the so-called moderates and point to its collapse in the years following Khrushchev’s demise.
At any rate, the demarcation line between hard-liners and moderates is not clear-cut and in times of crisis becomes blurred, with the moderates turning out to be advocates of economic warfare against the USSR merely as part and parcel of an overall strategy of imperialist subversion. The hard-liners, too, are for economic warfare, but they see it as a preliminary instrument for the military struggle.
It was reckoned by the so-called moderates that the arrest of Soviet diplomatic personnel and the provocations by the imperialist correspondents in the USSR, with their false stories and their role as intermediaries between the CIA and the dissidents, would go by the board without retaliation by the USSR. The USSR, however, not only retaliated against the reporters and their malicious propaganda, but it delivered a blow to the so-called moderates by arresting the International Harvester agent who, it is virtually certain, was violating Soviet foreign exchange laws.
In doing so the USSR demonstrated that it was not fearful of losing even such a helpful economic tie as International Harvester. It further demonstrated that the “intricate web” of economic relations is a two-way street.
While the International Harvester Company confined itself to making a pro forma protest, it is interesting to note that thus far, at least, the U.S. government has not cancelled the U.S.-Soviet grain contract nor taken any other economic sanctions.
(It is to be remembered that the Ford administration at one point did cut grain exports to the USSR. It was in part a calculated hostile measure against the Soviet Union, but it may also have been based on the Ford administration’s fear that in the upcoming election the Democrats would be able to use the issue of galloping food prices against him, and would blame the rise in prices on his failure to cut the USSR’s grain quota. Right now, however, the giant agribusinesses seem to be only too glad to have the USSR as a customer.)
Even the Jacksons and Moynihans have confined themselves, at least as of today, to vitriolic political denunciations, demagogically playing on the supposed anti-Semitic aspects of the Shcharansky case, but they have not gone beyond demands for a suspension of the SALT talks.
These, of course, are extremely important not only to the USSR and the U.S. but for the rest of the world. Secretary of State Vance was probably more correct than he realized when he said at his press conference yesterday that “this issue [SALT] must be treated differently from others and should be addressed on a continuing basis with the highest priority” because these talks deal with the possibility of the “mutual annihilation” of both sides.
The fact that he said this amidst a rising chorus of demands from the hard-liners that the talks be cancelled is in itself significant, even if Vance’s conciliatory approach is a mere cover for the far rightists who seem to have the upper hand in the Carter administration and growing support in the capitalist press and media.
The point then is this: unlike what the ruling class had anticipated, namely that the USSR leadership would cave in under the unbridled assault by U.S. imperialism, the Soviet government seems to have weathered the crisis thus far with a fair degree of equanimity and without any sign of capitulation. Moreover, it seems to be on stronger ground than during the negotiations with the U.S. to remove Washington’s trade ban restrictions against the USSR.
At that time the forces of militarism and reaction, headed by Senator Henry Jackson in the Senate and Representative Charles Vanik in the House, were able to ram through the so-called Jackson Amendment which, if accepted by the USSR, would have been a capitulation by the Soviet leadership to the unwarranted demands of the U.S. imperialists. It would have given the U.S. ruling class a license to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union by eliciting from the USSR a promise in writing on such serious matters as those pertaining to the migration of Soviet citizens.
Insofar as the Carter administration’s brinkmanship in concerned, the diplomatic, political, and economic offensive it has taken against the USSR has thus far failed in its objective. It has not brought Moscow “to heel.” So the ruling class deems it all the more necessary to fan the flames in the capitalist press on the so-called human rights issue.
Imperialism’s calculations on the Shcharansky case are likely to prove no more potent than in the case of Solzhenitsyn. For while the Solzhenitsyn campaign started off with a bang with his publication of the “Gulag Archipelago,” he now stands unmasked not merely as a clerical reactionary and obscurantist, but as a fascist to boot.
The fact that Harvard University invited him to make this year’s commencement address indicates how low this citadel of imperialist learning has sunk and that the U.S. ruling class’s regard for him is really just as a spare wheel to be dragged out whenever the general anti-Soviet hysteria goes flat.
The other aspect of the Shcharansky case is, that regardless of its outcome, there is bound to be a continuing and rising anti-Soviet wave propelled by the governing summits of American finance capital. The need to resist this tide become more urgent, and not just out of considerations for abstract truth in relation to the Soviet Union. It is an urgent need of the broad messes of the American working class and the oppressed, because the mechanics of imperialist lies and slanders facilitate the oppression and exploitation of the broad masses of the American people, especially the oppressed. This is what has to be kept in mind.
On the day that President Carter again took it upon himself to defend Shcharansky and thereby turn the spotlight of the capitalist media on the USSR, on that very same day, July 3, the capitalist press was totally silent on the appeal made by the Ambassador of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), Dramane Quattara, on behalf of the victims of racism in the United States. Only the Challenge, a Black daily newspaper in Brooklyn, published the ambassador’s press release.
In it he specifically denounce vigilante terror against Black people in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and likened the police murder of Arthur Miller to the murder of Stephen Biko in South Africa. He said that before the U.S. goes preaching about “human rights” abroad, it ought to first “clean the dirty steps in front of its own door.”
A primary objective of the Carter administration in focusing attention on the Shcharansky case is to divert attention away from the repression of oppressed people not only in Crown Heights but in Chicago and Houston and elsewhere throughout the length and breadth of this land. It is also the purpose of the Carter administration to divert attention away from such significant civil rights cases as the Wilmington Ten, Imani, and Dessie Woods, from the seemingly endless repression of the Latin communities, and from renewed attacks against Native peoples.
Persistent, intractable unemployment, galloping inflation, and utter unwillingness of the ruling establishment to deal even in a minimal way with the great hardships forced on the mass of the population by sharp cuts in vital life-preserving social services make it all the more imperative to focus the spotlight on the home front. As the havoc and devastation which the system of capitalist exploitation has brought about continually deepen, the ruling class must not be permitted to divert the attention of the masses, especially of the vanguard elements of the working class in this country, nor to channel their attention and saturate them ideologically as preparation for foreign imperialist war adventures dangerous to all humanity.
The masses can be mobilized against imperialism, and on a working class basis. And it hardly need be stated that the people in the socialist countries, the Soviet Union in particular, long ago showed their mettle when faced with imperialist attack – as even Carter had to admit in his warlike talk at Annapolis.
Last updated: 11 May 2026