Editorial: What is war good for? Absolutely nothing (2026)

Editorial from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

War has never solved, and can never solve, any working class problem; wars only help to make our position worse in the long run. They brutalise all those concerned in it, cheapening the feeling for human life and all that makes life worthwhile. Only the continued existence of capitalism drives society to war. The abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will remove the causes of war – and is the only way to remove them.

In furthering the economic ends of the capitalist class within their borders, states have two objectives that are complementary. One consists of economic, political and diplomatic actions, aimed at enlarging the market for exports, securing reliable sources of supply, and finding profitable investment outlets; the other consists of actions intended to enable them to resist armed attack (or force submission on other states) by building up the most murderous and destructive forms of armament that they can afford within the range of human ingenuity at any time. The building up of armaments in turn breeds fresh economic struggles in the effort to acquire the material needed to produce these weapons such as uranium or rare earths.   

Thus there is an intermingling of economic motives in the pursuit of economic and military dominance, because the means to carry on modern warfare are rooted in access to the resources for building up methods of destruction. Sections of the international capitalist class accumulate wealth out of the labour extracted from the working class, and without ever being seen as coming within the categories of ‘war profiteers’ or ‘merchants of death’.

Ultimately, wars are only possible because workers do not understand their identity of interest with workers everywhere in opposition to the interests of their rulers everywhere. Whilst this condition remains, workers of different states can be inveigled into shedding their and other workers’ blood for alleged objectives that, even if accomplished, leave them still an exploited class.

Many subterfuges have been used to entice workers into supporting a war; such as the defence of democracy, the right of nations to self-determination, overthrowing tyranny, resisting the aggression of some other state, safeguarding essential sources of food and other supplies, and so on.

Workers in this and other countries should turn a deaf ear to all those — bellicose generals and compliant governments — who are trying to get their support for policies to increase preparations for war by spending more on so-called ‘defence’. We urge them to recognise their fundamental identity of interest as the wealth producers of the world; join together for the purpose of abolishing capitalist domination in all its forms and, by establishing socialism, make the Earth and its products the common inheritance of all. Only then will it be possible to put into operation the socialist principle that will ensure the comfort, security and well-being of the whole of humankind –‘From each according to their capacities, to each according to their needs’.

Material World: It’s the Economy, Stupid! (2026)

The Material World column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

So said James Carville, a political strategist on Bill Clinton’s successful campaign to win the American presidency in 1992. It was written up on a whiteboard in Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters, as a reminder to campaign workers to remain focused on the recession then affecting voters.

A decade and a half earlier the Italian historian, Carlo M. Cipolla, wrote his essay, ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’. His basic contention was that everyone always underestimates the number of stupid people there are.

Stupidity is generally defined as acting foolishly or carelessly, in an apparently stunned or blank manner, or being ridiculous to an extreme degree. It is important at this point to establish that Cipolla wasn’t using stupidity as a synonym for idiocy or lack of intelligence. But rather it is a human feature of many, perhaps all, whatever an individual’s mental acuity.

Everyone, if they are honest with themselves, will be able to identify personal examples of their own stupidity, indeed they are likely to be many and various. Usually, they do not result in anything too serious, more often nothing worse than inconvenience or embarrassment. Occasionally, though there is injury, or worse

At the Kremlin

Consider two presidents, one Russian, the other American and their current wars. If there is one huge lesson the Second World War should have taught Russia’s present leader it’s that a powerful military force can be thwarted by a determined population.

Stalingrad was thoroughly bombed, shelled and otherwise blasted for over five months. 90 percent of the city was taken by the aggressors with almost half a million military and 40,000 civilian casualties. Yet not only did it not surrender but became the instance from which the invaders suffered ultimate defeat. Four decades later the Russians became the insurgent force in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat and expulsion at the hands of a seemingly inferior military.

So what induces the present Kremlin incumbent to consider victory in Ukraine likely? Dreadful as they are, the missiles and drones launched against the cities are not anything like the razing of Stalingrad. If the intention was to thwart NATO, the consequence has been to strengthen its resolve and expand it. To have expected otherwise, in the face of previous experiences, appears to be an exemplar of stupidity, at an awful and avoidable cost.

In the White House

Meanwhile, in the White House, stupidity seems to be the order of the day. The Vietnam War is not so long ago its conduct and outcome can have been forgotten. B52 bombers that were to return Hanoi to the Stone Age proved far less effective than bicycles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. America’s own, more recent, experience in Afghanistan, with the eventual return to government of the Taliban should have highlighted how all too easy it is to become embroiled in bellicose misadventures.

The setting aside once more of historical experience has ensnared the Commander in Chief in a conflict he is having great difficulty in extricating himself from. Indeed, it could well lead to the regime in Tehran becoming stronger. Stupidity wrapped in stars and stripes.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to identify any war the outcome of which was an unmitigated success for a winner. For any supposed winner there may be some short-term spoils, but any such resolution is subsequently unravelled by further conflict arising directly or indirectly from that martial discord.

Following leaders

The present system is driven by the accumulation of capital, which requires nation states to compete for resources, trade routes and markets, competition that all too often manifests as armed conflict. Governments of all types have to serve the interests of capital, the unfettered, as far as possible, pursuit of profit. It doesn’t matter what governments or politicians promise their citizens – better welfare at home or conquests abroad – the imperative of profit will be the deciding factor.

There are of course those for whom war is not stupidity writ large, the arms manufacturers. A huge industry worldwide it consumes massive amounts of scientific research time, resources and labour power, as well as the lives of multitudinous casualties military and civilian.

Consider how humanity worldwide would benefit if that effort was focused on meeting people’s needs rather than profiting from their deaths. It must be stupidity to persevere with maintaining a system that cannot be anything other than careless of human need.

Any campaigning against the arms industry is opposed not only by shareholders who want their dividend from the profits, governments covetous of tax revenue and, also, the trade unions of those employed in the industry. Yet the best interests of all, even the shareholders, would be in establishing a cooperative worldwide society that wasn’t riven by nationalism, wars, terrorism and all such manifestations of inhumanity.

However, for as long as people continue to lend their support, via the ballot box or other means, to political individuals or parties while expecting, or hoping for, better outcomes they are denying their own experiences. Rather than accepting the need to play an active part in determining a very different society, they continue to be passive recipients of whatever capitalism deigns to spare them. This is not congenital, but elective, which means it is eminently possible to choose otherwise.

One of the basic laws Cipolla formulated in his pamphlet was ‘A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain or even possibly incurring losses’.

Consider the two leaders referred to above, along with leaders in general, in the light of Ciprolla’s law. How long is humanity to be subjected to leadership stupidity? How long is humanity going to continue the stupidity of following leaders?

James Carville was certainly no socialist, but he unintentionally acceded to socialist understanding. Because it is the economy, the worldwide economy that is ultimately the determining factor of the quality of life to be shared by all.

D. A.

Another world war? (2026)

Book Review from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economic Foundations of Capitalism’s Rise and Decline. Communist Workers Organisation. 2026.

‘For global capitalism the devastation of world-wide imperialist war is the solution to its ineluctable profitability crisis’. This — that a third world war is needed for capitalism to continue — is the position that this 100-page book seeks to defend.

The argument starts from the view that under capitalism there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall as capital accumulation proceeds, due to an increasing proportion of capital being invested in plant, machinery and materials rather than in employing workers (whose labour is the only source of profits). This was something noted by Marx but he also noted other tendencies, arising too from capital accumulation but conversely tending to raise the rate of profit, such as plant, machinery and materials becoming cheaper and increasing surplus value per worker. So, what happens over any given period — which tendencies prevail and so whether the rate of profit does actually fall — is unpredictable. There are also other factors that reduce profitability, such as overproduction in an important industry having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy resulting in a general slump in production.

The book hopelessly mixes up all the various tendencies, elevating a theoretical slow long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall into ‘the drive towards the collapse of the capitalist system’. The authors also see this as, in the shorter term, the cause of slumps but to do that there would have to have been a fantastically rapid increase in mechanisation and productivity. They are correct, though, that an important way out of a slump is the restoration of the rate of profit due to devaluation of the capital invested in the plant and machinery.

