Now as Before, War on War! Fight the Enemy in Your Own Country! Workers of the World, Unite!

(Distributed on 1st May at various anti-war demonstrations)

For more than two months now, war has raged in the Balkans.

Despite what the powerful capitalist media has been trying to drum into us, war is not a phenomenon which just inevitably happens from time to time as a result of the latest mad tyrant going off the rails. War under present-day capitalism means plunder and extortion, a fight over domination of markets and sources of raw materials, and a systematic and planned elimination of surplus manpower. These destructions, and massacres of workers have the effect of temporarily rejuvenating decrepit and dying capitalism by starting up a new cycle of accumulation and destruction. Good evidence of this is provided by two world wars and the interminable minor wars since.

The general crisis of capitalism, after having swept over the entire planet bringing enormous destruction of capital and surplus labour power – as has long been predicted by internationalist communists – is now openly affecting the heart of capitalism and bringing war to Europe.

The main aim of the Pentagon strategists is to keep the Balkan/Danube zone under strict military control, since this area is the main bridgehead for any « projection of power » into several key areas: the middle East (main global oil supplier), central Asia (2nd most important oil supplier) and central Russia; thereby both blocking off competition from European imperialism as it pushes towards the East, and also any push by the weakened, but potentially powerful Russian imperialism, towards the West. The collision of the economic and strategic interests of the imperialist powers, both big and small, has had war as its inevitable outcome. So, all aspects of the present war are imperialist, even taking into account that at the moment the war is taking place in a geographically circumscribed area, and that on one side is ranged the enormous military power of NATO, and on the other the small Serbian state; outpost, nevertheless, of a second imperialist front in the process of formation. On the diplomatic, economic and military chessboards, the role of global gendarme is now exclusively filled by the United States following the collapse of Russian state capitalism. The European Union, with the economic and financial giant Germany at its head, has shown it is still a political dwarf in comparison, deprived as it is of the authority and military strength necessary to speak on equal terms with the transatlantic giant and impose its own conditions on international politics. Nevertheless, the goals of Europe and the United States are the same: imperialist domination and plunder abroad, and violent repression and exploitation of « its own » working class.

The working class therefore has nothing to gain by supporting either side.

On both sides of the battle front, the primary aim of the imperialist wars is the destruction of surplus capital – and surplus workers. The more senile imperialism becomes, the more its destructive virulence weighs down on the proletariat. If during the 1st world War, civilian victims were still considerably less than to those who died in combat, during the 2nd World War it was the reverse; a trend which has been confirmed in all the local imperialist wars since

The 2nd World War, which was passed off as a struggle between « good » democracy, and « bad » totalitarian fascism, was a ferocious war conducted by all the bourgeoisies of the world against the proletariat of all countries. The Nazi massacres of the first phase, when the German army was in retreat, were followed by the carpet bombing of the working class cities of Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin. The aim was to get the proletariat to abandon any autonomous attempt at communist revolution and become cannon fodder for the bourgeois anti-fascist resistance; fifth column of the Anglo-American imperialist powers and also of the weaker muscovite imperialism. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were warnings directed not just against Stalinist Russia, but also against the coloured peoples who were at that time embarking on national liberation struggles. Today, the incessant bombing of Yugoslavia, which have barely scratched the Serbian war machine, are being used to terrorise and kill proletarians, just as the repression inflicted on the Albanian population by the Serbian police and army goes well beyond the purpose of hitting the KLF. It all gives a good idea of what the purpose of the 3rd Imperialist War will be, which even the studies of bourgeois military strategists predict will result in 99% civilian casualties against 1% casualties amongst the military.

While all this is being got ready, the world working class remains paralysed; whether through terror induced by the allegedly invincible capitalist war machine, whether by the con-trick of democracy, or through the escape into individualism and into the multiple forms of addiction continually generated by the corrupt civilisation of the bourgeoisie.

The only thing moribund capitalist « civilisation » is able to offer is savage exploitation, poverty and war. The few crumbs that some sectors of the working class in the West still receive are paid for at a very high price, and are destined to vanish, devoured by the monster without a face, without a soul or without feelings; the monster of capitalism.

The proletariat must take advantage of these months of localised war to learn that the capitalist regime is on the brink of an abyss, and that a new global slaughter is being prepared, and that powerful new economic organisations need to be formed that will be capable of opposing the war plans of capital by mobilising the workers and utilising the weapon of an unrestricted all-out general strike.

Young proletarians, the life force of the working class need to link up with their revolutionary organisation, the international Communist Party, the one party capable of opposing the imperialist war with a social war against the regime of wage labour, of hunger, and of war.

The international communist revolution will be the start of a new epoch for mankind, which will finally be able to emerge from the prehistory of the division into classes, wage-earners, mercantilism: its name will be communism, the impossible, utopian communism.