Abolish the cause of war

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 Not only have individual capitalist owners been replaced by huge corporations and state ownership but the face of the world has been changed within living memory.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 arc 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.
GlLMAC.