According to the CWO, a new factor entered into the equation at the beginning of the 20th century: capitalism, after coming to dominate the whole world and creating the basis for a world socialist society, passed its peak and entered into a period of decline which they call ‘decadence’. In this period, the boom/slump cycle continues but:

‘Capitalist competition is no longer a purely economic battle between firms but imperialist rivalry between “great powers”; where, in short, the massive devaluation of capital required to assuage the crisis of low profitability and achieve a new round of accumulation is obtained by the destruction of capital values via war’.

‘The history of capitalism since the start of the twentieth century’ we are told, ‘has been this cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction’. That the First World War was caused by imperialist states being driven to war as the only way out of a fall in the rate of profit doesn’t hold. Conflict between the ‘great powers’ over sources of raw materials, markets and investment outlets makes more sense. Replacing the destruction caused during the Second World War will have been one explanation for the resumption of capital accumulation in the postwar period but by no means the only one and would have been completed within a decade or so. Another, more significant factor will have been the expansion of the world market as more and more parts of the world were industrialised.

Whether or not the rate of profit has fallen since the 1970s is a moot point since it is not easy to calculate. On some assumptions it has; on others it hasn’t. In any event, a hard-to-calculate and unknown average rate of profit will not have been a factor influencing decisions to invest by those in charge of capitalist enterprises; shorter-term and particular sectoral considerations will have been the deciding factors.

The question also arises as to why the long gap between the end of reconstruction and the outbreak of the Third World War. The authors provide an economic history of the period since the 1970s but don’t answer this question. They describe well enough the extent of the non-productive, financial sector that has grown on the basis of the real, productive sector of the capitalist world economy, but can’t explain away the real capital accumulation that has taken place.

When they write that, if socialism is not established, ‘capitalism could continue on its demented course for centuries’, it is not clear what they mean. Is it that capitalism could continue after a nuclear world war or that capitalism might not lead to one for centuries?

In short, the CWO have not proved their claim that present-day capitalism must, for capital accumulation to continue, lead to a Third World War (they are suggesting it’s going to be between China and the US). As long as capitalism continues, there will be wars but there is no compelling reason why there should be another world war, this time between states armed with nuclear weapons. It is not entirely impossible of course, but it wouldn’t be to restore the rate of profit.

Adam Buick

Disunited Nations (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that the United Nations Organisation, and before it, the League of Nations, could never provide a solution to the problem of war.

We have gone further than this. We have claimed that most politicians, British and foreign, have always been well aware of the fact. But politicians, if they are to keep their jobs, must profess to have an answer. After each world war the working class has looked to its “leaders” for a scheme to prevent the next one. No politician in these circumstances could hope to win votes without some solution to offer.

How many politicians have supported U.N.O. in the knowledge that it could not be effective can only be surmised. That it constitutes a majority we assume from the fact that they are generally no less intelligent than the rest of us.

U.N.O. Moonshine

But here is one who, in an unguarded moment, comes right out into the open. Here is what Ted Leather, M.P., thinks of the United Nations:—

"Sir,—Mr. Gaitskell’s statement that whatever the United Nations may say we should meekly reply “ we obey ” is perhaps the key to much of our differences in the last few weeks. Mr. Awbery, Labour member for Central Bristol, recently referred to the United Nations as a “court” which had passed “judgment” on us. In an ideal world they might both be right. In this one it is the view of many of my friends and I that they are talking moonshine.

For good or ill, it is just not true that the United Nations is a supreme court, or that it hands down objective judgments that have any moral force at all. The Assembly in New York, important though it is, is a body of politicians. They make political speeches, and the great majority of them vote according to their own political interests. A large number of them represent dictatorships. Many are openly hostile to Britain. If there were an international Government based on sound principles, or an international supreme court empowered to enforce law, many of us might support it. To surrender the ultimate sanction of the interests of the lives and interests of the British people to a body constituted as the United Nations now is, seems to me not only unrealistic but downright suicidal.

Yours, etc.,

Ted Leather,

House of Commons.”  

(Letter to the Times, December 10th, 1956.)

We may well wonder how long Mr. Leather has been of this opinion, whether he proclaimed these views when he sought votes at the last election.

He suggests that there are “many of us” who do not support the United Nations. That is what we thought. But we do not remember “many of them” saying so at the election.

We do not think there are many members of the British electorate who now have any faith in the effectiveness of U.N.O. We believe that most of them are aware, if only vaguely, that international conflict is an inevitable outcome of international Capitalism. The trouble is that they see no alternative.

It is that alternative which is offered in Socialism. We urge all workers to study the case for Socialism. With that understanding they will never again surrender their votes for spurious solutions to the problems of Capitalism —whether it be war, or poverty or unemployment or any other of its manifestations.

Read our two pamphlets, on Socialism and on War. Think for yourself and put not your trust in “leaders.”

John Moore

Editorial: Why war? (2026)

Editorial from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran marks another dangerous moment in world politics. Airstrikes, retaliation, and rising regional tensions are being presented through the language of security, defence, and national interest. Yet beneath these justifications lies a familiar reality: ordinary people are once again being killed and maimed and their homes destroyed in a conflict that they neither chose nor control. As socialists we utterly condemn this latest manifestation of capitalist barbarity.

Governments frame wars as necessary responses to threats, but history repeatedly shows that modern wars are struggles between competing states pursuing strategic influence, military advantage, and economic power. Workers, families, and civilians — regardless of nationality — bear the real consequences through loss of life, instability, inflation, displacement, and fear.

The attack on Iran must be understood not as an isolated moral crime, but as a predictable consequence of the global system in which all states operate. The United States, Israel, and Iran each act to defend and expand their economic, political, and military power. Modern wars are not struggles between good and evil; they are structural conflicts between states competing for influence, resources, and strategic advantage. Ordinary people, who have no control over these decisions, are the ones who suffer the consequences.

Framing the conflict as the wrongdoing of one government alone is misleading. Iran is itself a capitalist state with its own regional and strategic interests. Selective anti-imperialism, which opposes Western interventions but excuses rival states, risks replacing one bloc with another and fails to address the structural causes of war.

External interventions and regime-change campaigns show that foreign powers rarely act to promote democracy or peace. Instead, they reshape governments to serve strategic and economic interests. Similarly, targeting Iran’s leadership today is less about morality or security and more about shifting the balance of power in the region. Military escalation, sanctions, and proxy conflicts are predictable outcomes of a system built on competition and profit, not justice or human rights.

The global scale of the problem is clear. Worldwide military spending exceeds two trillion dollars annually. Alliances shift according to economic and strategic advantage, not ethical principles. Civilians bear the cost of sanctions, arms races, and proxy wars. The structural drivers of conflict are embedded in the organisation of capitalist states; until these are challenged, wars will continue, regardless of who occupies leadership positions.

The socialist perspective rejects nationalism, moral alignment with any government, and the illusion that stopping one war solves the problem. True change requires international working-class awareness, solidarity across borders, and a fundamental transformation of society to remove the systemic causes of war. Only by confronting the structures that produce recurring conflict can humanity hope to prevent the next war, rather than simply reacting to its latest outbreak.

Peace is inseparable from the end of a system that profits from division, conflict, and exploitation. The working class, not governments, must become the agent of real change. Until then, each ‘crisis’ will be merely another chapter in the same predictable story of power and suffering.

Fog on the Danube (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a Comrade in Vienna

Turning over the pages of the Arbeiter Zeitung, the interested intelligent reader must surely ask himself where this so-called Socialist journal differs from other daily papers that do not pretend to stand for Socialism. There are the usual features of all the other newspapers: pages of commercial advertisements, pages of sport, programmes of all the theatres, cinemas and other entertainments, Police and Court reports on crime and the daily tragedies of misery and want, murder and detective stories, appeals for funds to help victims of natural catastrophes, to help the blind, the cripples, the orphans and all the other unfortunates dependent on alms and charity culled welfare.

Here are a few examples of the way these “Socialist” journals deal with news items that would offer good chances of driving home the Socialist case and lessons for the workers:

A report in the Arbeiter Zeitung stated that the 89 year old Lord Bertrand Russell was continuing from his prison cell his anti-bomb propaganda. The paper quoted the aged philosopher as saying in an appeal: “You, your families, your friends and your States will be exterminated by the common decisions of a few but brutal men.” These, Lord Russell named as Kennedy, Kruschev, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Macmilllan and Gaitskell. What did the Arbeiter Zeitung have to say to enlighten its readers on the merits or demerits of Russell’s action and peace propaganda? Nothing.

