MIM Notes No. 198, November 15, 1999

Nuclear accident demonstrates consequences of militarism

by MIM

Two young people -- workers at the JCO, Inc. nuclear processing 
plant in Tokaimura, Japan -- will be lucky if they escape death 
after an accident at work. The accident was caused by company 
efforts to speed production, and made worse by a lack of 
safeguards. Both of these causes are basic products of capitalist 
production, which characteristically pushes individual producers 
to move faster and beat their competitors to market. When MIM says 
that humyns today live under the threat that the imperialists will 
blow themselves and the rest of us up before we can learn to 
cooperate and peacefully develop the world we live in, we are 
talking about such very real life situations -- in which the quest 
for profit comes ahead of humyn lives.

The imperialists today are conducting a hot war against the 
peoples of the Third World. This war takes the obvious forms of 
embargoes designed to starve the people of Iraq, Cuba and north 
Korea into rejecting their governments; and takes the less obvious 
forms of using the lands of other nations (like large sections of 
the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and Okinawa) as military bases 
from which to conduct these operations. This war includes 
sustaining nuclear weapons capability indefinitely as a supposed 
form of defense, as evidenced by the u.$. Senate's rejection of 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

This war gives the international proletariat compelling reasons to 
organize itself into national liberation struggles to throw off 
imperialism, and into socialist revolutions to rebuild their 
economies. It also gives people in the First World reasons to 
organize for proletarian anti-imperialist revolution. This is the 
only way we can honorably take responsibility for our own lives -- 
by working to keep our government from destroying the earth and 
all the people living on it.

Of militarism, MIM has written: "World War is not in the interest 
of the international proletariat. ... as U.S. hegemony crumbles as 
it has been doing since the mid-1970s, the U.S. military machine 
is likely to become overextended and even trigger a possible 
nuclear holocaust."(1) While the imperialists' own mistakes do 
fatally harm their own people sometimes, Communists must remember 
that what Bukharin wrote while he remained a revolutionary in 1915 
is still true today: "It is in the colonies that all the blood and 
the filth, all the horror and shame of capitalism, all the 
cynicism, greed and bestiality of modern democracy are 
concentrated."(2)

Hideous military accidents that kill and maim First World people 
are bound with international militarism and provide an example of 
what Malcolm X called "chickens coming home to roost." What the 
imperialists concoct for their colonies they cannot fully escape 
at home; with this tangible danger as a substantial incentive to 
activism we can hope to win more allies to the side of the 
international proletariat. Japan's relationship with u.$. 
militarism retains contradictions from the post-WWII era, when 
Okinawa was made an Amerikan military base. But while Okinawans 
protest the continuing presence and abuses of Amerikan military 
personnel, Japan as a whole benefits greatly from participation in 
imperialist efforts.

Japan: workers may die for quicker production

The processing plant that had the accident is part of Japan's 
nuclear energy program, which generates one-third of the 
electricity used in that country.(3) The accident was a nuclear 
chain reaction, a series of explosions set off when large amounts 
of depleted uranium were suddenly added together. Tokaimura, where 
the plant is located, has several local nuclear fuel processing 
plants and an experimental lab.(4) There are extensive regulations 
to manage the way nuclear energy production is run. But as with 
all industries under capitalism, there is a contradiction between 
the regulations and the need to make profit.

In the case of JCO, Japan's Science and Technology Association had 
reviewed and approved its operational procedure documents in the 
early 1980s. But the existing manuals do not follow the Agency's 
guidelines and workers at the plant interviewed after the accident 
said that the plant guidelines have been this way for at least 
five years.(5) The company apologized to its residential neighbors 
(310,000 of whom were advised to stay in their homes for 36 hours 
following the accident) for the accident and the resulting threat 
of exposure to radiation, but in typical capitalist corporation 
style, refused to take responsibility for endangering peoples 
lives. In this case the corporation blamed the workers whose 
actions directly caused the accident, saying that they had ignored 
the manuals.(6,5)

The two workers who were most exposed received 4,000 times as much 
radiation as is considered safe for a persyn over the course of a 
year; their exposure happened within one minute.(7) But the chain 
reaction lasted at least 18 hours, exposing many more people to 
radiation, because the plant had no procedures for handling such 
an incident. The company had convinced the Science and Technology 
Agency that it did not need any safeguard procedures against such 
an event because it could never occur.(6,5)

Under capitalism, there is tremendous short-term monetary 
incentive for such carelessness with people's lives. The 
capitalists pursue what Marxists call an anarchy of production -- 
there is no consultation or coordination among producers, so that 
while producers must lay out money to make their commodities they 
have no assurance that anyone will buy their goods when the 
production process is finished. In the case of Japan's nuclear 
power industry for instance, there may simply be more producers 
than are needed to provide electric service because there is no 
agreement among producers or between consumers and producers ahead 
of time. This leaves a tremendous incentive to cut corners, 
cheapen production, and be first and cheapest to sell. 

In MIM Notes 187, we wrote of weapons producing companies: "stock 
prices go up when investors think the company has prospects of 
more profits in the future. These companies benefit not just from 
the use of current weapons, which were already paid for in most 
cases, but from the prospect of more war in the future."(8) The 
same is true of energy production, the nuclear processors are 
pressured both by current sales and their future potential share 
of the energy market.

It is clear that capitalism can not efficiently manage the 
production of goods in the service of the people. Nor can it 
ensure the safety of the people or offer the people a world free 
of the threat of nuclear annihilation. For these advances the 
system of production relations must be changed. Join MIM in the 
fight to overthrow capitalism and build a communist society.

Notes: 1. "Main Principles," MIM Notes 40 4 March, 1990. Revised 
July 1991 & September 1995. 
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/mainprin.html 2. Imperialism 
and World Economy, by Nikolai Bukharin, Introduced by V.I. Lenin 
(London: The Merlin Press, 1972), p. 165-66. Reviewed in MIM's 
bookstore. 3. Washington Post 8 October, 1999. 4. New York Times 
in San Jose Mercury News 2 October, 1999. 
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/mood02.htm 5. WP 
in SJ Mercury News 3 October, 1999. 
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/uranium03.htm 6. 
Los Angeles Times in SJ Mercury News 7 October, 1999. 
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/japan07.htm 7. 
Associated Press in SJ Mercury News 1 October, 1999. 
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/nuke01.htm 8. "War 
demands more militarization of the economy," MIM Notes 187 1 June, 
1999.

edited by MC17