“The fraternisation of the workers of the world is for me the highest and most sacred thing on earth; it is my guiding star, my ideal, my fatherland. I would rather forfeit my life than be unfaithful to this ideal!” – Rosa Luxemburg
People’s blood has been spilt in a squalid war again and again.
The World Socialist Movement (WSM) has opposed every war, even those that were supposed to be morally justifiable but that is a claim the WSM has never accepted.
The role of revolutionary socialists is not simply to declare abstract principles as in piously abstract aims such as “peace”. Such aims are Utopian unless they are related to the historical possibility of establishing a class-free, state-free society. Understanding that capitalism causes wars, socialists urge the need for conscious political action to end capitalism and thus eradicate war.
Socialists do not simply oppose war, we oppose the class interests which give rise to these anti-social forms of behaviour. Socialist principles are put to the test when there is the real experience of wars and invasions when politicians and the media spout war hysteria and protesters express inane pacifist sentiments.
Instead of pointing out that workers have no interest in the territorial squabbles of their rulers, virtually all the anti-war activists opt to make legalistic judgements about which band of brigands ought to prevail. Peace is the impossible goal of the pacifist movement and a self-deception. The so-called peace and anti-war movements prevent the working class from carrying out its mission and attaining the power necessary for the abolition of capitalism and establishing socialism.
In the words of Marx: “In every country the workers must settle matters with their own ruling-class first.” Our job is to win power for socialism, then, and not before, will we be able to bring peace.
Anyone who preaches permanent peace will have to show proof that peace is possible and that the interests of nations are all identical. If they cannot prove this, then it will be certain that peace is impossible. Those who aspire to peace, disarmament and to arms control and who propagandise for these goals, must demonstrate that these objectives can be realised. And this must be undertaken not with vague slogans, but with examples and facts.
And they cannot prove it because the capitalist interests of rival nations impel them towards war. Under capitalism, there are no means other than the brute force of war for the purpose of growth and globalisation. Those who speak of peace must show how trade and markets can expand without capturing territorial influence. Whoever thinks that capitalism can change proves how little they know of capitalism for it has its own laws which are consequences of its very nature. Its principle laws are competition and conflict. Out of every war, a new war is being born. The big States and small States, all the capitalist States, those which have already become such States and those which want to attain that status, are lying in wait to pounce upon their prey, the powerful against the weak and, ultimately, all against all. The threat of new wars and vast new arsenals envelops the whole world. All States will arm themselves to the teeth, whether for offensive or defensive purposes. Politicians will pretend to seek peace, yet, all along, they will be armed to the teeth.
War is not natural. It is artificially produced by human beings as an integral part of a particular social system. In the world today there is constant economic competition between nations. When the rivalry becomes too intense, the next step is often military conflict. Modern wars are not to be explained by some supposed human nature. It is not the mass of the populations of any country who desire war and plan years ahead to prepare for it. So little is it true that human nature lusts for a war that there is hardly a country in the world that does not have to employ force in the form of conscription to compel its able-bodied population, first to train and then to fight? Always it is the governments which, having been pushed towards war by the rivalries of capitalism, lay their plans and organise the forces of destruction after having gone to unlimited trouble to win over the reluctant masses to acceptance of the need for war preparations and war. In these orgies of death and destruction which capitalism periodically and inevitably produces, workers, suffer and die not for their own interests but for those of their masters.
The World Socialist Movement uncovers the lies about international justice and freedom used to deceive our fellow workers into slaughtering one another. It exposes the claims that the war was waged to defend national sovereignty or that one side’s government’s foreign policy was misunderstood while the other government’s foreign policy was simply wrong because its leader is a war-monger and militarist adventurer. One side had recourse to war only because it was forced into a defensive position due to the other nation’s aggression.
Workers must learn that war is against their interests. There is only one war that is just — and that is the war of the oppressed class for its liberation. All other wars are predatory wars for the seizure of territories and markets for the profits of the exploiters, fought upon the corpses of dead workers.
We cannot stop war altogether. It is not possible to prevent the coming of war as long as capitalism lasts. However, war can on some occasions be postponed. forcing governments to refrain from immediately carrying out war plans. The fight against the war is a political fight. The working class must be stirred by protest meetings and demonstrations. This great aim, the permanent end to the war from the world, can be accomplished only by the overthrow of capitalism. The true enemy is at home: the capitalist class enemy and their political representative, the State. This is the enemy to be defeated, in every country.
This struggle against war requires at every stage the utmost clarity and realism and the working class of every country must understand who their enemy is. They must understand that the enemy is not the people of any other nation against whom their government may wage war, but that the real enemy is the ruling class of their “own” country.
Noble talk about “democracy” or “peace” or “defence” or “collective security” is cant and hypocrisy. Every conception of patriotism and nationalism must be opposed. The only war worth fighting is the class war for a world socialist society. In all wars, there are no interests at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working peoples’ blood
We are all living on this tiny planet together but we insist on creating imaginary borders to separate each other, fighting instead of uniting, focusing on minor differences instead of knowing we are all alike. There is only one way to live and strive on this planet and that is to be a peaceful, enlightened species. Unfortunately, we are not there yet, but one day, we will be, we hope
