The oppressed and exploited are always cannon-fodder to be called upon to take part in another war that threatens to slaughter men, women and children and bring ruin, misery and devastation. Our rulers will have us believe that this or that war is to be fought for a good cause to win our sympathy and pity. It is to mislead and to deceive by calling you to join up and fight for ‘democracy’. It’s the bait to catch us.
The World Socialist Movement deplores war and the ruin in its wake. War is part and parcel of the capitalist system. War is a feast for the dogs of war. It means armament spending and huge weaponry orders, an orgy of currency speculation and the accumulation of unheard-of fortunes. One sector of the economy class that is forever prospering and is the arms industry. It means riches for the war profiteers. But, for sure, war also means squandering the wealth and means actual devastation of countries plus death for many. But these ‘costs of war’ rarely appear in their annual accounts and have never deterred the capitalists from plunging nations into bloody conflict. International conferences to settle disputes end in fiasco. The quest for markets is nothing but the question of re-dividing the globe among the capitalist nations. We live in a pervasive atmosphere of imminent war with frequent ‘war games’ in the air, on the land and at sea with constant modernisation of warfare taking priority over welfare in every countries' budgets.
Workers must realise that war is against their interests. There is only one war that is just — and that is the war of the oppressed class for its liberation. All other wars are predatory wars for the securing seizure of territories and markets for the profits of the exploiters, but they are fought with the bodies of the workers. We cannot stop war altogether. It is not possible to prevent the coming of war as long as capitalism lasts. However, war can on some occasions be postponed. forcing governments to refrain from immediately carrying out war plans. The fight against the war is a political fight. The working class must be stirred by protest meetings and demonstrations.
The danger of war arises inevitably out of the very nature of capitalism — the ownership of the means of production by a small capitalist class and the complete domination of government by this class. In war the World Socialist Movement does indeed take sides, but it’s the third side. It’s the side of the workers, against the owning class that exploits them and also against the owning class that hopes to exploit them. Our position is not people against people but class against class.
A united front against war is appealing. What possible reason could one have in opposing an organisation composed of liberals, the churches and pacifists who are all determined to oppose war? Surely anyone who thinks that socialists alone can prevent war is being ridiculous, for the necessity of joining with all others who are opposed to war seems so obvious as to be beyond question. Nevertheless, those who understand the principles of socialism know that to depend upon any organisation other than the working class will sooner or later lead to failure. War is as intimately bound up with capitalist society as the exploitation of the working class by the employing class. To think of being able to prevent war, in the long run, without at the same time changing the system which breeds war, is utopian. Pacifists and reformists who in practice accept the present order of society and merely wish to ameliorate the conditions of the working class look to conferences and treaties to prevent war. Socialists look to the ending of capitalist society to prevent wars.
The World Socialist Movement has only one programme to prevent war: the programme of social revolution. That means that our struggle to end war is not something unique and separate from our normal, mundane socialist activities but is an intimate part of those activities. We do not create a permanent organisation to fight war with a special platform for that. The inference of many well-meaning and sincere campaigners is absolutely clear that wars can be stopped without a socialist revolution. No socialist can accept such an idea and we cannot lend our name to something which we know is wrong and which must inevitably confuse. Take, for example, the question of the idea of sanctions often raised by anti-war activists in regard to some conflicts. How could socialists ever consent to accept the idea of a boycott by one set of robbers against another gang of thieves? There’s is a most common mistake in the struggle against war, the belief that it exists ‘independent’ of the class struggle and that a broad alliance of all sorts of individuals from every social class and strata can be formed around the issue of fighting war, since – so their reasoning goes – these persons all equally opposed to war whatever their differences on other points.
War is not the cause of the troubles of society. War is a symptom. The only way to fight against war is to fight against the causes of war. Since the causes of war are part of the nature of capitalism, it follows that the only way to fight against war is to fight against capitalism. It, therefore, follows that the only possible viable struggle against war is the struggle for the socialist revolution. No one can uphold capitalism and fight against war, because capitalism means war. So to suppose, therefore, that the socialist movement can work out a common programme against war with non-revolutionaries is a fatal illusion. Any organisation based upon such a programme is not merely powerless to prevent war; in practice, it acts to promote war, both because it serves in its own way to uphold the system that breeds war, and because it diverts the attention from the real fight against war. There is only one case against war: the case for revolution to supplant the capitalist economy with a socialist society. Socialism will end national boundaries, placing the means of production under the ownership and control of society as a whole. This great aim, the elimination of war forever from the world, can be accomplished only by the overthrow of capitalism. The true enemy is at home: the class enemy and its political representative, the state. This is the enemy to be defeated, in every country.
This true struggle against war requires at every stage the utmost clarity and realism and the working class of every country must understand who their enemy is. They must understand that the enemy is not the people of any other nation against whom their ‘own’ government may wage war, but that the real enemy is the ruling class of ‘their own country’. Noble talk about ‘democracy’ or ‘peace’ or ‘defence’ or ‘collective security’ is cant and hypocrisy. Every conception of patriotism and nationalism must be opposed.
The only war worth fighting is for a world socialist cooperative commonwealth.
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