Humanity calls for peace, freedom and human dignity. A man-made war against innocent people has no place in global affairs. The unwarranted war in Ukraine must stop on all sides. We, the working people of the world call for an immediate halt to all war.
People who want to understand the modern world and why it erupts periodically into wars must forget the Putins and their ilk, they must tear away the political coverings with their smoke-screens of propaganda. Then they will see the process of production, the only basis of life, the making and growing of food, the milling and the mining, yes, and the moulding of guns. For the class that owns the world does not want to lose it, they quarrel with each other for bigger slices of it, and, finally, they are afraid of having to give it up altogether. Shorn of their political trappings, nations are merely the geographical incarnations of national capitalist enterprises competing with each other for commercial supremacy.
What are the essentials required by capitalists in their hunt for profits?
Firstly, they must have access to raw materials (minerals, oil, etc.).
Secondly, a working-class willing to labour for them, and
Thirdly, an entry to markets where they can unload their goods at a profit.
In all three essentials, the European Union are a good first while Russia is the runner-up loser. The reasons for this are historical and need not concern us here. Nor need we explain why Russia has been left behind in economic development and is now forced to combine brutal imperialism with a belated sprint to bring its economy into the competition.
The purpose of this article is to expose the mercenary nature of this war, which the allies of Ukraine’s government claim are being fought for “principles of international justice,” “rights of national sovereignty” “freedom,” etc. All of which may be good propaganda with which to get factory-fodder to become cannon-fodder. The working class everywhere have still to learn that violence in language and method are often used by movements that are most reactionary.
Two main arguments are presented in order to obtain working-class support for this war:
(1) That the workers’ standard of living is bound up with the maintenance or increase of the national boundaries of their respective countries.
(2) That this war is a struggle against a particularly obnoxious and reactionary regime, whose removal would mean the release and triumph of progressive and democratic ideas.
But the removal of reactionary governments by means of war does not ensure progress or democracy. For it ignores the mass-mentality that alone can help them to power. Let Putin be overthrown tomorrow and you are still left with millions of Russians whose minds cannot as yet grasp the advantages of free expression of political views. Bombs and bullets can never be the means of enlightenment.
The oligarchs, they possess more wealth than ordinary people can ever dream about. They enjoy luxury and privilege and wield enormous power. They are no better than the common person. They are no wiser, no smarter, nor do they work harder yet they rule over us. We create their wealth and without us they are nothing. Yet we are scared to challenge and topple our oppressors because we fear them and so we remain obedient and compliant to their demands. To control us them they turn against you and me against one another. They pit us against each other along national and racial lines. Workers must be made to feel threatened by competing workers. Our aims in life are different to theirs. If we create solidarity with each other and decide to co-operate rather than compete against each other, we can start to talk about revolution. The problem is that working people are not administering the world. They are and we got to change that.
There can be no place for the present narrow patriotism, the bigoted nationalist chauvinism that serves the oligarchs so well.
Nationalism serves as a powerful wedge, weakening the workers’ movements and preventing them from uniting against capital. It retards the process of building class unity and consciousness. The Socialist Party opposes this war, as it opposed all wars, for its butchery, its bestiality and the hardships it brings to working people, whose struggles for existence are already a crying indictment of a world where the powers of production are only equalled by the powers of destruction.
The overwhelming majority of the working class do not see things our way, however little enthusiasm they may have for waging war. True, there are a number of small movements, that, for various reasons, are opposed to war. There are pacifists, whose genuine opposition springs from religious or humanitarian grounds, and the left-wing, who now claim to be making a socialist appeal. None of them takes the stand of the Socialist Party whose case is based on an understanding of the social system that causes wars. Nor can there be any comparison for consistency.
One thing is certain. Revolt against war itself can have no lasting achievement. The Bolsheviks came to power out of the chaos and discontent caused by World War One and we saw this very Party lead the Russian masses into a new era of aggression and invasion
The time is past for any half-measures. Capitalism has reached a desperate moment. Scarcely a year has gone by without bringing to the world further chaos in the shape of war and ethnic persecution whose magnitude brought governments toppling from their seats of power.
This is why the attack on war and the war-mongers must be aimed at capitalism itself. The World Socialist Movement alone can point the way to peace.
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