Election Special: The Socialist Party and War

Nobody in his right mind wants war. Yet so far this century, there have been two world wars and countless smaller ones — and the threat of another catastrophe hangs over us all the time. Such is the contradictory nature of our capitalist world that the very thing—peace—which everyone wants seems impossible to obtain.

But “peace” will be a promise you will find in every capitalist party election programme. All of them will undertake to have this as one of their chief goals and will assure you that only a vote for them will ensure real progress towards it. Never mind that they have supported previous bloodbaths and helped to send millions of workers to their deaths. Never mind, either, that to a man they insist on the need to retain armaments—in fact to refine and develop them to a terrifying degree. They say that these arms are for “defensive” purposes, of course (no weapons are ever for “offensive” purposes). Yes, they will tell you of their desire for peace just as surely as they are getting ready for the next war.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has consistently opposed all war and has never ceased to point out its futility. Despite the claims of the politicians, war has solved no working class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of them at enmity with each other in the interest of sections of the capitalist class. Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the methods of warfare impressed upon them so that they are impregnated with the idea that force, and not reason, is the way to solve all problems.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain have maintained, against such reformist organisations as the C.N.D., that war has its origin in the capitalist system of society. Under capitalism the profit motive dominates production, causing competition for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, etc. War is in fact an expression of this competition in armed terms.

Socialism—the common ownership of the means of life—is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions which breed war, because it is a society in which the people of the world will work together for their mutual benefit.