The Cause of War

 The war continues in Ukraine and continually risks escalating into a wider conflict. You can’t humanise war. If you could it would not be war. While we have wars we must have inhumanity. And we must have wars until socialism. The immediate object of war is to dispose of the opposing forces. The only power that can stand between the people and the inhumanity of war is the organised working class of the world. The only hope that peace-makers have is in the working class of the world organising themselves. Their only hope, that is, is socialism. Our position is: We are against every war and both sides of every war. Wars are struggles between capitalist interests; no army fights for the interests of any working class. The Prussian militarist Clausewitz declared that war was “nothing but the continuation of politics by other means”. He would have been nearer the truth if he had said that war was the continuation of economics by other means. 

Capitalism is the cause of the international rivalries that lead to war. When socialists say that capitalism is the source of wars we do not mean that wars are deliberately plotted by individual capitalists or groups for the purpose of making money although in the present Ukrainian war, Putin and his oligarch supporters are singled out for blame. It is apologists for capitalism who lay the responsibility of the outbreak of war on the acts of ‘wicked’ men such as  Putin rather than contend that the root of modern war is the capitalist system. Capitalist society is rooted in conflict, and war is one of the products of that conflict. War is not an accidental interruption of the peaceful operation of capitalism but is inherent in the structure of the system itself, it is not the outcome of diplomatic stupidity or miscalculation, or of the arrogance and mistakes of statesmen. War is an extension of an underlying contest going on at all times. Governments in trying to handle the problems and antagonisms created by capitalism turn to war when other means fail.

Economic competition between capitalist groups leads to the encroaching on the markets and resources of foreign rivals, and governments retaliate. The prospect of losing its economic advantage over Ukraine’s economy to the EU was one of the reasons that led Russia to invade.

Capitalism with its minority ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the resulting economic struggle for profit means the capitalist class has a motive for using armed forces in wars to protect its vested interests. All members of the capitalist class do not have identical interests in foreign trade and investment; there are divisions. The policy of a government is dictated by which capitalist group is predominant at the time but the capitalist class as a whole has the same interest in defending itself and its privileged position.

The aim of war is the protection and advancement of the economic interests of the capitalist classes of every country, each in competition against the others—for example, to protect or gain markets, sources of raw materials, trade routes. The ambitions and interests of one state often must conflict with those of another. Political discord occurs, and when one government judges that “national interests,” that is, capitalist interests, are intolerably threatened, war explodes. Of course, the struggle is often not directly between great powers, but between their proxies or puppet states. In today’s world, small states cannot be independent. And independence, that is, exploitation by fellow nationals alone is not something worth fighting for to the working class.

The Socialist Party points out and explains the other war existing in society – the class war – and we show how the workers place this terrible power in the grasp of their most bitter and pitiless enemies and draw the only conclusion open to any intelligent person – that is that the workers must conquer political power for themselves, and so wrench from their oppressors once and forever that weapon which is turned against them, no matter whether Labour or Tories are in power, whenever they seek to obtain better conditions. Only then worldwide draw will the cause of wars – class and market – be abolished. Only then will the workers enjoy what they produce, and have comfort, luxury and happiness. Only in a truly socialist world-wide society will war disappear, because while the capitalist world social order lasts, the roots of war remain. So the only way to lasting peace is through a new world order—without private property, classes or nations.