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JOHN STRACHEY
a world in which, indeed, the outbreak of all sorts of conflicts be–
comes only too plausible, but in which the "inevitable" set-piece of a
world wide communist/capitalist war is by no means an ineluctable
denouement.
On top of all these unforeseen developments has come the
astounding phenomenon of nuclear weapons. It is true that, as not
only the Chinese but also every Marxist-Leninist is quick to point out,
nuclear weapons do not in themselves alter social relations.
If
these
relations really were, predictably, driving to a further bout of world
war before the apparition of the new weapons, they would presum–
ably continue to do so. All that the new weapons would do would be to
make that
denouement
far more terrible. But here their dialectical
training should come to the assistance of the communist leaders and
preserve them from being impaled upon the simple logic of their own
social philosophy. True, nuclear weapons are only a quantitative step–
ping up of the destructiveness of war. But a quantitative stepping up
of this magnitude may be expected to make a qualitative change in the
situation. Nuclear war is a different thing, with different conse–
quences, from conventional war.
As
and when the present generation
of mankind comes to realize this fact, profound changes in their
attitudes to war and to violence in general may become apparent.
Do we not catch the dawning of a realization of this profound
change in social reality in the Russian Government's new attitude
to nuclear war, which, as we have seen, has, after a false start by
Malenkov, been adopted by Mr. Khruschev, and has now been re–
iterated and given the stamp of orthodoxy in the controversy with the
Chinese? That new attitude is based upon two different but related
realizations. First, that full scale nuclear war may be expected to
spare neither communist nor "imperialist;" that both will be en–
gulfed in that "common ruin" of which the Communist Manifesto
speaks as the only possible alternative to the successful emergence to
power of new classes. And, second, that the development of new
social relations, which is so evidently and undeniably going on in the
world, may not after all involve a further bout of world war, now that
we know that it would be nuclear war. How far the change of
attitude
is
due to the apparition of nuclear weapons, and how far to
the divergencies which world development has made from the Lenin–
ist prognosis I do not know. But that there has been a real change of
