The Jamaica Plan for World Peace (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard has received a circular from the United Nations Association of Jamaica containing details of yet another plan for world peace, which the Association thinks we must strive to attain by means of a world peace referendum, in which the peoples of the world could declare that they want peaceful settlement of differences by negotiation, reduction of armaments, and a ban on the use of the atom-bomb, hydrogen-bomb, germ-warfare and other weapons of mass destruction.

This kind of plan is not new. There were a number of them before the second world war. Two that spring to mind are the Peace Ballot of the Peace Pledge Union and Canon W. H. Elliott's League of Prayer, to which belonged five and a half million people all praying that the nations might be guided "as one family into the ways of peace.” Since the last war we have had Communist-sponsored Peace Conferences; a rival non-Stalinist peace conference is reported as planned in Yugoslavia; the publisher Victor Gollancz has been trying to get people together with the object of "halting the drift" to a third world war; and now the Jamaica plan has appeared.

These attempts failed to stop the second world war.

And our experience teaches us that they will also fail to prevent yet other wars. No one questions the sincerity of the people who sponsor them and take part in them. And it is undoubted that people will support them in large numbers. This is not surprising. For if a hundred people are asked if they prefer peace or war, at least ninety-nine of them will say that they prefer peace; and therefore they are willing to sign petitions for peace, or vote for it in referendums. This general desire for peace among the peoples of all countries is well known; so much so as to render almost ludicrous the solemn statement made by a Russian in the new English language paper published in Moscow: she said, referring to a recent visit to England, that "there is no doubt that the average man is very much concerned about peace.” (News, July, 1951.) Why is it that this general desire for peace has such little effect on world affairs?

The reason is that the simple question, "Are you for war or for peace? ” never in fact arises outside the pages of the latest peace pamphlet. For what the organisers of these petitions and referendums ignore is that the world to-day is divided into a number of separate states, which all have capitalist economic systems, whether the private-enterprise brand or the State-owner- ship brand is more in favour in any particular country. And these states, by virtue of the fact that they are capitalist, have interests at variance with those of other states. They must all safeguard their sources of raw materials; they must safeguard their markets; and they must safeguard and improve their strategic position in the world so that they may be able to defend themselves successfully when the next war comes. Now there are not enough raw materials in the world to satisfy all the states at the same time; more important still, there are not enough markets (other than government buying of armaments) to be able to take up continually all the products of capitalist industry when it is going at full blast; and in the all-pervading atmosphere of insecurity^ and mistrust which arises from these continual conflicts' in the economic sphere, two or more states often find themselves contending with each other over the control of some small country or island which both sides consider is vital to its safety in a future war. Each state, then, filled with suspicion at the activities of other states, tries to defend itself by building up more and more armaments. Finally there comes a time when a state sees its interests so clearly threatened by another state that it has to resort to arms to defend them, and history has to record the outbreak of yet another war.

This is half the answer to the question, “Why is the general desire for peace ineffectual in preserving it?" The other half is to be found in the fact that in each state the organs of propaganda—press, cinema, radio—are in the hands either of private capitalists, who naturally support the interests of their own state, or (in the more recently organised capitalist systems) in the hands of the state itself. And when war becomes imminent, the press and the radio do not pose the simple question, “ Peace or war? ” to the populations whose opinions they influence; they put the question in the form, “Are we tamely to submit to the enemy aggressors and imperialists, and allow our friends and ourselves to be attacked, or are we to defend ourselves and our interests in other countries?” And the effectiveness of the organs of propaganda is seen in the fact that at any rate at the beginning of a war, the great majority of the population of any country is wholeheartedly behind its government.

In peace time, no one is more vociferously peace- loving than are the heads of states. “ Our main purpose,” said Mr. Morrison in the article which Pravda printed on August 1st, “is to avoid war, to preserve peace.” Pravda replied that the real champions of peace are the Russians. But in reality there is no state, on either side of the Iron Curtain, whose main purpose is to avoid war and preserve peace. All states believe that there are some things more important than peace. For example, in the “Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks),” the author (Stalin) distinguishes between two kinds of war:

“ (a) Just wars, wars that are not wars of conquest, but wars of liberation, waged to defend the people from foreign attack and from attempts to enslave them, or to liberate the people from capitalist slavery, or, lastly, to liberate colonies and dependent countries from the yoke of imperialism; and

“ (b) Unjust wars, wars of conquest, waged to conquer and enslave foreign countries and foreign nations.”

The definition of "just wars”—wars of defence against attack or to liberate dependent countries— could be stretched to cover any and every war any country was engaged in. And” just wars” are preferable to peace, if the choice has to be made, according to them.

President Truman, though going into less dialectical detail, comes into the same conclusion. “President Truman said tonight that ‘freedom and justice are more precious* to the American people than peace.” (Daily Express, 11/1/1951.)

Events would show us this even if the speeches and writings of the leaders of states did not. When war broke out between North and South Korea, the U.S.A. thought it more important that South Korea should be kept within what it calls “the free world” than that peace should be preserved. And when the North Koreans were retreating rapidly before their enemies, China thought it more important that North Korea should be kept within what it calls “the democratic world” than that peace should be preserved. Whatever Mr. Morrison may say, all states have ends which to them are more important than the preservation of peace.

The Jamaica Plan for World Peace, and all other plans of the same kind, ignore all these facts. The Jamaican circular calls on the peoples of the world “to deliver an irrevocable mandate for peaceful negotiation of differences between nations.” This rather reminds one of the people in a tropical village delivering “an irrevocable mandate” that the tigers in the nearby jungle shall settle their differences peacefully by negotiation. One can stop the danger of fights between tigers by shooting the tigers; and one can stop the danger of war by getting rid of the capitalist system. Until we do that we will have wars. If you support these schemes which leave out of account the great central fact of the existence of the capitalist system, you are wasting your time. The only way to put an end to war is to bring about the establishment of a socialist society.

