This article was written and distributed in Toronto by people
of varying political perspectives (anarchist, communist and others)
who have come together on a class basis to express opposition to
capitalism and its wars.
Against Capitalist War!
Against Capitalist Peace!
CLASS STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WORK / WAR
MACHINE!
As the Iraqi death toll from the UN-sanctioned economic embargo (a
particularly devastating weapon of mass destruction') is
calculated in seven digit figures, the US military is mobilizing over
150,000 personnel for an invasion of Iraq. With seemingly no sense of
irony, the greatest possessor of weapons of mass destruction in the
history of humanity, has characterized its imperialist drive to
dominate the world's oil reserves as a moral crusade to disarm Saddam
Hussein of deadly weapons. With the nationalistic/racist frenzy
whipped up in the aftermath of September 11 still lingering, the US
government is confident that it will encounter nothing more than
superficial resistance to its genocidal war.
In Canada, the state claims that it will need the legitimacy of a
UN Security Council mandate before it will participate in the Iraq
slaughter. Of course this is just a formality and the Canadian state
is already prepared to go to war. In any case the ruling capitalist
minority has stepped up its class war assault on the whole of the
working class, but particularly the Muslim/Arab minorities within it,
in an effort to reap profit from fear. With racism as a government
policy, and with the capitalist "post 9/11" austerity lay-offs and
cutbacks still in motion, there is little doubt that a war on Iraq
will not be kind to Canadian workers to say nothing of the fellow
workers in Iraq. But then again, when has capitalism ever been
nice?
CAPITALISM IS WAR
War is an expression of capitalist competition. In the drive to
accumulate profits, secure markets, control resources and human
labour, capitalists compete with one another on a global scale.
Rather than being an anomaly in an otherwise peaceful system, warfare
is an inherent and very normal aspect of capitalist competition. In
fact, capitalism could not survive without war.
The nation state is the most crucial vehicle which capitalists use
to pursue their interests. In addition to providing a captive supply
of labour, markets and resources, the state also provides capitalists
with the physical and legal mechanisms to compete with one another
internationally. Although competition between states does not always
take overtly militaristic forms (i.e. trade/tariff "wars", diplomacy,
economic warfare/sanctions etc...), capitalists time and again
utilize military power to obtain their ends. Whether motivated by
desperation to defend their profits from foreign competitors, by a
more aggressive impulse to encroach on the economic spheres of others
(usually weaker states), or even by the need to carve out a new
capitalist state (i.e. the would-be al- Qaida state); capitalists
inevitably resort to warfare in the pursuit/protection of
profits.
Both a cause and effect of capitalist war is the ever-present
cycle of economic and security "crises." Be they stock market
implosions or threat of terrorist attack, these symptoms of
capitalism create a ripe atmosphere for fear and distrust among the
working class. Crisis is always used to subjugate working people to
the needs of the ruling class, particularly in the drive to war. By
exploiting people's fears, capital attempts to mobilize them through
the ideologies of nationalism and patriotism. In this way the
interests of the exploiting minority are presented as the interests
of all. As it is the interest of the capitalists to squeeze more
profits from workers and to use them as cannon fodder in conflicts
with other capitalists, nationalism and patriotism portray sacrifice
and death as working class interests. Hundreds of millions of working
class people have marched off to their deaths in the heat of
nationalistic hysteria. We are told that in order to protect our 'way
of life' and the 'prosperity' of 'our' nation we must submit to
massive layoffs, government cutbacks and increasingly intrusive
'security measures.' Patriotism legitimizes capitalist profits at the
expense of workers.
In addition to this, xenophobia and racism make nationalism and
patriotism the time-honored tools for dividing workers into
artificially antagonistic camps, both internationally and
domestically. Foreign workers are portrayed as enemies/competitors
while minorities within the domestic working class are singled out as
enemies of the state. This has become evident since September 11,
2001 as Muslims/Arabs have been designated as the enemy "race" at
home and abroad. Nationalism and patriotism obscure the real division
of society into classes, thereby diverting class antagonisms and
strengthening the rule of the capitalist minority, militarism and
war.
CAPITALIST "PEACE"
Yet as horrific as capitalist war is on the working people of the
world, capitalist peace provides no respite from terror, brutality
and death. Capitalist peace kills tens of thousands every day death
by starvation, lack of shelter or healthcare, by unsafe working
conditions, by the poisoning of the air and water, by hopelessness,
alienation and drudgery. Terror is still terror whether it is fear of
lack of money or food, or fear of bombs and bullets. The military,
work, police, the judicial system, and prisons are all manifestations
of capital and states' everyday reign of terror upon working class
and excluded people. Capitalist peace means terror, death and misery
by other means.
CANADIAN IMPERIALISM & THE UNITED NATIONS
Despite the rhetoric about Canadian 'honest- broker' foreign
policy or its 'humanitarian' and 'peace-keeping' military policy,
Canada is a major imperialist power that is highly involved in
capitalist exploitation and war around the globe. Canadian capital is
active in almost every region of the world and Canada's foreign
policy is directed towards the protection and expansion of its
international investments.