But should not a journal and a party calling itself Socialist enlighten the workers on this, as on all other political questions? Should it not point out that it is not individuals alone who move the world, but the forces of capital? And that the Kennedys and Adenauers, the Kruschevs and Macmillans are only the temporary managers of these forces? Should it not be made plain that if these individuals were removed tomorrow, other executives and lackeys would take their place and continue the same policy, as has repeatedly happened in the past, and is daily happening before our eyes? Was not Asquith, the British manager of world-war I, removed and promptly replaced by another, Lloyd George? Was not the Kaiser (who had been denounced as having caused the war) exiled and replaced by other individuals who carried on the old system until it produced world-war II? Did the system of Capitalism end with the end of Hitler and Mussolini, who had been accused of having caused that second war? Were not Russian and Bulgarian Czars, Rumanian and Yugoslav kings dethroned, only to be replaced by reformers and more up-to-date administrators of Capitalism like Stalin, Kruschev, Tito, etc., to uphold and continue the private ownership basis and money economy of society, albeit State-Capitalism? Does Lord Russell really believe that if Kennedy and the other present top managers of Capitalism were removed, all would be well in the world, and the nightmare of an impending third world-war lifted from men’s minds? Does he not see that the other pretended “socialist” and pacifist politicians like Nehru, Ben Gurion, Spaak, Guy Mollet, Ollenhauer, etc., are equally staunch upholders of the universal conflict-breeding system that makes war inevitable?

Competition

As long as it is possible for men to exploit other men, war will be threatening humanity. The proceeds (profits) from Capitalist exploitation must be realized by selling the products of labour in the world’s markets. This is where the conflict arises. Commercial competition is war. Even when the rivalry is carried on at the business offices and in the State chancelleries, the clash of interests—the cold war—is there all the time and is eventually transferred to the battlefields of the various continents. What is at stake is big business, the question primarily of who can pocket the profits to be made from “assisting” the underdeveloped countries! Who can get in first? Who can “help” them—in truth, who will exploit them and make the big profits? And as the exploiters mistrust and are envious of each other, one tries to oust the other from the market. For this purpose all means are considered, including atom-bombs.

About Christmas time high functionaries of the Socialist Party of Austria, like the Vice-chancellor, and top Municipal councillors, painted dreary pictures of things happening in the Austrian Welfare State. Said Dr. Pittermann, leader of the SPA:

“In the days before Christmas we heard of the shocking tragedy at St. Polten, where four children burned to death in a barrack dwelling. In the country with the highest increase of the national income, a working class family with four children has to live in a barrack, not because there are too few houses in Austria but because inhuman greed does not place these flats at the disposal of those who are in dire need of a home: they are only for those who can pay higher rents than a worker’s family with many children. In the nearly 2000 years from the stable in Bethlehem to the death in the flames of the four children in the stable at St. Polten, usury with the housing and property has not been done away with. There are tens of thousands of flats empty or only partly occupied in Vienna alone, and innocent children become victims of borderless greed.”

During the budget debate of the Vienna City Council, councillor Mrs. M. Jacobi deplored the widespread unhappiness still existing in our welfare world. She said :

“The Vienna municipality has in its homes or with foster parents 3,900 children whose parents do not care for them. The background of nearly everyone of these children is a heart-rending life-story. Recently one of the boys wrote a letter to his mother, which read: Dear-Mother, I leave school this year. I should like to come to you, otherwise I shall have to stay at the home. If your new husband objects, please write to me.

A few days later the letter was returned. On the back it said, without salutation or signature: Sorry cannot take you; must stay at the home. My husband does not want you. Don’t write any more, it is no use. You are grown up, go to work! Do not think of coming to me. Please do not come, otherwise my husband throws me out . . .”

During the same debate, the Vice-Mayor Mandl also deplored the “cultural crisis” and said that:

“despite all the achievements of the welfare state there are alarming signs of decay, of a sick society. In Austria 1,630 persons committed suicide in 1960. 11,500 persons intending to take their lives were taken care of by one welfare centre alone. In another department 15,000 addicts to alcohol applied for treatment and the numbers of alcoholics, of alcoholic intoxicated and juvenile criminality and neglect are rising.

The place of the physical and material misery has been taken by the psychical and cultural misery. The invasion of the mass media of Press, film, radio and television into leisure is one of the main causes of the negative, often anti-social reactions ….”

Although the so-called Socialist journals report daily the threatening problems in all parts of the present turbulent world, they never advocate Socialism as a solution for society’s troubles and problems. Whether the scene of the turmoil is in Goa or Angola, in Algiers, Kuwait or in the Congo, in New Guinea or in other divided countries like India, Pakistan, Germany, or divided cities like Kashmir, Jerusalem or Berlin, the “experts” of the Arbeiter Zeitung will deal lengthily with these insoluble problems, claims, threats and demands: they will refute or support the “rights” or “wrongs” of this or that predatory clique, take sides for one or the other band of thieves, and so confuse the workers and entangle them in things that are no concern of theirs bill only of their masters.

However well they may know that drastic evils call for drastic remedies, however glaringly evident it is—often on their own showing—that the Capitalist system is responsible for the evils and sufferings of the workers, their leaders will not draw the attention of the people and will not have them concentrate their thoughts on the need for the removal of the cause of all the trouble. One does not expect the Conservative politicians to preach revolutionary change as the only wav to remove the social ills and incongruities, but parties and journals calling themselves Socialist or Communist and not advocating consistently the revolutionary doctrine and principles, stand identified with the enemies of the working class.

Rudolf Frank

Pathfinders: Big Red Button (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year Hollywood director Kathryn Bigelow caused a minor stir with A House of Dynamite, an earnest and compelling warning against nuclear war in the tradition of Fail Safe (1964), or its comedy twin Dr Strangelove (1964). Unlike her other films it probably won’t win any gongs though, because it annoyed a lot of people.

Note, this paragraph contains spoilers. Critics complained that the film wasn’t a ‘proper’ story, with a beginning, middle and end, but instead was a looping repeat of the same chain of events from different character viewpoints. Nor did it have an ending. The viewer is just left hanging. Does the missile blow up the city? Does the US launch a retaliatory strike, and against whom? We don’t find out. But that’s ok, because the ending wasn’t the point.

The point of Dynamite is how we got ourselves into this situation in the first place. ‘We all built a house filled with dynamite… and then we just kept on livin’ in it,’ says one character. Jacobin magazine sniffily objected that the film doesn’t really say anything, and is essentially an ‘impotent and unserious exercise in handwringing’. We might sniffily object in turn that anyone who doesn’t advocate the immediate abolition of capitalism is also merely handwringing. Which would include all of the left including Jacobin magazine.

Because while capitalism has done a lot of good things for humanity, it’s also an out-of-control profit-making machine that comes with some catastrophic downsides. Runaway global warming isn’t even the worst of these. We can probably survive that, as a species. But who would survive nuclear Armageddon? Who would even want to?

For all the Boomer generation’s supposed privileges, like free higher education, affordable houses, job security and career advancement, they still had to grow up in the Cold War under the shadow of the Bomb, not knowing whether each day would be their last. Now Gen Z and Gen Alpha, on top of their other problems, may come to know what that feels like. ‘On January 27, 2026, the Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history’.

Who’s got nukes?

Nine countries today have a total of around 13,000 weapons, down from the Cold War’s 60,000, but arsenals are increasing again. You can see the distribution at a glance at armscontrol.org. Most belong to Russia and the US, but China is fast playing catch-up. These are not just nukes, but BIG nukes. ‘For example, the warheads on just one US nuclear-armed submarine have seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. And the United States usually has ten of those submarines at sea’ (ucs.org).

Who wants nukes?

Basically, every country’s ruling elite, following the National Rifle Association’s argument that in an armed society, you’re safer if you’re packing heat too. Ukraine gave up its nukes in 1994 and what happened? It got invaded. Iran keeps being bombed by Israel, but who dares bomb nuclear North Korea? The lesson is obvious and unavoidable. Disarmament is for losers. To paraphrase Mark Carney at Davos, if you’re not at the nuclear table, you’re on the menu.