Alwyn Edgar

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.

The Armed Nation. (1909)

From the March 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The jingo spirit—commonly known as patriotism—always latent in the bosom of the unthinking worker, ready to be fanned to flame by the wiles of the pressman or orator, the strains of a brass band or sight of a bright uniform, the verse of the poet or the doggerel song of the music-hall artiste, is being aroused for the purpose of saving Secretary Haldane’s “Territorial Forces” scheme.

The beatific unanimity with which all sections of the capitalist platform and Press, from the belted earl to the sainted layman, from the Daily News to the Daily Mail, unite in the good work of persuading the propertyless that their interest, is to defend the propertied and their property—”on the cheap”—is touching in the extreme.

There is one spot of green in the wilderness, however, one oasis in the desert, and that is—the S.D.P. Through the mouths of Harry Quelch, H. M. Hyndman, Will Thorne, Sergt.-Mjr. R. Edmonson, and the columns of our “revolutionary” contemporary, Justice, we are given to understand that there is one alternative between Haldane and conscription, and that is the citizen army, as embodied in a Bill to be promoted by that sole result of 26 years of S.D.P. wirepulling, intrigue and compromise—Will Thorne, M.P.

Between the downright Tory idea of conscription, and the Liberal idea of voluntarism, there is now this difference—the first stands for open coercion, the second for insidious compulsion, as witness Haldane’s high appreciation of the “patriotic spirit” displayed by Rothschild in connection with the Alliance Assurance Company, which has adopted a rule requiring all clerks entering the service to join the Territorial Forces. But when this Bill of Bill’s is examined it is difficult to determine which it approaches the nearer.

There is a pamphlet written by the latest star turn of the S.D.P., Sergt.-Mjr. Edmonson, entitled “The National Citizen Force Bill of Mr. Will Thorue, M.P. : An Appreciation and Explanation.” The writer’s knowledge of army matters is assuredly greater than his knowledge of economics, or his service in the army was, even from a military point of view, a lamentable waste. From amidst a fanfare of trumpets and a dazzling array of ”credentials” at the beginning we gather that a standing army is “an expensive toy for the ruling class.” From the working-class point of view this is a matter of no concern, but no doubt the capitalist class are grateful for the information, and will act upon it. Well, the Sergt.-Mjr. has examined Will Thorne’s Bill, and has failed to put his finger “on any bad or doubtful points it may contain.” That’s unequivocal ! But maybe others can succeed where the gallant soldier fails.

The first clause, which proposes that, subject to certain exemptions, every man “shall be liable to military training” appears to leave room for revision—out of existence. The worker has no property to defend, therefore military training to fit him for defending that which he has not is rather superfluous—but where would Bill’s Bill be then ? This same clause “gives Ireland a chance of proving its patriotism,” and “enables Irish youth to take up arms in defence of the United Kingdom.” The Irish working man who thinks enough of the United Kingdom to put himself out to defend it must be a psychological phenomenon.

The information regarding the composition of the Administrative Council, in clause 2, is interesting, but as borough councillors and the like will not necessarily be altered to suit, this does not carry far.

We now “come to the more serious parts of the Bill,” but don’t be alarmed, ye braves ! as long as “we succeed in viewing it in an intelligent, patriotic light,” and make up our minds that “if a foreign foe attack us,” every male worthy the name of man would do all in his power to drive that foe “back from where he came,” our glorious Empire, of which we workers hold so large a share, will be safe.

And now for the call to the “aristocracy of labour.” “Trades-Unionist, you have something to defend and you know it.” So let your bosoms swell with pride, ye proud Britons, for ye have something to defend—the Sergeant says so.

The 6th clause is illuminating. “One of the duties of the National Citizen Force will be the protection of railways and rolling stock,” the other “chief duties,” presumably, will be the protection of the rest of the property of the capitalist class. That amongst other conditions should, according to the writer, “meet with universal approval.” Surely so ! Millions of working men and women have held railway stocks—or tickets—therefore every man must approve of a condition which gives him scope for the defence of his seat—or standing-room —in a third-class cattle truck.

After further elucidations the information is to hand that the labourer is worthy of his hire. That is a truism ; but when the Sergt. Mjr. informs his reader that “the soldier is very much a labourer,” that is a statement needing a great deal of qualification. The soldier performing no function necessary in an organised system of production and distribution, living, as he does, on the labour of others to whom he renders no compensating service, is to be numbered amongst the parasitic section of the community, however true it may be that he is recruited from the ranks of the working class.

There is apparently so much difference between the “free services of free men” and the “servile obedience” accorded by the rank and file to officers under the old regime, that under the proposed scheme, refusal to accord “free service” on the part of the “free men” is to be rewarded by as much as one year’s hard labour. The method of appointing officers under the Bill is by a ballot of the men, but no one shall be appointed who has not the approval of the Central Administrative Board. Consequently, the men may choose their officer, and the Board may exclude him by the conditions they impose. Staff officers shall be appointed by officers. These two rules strike our friend as democratic, and he opines that they will abolish “distinctions of class.” Proof as to how that or any other clause in the Bill can accomplish any such result is not forthcoming.

Will Thorne is thanked for his endeavours in the following terms. “Thank you, Mr. Thorne, for your brave and patriotic attempt to knock the present military law on the head in time of peace.” As to whether it would have been more or less patriotic in time of war we are not informed.

Clause 23 (and last) deals with the saving to be effected by the reduction of permanent expenses, and this is stated by the writer to be “a most important clause for the taxpayer . . . as well as from the democratic point of view.”

Now it is easy to understand the confusion of thought which has characterised the whole pamphlet. The “General” has tried to square the Bill with the interests of the working class and those of the capitalist class, seemingly in utter ignorance of the diametric opposition of those two class interests, and, naturally, he has fallen between the two stools.

