A WORLD WITHOUT WAR

 нет войне

O Truth, how many falsehoods are broadcast in thy name

The USA and its allies in Europe won the Cold War when the USSR finally collapsed in 1991. It was a humiliating defeat for state-capitalist Russia. Ukraine, an area that had been contested for centuries, became an independent state. The violence which is an integral element of world capitalism has erupted yet again. Once again we see how capitalism cannot develop an effective means of preventing violence.  Force is a necessary part of capitalism.

The workers of the world have everything to gain by peaceful co-operation, and everything to lose by war. The principal causes of war can be abolished by destroying the political and economic supremacy of the exploiting class. Enough has been said over the year to show that those who are aware of the real forces at work in the modern capitalist world hold out little hope for a future in which war will not rear its ugly and brutal head.

 

 The only political organisation in this country to consistently hold and propagate the view, during that the League of Nations and then the United Nations would inevitably fail in its professed purpose of preventing war was the Socialist Party. We knew that peace would not come merely from the setting up of “right” machinery, nor would war come because we may lack this machinery. We knew that, given the capitalist system, with the competitive struggle for markets and its conflicts over spheres of influence, etc., war was inevitable. As a result, our analysis was not welcomed by the many peace groups. It is not sufficient to work simply for peace. Our task is to work for a new social order. 

 Problems still remain because the causes of war were not removed. When the capitalists are faced with threats to their interests they will not stop to consider the “rights” or “justice” of the case. They will not forfeit their “right” to act in their own interests. They will move to defend these regardless of the legalities of international law.

 

“…war, organised war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and co-operative form of theft. And that form of theft began ten thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus, and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide.” Jacob Bronowski wrote in The Ascent of Man.

The decision on whether and when to use force is therefore dictated first and foremost by our national interests. In those specific areas where our vital or survival interests are at stake, our use of force will be decisive and, if necessary, unilateral.

The Socialist Party because it understands the nature of capitalism and its inevitable development refuses to be lulled by all sorts of reformers who pander to ignorance by claiming to have solutions for problems that are incapable of solution within the framework of capitalism. We are aware that this attitude is unpopular.