There are fewer total nukes than in the Cold War era, so why is the threat worse today? Because treaties are easier when there are only two sides to negotiate. After the panic of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War finally settled into stasis with arms control treaties. Now there are three major nuclear powers, and more on the way. In February this year the 2010 START nuclear non-proliferation treaty expired, and no nuclear power shows any interest in reviving or replacing it. Instead, with Russia fighting in Ukraine, China threatening Taiwan, India and Pakistan having cross-border skirmishes, and the US under Trump threatening to remove the ‘extended deterrence’ umbrella from its own NATO allies, the gloves are off. Any country that can get its hands on nukes and more nukes is going gangbusters to do just that, and never mind other internal costs like health and social welfare.

The upshot is proliferation. Now even America worries that, despite its gigantic arsenal, it won’t have enough to go round if adversaries like Russia and China decide to join forces. There is a terrifying escalatory logic at play, as the Economist points out. A country may opt for ‘minimal deterrence’, having just enough nukes to survive a first strike and still deliver unconscionable devastation on enemy cities. But beyond minimal deterrence, military planners aim for ‘damage limitation’, which means having enough missiles to take out all the other side’s nuclear silos, submarines and mobile launchers. If this capacity is achieved, it only drives the other side to acquire further weapons, and so on indefinitely (‘Nukes of Hazard‘).

Even if war is not the immediate result, this multi-sided arms race makes the prospects of any binding arms treaty look more remote, and the chances of a Fail Safe-like accidental launch greater than ever. But we, the vast majority of the world’s people, didn’t do this. We are merely the grunts who do all the work of maintaining what we like to call civilisation. It’s the rich who have built a world of dynamite and are sitting on top of it, smoking fat cigars. Our only mistake is continuing to support and vote for the market system which created the rich, and their nukes, in the first place.

J Robert Oppenheimer, the self-styled ‘destroyer of worlds’, was along with Einstein a founder of the Doomsday Clock that now ticks perilously close to midnight. There’s still time for humanity to claw its way back from the brink, and use its miraculous science and technology purely for the collective benefit, but only if it stops deluding itself. Capitalism is not sustainable, nor our best option. It’s a death cult with a Big Red Button.

Paddy Shannon

SPGB Snippets: If only . . . (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

March 18, 2026

… there existed an international organisation that could protect the world against the scourge of war, that acted in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, that settled international disputes by peaceful means.

Wait … there’s been one around since 1945, called the UN. But its solemn Charter, from which we nicked the verbiage above, is just fantasy. The real world under capitalism is better described by a nasty piece of work, Stephen Miller, who seems to have a big say in US policy at present:

“talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world … governed by strength … by force …by power.”

Yep, under capitalism. might is right.

Editorial: A more dangerous place (2026)

Editorial from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the world has become a yet more dangerous place with states with nuclear weapons throwing their weight about, bullying weaker non-nuclear states and preparing for war with each other, some are suggesting reviving a campaign for nuclear disarmament so that at least the next world war won’t threaten the future of humanity.

We are all in favour of making the world working class aware of the dangers of nuclear war, but it is futile to expect capitalist states which possess nuclear weapons to agree to give them up, and so it also is futile to support a campaign to demand that they do. To campaign for this impossible demand would divert time and energy from campaigning for world socialism, the only framework within which disarmament, non-nuclear as well as nuclear, will ever be achieved.

Wars are built into capitalism. Preparations for war, the threat of war and actual wars will remain one of capitalism’s features as long as it lasts. Wars are fought between capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, investment outlets, and strategic points and places to acquire and protect these. Initially, such disputes are dealt with through diplomacy.

However, in such diplomatic negotiations, the military strength of the sides plays an important part in the outcome. In international relations between states, ‘might is right’ and always was even before Trump openly admitted this to be the case. All states, therefore, have an interest in equipping themselves with the most up-to-date and most destructive weapons that they can afford, including nuclear.

As long as capitalism continues, it can be expected that more and more states will seek to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Some will succeed despite the efforts of the current nuclear-armed states to try to prevent this, in their own interest to deprive weaker rivals of the added bargaining strength that possessing such weapons would give them.

Even if nuclear weapons were to be outlawed (which they won’t be), wars would still continue and cause the immense destruction and mass killing that they always do, as can be seen from the current non-nuclear wars going on in Ukraine and Gaza.

The only way to get rid of nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear war and its consequences for the future of humanity is to get rid of capitalism. This means that the efforts of socialists should be aimed at persuading workers to take political action to end capitalism and bring in its place a world society without frontiers in which the natural and industrial resources of the planet will be the common heritage of all. In short, worldwide socialism.

Then, and only then, will the threat of war, non-nuclear as well as nuclear, be removed and humanity be in a position to set about re-orienting production away from seeking profits and accumulating capital to solely and directly meeting human needs on the basis of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’.

What 'peace dividend'? (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many workers believe—or, until the Gulf crisis, believed—that with the end of the Cold War peace has broken out and that as a consequence the demand for war weapons has gone into a permanent decline, so that the money spent on them can be directed to improving living standards and the industries producing them converted to peaceful purposes.

Talk of this so-called “peace dividend" began following Gorbachov’s speech at the United Nations at the end of 1988, since when there has allegedly been “no enemy in Europe". Tom King, the Defence Secretary said as much in a statement to Parliament on 18 June last year justifying reductions in defence spending. Then in July, as part of the defence review, he announced the cancellation of an order for 33 Tornado aircraft for the RAF. British Aerospace responded by announcing a cut of 800 in their manning on Tornado assembly. This was followed up by the announcement in November of a "restructuring” involving a cut of about 20 per cent in staff and the closure of two large sites, in Kingston and Preston. Again the recent changes in eastern Europe were cited as a factor. The future of the European Fighter Aircraft (EFA), already hazy, has become more doubtful still following German reunification and the resulting reassessment of German military requirements.

Arms still in demand

This is not a new situation. The demand for arms fell temporarily after the Boer War and after both World Wars. In 1902 and 1918 workers lost their jobs as a result. There were also campaigns for diversification and the manufacture of alternative products at armament plants such as Woolwich Arsenal, which had little success despite some support from local councils and chambers of commerce. In 1945, while there was again a temporary slump in arms production, capitalism went into a boom phase which minimised the disruption. In none of these cases, however, had peace broken out. Indeed in 1945, following the defeat of the Axis powers, two new aggressive power blocs formed immediately and the demand for military equipment duly recovered.

This conflict—the Cold War—has now come to an end, at least temporarily. The main reason for this has been the need for Russia to take time out to give urgent attention to its ailing economy. But the basic cause of war, the struggle of competing capitalist rivals for raw materials, trade routes, markets and strategic areas, remains untouched. This may cause the Cold War blocs to re-form at some future date. Or future superpower conflicts may increasingly take the form of local wars on the Korean and Vietnam lines, as this in theory reduces the chances of a nuclear holocaust which would be an overkill even from the capitalist viewpoint. The danger of such a holocaust, however, will remain as long as capitalism does. None of these scenarios, needless to say, in any way remotely resembles peace.

The truth of this is underlined by the current Gulf crisis and the Iran-Iraq war which preceded it. This conflict is so brazenly a struggle for control of the world’s oil supplies as to be reminiscent of the period prior to World War 1, before so-called "communism” and fascism arose to be used to mask the true cause of capitalism’s wars. Indeed so clearly does this current conflict illustrate the truth that further comment would appear superfluous.

Patriotic unions

The current "crisis" in the arms industry (notice how any suggestion of peace leads to talk of a crisis!) will not prove lasting. That does not mean that the working class, through the trade unions, should not do all they can to minimise the effect of the present downturn. Just as pressure to defend real wage levels can succeed, because the cost to the capitalist of a strike may he greater than that of conceding, so for a similar reason redundancies may be reduced, by determined militant action, below the original figure demanded by the employers. Socialists fully support and participate in such efforts.

However, what we have been seeing from the trade unions goes far beyond this and is not acceptable from the socialist viewpoint. Basically it amounts to an attempt to reform capitalism in order, so they hope, to keep their members in employment. MP's are lobbied, the capitalist government is approached, searches are made for other possible sources of investment and if found support for them is asked for. The unions have even been demanding that the government revoke its cancellation of the Tornado order!