The concluding paragraphs painfully accentuate this confusion, as the working class is alluded to as the “working classes” and “the masses,” and the capitalist class as “the classes” and the “dominant class,” all within one paragraph.

The tit-bit of all is the affirmation that “the National Citizen Force is the only salvation of labour.” This, coupled with a remark in an article in Justice, of February 6th, entitled “War Inevitable” by the same writer, to the following effect, is immense. “However, we are of opinion that he (the working man) would not be adverse to training under civil law, . . . but this would be too democratic for a capitalist Government to try.” If the leaders of the S.D.P. have any sense of the ridiculous they will retire, and thus remove a factor which is potent for the production of confusion in the working-class mind.

It is evident that if the citizen army is the only “salvation of labour,” Socialism cannot be so as well, therefore the S.D.P. can dispense with its affected object. Also, if it is “too democratic for a capitalist Government to try,” why does the S.D.P. accord its support to Will Thorne, and sanction the appearance of articles on the subject in Justice ?

The “War Inevitable” lucubration did not, as might have been supposed, consist of exclusive information in the possession of the T.C.P. or the writer. It was the heading of a full-page criticism of a sensational novel by one Alan H. Burgoyne, entitled “The War Inevitable,” which title, minus the article, figured in large type on the contents bills of that issue of Justice, for the obvious purpose of stimulating sales, in the typical catchpenny style of “yellow” journalism. Such enterprise should cause the Clarion and the Daily Mail to look to their laurels.

There are some curious examples of erudition in the article, amongst them being a statement that wars are sometimes set on foot for the purpose of diverting the workers from the real issue, and incidentally, of “killing off a few thousands.” This cannot be described as anything but balderdash ! The capitalist class have no need to resort to such catastrophic measures for diverting the workers : old age pensions are cheaper and more convenient, and as to ”killing off a few thousands,” from the point of view of that section of the community, the more the merrier. Besides, wars are expensive, and must imply, for a time, an excess of wages to the wage-earning class. This is not the policy of the wage-paying class—elimination of waste, not the opposite, is recognised as more to the point, as witness the growth of trusts.

Thus may one occupy the anomalous position of having as an objective, the extinction of waste, and yet of recognising that in society as at present constituted, the more waste the less want. War is instigated through the economic interests of the capitalist class of one nation or group of nations clashing with those of another. It may be engineered, partly, by a group of financiers interested in the production of stores and munitions of war,—instance, Boer War—but this alone would not be sufficient.

The working class has to clearly understand that the taking up of arms against other nations means the straining of the bond between the workers of the respective countries. The foundation of Socialism, which must rest upon the international solidarity of Labour, cannot be built up on citizen armies, neither can it have part or parcel with any scheme of armed nations.

Let there be no misapprehension on the subject of the “Armed Nation,” be it called by that or any other name. Armed forces are maintained for the purpose of holding the property and position of the robber against the robbed.

When the workers are able to dictate to the master class as to whether, or upon what terms, they shall serve in the army, then will the Social Revolution be at hand ; until that day Socialists must concentrate upon Socialism, and leave soup-kitchens and army reforms to those who, no matter what their protestations, are in the enemy’s camp.

D.W.F.

50 Years Ago: Did the Socialist Movement fail in 1914 (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We are now at the root of the whole matter of the failure of the “European Socialist Movement” to take up and maintain the Socialist position in the recent crisis. These gigantic political organisations which disposed of so many millions of votes were not Socialist organisations. They were not founded upon the principle of the class struggle. They had not done the work of politically educating their supporters. They had not built up their strength upon an electorate understanding the working-class position and desiring revolution. These millions of so-called Socialist voters did not understand the class division in society, and did not, therefore, realise the unity of interest of the workers the world over, and the clash between the interests of the working class and the master class, at every point, nationally and internationally. Their votes had been attracted by all manner of nostrums and side-issues, and simply expressed opinions thereon, and not on the vital matter of working-class emancipation.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain calls the attention of the workers of this and other lands to the fact that, founded as a political organisation upon Socialist principles, it has maintained the true working-class position in relation to the war without difficulty. We cannot boast of the support of millions of voters at the polls, but no one can point to a single word or deed of ours, in this time of crisis, which has been a betrayal of the cause of the proletariat. Well for Socialism, well for the stricken workers, well for the great cause of humanity, if, when the present riot of anarchy is over, and those who have to pay for it in blood and tears come to count the cost and apportion the blame, they realise that the political party of Socialism, weak though it was in numbers, was strong enough to denounce the war on all sides, strong enough to expose the misleaders of Labour and their purchased “patriotism”, strong enough to avow and maintain, in the face of a frenzy of insane nationalism, the unity of interest of the workers of all countries, strong enough to remain Socialists and keep the flag of Socialism flying.

[From the editorial,  'A Blow for Socialism', Socialist Standard, March 1915.]

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’.

Editorial: Principles or Expediency (1939)

Editorial from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

From its formation the S.P.G.B. took a firm stand for “principle” against “expediency,” and, unlike other organisations which also professed attachment to principle, the members of the S.P.G.B. really meant what they said and acted up to it. The controversy was not one of personalities but of a fundamentally different view of things. Yet it could truthfully be said of the advocates of expediency that most of them were not very clear about the implications of their attitude. They would say that they realised the necessity of remaining loyal to Socialist principles, such as opposing all capitalist parties, but when it came to applying the principle they would constantly find some urgent and special, but only “temporary,” reason for suspending the principle. In practice this meant that temporary became permanent, and the principle was forgotten.

