Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Workers are butchering workers for the privilege of rearranging capitalist state borders. Needless to say, in this as in all wars it is the working people who suffer most. They do the fighting and the dying, they are raped and “ethnically cleansed”, and it is their lives and homes that count for most of the “collateral damage” whether or not they swallow the nationalist myths of their leaders. It is surprising to find how many workers are always ready to believe anything the media and their masters tell them.
Once again European cities are being bombed. Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be a lot of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe. Now full-scale war has returned to Europe. The illusion that permanent peace and prosperity is possible under capitalism has been shattered. When the capitalists of different nations fall out and go to war, they don’t do the fighting themselves but get their respective working classes to do it for them. This requires an appeal to patriotism, where politicians whip up enthusiasm for the war.
The fact is the working people are impoverished and subjugated, whether under Putin or under Zerenskyy and consequently have no business to offer their blood and interest for the war service of either set of bloodsuckers.
The interest of the workers everywhere is not in helping their rulers to grab or hold, but in the speedy overthrow of capitalism everywhere, the ending of the exploitation of one class by another. Let the workers of all countries apply that touchstone to the policies of their respective governments. Whether they call their wars offensive or defensive, struggles for colonies or to protect trade, for democracy or for independence, for religion or against it, the true purpose will be to hold or increase the wealth of the various sections of the ruling class. Workers have none of it.
Wars are inevitable under capitalism because of the economic competition between states that is built-in to it, but is normally only a last resort when a state’s “vital interest” is involved. Within a year of its founding the Socialist Party had published an article putting its view on war:
‘I do not think it will be questioned by any socialist that it is his duty to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another, and refuse to participate in them’ (Socialist Standard, August 1905)
We do not distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” wars. In truth, no real distinction is possible. We do not attempt to distinguish between the relative merits of the conduct of capitalist governments at war with each other. Should wage slaves take sides when the slave-owners fall out? Obviously, no. We oppose working-class participation in wars between capitalist governments for reasons based directly on working-class interests and the interests of the socialist movement. In all countries, the workers are exploited by the owners of the means of production and distribution. There are no differences between the conditions under which exploitation is carried on in the different countries sufficient to make it worth the workers’ while supporting war in order to defend their subjection to one national group of capitalists rather than to another.
For socialist propaganda to make headway, nationalistic prejudices have got to be struck at the roots, and that from the very beginning. As a practical policy, this means that socialists must carry on their struggle against the capitalist parties in their own country and must on no account allow it to appear, through political alliances or collaboration in capitalist governments, that they associate themselves with their own capitalists against the rest of the world.
In war, “Our duties as Socialists are clear enough, and do not differ from those we have to act on ordinarily. To further the spread of international feeling between the workers by all means possible, to point out to our own workers that foreign competition and rivalry, or commercial war, culminating at last in open war, are necessities of the plundering classes, and that the race and commercial quarrels of these classes only concern us so far as we can use them as opportunities for fostering discontent and revolution; that the interests of the workers are the same in all countries and they can never be really enemies of each other; that the men of our own labouring classes therefore, should turn a deaf car to the recruiting sergeant, and refuse to allow themselves to be dressed up in red and be taught to form a part of the modern killing machine for the honour and glory of a country in which they have only the dog’s share of many kids and few halfpence—all this we have to preach always. though in the event of imminent war we may have to preach it more emphatically” - William Morris
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