That is not to say that such attempts are doomed to failure. By and large, however, they come from an attitude in which fantastic and utterly useless remedies are being put forward, something that is not confined to armaments workers of course. Sometimes sections of the capitalist class lend some support if they see a prospect of profit, but it will of course be support on capitalist conditions, which cannot be of any real benefit to the working class.

We can see in such thinking a reflection of the attitude of the Labour Party to which the unions are unfortunately still wedded. The Labour Party is mainly composed of workers who believe that Labour politicians can run capitalism better than the capitalists. The example of Solidarity in Poland, originally a trade union, but which sprouted a political wing that now forms a government which is enforcing draconian austerity measures ought to serve as a warning to the super-reformist (and often super-patriotic) British trade unionists who are so numerous in the aircraft industry.

There can be no compromise with capitalism, and no matter how desperate the short-term situation may be, workers should not entertain such ideas. What may look on the surface to be just a compromise, will always prove in the end to have been surrender.

E. C. Edge

Excuses and Admissions (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

When he was Prime Minister, and a plain Mister, Earl Attlee made something of a name for himself as a calm, quiet, pipe smoking, doodling, ruthless chief. Now that he is in retirement, his views are much sought after by the newspapers, radio and so on, who presumably think that there is nothing so sage and objective as the opinion of the elder statesman. A few months back, Earl Attlee went to a meeting of the World Association of World Federalists in Bonn and there made the sort of speech which was expected of him. In the course of that speech he said, as an indication of the urgency of resolving international disputes, that there were “… not more than ten years in which to find the road to peace.”

Now this was something of an admission. If there was one thing for which the last war was suppose to have been fought, it was to ensure a peaceful world. Earl Attlee, as Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition, played his part in promoting that idea in the minds of war-weary workers. Yet here we are, fifteen years after, still apparently looking for the road to peace.

Of course, Earl Attlee’s statement is by no means exceptional. Many politicians have a seemingly infinite capacity for explaining away, and promising to remedy, the malfeasances of capitalism. Whatever the strife and poverty which may be evident at any time, there is never a shortage of smooth politicos, each with his solution to the world’s problems and the hope of better times to come, when we have found the road to peace or prosperity or some other paradise.

Take, for example, the recent trouble in Laos, over which the State Department displayed its famous trigger-neurosis. A popularly touted solution to this flare up was the recall of the 1954 Geneva Conference. This, we were invited to believe, would do something to settle the Laos disturbance. But this is what the 1954 conference was supposed to have already done; remember the knighthood which Anthony Eden received for the part which he played in it? Now we have evidence that the disputes in Indo-China are as rife as ever. The new trouble spot—Laos—was, in fact, established as an independent state by the Geneva Conference as part of its supposed peace making. What reason is there to assume that another conference would have any more lasting effect than its predecessor? None whatever. Nevertheless, this is all that capitalism’s representatives have to offer.

It is true that these conferences sometimes seem to bear fruit. But this is only a superficial impression; actually, they can only ever manage to suppress one aspect of a particular problem, which is simultaneously in evidence, or about to emerge, somewhere else. Consider the case of Cyprus. For years, the Greek Cypriot nationalists fought the British forces on the island, taking occasional time off to kill Turkish Cypriots or their own traitors. Then came the Zurich Pact which, when the various disagreements had been hammered out, seemed to have put an end to the fighting in Cyprus. Now, apart from the odd settling of a score which was made during the emergency, all is peaceful on the island. What about the rest of the world? We have already mentioned Laos; the war in Algeria goes on; the Belgium Congo is still in bloody confusion. And we know that, if an international conference were to settle these conflicts, similar problems would spring out somewhere else. Perhaps, even, in Cyprus again. This may make the conference look pretty sick as a pacifying instrument, but we can depend on it that it will not prevent the politicians from offering it as a remedy when the world’s next sore spot breaks out.

This is not peculiar to the international scene of capitalism. At home, the working class are familiar with—and, sadly, receptive to—the excuses and nostrums which flood from the organs of capitalist opinion as fast as the events which provoke them. Sometimes, directly opposite solutions are proposed for the same problem. The government has stated that, to stabilise the British economy, they must impose some strict controls over hire purchase facilities. In contrast, there are many spokesmen for the industries which thrive on H. P. who take the view that the way to stabilise the economy is to remove, or at any rate to relax, those restrictions. Neither side has any interest in pointing out that the H.P. boom, and the recession which followed, is an example of the fundamental anarchy of capitalist society. At least one firm in the domestic appliance industry felt the H.P. cuts extra keenly because, when the restrictions were off, they invested in a lot of extra productive capacity to enable them to exploit the market which had opened before them. When the squeeze came, this production—and a lot of workers— became redundant.

Is it too much to hope that the redundant workers will reflect that they have been caught in something which, we were assured, could never happen again? Some capitalist economists are fond of blaming the 1929 crash onto the fact that, in the excitement of the preceding boom, there was a lot of reckless investment which was bound to collapse sooner or later. This was supposed to have taught everyone a lesson. Yet some of the stories which have gone the rounds in the City about the recent collapse of a couple of H.P. finance companies almost recall the days of the South Sea Bubble (although admittedly no company has again reached the blissful state of raising capital to finance “an enterprise the nature of which is to be divulged”.) In their eagerness to exploit the boom the financiers trusted their weight to as creaky limbs as their forebears did in the twenties. Whatever other changes there have been, the basis of capitalism—production for sale—remains. And with it remain the anomalies and upheavals, try as the politicians may to explain them away.

What is to be done about this? Should we look for better politicians, with better excuses? Self evidently, this is futile. Wars, uneasy peace, booms, slumps, poverty are part of capitalism because they spring from the roots of that society. No politician, however smooth, can change that. This, strangely, must be done by the working class over the world. These are the people who produce our wealth, suffer capitalism’s wars and its insecurity. Now, they accept their leaders’ excuses and apologies. As easily, they could reject them.

Ivan

Alternatives (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Meet the New Year, same as the Old Year’ to paraphrase Pete Townshend. Which begs the question, will we be fooled again?

Certainly January 2026 seemed to be serving up familiar news items. Putin continuing to pound Ukraine, Trump similarly enhancing his country’s democratic credentials through a military adventure in Venezuela to kidnap their president and his wife. Xi Jinping in Beijing must surely be casting covetous glances at Taiwan while feeling on-trend with his fellow presidents.

Israel continues air strikes on Gaza while, no doubt, Hamas quietly bide their time plotting another blow for liberation, perhaps by killing more kids at a pop festival. Meanwhile Iranian state forces have been slaughtering protesters who are sick of the repressive theocratic regime.

Meanwhile in good old Blighty, the Labour government continues to demonstrate that inequality cannot be taxed away. The Prime Minister, posturing on the international stage, pursues his partial morality by speaking out in condemnation of Russia’s assault on Ukraine while remaining silent over USA’s incursion into Venezuela.

Rather than New Year resolutions, what is required is New Year revolution, initially in people’s thinking. As long as nationalist concepts continue to be entertained to a greater or lesser extent around the world, nothing fundamentally can change.

Wars and armed conflicts will continue to kill, almost without discrimination, huge numbers of men, women and children. Each death utterly preventable. To continue to support, actively or passively, maintaining the present system is to support the killing.

New Year’s resolutions are largely wishful thinking, largely forgotten halfway through the month. However, to make a telling change in the world in favour of the vast majority does require resolution. A resolve that will be challenging and will be challenged. It’s either passive acceptance of the status quo or the active and conscious pursuit of an alternative society.

Early alternatives

Emerging capitalism spawned attempts to bring about political change and establish ideal, cooperative communities. The seventeenth century, during the upheavals of the English Civil War, saw the rise of two such movements.

The Levellers were concerned with political and legal changes via extended suffrage, annual parliaments, religious freedom and equal justice for all. Printed manifestos were the main campaigning device, allied to public debates such as those in Putney. Influential for a while within the New Model Army.

The Diggers focused on economic change through the abolition of private property, common ownership of land, communal farming and the ending of wage labour. Themes that continue to resonate with socialist thinking of the present day.

The difference between the two groups also continues to persist, agitators for political change on one hand, direct action communalists on the other. Little recognition at the time that the two elements are intimately connected.

The political establishment of the day, the Commonwealth under Cromwell, produced its own Agreement of the People marginalising the Levellers. Meanwhile the Diggers were subjected to legal action and violence for their occupation of land.