The issue would arise then in just the same manner as it does to-day. There would be a Tory Government in office, and the alleged Socialists in the I.L.P. or Labour Party would say, “In principle we are as much opposed to Liberals as we are to Tories, but it would be a good thing if we were to promise to help the Liberal opposition if in return they will promise some social reform legislation.” To the superficial short view it looked good business, but the price that had to be paid far outweighed the immediate advantage. In order to help secure the victory of the Liberal Party the other parties to the bargain had to drop all pretence of Socialist propaganda and devote their efforts to convincing the electorate that Liberal social reforms were the thing that really mattered. The first duty of the Socialist Party is to make Socialists, and the policy of expediency meant the almost total suppression of Socialist propaganda.

Needless to say, when a Liberal Government was in office the expediency-mongers often transferred their allegiance to the Tory Party.

The Socialist Party condemned expediency and showed how it confused, demoralised and divided the workers. Men and women, just beginning to learn that capitalism is the enemy, would suddenly be told that it was urgently necessary to support one section of the capitalists against another. They learned to suspect their leaders, often wondering whether their chief allegiance was to their own party or to the Liberal or Tory Party. Expediency also divides the workers among themselves. It was all very well to support “Free Trade” when helping the Liberal Party, but workers in industries directly affected by foreign competition thought they had just as good a case for supporting tariffs, and the Tory Party, which advocated them. And how could the worker who was told to vote for a capitalist party and its programme of reforms go on believing that “Socialism is the only hope of the workers”?

Helping Capitalists to Power

Socialists, taking their stand on Socialist principles, went on pointing out the harm of sacrificing the substance for the shadow, the achievement of Socialism for the momentary petty concession from the capitalist class. They showed from past and present history how that policy produced only disappointment and betrayal, and prevented the growth of the Socialist movement. Above all, Socialists insisted on the hard truth that all capitalist agents who are elected to Parliament use their power to protect and preserve the capitalist system against the interest of the working class. Elect a Liberal reformer to-day on the strength of his promises and you will find him to-morrow using the armed forces to defeat a strike.

It is just the same in foreign affairs. Every capitalist and Labour politician swears his love of peace, but it only needs a realisation on the part of the capitalists that their interests are threatened to see the peace-loving politician declaring war. Liberal and Labour Party leaders, prior to 1914, were the peace-lovers; but war found them in coalition with their erstwhile Tory enemies, waging capitalist war, enforcing conscription, and so on. Only a brief while before President Wilson launched America into the War he had been elected—with the support of alleged Socialists—on an explicit promise to keep the country out of war. Chamberlain, the “peace-maker” of Munich, may be wanting war at no distant date, and if he does his way will be made easier by his reputation as a peace-lover. His present opponents in the Liberal and Labour Parties will be found helping him to win over the population to a policy of war. Expediency will again ha’ve helped the capitalist class to their task of hoodwinking the workers. Yet expediency has its surface attraction. The alleged Socialist who hails Chamberlain for preserving peace has apparently a substantial claim, just as has the opponent of Chamberlain, who urges unity with other capitalist groups, to “defend democracy.” But whichever group has its way the workers will be divided, will be deceived into entrusting control of the political machinery in capitalist hands, and will have their attention taken away from the basic fact that it is capitalism which produces wars, capitalism which stands in the way of Socialism.

Once Socialists give up principle for expediency they lose their way and get entangled in the intricate maze of capitalist political intrigue. Worst of all, they become divided, attaching themselves to different and rival sections of capitalist movements. Wars about capitalist interests masquerading as wars for democracy or nationalism are the most tragic example. Expediency in the last War naturally led to so-called Socialists fighting on the Allied side for “democracy” or “self-determination” and on the German side for “culture against Russian barbarism.”

The Czechs, who in the last War declared that they were being loyal to Socialism by fighting to dismember Austria and gain Czech independence, have their counterpart to-day in the Ukrainian “Socialists,” who are prepared to back Hitler-Germany in order to secure Ukrainian independence from Poland. One of them told a News Chronicle correspondent (News Chronicle, December 9th, 1938): “Better an alliance with the devil than continued Polish oppression.” Very short-sighted, of course, and incompatible with Socialist principle, but so is all expediency.

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.

Answer to Correspondent (1939)

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

Mr. W. E. Bell (Le Havre, France).—We have your letter and your comments on money, production, etc. Our observations on the latter can only usefully be directed towards the underlying ideas.

You find the Socialist doctrine of the class struggle hard to understand, because you do not go far enough below the surface. The great majority of the population possess little or nothing, and they must therefore live by being employed or as dependants of those who are employed. On the other hand, the minority who own practically all of the accumulated wealth are able to live on incomes from property, i.e., on the backs of the propertyless producers of wealth. The two classes have opposing interests, just as slaves and slave-owners have opposing interests.

Your idea that the capitalist manufacturer is “half financially strangled” is not true in fact. The great bulk of the huge fortunes are in the hands of manufacturers and traders, not of bankers. It is also based on a fallacy, the belief that over the whole field of capitalism there is a shortage of purchasing power. We agree that “all we require is access to the earth’s bounty,” but, unlike you, we see that the propertied class (landed, industrial and financial) will stand as one-man to prevent the dispossessed majority from gaining that access.

Ed. Comm.

Umbrella statesmen (1939)

From the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot of skits have been published about Chamberlain and his umbrella, but the real significance of it has escaped the commentators. It is that, in negotiating peace or war, it is the capitalists or their representatives who carry the umbrellas, but the workers who, when the war has started, are expected to shoulder—not umbrellas— but guns, and to blow each other to bits about a quarrel which can be made or made up by statesmen, who need to be armed with nothing more than an umbrella, a fountain pen, and the passive support of the workers themselves in order to be able to plunge the world into a holocaust of blood such as the earth has never yet seen.

R. M.

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.]

