Against Capitalist War! Against Capitalist Peace!

The Middle East has been an area of conflict between the big capitalist countries for more than a century. At first, it was Russia against England, France and the USA. Now, following the collapse of Russia, the USA is seeking to muscle in with its superior military forces. It is not only about oil (the supply and the price), it’s about strategic domination of the area. American capital has been hit by a very serious crisis, set to become the worst in the last 70 years, and already millions of American workers are suffering from its deadly effects. The USA therefore intends to penetrate the region with the aim of increasing profits by force of arms.

The workers are the true victims of bourgeois wars. Today, it is the American and Iraqi workers who are directly in the firing line, whether as civilians or in uniform; and then there are all the other proletarians in the adjoining areas, i.e. the Arabs, Kurds, Israelis; and finally the workers in the rest of the world, impoverished, terrorised, and repressed in the poor South as in the increasingly similar North.

Hair-splitting arguments are being deployed by equally capitalist States against the war. Not because they are lovers of peace and horrified by the imminent carnage, but because they have their own selfish bourgeois interests to protect, and don’t yet see War as necessary to defend them. The Euro coalition, in the measure to which it is resisting war, doesn’t represent a force for peace, in opposition to a war-mongering Dollar coalition, but just one of the line-ups in the fast approaching inter-imperialist conflict. From this conflict there will emerge not an impossible, different Europe, but inevitably a direct clash between global capitalist juggernauts: Europe, USA, Russia, China, Japan …, and the Third World War will be just as imperialist as the First and Second World Wars.

In England, the only solution that the assorted left-wingers, pacifists, and trade-unionists can recommend to proletarians is urging the United Nations – a gang of imperialist diplomats – to decide if war is “justified”, and maybe, why not, even launch a “peaceful invasion”. As though the U.N. wasn’t just as anti-proletarian and reactionary as the USA! It all just goes to confirm the Communist view that ‘Democracy’, the pride of bourgeois civilisation everywhere, is just a convenient cover for a deadly and well-oiled militarism; and that it serves as a brilliant ruse to get millions of proletarians, from the offices and the factories, to march off to the trenches in an orderly way.

Meanwhile, why are the trade unions just echoing the bourgeois media? Shouldn’t they be taking steps to do something about the inevitable increased exploitation, and restriction of trade-union liberties, that inevitably goes hand in hand with war? Just the rank-and-file organisations in Italy, as far as we know, have said they will declare a general strike on the day the first bombs fall on Iraq.

Capitalism thirsts for war
Only the International Working Class
has the power to oppose capitalism’s deadly plans

Only the proletariat, a class WITHOUT COUNTRY – a class which has nothing to gain from “its ruling class” achieving either economic domination or winning the war – has the historical prospect of achieving social emancipation, and has the power to impose it, against Capital’s wars and against its just as monstrous and unbearable peace. In order to become explicit, this power will need to be organised and directed: they will have to strengthen their class based trade-union organisations in order to mobilise the great majority of workers on a national and international scale. Finally, there will need to be a strong and influential International Communist Party – the indispensable instrument for leading the working class onto the front of a revolutionary opposition to imperialist war.

For the emancipation of the workers!
For class solidarity with the proletariat of Iraq and the Middle East!
Against War between States; For Class War against the capitalist regime

Feb 2003