So the new governing force did what subsequent governments continue to do to the present day, that is defuse radical aspirations through short-term measures that really changed nothing significant in the political and economic relations as experienced by the vast majority. However, the way had been opened for the rising capitalist class to usurp the fading power of feudalism that eventually re-divided the people into two classes, capitalist and workers, a situation that still persists today.

Brutal conditions

The brutal conditions workers had to endure when industrial capitalism was enacting its steam-powered revolution produced an inevitable reaction. Combinations, early trade unions, met with an outright ban initially, while the Luddites faced deployments of soldiers and the hangman’s noose as governments did little to mask their sympathies.

There were capitalist employers who did take a more enlightened view, seeing no benefit in overworked employees living in squalor. Famously, Robert Owen ran the New Lanark manufacturing community on the banks of the Clyde. Reasonable living and working conditions, at least by the standards of the times, along with health and education services were undoubtedly an improvement. The fundamental aim of that community still remained the creation of profit.

Owen demonstrated that the profit motive could be well served, perhaps better served, through a more-or-less contented workforce. This was an early example of welfare capitalism, what would become social democracy on a national scale. As an alternative to the miserable slums in which so many urban workers then existed, New Lanark would have been acceptable. It was not, though, any sort of alternative to capitalism, but an indication of how it would develop as a functioning society.

Owen would go on to become involved with the New Harmony utopian community in Indiana. 20,000 acres along the banks of the river Wabash. He is often credited with being the founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. Perhaps he was also an early syndicalist through his involvement with the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union, the attempt to have a national trade union for all workers. An aim of the GNCTU was to use the combined power of all workers to assume control over industry to be operated on their own behalf. A general strike was envisaged as a means to this end. New Harmony, the GNCTU and the co-operative movement patently failed to bring about an alternative society as the whole world continues to be capitalist.

Modern failures

There have, of course, been many subsequent political movements and parties expressing their intention of overthrowing capitalism in favour of socialism. One strand of this has been social democratic gradualist organisations proposing to reform away capitalism. Despite at times succeeding to enact reforms that have achieved significant – usually short-term – beneficial changes, these parties have failed to maintain those improvements and, instead, have largely become managers of society on behalf of capitalism.

A variety of Leninist parties continue to advocate their own revolutionary model. However, wherever their designs have been realised subsequent to the Russian Revolution of 1917, they have only produced state capitalism in one form or another. None have at any time been socialist societies.

A truly socialist society means common ownership of the means of wealth production meeting everyone’s self-defined needs, with people freely contributing their talents and abilities, a society without money, democratically achieved worldwide through the conscious action of the vast majority, the workers.

Capitalism for ever?

Absolutely a huge task, but one that must be undertaken if there is to be an alternative to economic hardship, rationing of resources by ability to pay, and an almost continuous waste of life and resources through war. Otherwise these features of capitalism will simply continue ad infinitum.

The task of motivating a vast majority of the world’s population of 8 billion or so to embrace the concept of socialism and act in concert to realise this concept precludes there being any ready formula concocted by a minority. Those who would be vanguards to act on behalf of that majority are bound to fail. Only by common consent and commitment can the majority identify what needs to be done and institute those organisations required to deal with the process, overcoming obstacles already known and those that will undoubtedly arise.

This requires individual resolution to bring such change about, acceptance of responsibility as there is not, and cannot be, a leader or party who can do it on people’s behalf. Looking beyond those from left, right and centre claiming they have the way forwards.

It is for socialists, however few in number at present, to maintain the broad principles of socialism in the public domain and advance where and when possible. There can be no short cuts whatever others might claim to the contrary. On hearing any such claim, recall the title of The Who song alluded to at the start: ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. Take it to heart.

D.A.

Letter: Supporting a Capitalist War for Freedom (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (S. H. O., Highgate) puts the following question : —

“Suppose, in the recent crisis, one had to choose between a certain suppression of freedom of expression and association (as, for example, is at present enjoyed by the S.P.G.B.) and fighting in a capitalist war, with, nevertheless, a chance of preserving such freedom, what should the Socialist decide to do? 

“N.B.—I am not implying that such was the choice; I am asking you to suppose it was.”

Reply

Our correspondent’s letter well illustrates the difficulty of giving a satisfactory reply to a question based on a hypothetical case. What line Socialists should follow in a given situation must depend upon a consideration of all of the important factors, but in any hypothetical case some important factors are not stated, and the situation itself may be one which, in the opinion of the Socialist, could not happen.

In the present case our correspondent tries to give the hypothetical situation actuality by instancing the recent crisis; but this is not a legitimate parallel, for the recent crisis was not a situation in which the assumed choice of alternatives presented itself.

Our correspondent does not explain how opposition to a capitalist war could make certain the suppression pf freedom of expression, etc. Does he mean that defeat in war by Germany would make that result a certainty? If so, we must reply that there can be no certainty about it. The German capitalist class (like their British counterparts) are interested in the acquisition of colonies and markets, and in weakening the armed forces of their rivals. It is impossible to say what their wishes about the form of Government of Great Britain would be. One guess is as good as another. If a victorious German ruling class shared Mr. Winston Churchill’s view about dictatorship they might even use their influence to prevent it in this country.

Mr. Winston Churchill: “I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war, I hope we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations.” (Daily Telegraph, November 7th, 1938.)

Actually, it is the attitude of the working class which is in the last resort decisive. If Fascism arose in Britain, with or without war, it could only be because the British capitalists wanted it and the workers supported it or were apathetic.

Our correspondent does not mention, and may have overlooked, that the line to be followed by Socialists is not one for British Socialists alone but for all Socialists. His proposal can, therefore, be tested by its application in other countries.

The British-French capitalists would be waging war in defence of their class interests, in alliance with one or more of the Russian, Polish, Turkish, Yugo-Slav, Italian or Rumanian dictatorships. Socialists in those countries would be in a position of having to support their own dictatorships and thus give up their own struggle for “freedom of expression and association.”

But if it is desirable for Socialists to fight in a capitalist war because of the chance of preserving freedom of association in one country, it must logically be equally desirable to fight in a capitalist war because of the chance of gaining such freedom in another country. Consequently, the Socialists in those dictatorship countries would be considering helping the “enemy” group (Germany and her allies) against their own Governments, because defeat of their own Governments might assist the establishment of a democratic or, at least, a weaker Government, and give them freedom of association. (This line was followed by some alleged Socialists in 1914.) Then the Socialists of the world would be fighting each other, all on the basis of the principle contained in our correspondent’s question!

As against such opportunism we say that Socialists must maintain the independence of the Socialist movement and its international solidarity, recognising that the preservation of freedom of expression depends ultimately on the degree of class-consciousness of the workers, and war weakens that class-consciousness.

Ed. Comm.

50 Years Ago: Enoch Powell & war (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enoch Powell is no friend of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. His divisive views on race are enough to make any self-respecting Socialist shudder. Yet amongst politicians he is undoubtedly one of the more coherent defenders and theorists of the present social set-up. His opposition to government spending, for example, does not extend to the police or prison services. He is in no doubt that crime is an unavoidable part of competitive society and maintains that economies in this field can only hamper the smooth running of that system. On inflation, too, he is uncompromising. He fully understands that inflation is caused by governments having an excess of paper currency printed, an explanation given (although Enoch may not realise it) by all Socialists since Marx.

In a recent edition of the BBC’S Any Questions Mr. Powell “came clean” once again, this time on the subject of war. He expressed the view that, with nations obliged to defend their interests against possible attack by outsiders, all grandiose, well-meaning schemes to disarm or to abolish war were pie-in-the-sky; the best governments could do was to stave off for as long as possible the wars that were bound to break out sooner or later. This is a bold, objective description of conditions in the world today and we must congratulate Mr. Powell for his frankness and lucidity. (…)

Enoch Powell is simply acknowledging what we have said: in a commercial, nation-divided world, war is inevitable. If the politicians are unable to avert wars, it is quite simply because they are committed to looking after a system that breeds them.

What is our alternative? We suggest a truly united, wholly democratic world with no nations, no money and with the satisfaction of human needs as its first priority. Impossible? We don’t think so. All that is in fact needed to bring it into being is peaceful political action by a convinced majority of ordinary people.