Against all war, economic and military (2004)

From the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists appreciate that the war over Iraq has drawn many workers into a political arena hitherto seen as boring and as impossible to influence from the outside. Workers once apolitical have been stirred into action by the lies, the tricks to curtail the democratic process, and the acts of violence, murder and destruction from their leaders.  Where before, whether at breakfast, in the workplace, in a café at lunchtime or over dinner in the pub in an evening, we discussed our work, sport, TV, pop music, sex and the weather or our personal pursuits, over and above our everyday troubles in life, lately we’ve seen the war over Iraq come to figure in these discussions.  Not satisfied with these usual outlets for our feelings, many have been attending the numerous anti-war rallies around the world and writing into newspapers, radio and television.  Socialists expressed pleasure in seeing so many of our fellow workers in anti-war mood, and in such numbers. 

   

But socialists are aware that in the workplace workers, anti-war campaigners and not, are soldiers in an economic war on behalf of the generals who own the businesses where we work.  We thought it ironic that workers should be so strongly united in an anti-war outlook on a Saturday, and then, back at work on the Monday, would go to war with each other, united only in an effort to win the battle for production, sales or work over their anti-war friends engaged in a similar process for other generals. A common lament from the weary and dismayed proletarian soldiers in the American Civil War of the 19th century was, We are all Americans! We socialists have a similar cry to workers in both the commercial and military wars of today – We are all fellow workers! If non-socialist anti-war campaigners only knew it, the wars of commerce lie at the root of all the military wars.

   

Sadly not a common view among anti-war campaigners, but all the signs of war are readily available if one cares to look and reflect on our day-to-day activity for just a moment.  Do not most of us work for a business to produce or sell products or provide some type of service in competition with those produced by our fellow workers who work in other businesses in the same field of activity? The products from one worker look almost identical to products from another, are made in similar environments by similar processes by workers who perform similar tasks in similar numbers and using similar tools. These commodities, whether we make them, sell or deliver them as a service, perform the same function, serve the same need, and sell for almost the same price. It is made clear to us, no matter where we work, in a supermarket, in a car or clothing factory, in a bank or a TV station, for example, that the company we work for, and by implication ourselves, are engaged in national (and international) rivalry with similar businesses all across the world. Every one of these businesses would if they could keep the whole market to themselves, and they struggle to get as much of it as they can in a game of competition – war by another name.  And the obvious end result is that the task is overdone and thus a glut is produced. 

   

Commercial conflicts are like military ones, with resources being trashed in a war for survival.  And the ruin of products coincides with the dissipation of the human effort employed in their production as well as the squandering of the quantity of the Earth’s natural resources as ingredients for their production. Perishable commodities which cannot be sold at their intended price are jettisoned into the bargain basement saleroom and then, if necessary, churned back into the soil even before the needy workers, who produced them, are allowed to have them free. The owners of the businesses where we work care not a jot for the workers when their particular war is over and they are no longer needed, due to sickness, injury on the job, the employment of new technologies, improved methodology or bankruptcy, which brings on our redundancy and poverty.

   

War includes struggles between classes, class wars between capitalists and workers.  In 19th-century France, a short civil conflict was fought between the bourgeois French National Assembly, and Parisian workers as republicans, known in socialist annals as the Paris Commune. In Britain, a civil war was waged between a feudal class and the rising bourgeoisie in the 17th century.  A war can also involve rival sections within a particular class who compete for power, as in America, where a civil war was fought between rival members of the American bourgeois class in the 19th century. There is another type of civil war which socialists cite, where in the arena of commerce, battles are waged between corporations, assisted by their (home-based) state authorities, first within national borders then steadily growing in stature to a transnational arena.

   

The now universal culture of ‘market ideology’ is the primary influence on the behaviour of humans everywhere.  The more power or money an individual or group can secure for themselves, the better their quality of life.  To be effective in their pursuit of power and wealth, whether solely by the means of commerce, or upgrading their war to the military stage, they must be indifferent to the needs and plight of their competitors; otherwise, their ability to wage war is diminished.

   

Whether a war in society is within a nation or between nations, the causes of these wars between the protagonists are of a similar nature. While the circumstances surrounding each war may remain peculiar to the time and place (the extent of dictatorship/democracy, class structure, mode of production, laws, parochial cultures or ideas or religions etc), the pattern seems to be repeated all over the world.  The owning class of one nation possesses something which that of another nation, or groups within a nation would like to possess.  These could be land, foreign trade deals, cheap labour, talented labour and property (as businesses or complete/established industries), home markets, and a natural resource as marketable asset – oil, gas, coal, iron ore, gold, diamonds, water, etc.  These are all requirements for success in making money, and with money comes power and influence for businesses and individuals.  As no one country has been endowed with a complete set of resources, there will often be a need to plunder.

   

Wars in human society take place between nations when the dominant men and women within them (the capitalist class) pursue wealth or the means to create wealth in society, using the power of their state and their labour (workers) as battering rams to defeat their enemies, which are themselves comprised of their opponents’ state machinery and workers. And where a conflict occurs within the territory of one nation, outside influences are often brought to bear. If resources are up for grabs, the capitalist grabbing class join the fray to see what they can win.

   

Only socialists can claim to be the true anti-war campaigners. Fellow workers around the world participate in anti-war campaigns, which call for the end of military wars, but none that we know of make that connection, as socialists do, to the wider society and particularly, to its mode of production and guiding ideology which promote competition among all sections of society. In campaigning solely for an end to military wars, which are but a bloody climax to the wider commercial war, there can be no hope of addressing the problems of human society today as a whole.

William Dunn

Worse than thought: In the article on Terror last month we quoted a figure of 35,000 for the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the Anglo-American invasion. Since then the medical journal, The Lancet, has estimated the number as being more like 100,000.