Canadian capital finds itself most comfortable in the poorest
regions of the world where its treatment of workers and the
environment is only comparable to conditions in slave-labour camps
and toxic waste dumps. In places like Colombia and Sudan, where
Canada has billions of dollars in investment, death squads, assassins
and helicopter gunships have been the primary means of labour
relations/asset protection.
Unlike some militarily stronger imperialist states, Canada's
moderate military capabilities limit its ability to independently
intervene on behalf of its international capital assets. As a result,
Canada has traditionally fulfilled its imperialist military needs
through a combination of long and short-term military coalitions
(e.g. NATO, the Allied coalition in Afghanistan) and the military arm
of the United Nations. In this way Canada has been able to pursue its
imperialist interests by collaborating with other capitalists when
their interests are in common.
Since the Second World War, Canadian militarism has been expressed
mainly through its role in UN "peace-keeping/police" operations. Far
from being humanitarian in nature, UN interventions (often Canadian
led) have always been imperialist in nature. The UN is a body made up
of competing capitalist states the strong, the not so strong, and
their lackeys. It is not above the conflicting interests of its
constituents. The UN's activity has always reflected the interests of
the dominant capitalist states. The common purpose of UN military
intervention into states has been to establish an order'
suitable to foreign capital. This usually involves (re)establishing a
local foreign-capital- friendly ruling class, as well as training and
equipping a military and police force to protect it from the local
population.
In the current situation with Iraq, the cynical and bloody
interests of capitalism are being justified under the guise of a UN
banner. UN Security Council (SC) resolutions (such as the recent
"weapons of mass destruction" resolution) have long been held up by
the Canadian ruling class and much of the left as the true expression
of international justice. Nothing could be further from the truth. SC
resolutions are no more than a rubber stamp of moral legitimacy for
war crimes of unimaginable magnitudes. The UN mandated economic
sanctions that have been placed on Iraq since the last Gulf War have
killed over a million people (none of course from the ruling class).
Yet according to Canadian capitalists, this same murderous mechanism
will determine whether or not Canada will join in on the orgy of
death in Iraq!
THE REAL FACE OF WAR
The capitalist state and media would have us believe that since
the first Gulf War, all US/Allied wars were hi-tech, bloodless
conflicts of "pin-point precision". Through a combination of lies and
rigid media control/compliance the governments of the major
capitalist powers have portrayed a wholly fraudulent picture of
modern warfare.
In Kosovo, far from defeating Serbian military forces in the
field, NATO succeeded only by destroying the civilian infrastructure
of the Serbian state. That meant bombing the electricity grids, water
and sewage processing plants, government buildings, hospitals,
bridges, roads, factories and workplaces. Less that 5% of Serbian
military forces in Kosovo were actually destroyed by NATO forces!
Although coalition forces were much more successful in massacring
over 150 000 Iraqi soldiers in the open desert during Desert Storm,
the civilian infrastructure and Iraqi cities were a primary target.
Thousands of Iraqis were killed in their homes, at work and even in
civilian bomb shelters.
The recent US/Canadian/Allied war in Afghanistan was not much
different. Although a civilian infrastructure was almost non-existent
in this poorest of poor countries, coalition forces ruthlessly
assaulted the civilian population claiming that civilians and
combatants were "indistinguishable". The poverty stricken people of
Afghanistan did majority of the dying while the leaders of al-Qaida
and the Taliban went largely unscathed.
The bloodless wars in the age of computer precision', have
been bloody massacres, reign of terror attacks on working class
populations. In war has not become more humane and will not
change.
TORONTO LEFTTHE LEFT-WING OF CAPITAL & WAR
Religion and its leaders have come out for and against a war
against Iraq. But regardless of their stance, they always act as
enemies of the working class. Whether justifying capitalist war (e.g.
the western Christian right and Islamic fundamentalism) or capitalist
peace (e.g. the Vatican and most branches of "moderate" Christianity
and Islam), religion seeks to tie working people to their bosses, the
states and capital in one great brotherhood.' The truth of
course is that workers have nothing in common with its rulers
regardless of their ecclesiastical affiliations.
The anti-war demonstrations in Toronto, for the most part, have
been organized by the Coalition to Stop the War (CSW), out of which
the Toronto Coalition Against
Sanctions and War on Iraq (TCASWI, a.k.a.
the International Socialists) is the most visually active. The
CSW/TCASWI coalitions are a cross-class alliance made up of social
democrats, religious leaders, pacifists, union bureaucrats and other
class enemies of workers. Far from opposing the political, social and
economic structures that create war (i.e. capitalism), TCASWI
advocates the reactionary/pacifist position that capitalist society
can exist without war in other words with capitalist peace. They
claim that petitioning (often literally) Canadian rulers to alter
their imperialist ways is the only possible course action to end war
(and have even displayed hostile discomfort with others who have
opted for more confrontational forms of opposition).
On the TCASWI website they list such "radical" demands as "That
Canada oppose any new war on Iraq" and "That Canada recognize its
responsibility and the harm inflicted on the Iraqi population and
promote the creation of a fund for compensation and reconstruction of
Iraq."
