Time and time again the Socialist Party has demonstrated that war stems from capitalist struggles for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, and places of strategic importance. All these spring from the production for sale, with a profit motive for a small section of society, the capitalists. This in itself works against the interest of the overwhelming majority of society, the working class. This “working class” is in every “nation” and is faced with exactly the same problems as the “working class” here. So it is at this level that international conferences must take place, and it must be international conferences for socialism.
War can solve no working-class problems. The effects of war are wholly evil. Capitalism gives rise to war and socialism is completely opposed to capitalism and to its wars and what they represent. To get rid of capitalism and to establish socialism is the task of the working class of the world. They must understand what socialism is, and organise politically to bring it into existence. No leaders or groups of leaders can do the job for them, but the working class alone.
Instead of campaigning to stop wars, we should be campaigning for a different kind of system, one that excludes the possibility of war completely. Instead of allowing their emotions to be stirred by being among massive crowds and hearing dramatic rousing speeches, anti-war protesters would do better to mull over whether their activity, whatever its sincerity, energy and commitment, serves any real purpose. They might also consider whether they wouldn’t do better to use their energies in a movement actively engaged in spreading the idea of a class-free, frontier-free world based on voluntary cooperation, a world in which weapons and war, an inevitable feature of the present economic set-up, would serve no purpose and have no place.
Socialists have been urged to neglect the case for a new society and join the general clamour against some current evil. The need for socialism is greater than ever, to urge people to look deeply into the terrible problems of capitalist society, deeper than the slogans and the banners.
One further point. We do not deny the sincerity of many campaigners; the imagination and ingenuity they displayed in tackling a job they considered important provided further proof that once working men and women get on the right track capitalism’s days are numbered.
Under capitalism, we have a world that is divided into rival and competing nations, which struggle with each other over the control of markets, trade routes and natural resources. It is this struggle that brings nations into armed conflict with each other because militarism is the violent extension of the economic policies of propertied interests. Wars cannot be isolated from the economic relationships of production or the general object of capitalist production, which is to advance the interests of those privileged class minorities who monopolise the whole process of production.
It follows that no working class of any country has any stake or interest in war, and we have always said that workers should never support wars. Our stand since we were established has been to oppose every war. Equipped with this understanding of the cause of war we are committed to working politically with workers of all countries to establish world socialism because that is where the interest of the working class lies. We have never participated in the hideous cause of capitalism at war.
Even amid the hysteria of the first and second world wars, when the nationalistic pressures on the whole population to support the war were very intense, our early comrades sent out this message. "Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands, the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism."
We are saying that socialism is the only guarantee that war will not take place because it will completely remove the cause of war. But we are saying more than this. All the time capitalism exists, war will remain because the threat of military force, and its use, is a necessary instrument of vested economic interests. All the facts of modern history show that this is why governments maintain vast "defence" expenditures. It follows then that activity to get rid of war and the nuclear threat must essentially be the activity to get rid of capitalism. When we have a look at anti-war movements and the arguments they present, there is no analysis of the cause of war, and no attempt whatsoever to understand war as a social problem.
If movements continue to support capitalism they must be responsible for all the ways in which capitalism develops. Because capitalism cannot be controlled in the human interest, we do not know all the ways in which it will develop. If we are able to go back to the 1930s and had the argument over again with all the people who were then protesting about the effects of capitalism and who said then that there was no time to work for a different society, they would have to accept a measure of responsibility for the things that have happened since that time. We now know the whole story: the second world war, death camps, the development and dropping of the atomic bombs, many more wars since then, the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq, millions of people being killed, the development of all the horrendous weapons that exist today, and the obscenity of millions starving while technology, social labour and resources are squandered on the indefensible objectives of capitalism. we are in exactly the same mess that we were in then. When will it be the time to change society?
We invite those who sincerely seek peace to join us now in building a better world. They must build on the concern and indignation and broaden their horizons. They should not place their faith in governments; that is a sure recipe for disaster and disillusion. We come back to our first question, how do we control society in the human interest? We must not make pathetic appeals to governments to do something on our behalf. We must take the world into our own hands.
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