[From ' Enoch Powell & War' by HKM, Socialist Standard, January 1976.]

Abolish the cause of war (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

That “the old order changeth” is a statement that few would now contest. Not only have individual capitalist owners been replaced by huge corporations and state ownership but the face of the world has been changed within living memory. Gone is the ramshackle empire of the Russian Czar, the German empire of the Hohenzollerns, the Eastern empire of the Japanese, the self-contained policies of the Americas, and the vast colonial empire of the British. In between the two wars the Nazi and Fascist empires had a brief though hectic existence.

In spite of these tremendous and far-reaching changes one thing has not altered—the exploitation of the wealth producers. The changes have only been changes in the composition of the groups that live out of the surplus wealth wrung from the toil of the workers of the world. The workers as a class still receive in return for their labouring only sufficient to enable them to live at the level required in order to carry out the work they have to do. Even that is only true in “good” times; in “bad” times starvation or semi-starvation is frequently their lot. All the time they are harassed by insecurity, for they are never sure how long their jobs will last nor what prospects they may have of getting another one at the same standard of living or even below.

The last thirty years have brought into greater prominence another form of insecurity, the insecurity of life itself, brought, about by the expansion of wars and of the means of destruction developed by warfare which threaten the existence of both the members of the fighting forces and those behind in their homes. All the fine schemes for outlawing war, building up League of Nations and United Nations organisations, as well as limiting armaments, are rendered impotent by forces and ideals that are the necessary product of the present social organisation which drive the privileged groups into conflict over the plunder extracted from the labour of the workers. A little talk awhile there is and then—breath-taking plunges into the production of means of warfare that successively increase the weight of the staggering burden of armaments. In 1914, and again in 1939, we were assured that the war, in which millions lost their lives and millions more suffered injury, hardship and misery, was a war that would end all wars. Now we are threatened with another war which promises to reduce to insignificance the terrible results of all previous wars.

All the boasted intellectual eminence at the disposal of governments is incapable of solving the problem of war and this impotence is made plain by the disagreements between the “experts” and their attempts to blame “the other fellow.” In this also there has been no change ; the general propaganda justifying going to war uses arguments that are as old as war itself. And yet the real solution to the problem of war is a simple one, but one that only the workers can apply. The solution is simply to abolish the cause of war

What is the cause of war? We have said wars are struggles between privileged groups over the plunder extracted from the workers’ labour. What is this plunder and how is it extracted?

The workers in the extractive, productive and transport industries produce the wealth of the world. The worker works for a period and receives in return for his labours a wage or salary. The total output of the workers is sold for a price that is greater than the price the workers receive (expressed in wages or salaries). This surplus, which costs the privileged class nothing, is taken by them and it is out of it that they live, some in stupendous luxury. Broadly speaking the more that is sold of what the worker produces the greater is the surplus to be divided among the members of the privileged class. Consequently this class (or rather those who act on its behalf) is constantly engaged in increasing the amount of capital invested in industry, finding more prolific sources of raw material and expanding the market for the goods produced by the workers.

Although members of the privileged class, the capitalists, have a united interest, the interest of plunderers, as opposed to the interests of the working class, they come into conflict with each other over the division of the plunder. Hence sections of the privileged class fight each other over spheres for the investment of capital, over sources of raw material, over markets for the sale of commodities and over trade routes to markets and to sources of raw material. It is these conflicts that at times flare up into wars, and, as we have shown, they have their fundamental source in plunder wrung from the workers. Therefore the only way to abolish war is to abolish its source—plunder. And that is where the workers come in, because it is they alone who can accomplish this job.

Is it necessary to urge that the workers have a vital interest in abolishing war? Hardly—the devastation of the last war and the promise of the next should be sufficient to compel them, even if they only want to live, to spend a little time and mental energy pondering over the problem. Here is a simple solution which must be obvious to any worker who will clear the capitalist cobwebs out of his brain for a few minutes.

The wealth that is produced is the result of the application of human energy to the material provided by nature. The people who apply this human energy are members of the working class employed as labourers, mechanics, managers, foremen and so on—people who have to sell their energies to a privileged class for wages or salaries. The capitalist as such is not engaged in industry; he may be touring the world, feasting or hunting or dying, but wealth production goes on just the same—he is simply a parasite upon industry; his disappearance would therefore have no direful consequences to industry. As the workers run industry today for the benefit of a parasitic class they could just as easily run it to-morrow for the equal benefit of the whole human race. This would involve the common ownership of the means of production and the abolition of all forms of privilege that arise from private property ownership. This is the only solution to the problem of war and to all the other evil consequences of Capitalism from which humanity is suffering.

Gilmac.

Election Special: The Socialist Party and War (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody in his right mind wants war. Yet so far this century, there have been two world wars and countless smaller ones — and the threat of another catastrophe hangs over us all the time. Such is the contradictory nature of our capitalist world that the very thing—peace—which everyone wants seems impossible to obtain.

But “peace” will be a promise you will find in every capitalist party election programme. All of them will undertake to have this as one of their chief goals and will assure you that only a vote for them will ensure real progress towards it. Never mind that they have supported previous bloodbaths and helped to send millions of workers to their deaths. Never mind, either, that to a man they insist on the need to retain armaments—in fact to refine and develop them to a terrifying degree. They say that these arms are for “defensive” purposes, of course (no weapons are ever for “offensive” purposes). Yes, they will tell you of their desire for peace just as surely as they are getting ready for the next war.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has consistently opposed all war and has never ceased to point out its futility. Despite the claims of the politicians, war has solved no working class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of them at enmity with each other in the interest of sections of the capitalist class. Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the methods of warfare impressed upon them so that they are impregnated with the idea that force, and not reason, is the way to solve all problems.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain have maintained, against such reformist organisations as the C.N.D., that war has its origin in the capitalist system of society. Under capitalism the profit motive dominates production, causing competition for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, etc. War is in fact an expression of this competition in armed terms.

Socialism—the common ownership of the means of life—is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions which breed war, because it is a society in which the people of the world will work together for their mutual benefit.

Fools learn by experience. And so do other people. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Have Left Behind.

It was the custom, but a short while ago, to attribute to savage life a setting of perennial violence and promiscuous murder. It was the custom, in days yet no further from us than their rose-scents endure, and their laurels keep their freshness, to acclaim our exalted civilisation, and to gasp at the completeness of our conquest of ourselves by ourselves, and our triumph over external conditions—with the aid of God, and of parson, and of men like Mr, Lloyd George, and Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Berry, the celebrated hangman, of course. It was the custom to search the world for the Molochs of other worships and the Juggernaut cars of other civilisations, and to use them as pin-flags to mark the course we have followed and the giddy heights we have achieved above them.

Who does not remember for what bloody butcheries and devastating conquests excuse has been found in the tyranny of native rulers and insecurity of native life ? The “poor black” could never be sure, when he put his head out of his kraal in search of his morning paper, that some earlybird with a highly developed sense of humour and a capacious knife was not going to tumble that head into the milk-can. And it was suspected that, hidden away in the fastnesses of primitive forests, woolly-headed, dusky Camp­bells and Booths and other bogey-men were mixing up the trade of restaurateur with that of juggler, and administering the Communion with such grim realism as rendered superfluous the pronouncement “This is His flesh.” Such offences against the nostrils of “our common humanity” invariably called aloud for expeditions composed mainly, after its human components, of those well-known civilising agents, bullets, bibles, and booze (three out of the famous “Four B’s” of Christian pioneering—the missionary was the fourth).

Love’s Labour Lost.

Many an expedition, armed to the teeth for butchery, has left our shores on the pretext that the barbarities of little-known people shock the world and are a danger to civilisation ; many an expedition, reddened to the ears with butchery, has justified its orgy of rape and murder by grim tales of mountains of skulls discovered in some dusky potentate’s backyard. Civilised ruling classes have been touched to the tenderest cores of their tender hearts by savage brutality, and have expended much blood and treasure to correct the idiosyncrisi.es of the Mahdis, and clear up the messes of the King Coffees,

And now what a spectacle the Christian rulers of Christian lands present to the astonished eyes of savagedom !

