Answers to Correspondents: Socialism and the Armed Forces

T. SAWYER (Balham).—It is true that when Socialism is established the need for army and navy will have disappeared. Your point as to the intervention of other capitalist countries has no bearing, for Socialism is international. It is a movement of a class that knows no national boundaries, because it is to replace one that occupies an international area. The present system is so interdependent in its relations, and the master class so well organised internationally, that only an international alternative could succeed. You give no reasons why Socialism “can’t come all over the world at once.” Socialism is growing up internationally, and though its coming may not synchronise to the moment everywhere, it will be instituted internationally in the same period. Hyndman and Blatchford know that armies and navies are needed under capitalism to keep the workers down.