Sir! No Sir!

Up to 100,000 people are expected to descend on Edinburgh between now and Sunday as it plays host to the third annual Armed Forces Day. The biggest event of its kind, it will involve thousands of personnel from the army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy along with VIP guests including the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay. The day is designed to honour and celebrate those who serve and have served in the Armed Forces.

The killing machine that is the military always needs fuel , so tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on the media convincing youngsters to (literally) sign away their lives. Our most dangerous enemies the world over are the insidious, manufactured histories refashioned and spun to keep us on-side and supportive of damaging, acquisitive foreign policies and unpopular domestic ones. Part-truths, withheld information and downright lies as opposed to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the norm. The old soldier hopes for the end of all wars as promised in “the war to end all wars” and the would-be recruit hopes he can be one of the ones to finally put the world to rights.

No member of the Socialist Party is allowed to join the armed forces, since we are not prepared to kill and be killed for "Queen and Country", but we do not regard soldiers and so on as enemies of the working class. The armed forces exist to defend the interests of the ruling class of whichever country they serve. To do this, their members must be prepared to kill, injure, maim and torture, under the orders of their commanding officers. And soldiers don’t just kill: they also die in the interests of a class of parasites. Learning to be a good soldier, sailor or airman/woman involves unquestioning acceptance of orders and soul-destroying drills intended to inculcate discipline and obedience. The humanity of soldiers and their victims are both dismembered by war and their training that prepares them for war. The experiences of an old man in a long ago war are not that different from those the young are experiencing right now. The technology moves on but the physical and emotional effects on the human beings remain terrifyingly similar.

Here, in Britain, where there is no conscription, very few people join the army with a view to killing others. Most join because they see it as an alternative to the dole queue or because they seek adventure or believe the army can teach them a valuable trade but the job of an army is to do the state's dirty work, that is to plunder land, wealth and raw materials, as well as secure routes for international trade, or to prevent another state from doing same. The UK regular armed forces are the third-largest in Europe after Germany and France. Britain is the world’s largest military spender after of course the US, and its armed forces being the most stretched in the world, over £2 billion is spent each year on recruiting and training 20,000 new personnel to replace those who either leave or are wounded/killed on active duty. The armed forces, as the statistics show, draw their non-officer recruits mainly from among young people with low educational accomplishment living in poor communities. A large proportion joining for disadvantaged reasons, including the lack of civilian career choices.

We don't need to select between the false options offered by capitalism. We don't have to choose between, on one hand, supporting the British state's bloody efforts in Afghanistan, and, on the other hand, supporting those unlikeliest of freedom fighters that make up the Taliban. We don't have to choose between the old-fashioned barbarism of the semi-feudal Taliban tribal leaders and war lords, and the modern barbarism of capitalism. Socialists reject that choice. We support neither side. We denounce as obscene the calls to send more weapons to the UK troops in Afghanistan so they can kill more of the tribesmen they are fighting. More crucially, we express a clear and consistent opposition to war, based not merely on emotion or morals, but on recognition that no working class interests are ever at stake in the battles of our leaders or our employers.

The SPGB are not pacifists. Pacifist are in the position of accepting the competitive social system which necessarily breeds bitter rivalries and of thinking at the same time that the rivalries can be settled by amicable discussion at the council table. The Socialist Prty would countenance fighting should a pro-capitalist minority take up arms to try to prevent the democratic establishment of socialism. However, we say there is no such thing as a "just war". Wars are fought over markets, investment outlets, raw material sources and trade routes and strategic points to control them. Wars are inevitable under capitalism because of the economic competition between states that is built-in to it, but is normally only a last resort when a state's "vital interest" is involved. War produces inhumanity. To assert to the contrary is to pander to the tastes of the capitalist history mongers with their glorification of war and their whitewashing of atrocities of their own armies.

To some, war is heroic; to others, it is anathema. There is only one thing that can be said for certain about wars: they are never fought in the interest of those who die in them. Today, Britain has a professional volunteer army, and technical advances mean that modern warfare is a much more scientific affair. War within capitalism can only be fought on capitalist terms. You can't have a democratic army.
The anarchist writer, Agustin Guillamon, writes "The nature of military warfare is determined by the class directing it. An army fighting in defence of a bourgeois state, even if it should be anti-fascist, is an army in the service of capitalism...War between a fascist state and an anti-fascist state is not a revolutionary class war. The proletariat's intervention on one side is an indication that it has already been defeated."

Our attitude and the workers’ real interest calls for not merely anti-war, but anti-capitalism. The true anti-war movement, rather than an anti-this-war movement, is the movement to replace the war-generating capitalist system with socialism. We call upon the workers to join with us in the fight for socialism. Until the workers cease to respond to the call of false nationalist sentiment they will remain what they are - wage slaves in peace, cannon fodder in war. Imagine when the bulk of workers, soldiers included, want an end to capitalism and have a good idea of the sort of society that will replace it - the day when the capitalist class will become frustrated generals without an army.

“I do not know of a war for the last 300 years that was caused by a soldier or a soldier’s ambition. All wars have economic causes. Without a single exception, all wars are wars for trade. They are caused by bankers, merchants and business men.” said Frederick Dent Grant of the United States Army as long ago as 1909

For the personal statement of an ex-soldier who became a socialist read here