All former hates and blood-lusts pale into insignificance compared with the consuming passions that run riot through the breasts of “civilised” men ; all former wars become mere local disturbances by comparison with this ghastly struggle which is turning countries into cemeteries and civilisation into an instrument of bloodshed; all former barbarities, whether of African despot or Asiatic ravager or European money-hunter, are eclipsed by the callous brutality of the means by which all the combatants alike seek to put out the lifespark of men in this last great crime which reveals the true visage of capitalism.

What irony survives the shock of events ! It was the complaint of multitudes, when we Socialists delivered the Socialist message in the pre-war days, that any attempt to establish society upon a basis of common ownership must lead to bloodshed. The fear of such a contingency has closed to our message the ears of many whose logical faculties could permit no other escape from the general truth of our conclusions, but who had not yet appreciated the veracity of Mr. Churchill’s dictum : “There are worse things than bloodshed.”

If Blood be the Price—

But to those who feared so much the giant figure behind the Socialist banner what has capitalism presented—and what has it yet to present ? In the first year of war about 85,000 British lost their lives in operations by land and sea, and a month later a military member of the House of Commons told us that “we have hardly yet wet our shoes.” A Paris journal. “L’Oeuvre,” in an estimate widely quoted by the Press of this country, states that up to the end of last February, that is when the war had been in continuance only half the time that it has now. France had lost in killed alone 304,000 men, Russia 850,000, Germany 975,000. Austria 1,400,000, while the total losses in killed of all the belligerents exclusive of Turkey were 3,689,000.

If we had not wet our shoes in September we had not even soiled them in February. Since then there has been colossal fighting on the eastern front and terrible work and suffering in Gallipoli ; since then there has been a costly attack and advance in France, while in addition Italy has entered the arena and made some progress in running up a tragic bill. What, then, must be the appalling death-roll now, with this second seven month’s lighting added to the first ?

Nor is it only in this direction that the war is robbing Socialism of its terrors. Many people in the past have stumbled over the idea that it is only the free play of capitalist competition that makes the world go round, and that without this stimulus to endeavour the means of production, wonderful as they are, would not suffice to support the race, and chaos and ruin would at once overtake us. But what do we find ; where does the war demonstrate the truth to be ?

It is revealed in practice that military strength —which to-day more than ever resolves itself into the largest, and therefore the most econo­mical output of wealth—is in inverse ratio to the free play of capitalist competition. It is seen that, so far from true is it that the ordinary private enterprise of interested capitalists, spurred on as it is by an unparalleled opportunity for gain, means efficiency, that it means, on the contrary, misdirection, waste, and chaos which must prove fatal to those foolish enough to rely upon it.

The Failure of Private Enterprise.

It is here that the scientific German has scored heavily over the short-sighted fools who have fondly imagined that private enterprise under the stimulus of competition would suffice for nearly all things in peace and in war. For years the German rulers have had arrangements made for a wide abandonment of the competitive processes of production in event of war. At the annual military manoeuvres a large number of German factories have been put under State control and run for a fortnight under war conditions. Whatever miscalculations the Germans made as to the requirements of modem warfare, they may, at all events, take credit for recognising from the first, and long before the outbreak of hostilities, the truth of the Socialist contention that the boasted private enterprise, under the stimulus of the competition generated by the lust for profit, is a drag upon production and a fertile source of chaos and inefficiency.

Germany acted upon this knowledge, and as a result our masters are forced to confess that, other things being equal, the only effective reply is to themselves abandon private enterprise for the time. In other words, they are forced to admit that capitalist production by private enterprise is a failure, and that only production organised on a basis from which the attributes of private enterprise are eliminated can enable them effectually to deal with a situation of their own making. To this extent, therefore, the evidence of the war is a triumph for Socialist theory which we shall know how to make good use of when the war has run its course.

Some further lessons.

But another aspect of the same question provides a useful lesson and further vindication of Socialist claims. When the war broke, out the financiers and capitalist economists showed that it could not last longer than a year. The upheaval of finance, the disturbance of trade, the disruption of production—these potent factors were to cool the ardour of the most warlike in a matter of nine to twelve months, and bring peace because the resources of mankind could not support war on the colossal scale for a longer time. By all the calculations of capitalist economists, based upon the soundest of capitalist theories, the Teutonic allies, with so much of their own manhood removed from the production of the necessaries of life, with their imports and exports almost completely cut off, should have reached bankruptcy and starvation and military paralysis long before this. Yet the prognostications of the wise men, who have imagined that the only possible basis for the activities of civilised man is money, and therefore solvency, and who have stoutly denied the Socialist assertion that an enormous proportion of the human energy under capitalism is run to waste these prognostications are pulverised by the peculiarly healthy vigour of the Austro-German entity.

Of course, the seers did not realise that a country organised for war could eliminate private enterprise and profit-hunting to any extent that its government thought necessary and its capitalist element was prepared to submit to, and thus organised on a temporary basis foreign and even antagonistic to capitalism, could go on with the war in defiance of financial dictums and capitalist economic theories, to the first of which the capitalists of that country are answerable only when the normal conditions of capitalism return, and the last of which they blast for ever.

But so it has been. The rulers of the German nation have found it possible to engage over ten millions of their seventy millions population in the direct prosecution of the war in the actual fighting forces, and in the production and transport of munitions and other requisites of war. We may put the ordinary working strength of Germany—the number, that is, following any occupation (the housewife’s duties excepted)—at from eighteen to twenty millions. We find, therefore, the remarkable spectacle in a capitalist country “organised for war,” of more than one half the working population (and the most physically efficient half at that) engaged in providing the forces and means for carrying on the conflict.

It is just this that has upset the calculations of the prophets. Plain soldiers, unhampered by economic theories and financial superstitions, knew that of the conditions essential to the carrying on of war, solvency was not one. Hence they made preparations “for three years or for the period of the war.” But the theorists have had a rude awakening. It comes as a surprise to them to find that while the ordinary processes of capitalism were suspended, and to the extent that they were suspended, bankruptcy was a word without significance. It comes as a shock to them to find that the country best organised for war is forced, when up against the military resources of the greater part of capitalist civilisation. can gain additional strength only by the wider abandonment of the principles of private enterprise, and the substitution therefor of organisation on a basis which, while far as the poles asunder from Socialism, contain this element in common with Socialism, that production for profit, with its wasteful competition, gives place to production for use, with its concomitant economical co-operation.

Thus is proved the Socialist contention that capitalist production, on normal capitalist lines, notwithstanding that such vast wealth results, is an insanely wasteful process. The very fact that the capitalists themselves are compelled at a time of stress to reject it in fields essential to the prosecution of the war speaks volumes. In this, when the war is finished, Socialist propagandists will find a powerful object-lesson to put before their fellow-workers.

It is more than possible that the war will provide even more important lessons for the working class than any here outlined so far. We all know how much the governments of the “quadruple entente” are building upon a revolt among the working class of the “enemy” countries. The contingency is not by any means remote, since it might suit the book of the Teuton mili­tarists, should they be unable to stave off defeat in the field, as well as it would suit the purpose of our own masters and their allies. We should then probably see the erstwhile capitalist foes united in a bloody suppression having for its object the striking with terror anew the working class of the world.

But for the moment the lessons of the war are these: Firstly, that the evolution of capitalism, so far from freeing us from the bloody violence alleged to attach to savage existence, tends to make wars more colossal as the improvement in the means of production sets free a larger proportion of the workers for war, and more cruel as the conquests of science place new means of butchery at the disposal of our respective masters. Secondly, the war demonstrates how small a proportion of the energy of any community, with modern instrument of labour, suffices to supply the necessaries of life for the whole. Thirdly, the war reveals that private enterprise and production for profit, so long and so sternly condemned by all Socialists, is not good enough even for the capitalists when the exigencies of a vital war make it imperative for them to make the most of their resources.

These lessons of the war will go far in the hands of those who have taken up the Socialist position, when the butchers shall have decided their quarrel by the old test seeing who can pour out working-class blood the longest. They will, added to the grudging return which the capitalists of this country are already preparing for their disabled warriors, open eyes even that German bullets have rendered sightless forever. Then, with the utter wantonness of this colossal destruction of life revealed in the worsened conditions of those who are everywhere bearing the brunt of the fighting and the bulk of the suffering the working class—and with the many false friends of labour exposed and discredited for all time by their attitude during this crisis, the cause of the working class will flourish with vigour that will relieve and compensate for this dark and savage outrage upon our class.

A. E. Jacomb