SHALL
GERMANY RE-ARM?
An argument used by Labour Party and other opponents of German
re-armament is that the Germans have caused two world wars, are a
militarist nation and cannot be trusted. In other words that the
Germans are an “inferior race” by comparison with all or some of the
others.
In the controversy each national group can state what, in its own
estimation, is an unanswerable case. As each group maintains that is
own armaments are purely defensive, and as each can provide ample
evidence of fiendish barbarities used by other Powers in war, this is
easy. All war is bestial and no nation has a record much less
horrifying than any other. The whole argumentation is bedevilled by a
blank inability to recognise why capitalism needs arms and why wars
occur. The capitalist-minded patriots of all countries denounce the
methods used by the others but fail to recognise that they are pursuing
the same objectives in the same way. They all seek to control sources
of raw materials, seek to invade new markets, and seek strategic bases
to protect their territories and trade routes. But each and every one
regards its own activities as necessary, lawful and legitimate, and for
those who accept capitalism and seek to perpetuate it so they all are.
Given a capitalist world Russian attempts to dominate the Dardanelles
or seize North Persian oil (as in 1946) have just as much necessity and
legitimacy as the British hold on Suez or Abadan or the American
control of panama or oil resources in the Middle East. It is the law of
the jungle.
Not recognising this, those who argue superficially about war being
caused by American, Russian, British or German aims of world domination
allow themselves to be deluded into the belief that aggression is an
inherent characteristic of one particular nation or is the outcome of
some ideology. It is only necessary to glance at the present trouble
spots of the world to see how remote this is from the truth. Is it
“ideology” that sets Egyptian capitalism against British at Suez,
Russian against Turkish in the Dardanelles, French against Indonesian,
argentine against British over control of territories in the Antarctic,
America against Russia in Europe, the Pacific and elsewhere, Israel
against the Arab States, India against Pakistan over Kashmir, British
against African in Kenya? The list could be enormously extended and the
explanation in all cases is that capitalism is by its nature a
competitive, expansionist system breeding rivalry, hatred and war.
There is no way out of this terrifying threat of continuing wars except
by abolishing capitalism and establishing world socialism in its place.
(From editorial, Socialist Standard, April 1954)
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