Violence and war: Are they inevitable? The long view (2025)

From the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

It’s become widely accepted that, for well over 200,000 years, hunter-gatherers, humans like us, lived in egalitarian societies. So why, beginning around 12,000 years ago, did most of them, within a relatively short period of time, give up that lifestyle for settled agriculture and, in so doing, move to a different way of life and new social structures, where a dominance hierarchy of the few began to take over from equality for all, leading to exploitation, slavery, violence and war?

The invention of scarcity

The answer to that is multi-faceted. But, broadly speaking, such a transformation can only have come about as a result of environmental factors pushing people into the imagined greater security that the longer-term and more abundant supplies of food and other materials derived from farming would have been capable of producing. The trouble is that, once that happened, there was no obvious going back, as it brought with it the creation of hierarchies and states and rule by those few who in previous societies would have been considered anti-social for their dominating tendencies. That minority would now have much freer rein for their deviant behaviour, resulting in struggles for power, the development of classes and rulers and ruled, and the emergence of what came to be considered natural orders headed by kings, emperors, pharaohs and high priests, with the majority living at a lower level of subsistence than as hunter-gatherers (‘the invention of scarcity’, it has been called). This in turn gave rise to full-scale predatory social systems (first slavery, then feudalism, and now capitalism) where the majority have been kept in check by tiny, privileged minorities either by the threat of violence from higher authority and/or by ideological constructs or smokescreens such as tribal loyalty or nationalism.

Original sin and the free market

In the lens of recorded history the result of these dominance structures and of the conflicts over wealth and resources that have arisen between the privileged ruling minorities has been (and still is) large-scale violence and continual wars. And over most of this history, the explanation for this found in writings, both secular and religious, has been that conflict between humans is the natural state of things. Christianity, for example, expressed this through the idea of ‘original sin’, while commentators not dependent on religious doctrine tended to come to similar conclusions. For example, the 16th century Italian political writer Machiavelli, in his famous essay The Prince, stated that human beings were ‘ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, hypocritical, cowardly and greedy’ and ‘never do anything good except out of necessity’. Similar views were expressed in the following century by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan, which argued that human beings are greedy by nature and that human life is ‘a condition of war of all against all’. The following century, the economist Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, also famously insisted that private interest (or ‘self-love’) was ‘natural’ human behaviour, justifying a society based on the ‘free market’, where everyone seeks their own self-advantage regardless of the social and economic inequality that goes with it. Some questioning of these views did begin in the 19th century with the writings of Charles Darwin and early practitioners of the science of anthropology such as Lewis Henry Morgan. But it was only in the 20th century, with the increased flowering of anthropology and the new science of archaeology, that serious doubt was cast on the belief that human beings were deep-down selfish, wicked and aggressive, as new perspectives emerged from growing evidence of how people had lived and interacted in the pre-farming era, the overwhelmingly longest period of human existence on earth.

Not that the traditional ‘fixed human nature’ view simply went away. It continued to be expressed in much popular writing in particular. Examples of this between the 1950s and the 1970s were books like Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape, Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression, Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, and imaginative fiction like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (and arguably George Orwell’s Animal Farm too). It also carried on coming from some ‘scientific’ sources, for example Richard Wrangham’s 1996 book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence and, most recently, Richard Overy in Why War (2024). Such writers tend to see war as having been constant throughout the whole of human history, suggesting that humans are war prone and have what Overy calls ‘a psychological predisposition for warfare’. And this leads that writer to conclude that ‘if war has a very long human history, it also has a future’.

But, overall, the last 30-40 years have marked a significant shift in perspectives both among social commentators and scientific experts. Among a slew of studies on this and allied topics (some of them reviewed in this journal), titles like Beyond War, The Human Potential for Peace, Team Human, Survival of the Friendliest, and Ultra-Social tell their own tale. The majority of these writings conclude from their authors’ investigations not that human beings are non-violent and non-prone to war per se but rather that violence and fighting are not their most natural inclination, even if they are capable of being driven to it by circumstances. Even the widely read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, though often cited as supporting the idea of innate human selfishness, on close examination does no such thing. In fact it is largely a book about altruism and cooperative behaviour. Even its writer is on record as saying that its title may have been an unfortunate one and that perhaps a different title such as ‘The Immortal Gene’, or even ‘The Altruistic Organism’, might have been more appropriate.

Highly flexible or pro-social?

Highly relevant in this connection too is the work of anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson, who has spent 50 years researching the origins of war and has been called ‘the greatest living scholar of human warfare’. In an article in Scientific American in 2018, entitled ‘War is not part of human nature’, Ferguson notes that the overwhelming evidence on war, which he defines as armed conflict and killing sanctioned by society and carried out by members of one group against members of another group, suggests that it was not always present among humans. Instead it began as a result of societal changes at varying times in different locations but with its earliest signs appearing around 12,000 years ago – so closely coinciding with humankind’s first experiments with agriculture. In a later article (2023) in the journal Public Anthropologist, he states: ‘Our species is not biologically destined for war. War is not an inescapable part of social existence’; and ‘Obviously, we are capable of war and often choose it. The question is whether evolution tilts us in that direction. I say no.’ His findings, he says, show that: ‘egalitarian mobile hunter foragers generally don’t make war’ and that ‘agriculture and states went along with more war’. His most recent book, Chimpanzees, War, and History: Are Men Born to Kill? (2023) reiterates this with the conclusion that ‘Men are not born to kill but they can be cultivated to kill’.

This is a perspective also echoed by Yuval Noah Harari in his best-selling book Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind (2014). Here Harari makes a clear statement about humans as essentially flexible creatures, insisting that human behaviour is shaped by the society into which we are born and become part of. He goes on to say that, if our social arrangements were determined simply by our biology, then there would never have been the wide gamut of behaviour patterns, relationships and cultures which we know about and which can also be witnessed in what we see around us now.

