WAR — THE SOCIALIST POSITION

 

WORDS ARE OUR WEAPON

So capitalism has again unleashed the horrors of war. The Socialist Party’s attitude is clear. Wars are never justified from a working-class point of view. They are fought by capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investments. None of these is issues of concern to workers. The outbreak of any war is an unmitigated disaster for the working class. It is the workers who are hired or conscripted to do the fighting, the destroying, the killing – and the dying. It is workers and their families who suffer from the bombings, the destruction, the restrictions, the food shortages and the disruption to health services that accompany all wars. War brings nothing but suffering and misery. 

This is why, as the Socialist Party representing the working-class interest, has been opposed to all wars. Always. We are not prepared to support under any circumstances the killing and maiming of our fellow workers in the pursuit of capitalist profits. Ideally, from the point of view of the working class within capitalism, it would have been better if the capitalists had settled this conflict peacefully and, now that the war has started, it should stop immediately. Unfortunately, this can only be wishful thinking. Capitalism does not work that way. War will always be a policy option invoked by capitalist states from time to time.

The truth is that capitalism is triumphant everywhere because the working class are blind to their own class position, and are still persuaded that they have an interest in leaving power in capitalist hands. It is only a degree worse that in some countries large numbers of workers go further on the road of stupid servility, and help to place power in the hands of demagogues such as Putin. The only people who can end this are the workers themselves. It is the duty of each national section of the working class to struggle against their own capitalist masters, aided to the extent that is possible by the international movement. The way to prevent war is not by engaging in anti-war campaigns. These are quite useless because they leave the causes of war untouched. The only preventative is to take away the urge to war; take away the profit motive. Socialism is the only means to defeat the warmongers. 

The Socialist Party has always and everywhere been pro-working class and nothing else. We are internationalists, and our slogan is “The World for the Workers”; not for the British or for the white races, but simply for the workers. Our internationalism rests on a firmer foundation—the sure knowledge that national sections of the working class stand or fall together.

We can reject the notion that human nature is essentially warlike.  Mankind’s nature is just what conditions make it, and there are no naturally militarist races. Modern wars have their cause ultimately in economic rivalries and are the unavoidable accompaniment of capitalist civilisation. It is not suggested that tradition, religious beliefs, and racial hostility do not play their part, but these tend more and more to become mere auxiliaries to the main forces—means to the ends of our politicians, and excuses rather than causes. War as we currently see may come at any time unless the workers abolish capitalism. War is competition for profit writ large, the continuation of business by other means. It is not enough for the capitalists that the workers must suffer from continual exploitation, earning only enough to keep them in a fit mental and physical state in order to accrue more profits for their “masters”. 

What adds injury to insult is when the workers are conned into fighting workers of other nations suffering under the same exploitative system—all for the right to be exploited by the more affluent victor. The working class has in reality only one enemy: the capitalist system. We denounce the war as yet another example of the barbarous nature of the capitalist system and call upon our fellow workers in all countries to unite even more urgently to bring the war-causing capitalist system to a speedy end by establishing in its place a world socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources by all the people of the Earth.