Who cares about spies

Why all this fuss about spies and traitors? The commercial press, of course, likes a sensational treason trial. It helps them stir up national hatred. Spies are held up as objects of public scorn. They are, we are told, greedy men and women led to betray their country for thirty pieces of silver. Now come the Spies for Peace. The Spies for Peace have in fact done us a good turn by telling us some of the minor preparations the government has made for its safety in any war. The press, the Labour Party, the churches and other capitalist henchmen, naturally feel differently. They want the “traitors” arrested and punished. They are concerned about Mr. Krushchev getting hold of the pamphlet. But no-one bothers to ask the more basic questions. Why are there state secrets? What is their significance? Does it matter what Mr. Krushchev knows? That he knows there are plans for Regional Seats of Government at Warren Row and the other places where they’re supposed to be?

Consider the matter a little more closely. Today there are two kinds of people around. Those who are rich and wealthy and own all the means of living and the rest of us who own practically nothing. This means we have to work for these owners in order to live. In other words we are slaves. There is no other word for it. The workers are dependent on the owning class—just as the slaves of the past were dependent on their masters. Its the same all over the world. In America, in Russia, in France, in Germany. The working class, we are always told, no longer exists. But how stupid can you get! Of course, the working class exists. Its us—those who work and make everything but own nothing. Everywhere the working class is a slave class with the rich owners as their masters. So what’s all this nonsense about nations? The slaves in Athens didn’t count as Athenians. And we don’t really count as Britons, Germans, Poles, or any other of the names in use. Our political nationality is a fraud. “The Nation” is the owning class. The “national interest” is their interest. So all this talk about bombs and armies being kept to protect us is so much nonsense. They exist to protect our masters. To protect their property. To protect their ruling position. To protect their markets. Ask yourself: what have I to sell save my ability to work? Nothing! Then why worry about whether factory owners can sell their steel, their cars, their machines? But its for these people that wars are fought. To get markets for them. To help their trade. War gives us nothing. In no war is there anything at stake worth dying for. Just our masters’ markets and trade interests.

Everybody wants peace these days. Everybody is against war. But how do you get rid of it? Peace marches, perhaps, or conferences? No, neither. If the set-up didn’t mean that one class lives by selling what the other makes there would be no war. For capitalism has a built-in drive toward war. That’s why its stupid to hope for disarmament under capitalism. Armed forces are not kept for the fun of it. They can’t be disbanded at will. They exist to protect the interests of the capitalist class at home and abroad. A capitalist must sell or die. If he doesn’t sell he gets no profit. If he gets no profit he can’t accumulate capital. If he doesn’t accumulate he can’t modernise his equipment to meet competition. Which means he will be driven to the wall by more efficient-competitors. This is the basic cause of modern war.

The capitalists in various areas join to keep a national state to look after their interests and carry out their wishes. Hence the so-called nation. Every “nation,” or rather every capitalist gang, competes against every other. In this struggle might is right. This is why armed forces exist. Today America and Russia and their allies are at cold war with each other. They are struggling for world domination because they must. Neither of these groups of powers can afford to let the other get ahead militarily. So the arms race and the H bomb. In this race to keep ahead military secrets are important. Important, that is, to the capitalist class and the state they keep to protect their interests. This is why in every country the worst crime is treason, worse even than murder.

But where do we come in? Should we worry about cases of treason? Should we look upon those who give away secrets as traitors? The short answer to questions such as these is that workers have “no country. And it’s not? as if the state and its secrets exist for our benefit. They are only traitors from the capitalist viewpoint because they have committed the worst crime m the book. They have helped a rival capitalist gang. Each secret betrayed to a foreign power weakens the military machine. This is why state secrets are so important to the capitalist class. This is why those who give them away arc labelled traitors and punished harshly. For us it’s different. We don’t need to worry about security and defence matters. They’re not our concern. The war machine is not there to protect us. It’s there to protect our masters’ interests at home and abroad. And more. The armed forces are used to keep the masters masters, and us slaves. They are part of the government machine. And it is through this machine that the capitalist class rules. At home the government machine is used to keep ’’law and order,” to keep the set-up whereby the capitalist class live off our unpaid labour.

We have nothing to gain from war, nor from war or defence preparations. It is for the capitalist class to worry about British “security” services or about whether Mr. Krushchev knows “our” secrets.

ALB