Such calls to the rulers of the Canadian state to repent for their
imperialist activities could almost be written off as naivete if they
were not so blatantly intended to subvert anti-war sentiment back
into capitalism. By squeezing anti-war opposition into reformist
class-collaborating alliances, TCASWI effectively does the job of
capital. The working classes anti-militarist and anti-capitalist
potential is silenced in favor of capitalism's legalist,
electoralist, "send a message to our politicians" ideology, that only
strengthens the political/state structures of war. CSW/TCASWI's role
has been to pacify and paralyze autonomous working class opposition
by channeling it into activity that legitimizes the existence of
capital, the state and therefore war.
In supposed opposition to the overtly pro- capitalist CSW/TCASWI,
is another ever-present perspective on the Toronto left that of the
leftists'/ Trotskyists. The common ideological formula among
these tendencies dictates that in any given war the weaker capitalist
state/would-be state is actually engaged in an
anti-imperialist' struggle of national
defense/liberation'. This strange concept is used to justify
blatantly pro-capitalist positions of support for worker-murdering
states like Iraq.
In their "Defend
Iraq!" statement (Oct 2002) the International
Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) claimed that people must "take sides in
conflicts between imperialist predators and there victims", and that
the IBT "reject[s] the simplistic equation of Saddam Hussein
and George Bush [...] as a plague on both your
houses'." In effect the IBT advocates militarily defense' for
the Ba'athist regime while affording "no political support to Saddam
Hussein" - but what the hell does that mean?
The Trotskyist League (TL, a.k.a.
Spartacists) makes it a little clearer. In their "Defend
Iraq Against Imperialist Attack!" statement (2002) the TL states
that a US led war against Iraq "will be a predatory war of conquest,
while on the Iraqi side it will be a just war of national defense.
Opponents of imperialist barbarism must take a sidefor the military
defense of neocolonial Iraq against imperialist attack, while giving
no political support whatsoever to the vicious Saddam Hussein
regime."
How is such a thing possible? What is the difference between
"military defense" and "political support"? Well of course there is
none. In the International Communist League's (the international of
the TL) statement "Defend Iraq Against US and [...]" they
quote the Clausewitzian maxim "war is the continuation of politics by
other means". A very true statement indeed, but if war is politics by
other means, then "military defense" is nothing more than "political
support" by other means. The leftist' defensist theory is
nothing more than a thinly veiled call to support a worker-murdering
capitalist war machine. How very proletarian of them!
What makes the leftist' positions all the more paradoxical
is they also claim that the oppressed Iraqi working class must
overthrow Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist regime. When placed into
the context of their anti-imperialist' strategy, the
contradictions slap you in the face. The leftists' proclaim
that the Iraqi proletariat is to overthrow Saddam and his state while
the Canadian working class is supposed to be supporting Saddam with
"military defense"!? What form of working class solidarity and
internationalism is this? Clearly, these reactionary and
anti-proletarian positions have nothing to do with class struggle and
everything to do supporting capitalist war.
In the end the only thing separating the leftist'
Trotskyists from the reformist/pacifist CST/TCASWI is militant
rhetoric - as both tendencies are intent on diverting the working
class into supporting capitalism and its war machine.
WORKING CLASS OPPOSITION & BEYOND
In all wars we are caught between our enemies and our enemies'
enemies. Although war is the expression of competing capitalist
states/would-be states, it is regular working people that do all of
the dying. The impending war against Iraq will likely result in the
deaths of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of working class and
excluded Iraqis. This is business as usual in a world where tens of
thousands die from the "peaceful" conditions of capitalism on a daily
basis. At what point do we collectively reject this homicidal
madness?
War is not an independent phenomenon that can be eliminated in
isolation. War is but one aspect of capitalist relations. Capital
itself, cannot be morally divided into militaristic and
peaceful' sectors. It is an organic whole and all of its
various aspects culminate together to create its motives and impulses
such as the drive to war. To oppose this barbarism means linking up
all fronts against the state and bosses' global exploitation of
humanity. Only the end of capitalism itself can usher in the
conditions of permanent and true peace. Only the collective power of
the working class has the possibility of uprooting, once and for all,
this blood- drenched system of misery, terror and death.
Therefore the struggle against war is same struggle that we
experience everyday the struggle to survive as wage slaves under
"peaceful" capitalist domination the class struggle. This struggle
has been expressed in various forms of resistance to war likework
stopages, the "hot cargo" of war materials, strikes, general strikes,
mass mutinies, uprisings and revolutions. Recent actions have shown
how even relatively isolated working class activity can directly
impede capitalist war efforts. The firefighters' strike in Britain
forced that government to divert significant military resources away
from its war mobilizations. In Nagasaki Japan, 200 dock workers
refused to load military supplies onto naval vessels headed to assist
the US-led war on Afghanistan, single-handedly impeding the entire
war effort of the Japanese state. Such isolated actions have done
more to hamper capitalist war efforts than all of the anti-war
demonstrations. Image what an internationally united working class
could do.
For a classless, stateless human society, devoid of work,
racism, poverty, alienation and the law of value.
NO WAR BETWEEN NATIONS!
NO PEACE BETWEEN CLASSES!
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