- Capitalism and Alternatives -

No War but the Class War!

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist Party, UK ) on April 30, 1999 at 16:17:43:

Reckon its time to put a few things straight, and make my position plain. I
am not anti-U.S., nor anti-British, nor Pro-nor-anti-Serb, I am, and always
remain, anti-capitalist, an oopenant of the system, in any of its
manifestations. I am against capitalists sacrificing the lives of other
humans, for their own naked self-interest- when war comes, is capital
consripted? Did Krupt make guns for free, or rolls-royce? Or Vickers? Did
they lose their factories, the merchants of death? No, but the workers were
conscripted, and were asked to give up their lives, more often than not, in a
cause that stank of corruption more than of anything else.

War is trade carried on by other means, or rather, trade is war itself, we are
in a constant state of war against the rest of the world, and when we start to
lose by conventional means, when our interests are deeply threatened, we
revert to less... subtle, less efficient ways of compteting, of getting the
edge, and imposing our will (understand, by 'we' here, of course mean our
masters, we have no interest in this at all- there is no 'national' interest,
except in as much as it is our masters interest, and by that token, by their
strength and wealth, depends how likely they are to employ us, or punish us to
save their own interests) to try and get aead in the competition by use of
force.

War is an expoensive business, risky, and a huge use of resources, our hard
headed masters, who calculate every penny they spend, judge minutely where and
to whom it must go, who will try to avoid giving it to the poor, will not
lightly, nor spendthriftly fritter it away on war without good reason- no
amount of suffering nor evil will provoke them to start a war, unless it
begins to impinge upon their interests,a nd hurt them as well- war is subject
to cost/benefit analysis, and our masters don't like taking a loss.

The constant war, the mob war, gang war, turf war, that is global capitalism,
means that any notion of law, justice or international co-operation (beyond
ever greater bands of bullies) is a pipe-dream, a mockery, a joke. Wars are
fought by the powerful, and only for their aims and interests, and if they can
pretend to being doing a good turn while they do it, they will put out that it
is so, but almost inevitably, ordinary humans, the seried mass of workers, who
have the misfortune to come between the pass and fall of the mighty warring
powers, will be cut down without remorse, as 'a price worth paying'.

In Yugoslavia, war has sprung from the foetid interests of regional elites,
squabbling amongst the ruins and poverty of a wrecked economy, aided and
abbetted by foriegn powers keen to assert their interest in the area (Germany is croatias friend, but Dggie Hurd likes the Serbs), any notion of the
interests of the peopel of ther egion is subsumed to the cries of their
masters to fight for them, and the battered,m bewildered, scared working
class, smothered by a tide of poverty, will scramble to any point ofsafety, to
lash out at any (however imaginary) enemy or cuase of their misfortune.

It is capitalism that has casued the Balkans war, and capitalism that will
keep causing similar wars, so long as it exists. To appeal for negotiatins,
to back the NATO bombing, to plead for peace and justice, will avail no-one
anything. there can be only one resolution to War, and that is to abolish
capitalism, abolish the world-wide market war, and bring the peace the world
deserves.

"Workers of the World Unite!"

Platform Deathy


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