Root out the roots of war

NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR

War tests the will of all whom it affects. War strips bare the pretenders and betrayers within the working class and  separates the opportunists and the patriots from the revolutionists.  On the question of war no evasions, no half-truths can be accepted. The only answer to war is the full answer, with no sugar-coating equivocations, escape clause caveats. Whether they have been frankly waged as wars of aggression or they have been hypocritically represented as wars of “defence" they always have been made by the ruling classes and fought by the working masses

Socialists have always claimed that at the bottom of all war there is an economic cause. This claim is substantiated by a careful study of  the causes and results of all the modern wars that have taken place. “Spheres of influence” is merely an elegant phrase that really means exclusive possession of foreign markets and trade privilege. Kings and capitalists may fight for these things and perhaps benefit— people, never! The interests of the working class are bound up with the maintenance of peace and it is the working people who suffer most severely from the devastations and horrors of war.  Yet it is people that must make wars. So the rulers must find some other means of enlisting their subjects in their fights. Many schemes have been used by them but one effective  means has been found. It is nationalism, inciting patriotic duty in the face of  “foreign aggression.” Economic causes are, of course, still at the root of wars. But today it is easier than ever to obscure this fact. Nationalism is the cloak behind which the economic causes work. Nationalists claims that the culture belonging to one nation is distinct from that belonging to any other. This may have been so in the past, but the development of mankind is making it less so. Increased means of communication and transport have caused nations to exchange not their products but their fashions and tastes until today there is no essential difference between any one of the countries of the world. Only by the most artificial kind of propaganda that nationalism is kept alive. Nationalism is an unmitigated curse. It leads inevitably to chauvinism and to national aggression. It leads to a patriotism for the soil, for the particular bit of dirt on the earth’s surface on which a particular person has been born. It leads to narrowness and bigotry, to national jealousy and petty pride. It serves the machinations of the ruling class.

The guiding principle of capitalism is competition, to strive to make profit out of one’s fellows, and to grow richer at the other fellows’ expense. This  is inherent in all the ramifications of society and  finds its final expression in the contest of great industrial and commercial empires for world dominion. The contest for world dominion, like the smaller contests of capitalism, can never have a permanent solution. Ever new contests will, and must, arise so long as capitalism remains. Capitalism is always at war; its component parts are always contending with each other. So the contest will continue, always growing fiercer, whilst capitalism continues. Science places ever more terrible means of warfare at the disposal of the great combatants, the few rich men behind governments, throw the entire populations of the nations into conflict for their enrichment. It is useless to imagine that a change of parties, a change of diplomatic method, will check the gigantic contest. The United Nations itself  has proved to be used as an instrument in the hands of which ever power can succeed in dominating it.

The capitalists and their generals understand this. They prepare systematically and without compunction, arranging their wars in which the lives of millions will be sacrificed with a detached coldness.

 “Wars will never come to an end,” says the supporters of capitalism with some justification, but we who are socialists know otherwise. We know that wars will cease, but only with the downfall of the capitalist system. We know that no half-measures will suffice, and that the entire fabric of capitalism must be swept away if its evils are to be ended. There is no hope in eliminating merely the big capitalist, for the small capitalist is continually growing with prosperity into the large capitalist. Nor can socialism exist as a half-measure. There must be common ownership of the land, the means of production and  distribution. Money, barter, all forms of payment, buying and selling, and wages must be abolished (rationing of any sort can only be tolerated in case of scarcity). Each shall give according to his or her ability , each shall use according to his or her needs.

When we look around  and see the extent with which a war economy has come into being we wonder why the system cannot mobilise similarly in the wars against poverty and disease. It is for us, therefore, while we endeavour to urge peace to, more importantly, strive for that greater object even than peace—socialism; so that when peace is assured it shall be a peace based upon universal freedom, co-operation and fraternity.