‘The main enemy of every people is in their own country' - Karl Liebknecht
If you are opposed to war and all that it represents—as any right-thinking person should be—you will advocate policies and take actions that will make war impossible, by removing its causes. That is, you will seek to transform society in the interests of human beings as a whole, without restriction to so-called race, nationality or gender, by establishing socialism in place of capitalism. Like many other problems thrown up by capitalism, war has produced a group of people intent upon solving or ending it within capitalism, not recognising that this and other problems are inevitable under the present social order. The tenor of many pacifist arguments is that we can do nothing constructive until this war is ended
The class struggle, in its varied aspects, exists and continues because capitalism divides mankind into warring classes, those who live by owning the means of production and distribution, and those who are propertyless and must sell their labour-power to the former. Capitalism gives the ruling class the incentive to protect vested interests bound up in trade routes, sources of raw materials, and areas of foreign investment. Control of the machinery of government gives them the power to wage war. The only sure road to peace is the road that leads to socialism, the conquest of the powers of the government by a politically organised socialist majority. The so-called peace movements have all failed to understand the nature of the forces against which they pit themselves. They are stuck in the rut of nationalism, just as are those to whom they appeal. None of them can see any further than capitalism, even though some of them sometimes use phrases that might give a different impression.
While nationalist feelings prevail, it will be relatively easy for the propaganda machine to persuade workers that “if the country is good enough to live in, it is good enough to fight for.” Nationalism is a big help to the ruling class in getting support for armaments and ultimately for war. As long as workers think in terms of “the country,” it is logical for them to be prepared to defend it. Thus all the horror weapons become “necessary” in the name of “defence.”
The capitalist classes of the major power blocs maintain their military machines for the purpose of protecting or expanding their spheres of profitable influence, nationally and internationally. This minority of people own the factories, the land and all those assets which go to make up the country. At the same time the majority of people—the working-class—own nothing to fight about. Workers in all parts of the world have a common interest to get rid of the social system which condemns them to exploitation. They cannot do this in ignorance; they must realise what capitalism means and how to change it. If you really care about people you will want to campaign for their enlightenment, for an absence war—in a word, for socialism.
While the Socialist Party’s immediate task is to impart socialist knowledge to the working class, the pacifist's immediate anti-war work is to attempt, by any means, to end the war. Their views arise, in general, from looking at the war in isolation and not realising that peace of any description, as it will leave the capitalist basis of society intact, will carry with it the seeds of a future war. They ignore the fact that so long as we have capitalism,.with its competitive struggle over commercial matters, such as trade routes, sources of raw material, control of relatively undeveloped areas of the world, so long will we have war. While the working class lack socialist knowledge and support capitalism they will support the wars that occur; this support is given because war, at the time of crisis, appears to them as the only possible policy for "their" government or country to pursue. We know that this war will end before we have socialism, but lasting peace cannot be gained without socialism. The question of its being remote is therefore entirely irrelevant. As we have shown, socialism is an urgent necessity, a practical and immediate policy for today, and we have yet to be shown how by deferring it until some future date the working class can benefit.
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