The Passing Show

If we do not realise that the third world war—with its probable loss of many millions of human lives may break out at any minute, it is not the fault of our rulers. They never weary of warning us. If the third world war does come, we cannot say we have not been told of its likelihood many, many times in advance. Whether the recurrent crises are over China, or Cuba, or the U2 planes, or Berlin—to name only a few current head-liners—the leaders of the Western and Eastern blocs never miss a chance to tell us that this is exactly the kind of behaviour—by the other side— that could well lead to the ultimate explosion. And these speeches and warnings are not simply fortuitous. They are part of the necessary conditioning of the workers in all parts of the world to the idea that war may come at any moment, so that if it does come they will once again be prepared to go out and sacrifice their lives in defence of their masters’ profits.

The wall
The Berlin wall is high up on the list of the pretexts which the great powers are keeping warm as excuses for a third world war when they decide it will be in their interests to have one. For a pretext is all the wall could be.

Let us see what both sides say about it. The Western bloc say it has been wantonly built by the East Germans right across the middle of Berlin, dividing German from German, in order to prevent East Germans fleeing to the west. The Eastern bloc says that the wall is a deplorable necessity, which had to be built to fence off West Berlin, since it had been turned into a nest of spies and agents-provocateurs. Both sides agree that the wall is regrettable and unnatural, but each blames the other for its erection.

Frontiers
In fact, there is nothing unnatural about the wall. Frontiers, which divide the world up into segments, are a natural concomitant of capitalism. All capitalist states, whether their frontiers are old-established or newly-drawn, erect fences to keep their own people in and “foreigners” out. Where frontiers are changed, through wars or treaties, defences are soon put up along the new lines. And anyone trying to cross the frontier without the necessary papers and permissions will find himself treated as roughly as anyone caught on the Berlin wall, especially if the two powers on either side of the frontier happen to be hostile to each other. The only thing that is “unnatural” about the Berlin wall is that such a long time elapsed before it was built to mark the new frontier. There are reasons for that, of course; the East German rulers hoped for a long time that they could extend their sway over West Germany as well, while the West German leaders hoped to bring East Germany under their control. The building of the Berlin wall marks the abandonment, or the postponement, of these hopes by the East German regime.

The same language
The Western bloc makes great play with the fact that the wall divides German-speaking people from other German-speaking people. This, of course, is nothing unusual. The Franco-Belgian frontier divides French-speaking people from each other; the Belgian-Dutch frontier divides Dutch-speaking people from each other; the Swiss frontier cuts across areas of German-speaking people, of Italian-speaking people, of French-speaking people. The majority of frontiers in South America divide Spanish-speaking people from each other.

In Africa, the great powers in the last century cut up the continent among themselves without the slightest reference to the wishes or language of the inhabitants, so that there are now very few frontiers in Africa which do not cut across the old tribal or speech-group lines. For the capitalist power-groups of the world —East and West—to make public professions of regret at the carving of Germany and Berlin into two pieces is sheer hypocrisy.

Divided world
Socialists oppose the Berlin wall for the same reasons that they oppose every other capitalist-made frontier—that it divides the people of the world from each other. So much emphasis is placed on whether a man is a Frenchman or a German or an African that it is often forgotten that he is primarily a human being. Socialists oppose state frontiers because they keep human beings apart; frontiers will cease to exist under Socialism. It is just as iniquitous to build barbed-wire fortifications manned with troops and police to keep Frenchmen and Germans apart as it is to keep Germans from each other. As so often happens when the issues of the day are probed more deeply, it becomes clear that it is useless to oppose the manifestations of capitalism while supporting capitalism itself. For the wall is merely a symptom of the class-divided, and therefore frontier-divided, world which produced it.
ALWYN EDGAR.