Some studies go even further than this, seeing humans as naturally ‘pro-social’ beings with cooperation not competition, peacefulness not violence as their intrinsic default. In such studies, qualities such as kindness and empathy are seen as existing ‘naturally’ in the overwhelming majority of humans, as long as overwhelming forces don’t get in the way of it. The historian Tine De Moor, for example, in The Dilemma of the Commoners (2015), claims that ‘history teaches us that man is essentially a cooperative being, a homo cooperans’, that ‘human beings claim togetherness and interaction’ and that ‘our spirits yearn for connection just as our bodies hunger for food’. This kind of outlook is echoed by Rutger Bregman in his book Humankind. A Hopeful History (2021) in which he presents arguments many have found compelling that the innate, fundamental default of human beings is to be friendly, communal and cooperative and that the outstanding feature of human behaviour is the desire to act together and to display tolerance and mutual support even if circumstances are dire. As part of the evidence for this he points to the plethora of everyday gestures of help, cooperation, solidarity and compassion people in all societies all over the world show to one another on a daily basis without any prospect of gain or reward. John Gowdy’s Ultra Social. The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future (2021), though in most ways a quite different kind of book from Bregman’s, echoes a similar message with statements like ‘Our current predicaments are not gene-based. They have risen out of the material base of human economies and the associated cultural adaptations and supporting institutions’ and with an insistence that, if we have a ‘nature’, it is a ‘pro-social’ one, a natural inclination, to be empathetic, associative and cooperative.

Such considerations about human behaviour have been accompanied – and often confirmed – by the more detailed and scientific studies of primeval hunter-gatherer societies that modern technological methods have made possible. A recent study, for example, analysing evidence of traumatic injuries in 189 individuals from 25 different sites revealed healed bone treatment, suggesting a story of mutual aid, patience and dedication among those people (Victoria Romano and others, ‘Bone trauma and interpersonal care among Late Holocene hunter-gatherers from Patagonia, Argentina’, International Journal of Paleopathology, December 2025, pp.10-24). It has been estimated that around one in five hunter-gatherers would have been likely to suffer some kind of injury or disability and while most wounds would have been the predictable bruises and fractures of daily life requiring only a short break from everyday activities, others were likely to have been worse, leaving individuals unable to hunt, gather, grind plants, craft tools, etc, for months, or perhaps a lifetime. Here we are presented with evidence that those suffering in this way would have been cared for by the community, even if they were not economically ‘useful’. Such research, therefore, lends weight to the ‘pro-social’ arguments many are making about a fundamentally benign human nature.

But in the end, whether humans are intrinsically ‘pro-social’ or simply highly flexible, the evidence is that, while violence and war are certainly possible forms of human behaviour as both history and the present show, coexistence without violence or war also presents itself as another possible form of human behaviour. This was a reality recognised as far back as 1985 in Unesco’s ‘Seville Statement on Violence’, in the following terms: ‘Biology does not condemn humanity to war … It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behaviour is genetically programmed into our human nature’. And the undeniable fact is that the vast majority of interactions that take place in daily life between human beings are co-operative, peaceful and harmonious, not rude or cruel or anti-social. We do not normally expect to have arguments or experience serious friction with our fellow humans in the course of our daily activities, and most of the time we don’t. And, on the relatively rare occasions when that does happens, it stands out – precisely because it is rare.

Cooperation or competition?

The broader point here is that, while we do not say that the kind of society socialists advocate and regard as eminently possible will be entirely argument or conflict free (no human society could be), we do say that the scope for argument and conflict will be far less than in the competitive, insecure society we live in under capitalism. This society, in both its ethic and its organisation, runs directly contrary to the ‘normal’ human tendency to help and cooperate with others. It drives people to compete with others, to try to get the better of them and even to do them down. It does this by tempting people with the lure of gain or reward, often financial, so pushing them to behave in ways that divide them from their fellow humans and often making the ‘success’ of one into the ‘failure’ of others. Given this reality, what is truly remarkable and significant is that, despite the overwhelmingly powerful pressures capitalism places on people to get the better of others and so not be ‘kind’ to them, in so many of the actions and connections and competitive situations created for us in our daily lives, most of us still manage to be largely kind to others, to cooperate with them and to share. In a new kind of egalitarian society, one of free and equal access, with no buying and selling or wages or salaries, with co-operative endeavour, and with technology and the abundant resources of the planet used to satisfy need and not for profit-making ends, is it far-fetched to believe that such behaviour will come fully into its own?

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

Books mentioned in the article that have featured elsewhere in previous Socialist Standards

• Sep 1969: A review of The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris.
• Aug 1993: A review of Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
• Nov 2015: A review of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
• May 2021: A review of Humankind. A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
• Sep 2022: A review of Ultrasocial. The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future by John Gowdy

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.

The weakness of the anti-war movement (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The weakness of the anti-war movement is that the majority want nothing more than a return to capitalist “peace” rather than the overthrow of the system that causes war

According to the Guardian (15 October), government ministers were genuinely surprised at the estimated 20,000 plus demonstrators who turned out the previous Saturday for a CND peace march against the war in Afghanistan. The editors of the Guardian themselves must have been surprised, since earlier the same week they had published opinion polls showing 86 percent support for the war. Opponents of the war have already had a number of surprisingly large turnouts, given the short notice and word-of-mouth methods of announcing their meetings.

On 21 September a meeting was called by the “Stop the War Coalition”, an umbrella front organisation organised under the auspices of the SWP’s “Globalise Resistance” umbrella front organisation, and the “Socialist Alliance”, another front organisation. They had booked the main hall at Friends Meeting House in London, which seats 1,200 people. In the end over 2,000 people showed up, to this snap meeting, and thus an extra hall and an impromptu out-door meeting had to be organised as well, with speakers rotating between meetings. Although a healthy turn-out, the bulk of the audience was made up of what MP Jeremy Corbyn (one of the speakers) referred to as “The Usual Suspects”. Indeed, there is every chance that a bomb strike on that hall could have wiped out most of the left in London.

