How to be Anti-War

 

Working people feel the impact of the changing world on their daily lives and search for an answer to their problems. 

What is blocking the way to economic and social progress? The Socialist Party reply: The system of profit-making, the ownership and control of industry by a few industrialists and bankers for their own gain and not for the benefit of the people.

Much of the anti-war movement is a mixture of Utopian pacifism and still a slavish loyalty to capitalism. The mass butchery of war can only bring hunger, misery and poverty to the workers of the world. Only the class war for the overthrow of capitalism can end wars by ending the cause of war capitalism. The solution for the ills of present-day society is common ownership of the industries and production for the social good, instead of profits for the few.

Socialism can be achieved only by the will of the people when the conditions have become ripe for the historical changeover from capitalism to socialism. Socialism will thus triumph as the result of the will and actions of the  people, and cannot be imposed from outside. 

We explain to the workers the irreconcilability between their interests and the interests of bloodthirsty capitalism. We propagate the unity of the workers. It is only workers who can guarantee real peace. Only socialism can end war by ending the cause of war – the capitalist system. We must fight against the real cause of war, and against the class that benefit from it. Our enemy is not the Russians, the Chinese or Iranian workers. It is capitalism everywhere. The economic processes of capitalism lead, we repeat, to war. The political processes of capitalism, based upon its national and territorially structured State, cannot create peace. Peace can only come from a worldwide commonwealth. 

Capitalism is the basic cause of war in modern times. Capitalism controlled the entire globe and the war resulted from the struggles of the corporations in the leading capitalist countries to re-divide the world, to wrest from each other colonies and markets, cheap labour and raw material supplies. It is capitalism which gives rise to the danger of more wars. Socialism gives a correct analysis of the fundamental reasons for the wars and miseries of our times. The solution is to end the private ownership of the means of production and replace it with social ownership and production planned to meet the people’s needs, that is, socialism.

Socialism puts an end to wars and the danger of wars because under socialism there are no capitalists who are interested in war profits and the conquest of new markets. and colonies. Socialist planned economy abolishes anarchy of the market and thereby puts an end to depressions and unemployment.

Social ownership ends exploitation of man by man because it is through private ownership of the factories and workshops, mills and mines, the banks and lands that the wealthy minority exploit the great mass of the people. Common ownership frees the energies of the people and productive forces for mighty economic, social and cultural advances by means of socialist planning. With common ownership, instead of production for profit there is production for the benefit of the people.

Socialism does not destroy democracy, as the servants of the wealthy assert but, on the contrary, enormously extends political liberties. The only “liberty” which Socialism ends is the liberty of the privileged class to own industry and amass wealth at the expense of the great majority. Socialism ends all exploitation and oppression of the producers by a privileged parasitical class. By ending the political, economic and financial domination by the clique of millionaires, socialism, for the first time, creates the conditions for the free expression of the people’s will. The dictation of policy by the wealthy few makes way for the dictation by the many. Nor does Socialism “worship the State” and aim at domination of the individual by any all-powerful State. Socialism involves the abolition of  capitalism, socialisation of production and distribution and their use for the benefit of society. Only the organised power of the people can achieve this aim. Our aim is to achieve socialism by peaceful means. The Socialist Party at all times stands for a peaceful solution of the political, economic and social issues of our time.

We are here to fight to build up this new society, to create a new spirit in the world, to end war, to end murder, to end suffering, to end the destruction of millions of lives, and bring into existence a brotherhood to inspire the hearts and minds of all men and women, in which we will have fraternity and equality, and in which for the first time the people will be endowed with those inalienable rights of life, liberty, and happiness. We ask you to stand with us. We ask you to work with us to achieve this goal of socialism.