War, Imperialism and the State System: a Critique of Orthodox Marxism for the 1980s

Abstract

We have lived through a transition at the beginning of the 1980s which has all the signs of being more fundamental than any since 1945. The start of the new decade coincided almost exactly with the Western decisions about theatre nuclear weapons and the Soviet action in Afghanistan. 1980–81, unlike previous crises in a twelve year cycle which goes back through 1968 and 1956 to 1944–45, has been overhung by the fear of war, even of the nuclear holocaust. The ‘greatest international crisis’ since the Second World War has threatened to swallow up the optimism generated in these previous years of change. True, there have been moments of hope to offset the more dangerous and damaging shifts in the international situation — in the rise of Polish Solidarity and the peace movement itself. But if long waves work in political history, the early 1980s threaten to mark a reversal of much that has been achieved throughout the post-war years.