A CND concept vigil was organised outside Downing Street the following day (the concept being that everyone wear black). This attracted some 2,000 people as well, and saw them lined up along Whitehall displaying placards stating that they were standing “Shoulder to Shoulder against the war”, in pastiche of Blair’s cretinous soundbite of support for the US government in its war.

In clear distinction to the recent “anti-capitalist” demonstrations, these events were attended by an immensely broad range of background and age. One of the demonstrators was old enough to recall being handcuffed to a Socialist Party member, as a conscientious objector during the Second World War. Compared with crowds at other political events, they were relatively receptive to taking the literature being distributed by Socialist Party members present.

Alongside this various committees have been formed: “Media Workers Against the War”, “Artists Against the War” and “Lawyers Against the War”, usually with a significant SWP organisational input. This mushroom-like proliferation of organisations and their prominence within the anti-war movement that exists demonstrates the degree to which it is dominated by leftist notions and agendas. The aim, indeed their very existence, is focussed on the war itself, as an immediate crisis, without developing any broad analysis of the system of society that spawned it, with themselves as the unifying organisations drawing together the disparate groups and agendas involved in opposing the war.

Many of the protestors are dyed-in-the-wool pacifists, whilst others are leftists, and still others Islamists, united only in their opposition to this particular war, not their reasons for opposing it. This was made abundantly clear at the CND march. Trafalgar Square had been booked, some time before the 11 September 11 attack, by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for their own cause, but they handed it over to CND for their anti-war march. A number of speakers, including one from the PSC, used the occasion of the war to push the Palestinian nationalist case as a cure for international terrorism. The number of mosques thanked by the meeting chair for their help in organising the event indicated why slightly more turned out in opposition to this war compared with the Kosovan conflict. The chair also thanked the Stop the War Coalition for helping organise the event. So, the front of a front was working in a front with CND to hold the march.

Speaker after speaker at each of the meetings have trotted out a long list of reforms, from George Monbiot’s suggestion of a Tobin Tax and an International Clearing House to alleviate world poverty, to Tariq Ali’s more conventional leftist approach of assessing the situation in national terms such as placing the Palestinian question at the centre, to the general cry for a standing International World Court to try “crimes against humanity”. The best CND could manage was a weak call to “negotiate”. The only glimmer of hope has been that the nebulous threat from “terrorists” has made the situation resistant to attempts to nationalise the problems into a conflict between specific states, thus speakers have had to talk much more in terms of a world solution.

The problem with this approach, above and beyond the mendacity of leftist fronts, is that it fetishises the crisis (both in philosophical, and more popular usages of the word, the latter, specifically for all the “activists” who long for a campaign to throw themselves into). It sees the immediate situation of open conflict as the problem, the simple solution of which is to simply pull back the troops. It doesn’t go beyond that to examine the fact that if states have weapons and armies, they are there to be used. It fails to look at how conflict is actually continuous in the present world. It simply adopts (and promotes) a simple moralist position, “War is bad, mmm’kay?”

Cause of war ignored

By taking the state propaganda at face value, and focussing on this war as a singular event, rather than a manifestation of historically arrived-at social relations, peace protestors are left with nothing more than vapid hopes. In ignoring this, they lose sight of the fact that we live in an economic system which drives its actors to battle against one another, in order to secure trade routes, natural resources and capital investments. This conflict is continual, the only variation being in the intensity of the conflict and the badges on the uniforms.

The leftists focus on the role of American Imperialism (with the SWP pointedly refusing to condemn the 11 September hijackers, merely disapproving of their tactics), hence their couching of their anti-war sentiments in terms of US withdrawal from the region. Such accounts present it as if the American government had some choice in pursuing an imperialist policy, that its actions result from some mysteriously gung-ho national characteristic, rather than from the dictates of capitalist economy. It also ignores the fact that if the US ceased to be the disruptive force for chaos in the region, there are plenty of willing understudies to take over that role. All capitalist states are basically imperialist in character and ambition.

That the master class of each nation needs to have recourse to violence to enforce and defend its interests in the world means that they must keep exclusive control of the states that direct those armies. The political machinery of society remains in the hands of a tiny minority so that it can be exercised to enforce the wage-enslavement of the immense majority at home, and rob the capitalists’ rivals abroad.

Hence why in Britain the decision to deploy military forces isn’t permitted to be voted on by Parliament, and why in America (as in the Kosovan war) the state can ignore the (unconstitutional in itself) War Powers Act (which, basically, states that the President may not deploy forces abroad for more than 60 days without congressional approval). The fewer hands involved in controlling the power to wage war, the better for the ruling class.

In its heyday, CND could count on having half-a-million marchers turnout to march down Whitehall to press its case for abandoning nuclear weapons. The holders of political power steadfastly ignored them, and nuclear weapons are still here. CND could march half a million down Whitehall against the war now, and the clique in charge would steadfastly ignore them again. The principle that the “masses” have no say over the means of war must be maintained at all costs. So long as the immense majority allows the state to arm itself and remain in the hands of a select few, we will have no capacity to effect war policy.

A socialist took the opportunity of an open microphone to address a Coalition Against the War demonstration from the plinth of Nelson’s Column, at a demonstration on 8 October, and point these facts out to the crowd. Hopefully some seeds of thought were sown there, and the idea that only socialism, the abolition of these conditions of war, exploitation and the existence of class, represents the practical material answer to the threat of war in all its forms will gain ground. So that, at some future demonstration, the impressive number of participants will stop chanting the puerile “Welfare not Warfare” and instead loudly proclaim their adherence to “no war, but the class war” as a means for bringing this ongoing horror to an end.

Pik Smeet