WHAT WE SAID (4)

“And, finally, the only war left for Prussia-Germany to wage will be a world war, a world war, moreover of an extent the violence hitherto unimagined. Eight to ten million soldiers will be at each other’s throats and in the process they will strip Europe barer than a swarm of locusts. The depredations of the 30 Years’ War compressed into three to four years and extended over the entire continent; famine, disease, the universal lapse into barbarism, both of the armies and the people, in the wake of acute misery irretrievable dislocation of our artificial system of’ trade, industry and credit, ending in universal bankruptcy, collapse of the old states and their conventional political wisdom to the point where crowns will roll into the gutters by the dozen, and no one will be around to pick them up; the absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will all end and who will emerge as victor from the battle. Only one consequence is absolutely certain: universal exhaustion and the creation of the conditions for the ultimate victory of the working class.”  - Friedrich Engels, 1887

We cannot struggle  against war unless we understand the true nature of war. To many war seems a Law of Fate. The first we must know about war is that war is not something  that “just happens”. War is, on the contrary, an essential and necessary part of the society we live in. War is just as much a part of capitalism as wage labour, or corporations, or banks.The struggle against war is not and cannot be conceived as an “independent” struggle, having a special status above class conflicts. It is an integral part of it.  The struggle against war is the struggle for socialism.

Most people believe that they are opposed to war. War is so terrible that only a small number of perverts or professional soldiers or completely ruthless financiers can support it in their minds so most people must at least pretend to themselves that they are against war. But we have seen that wars do not result from what people wish and believe; and that just being against war does not prevent people from acting in a way that helps bring war about. The truth is that the most dangerous enemies in the struggle against war are not those who openly support war or are in a position to benefit from war but those who seem to be against war, who seem to be friends of peace. And of these, the most dangerous of all are the false opponents of war within the working class itself. They promote illusions about the ‘justice’ of the United Nation. they bind them thereby to the controlling member states of the permanent Security Council. The most fatally dangerous doctrine, a doctrine which has been systematically propagated during recent yearsis the theory that a basic distinction must be drawn between the comparatively “good” capitalist nations, the “peace-loving” nations – Great Britain, France, and the United States, on the one hand; and, on the other, the altogether “wicked” capitalist nations such as Iran or Syria. From the point of view of the working class, there can be no “good”, no “peace-loving” capitalist states. Every capitalist state, professed democratic as well as tyrannic , represents one or another form of the dictatorship of the capitalists over the working class.  The business of the working class within any country is never under any circumstances to defend “the government” – that is, the political executive of the class enemy – but always to fight for its overthrow. 

Peace: In The Hands of The Workers

To-day is being waged the greatest military struggle of all history. The flower and manhood of the five greatest races of this continent strive with all the resources which science has placed in their hands to slaughter their fellows. You are told by our masters' Press that the German soldiers do not know what they are fighting about, or even who their enemies are—but do you know these things either ?
In every advanced country the improvements in machinery and methods enable the workers to produce far more wealth than is needed to maintain them in working efficiency. Of this wealth all beyond what Is essential for the upkeep of the workers' efficiency is retained by the masters.
As machinery improves, this surplus grows greater, and presents to the masters this ever-increasing problem : Where can they find a market for it ?
Here we have the cause of the present struggle.  It is commercial rivalry and nothing else....

...The remedy is for the WORKING CLASS to take over the whole of the means of production and distribution, in order that what they produce may belong to them. They will then have control of the product of their hands and brains, and will use it for its logical purpose—to satisfy the needs of those who produce it.
When the workers have ceased to be plundered, there will no plunder for a class of plunderers to make war over, and peace will be the portion of humanity at last
WORKERS, STUDY SOCIALISM !
THE EXECUTIVE  COMMITTEE
SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY HOPE OF THE WORKERS!

November 1914