Tuesday, January 14, 2014

WHAT WE SAID (1)

One continuing problem which capitalism has not solved is that of war. The view that capitalism causes war is not held exclusively by the Socialist Party.‭ ‬Other parties say much the same thing and like the Socialist Party called for the international solidarity of the working class.‭ ‬Although the Socialist Party contains a number of‭ “‬pacifists‭” ‬in the sense that they are reluctant to use force even to defend the achievement of socialism,‭ ‬the Party itself is not pacifist. It does not recognise an overriding moral or religious objection to the use of force in all cases. An anti-war campaign,‭ ‬as such,‭ ‬is,‭ ‬from the working class standpoint,‭ ‬absurd.‭ ‬Just as the class struggle cannot be abolished save by abolishing classes,‭ ‬so it is impossible for capitalist nations to get rid of the grim spectre of war,‭ ‬for capitalism presupposes economic conflicts which must finally be fought out with the aid of the armed forces of the State. For the capitalist class , peace is merely the continuation of war by other means, to paraphrase Clausewitz. It is possible to see in today’s successive crises, national rivalries culminating sooner or later in yet another vast blood-letting.

The marching bands and patriotic songs of August 1914 gave a romantic view to the war that led to the reality of the blood and mud of the trenches, of  daily the casualty lists published ... dead ... wounded ... missing ...There is no such thing as humaniarian or civilised war but for the capitalists these phrases are necessary. They cannot get up a war against another country unless they are able to persuade their fellow countrymen that they are fighting in defence of all that is good. They must get the latter to hate the enemy, or the odds are that they won t persuade them to kill them. When war breaks out the Socialist Party’s main aim is to warn the workers against allowing themselves to be misled by the lies of the media. 

In 1912 the Second International at their congress declared “If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective...In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule...The proletariat will exert all its energy to prevent the annihilation of the flower of all peoples, threatened by all the horrors of mass murder, starvation, and pestilence...Proclaim your will in every form and in all places; raise your protest in the parliaments with all your force; unite in great mass demonstrations; use every means that the organization and the strength of the proletariat place at your disposal! See to it that the governments are constantly kept aware of the vigilance and passionate will for peace on the part of the proletariat! ”

It was not to be, for when the war broke out in‭ ‬1914,‭ ‬nationalism proved a far stronger force than socialism.‭ ‬In the First World War a small number, nevertheless,  refused to surrender their principles to the pro-war hysteria. The EC of the Socialist Party passed a resolution declaring that any member voluntarily joining the armed forces would be required to resign from party membership. As a result, several members, forced by domestic and other pressures, resigned from the SPGB in order to fight. Most members refused to take up arms: a few remained in prison from 1916 when conscription was imposed until the end of the war: several members formed 'the flying corps', so called because they remained on the run from the authorities, relying upon the help of other socialists and their own wits in order to survive. The resignation of members who joined the armed forces, the loss of contact with socialists in prison (at least eight) or on the run or fled abroad, and the domestic pressures upon older members and women who were able to retain their membership resulted in a dramatic fall in official SPGB  membership. In January 1919 there were approximately eighty members This increased to one hundred and twenty in 1920 and one hundred and ninety seven at the beginning of 1921. compared to a a voting membership of 261 out of total membership of 484. The Socialist Party journal became a vital conveyor of anti-war propaganda. SOYMB will over the following months articles or extracts from articles from the Socialist Standard published during the war years, presenting the case against war. 

The War and You

“...When we say that this mad conflict has been long expected and well-prepared for we make a statement which is almost trite. However much the masters of Europe may have tried to hide the underlying causes and objects of their military preparations, they have never taken any pains to conceal the fact that they were arming against "the day", and that "the day" was inevitable. Miles of paper and tons of printing ink have been used in the various countries in order to disseminate among the "common" people—i.e., the working class—explanations calculated to fix the blame on other shoulders. In each country voluminous "exposures" have been made of the villainous machinations of the "foreigner", always in such deep contrast to the Christian innocence of the exposers. But so far have any of the chief parties ever been from disguising the inevitability of the event they have been arming for, that they have used these very "exposures" to obtain the assent of public opinion to the race for armaments and the preparations for wholesale slaughter.

However hard our masters may try to cover their actions with the tattered and slimy cloak of "national honour" like slobbering and sentimental frauds, and however a politically and economically ignorant working class may applaud and echo these sentiments as if in an effort to hide from themselves brutal facts of which they are conscious and ashamed, there remains the obstinate truth, obvious to anyone who will go out into the streets and listen to what is there said, that even the working class realise that the motive for the war is in the last resort an economic one. Behind the covering screen of cant about British honour and German perfidy is the consciousness, frequently voiced, that it is a question, not of German perfidy but of German trade; not of British honour, but of wider markets for the disposal of British surplus products...

...The workers are wage-slaves, and as such they are and always must be subject to economic laws which govern the wages system. An unemployed army suitable to the capitalist requirements of the time is one of the constant provisions of the operation of those laws—working through the development of machinery. No matter how trade may expand, or whether the German masters rule the country or the English masters continue to do so, this unemployed army will continue to be produced, and will determine the main conditions of working-class existence...The question for the working class, then, is not that of British or German victory, since either event will leave them wage-slaves living upon wages. Under German rule those wages cannot be reduced lower than under British, for every British workingman knows that the masters who are shouting so loudly today for us to go and die in defence of our shackles and their shekels, have left no stone unturned to force wages to the lowest possible limits. The question, then, before the workers, is the abolition of the whole social system of which war and unemployment are integral parts...”

September 1914

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