Always Against War

 

The experts now foresee a long protracted war in Ukraine with further inevitable economic consequences for many other peoples across the world. The burden of war always falls heaviest on the poor and vulnerable. They are taught that their masters always know better, and thus when commanded go out in vast numbers to be killed on the battlefield. And what is their reward? If they escape death they return to face their rulers cutting social and welfare services. You are doomed to sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters' freedom. Let the workers form one great worldwide union to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness. When millions of workers are set free from making armaments for warfare, then they will be able to turn their attention to building themselves better houses, producing more and better food and healthcare for their families, and they will enjoy the leisure, the comfort, the culture and the education which are now the privileges of the exploiters. Let us work to bring about universal prosperity and peace.

To the Russian soldiers, we say you are being misled and are sacrificing your lives and your family's happiness in an unjust foreign invasion. You are fighting a most disgraceful and inhuman war. Yours is the robbers’ fight to steal another’s country.  Putin cannot fight even the smallest battle without you. You are the masters of the entire situation. Lay down your weapons, go back home and change conditions back there.

To the Ukrainian soldiers, you are martyring your lives in the name of patriotism so that plutocrats can preserve their privileges and private property. Join your women and children and seek safety outside Ukraine and let the politicians and the employers who benefit do the fighting. Why bleed for the capitalists?

Men and women make their own history, as Marx once said. Imperialism is a product of capitalism and we cannot destroy the one without overthrowing the other. Socialists struggling against economic slavery at home cuts at the roots of war that can only be overcome by the working-class conquest of economic and political power in their respective countries, which will bring to an end the capitalist regime, and call into existence the cooperative world commonwealth.

Capitalism condemns people against one another. Capitalism is the instigator of wars. Instead of uniting the world, it works for its irremediable division and for eternal war. 

The Socialist Party has for years declared against the atrocities of capitalism, but now there are so-called socialists informing us that it is our duty to become accomplices of the rulers in the greatest of all iniquities, the slaughter of fellow workers by fellow-worker, dutifully performing one's patriotism by taking life, bombing homes, and laying waste to fields of the innocent.

The working class of the world has but one enemy, the capitalist class of the world, those of their own country being at the head of the list.