Imagine a world without war

 As long as capitalism lasts there will be a conflict of interests; in other words, war is caused by capitalism and cannot be avoided under that social system. We have had two global wars and countless regional and local conflicts over the struggle for raw materials, trade routes and spheres of influence. Capitalism is a competitive society and the logical outcome of the resultant conflict is military violence. Capitalism by its very nature breeds competition between nations and this produces threats and counter-threats which leads to ultimatums, eventually, military action. The awful truth is that it is members of the working class who own no part of these resources who take part in the resultant conflicts and suffer the resultant tragedies of war.

The tragedy of war is that our fellow workers have no reason to go to war; their interests are not involved. Yet we are the ones who do the fighting and the dying. For almost 120 years, this organisation has been consistent in its opposition to nationalism, in the belief that nationalism is a killer epidemic, creating conflict from which those with the least to gain have the most to lose. Whatever cause and victory the misinformed defenders of nationhood believe they are fighting for, it pales into insignificance when compared to the real war that needs to be waged on the battlefield of ideas and against an elite who perpetuate the myth of nationhood for their own ends and always to our detriment.

Socialism will abolish war because it will bring a community of interests; it will be a society without frontiers, without nations, without classes, without conflict. Socialists can therefore say without any hesitation that there can be only one way to achieve lasting peace across this planet and that means an organised retreat from nationalism in all its forms and an escalation of the struggle for global working-class emancipation. War is an ever-present menace so long as capitalism survives. The sordid squabbles over markets, trade routes and other considerations, give way eventually to armed conflict, but no working-class interest is involved, and no social problem is solved by fighting. When each war is over, all that can be said is that countless workers have died to preserve the conditions for another holocaust later on. Someone once said that the next war really begins where the last one ends. We could not agree more. So it will continue until those who do the work of the world understand that only when class ownership of the means of living, has been abolished will it be possible for the people of the world to live in harmony. When this is achieved exploitation and the hunger for profit will disappear and there will no longer be tragedies like Yemen or Ukraine. We ask that workers set aside nationalism and join together to root out the real problem itself—capitalism.

The real needs of people the world over can only ever be fulfilled in a world devoid of borders or frontiers.

PEACE AMONG THE peoples, no peace BETWEEN THE CLASSES