Editorial: Who are the friends of peace?

If we could attach any importance to the claims that are made on this question the world is almost entirely populated with friends of peace. Only a handful of the hotheaded or crack-brained avow themselves to be friends of war. But as this was also true of all the governments, generals, scientists and workers before the last war and before the war in 1914 it plainly has no significance and will not help in any way to stop a third world war.

Nor do we get any further if we look to the Peace Congresses organised by the Communists and their followers. They are not friends of peace but friends of the Russian government, anxious to help that government to achieve its aims whether by peace or by war. At the recent World Peace Congress in Paris the real intentions of the majority of delegates were exposed when a Mr. Harvey Moore, K.C., created uproar among them by attacking the war in China. When he asked, “Do you want the war in China to go on until the victory of the so-called democratic forces?” “Yes,” roared the Congress delegates. “Do you want an immediate peace?” “No,” yelled back the audience (Reported in the Sunday Chronicle, 24/4/49.)

There are yet other groups, the anti-militarists, those who genuinely oppose war and declare that they will not support it. What have they to offer? One of these groups, the “League for Freedom,” with headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, has sent us some of its literature. The League’s outline of its principles is superior to much of the literature of the anti-war movement, as the following excerpt shows.

“Modern war is fundamentally a war between the ruling groups of each nation or Empire (or Republic) for power and economic domination, above all for overseas markets and the control of sources of raw material. All modern wars are essentially Trade Wars, those of 1914-18 and 1939-45, throughout their whole course, certainly being no exception. The Third World War (for which the militarists, under the domination of their political and economic masters, are already preparing) will arise from similar origins. Modern States do not fight over ideologies or ‘isms’—no matter what their propaganda agencies may put forth to the country. They fight for plunder, and it is their people who shed the ‘ blood, sweat and tears,’ that the few at the top may reap the rewards. That is the only sense in which any war is a ‘ People’s War’.”

This looks like a promising basis for a real movement against war; but the policy that follows is a pitiful falling away. The League proclaims its opposition to conscription, military or industrial, and to jingoism, and declares its support for racial equality and freedom of conscience but there it ends. The last sentence in the outline of principles is that “The League for Freedom is non-party and non-sectarian.” When we examine what the League omits to say we see how sterile such a movement must be.

The third world war, it tells us, is being prepared by the militarists “under the domination of their political and economic masters.” Logic points, therefore, to the necessity of dealing with these “political and economic masters”—but the League is “non-party.” How then does it prepare to deal with them? How will it stop the actions of those who are able to dominate because they are in control of the machinery of government and armed forces? “Non-party” means people who are either not interested in politics at all or (as is probably meant here) people who give their support to whichever party suits their tastes. But giving support to Tories, Liberals, Labourites or Communists (or to their Australian equivalents) means giving political power to parties that will prepare for and go to war, and on this the League has nothing to say, it is “non-party”!

Again, the League says that the purpose of war is plunder, and that conscription “is the scourge of the working class.” But the League, while recognising that the “ruling group of each nation” are out for plunder in war, quite fails to notice that the capitalist class of all nations is out for plunder in peace as well—the plunder of the working class. It is capitalism that is the scourge of the working class whether at peace or at war. Perhaps the League has not realised this; though such blindness seems hard to believe in those who can get so nearly at the nature of war. More probably, tactical considerations have induced the League to turn a blind eye on capitalism so that it can concentrate on war and thus not offend its “non-party” supporters of capitalism and capitalist parties. In so doing the League, like all pacifist bodies, proclaims its own futility. War in the world today is a necessary result of capitalism, and war preparations are a necessary activity of all parties that administer capitalism. All who want to be effective “friends of peace” have therefore only one course open to them, that of seeking to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism. They have to recognise for what it is the empty gesture of protesting against war while accepting capitalism. They have to come down off the non-party fence and join the Socialist movement.