What Causes War?

 

The pacifists have no answer to this question. What is our attitude to war? We are not pacifists. War is always barbarous and brutal, horribly so. Think of the bombing and the atrocities perpetrated. War is always evil and it generates other evils too. The soldier himself is a slave hired by the ruling class to shoot other slaves. Whoever defends any form of militarism, any arming for wholesale killing, defends the most damnable feature of capitalism and can have no part or parcel in the doctrine or movement of socialism. The socialist revolution, which will put an end to capitalism, must be international. Therefore, the workers must not think so much of their country as of their solidarity with the workers of all countries.

1. Modern wars are part and parcel of the capitalist system.
 

2. Capitalist economy must continually expand or the nation suffers from depression, unemployment and internal revolt.
 

3. Each capitalist nation is continually driven to seek new markets, new sources of raw materials and new areas for investment.
 

4. The capitalist need to expand continually makes each industrially developed power an imperialist aggressor – whether it is Britain, Russia or the United States.
 

5. There can be no end to imperialist wars without an end to capitalism.
 

6. Permanent peace is only possible when planned production for use has taken the place of competitive production for profits. Planned production for use on an international scale means a World Socialism

It is a crude naked struggle for economic power, raw materials, spheres of influence, strategic areas.

“It’s a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,” was once a common slogan. Our position is one of irreconcilable opposition to any war waged by the capitalist ruling class. The struggle against militarism is the working-class struggle against capitalism itself.

Let the working class be realistic. Let it likewise trust only its own organised power. The international solidarity of labour is the only world organisation that can block new wars. The enemy is the same – vested interests, capitalism, and there will never be peace, freedom, equality, justice until THE SYSTEM is swept away. The only campaign for peace, if it is not to be a Utopia, must consist in the socialist organisation of the workers of the whole world for the overthrow of capitalism. When things are no longer produced for profit, but for the use of those who make them, then there will no longer be any necessity for capitalist armed forces. When millions of workers are set free from making munitions and provisions of warfare, then they will be able to turn their attention to building themselves better houses, producing more and better food and clothing for their families. It is either capitalism and military hell, or socialism and cooperative and peaceful enjoyment of the bounty of the earth. 

The time is here to choose.